Bless him for that.
Mac found plates while Maren found a skillet. Juni narrated her coloring process from the table, occasionally asking whether unicorn hooves were allowed to be orange. Mac assured her there were no laws against orange hooves in Colorado, though he couldn’t speak for Wyoming.
By the time the first pancake hit the pan, the safehouse smelled like butter and coffee.
Juni abandoned her coloring page and appeared at the edge of the kitchen, Snoopy tucked under one arm.
“Are those pancakes?”
“They are,” Maren said.
“Like yesterday?”
“Better than yesterday. These aren’t from McDonald’s.”
Juni nodded, accepting the upgrade. Then she looked past Maren toward the front door. “Will Colin get pancakes?”
Maren’s heart gave an annoying little kick.
Mac’s mouth twitched. “Colin mostly runs on coffee.”
Juni frowned. “That’s not breakfast.”
“It is for Colin.”
“That’s not healthy.”
“No, ma’am, it is not.”
Maren flipped the first pancake and tried very hard not to smile too much. “We can save him some.”
“With syrup.”
“With syrup,” Maren promised.
Juni looked relieved.
Mac leaned closer to Juni and lowered his voice in a stage whisper. “Between you and me, for your aunt’s pancakes, I bet he’d make an exception.”
Juni climbed back into her chair at the table. “Colin will eat his pancakes. He promised he’s coming back.”
Maren’s hand stilled on the spatula. There it was again. The real question under the pancake concern.
He promised he’s coming back.
Mac heard it too. “He’ll come back,” he said, steady and certain. “Colin doesn’t break promises.”
Juni studied him with those silver-gray eyes that had undone half of Watchdog in less than twenty-four hours.
Then she nodded and picked up her orange crayon again.
Maren turned back to the stove because apparently pancakes required her full attention if she didn’t want to stand there with tears in her eyes over breakfast food and a man who wasn’t even in the room.
Mac stepped closer, voice low. “You okay?”
No.
“Yes.” She poured another circle of batter into the pan. “Just tired.”
