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“Give,” he said.
I handed her over, then picked up my coffee. He settled her along his forearm with her head in the crook of his elbow, no fumbling, and Sparrow gave him a long, serious look.
That’s my daughter. She doesn’t fuss much. She watches. The dark hair didn’t come from my side of the family, and neither did the eyes that grew darker instead of lighter. The way she studies people is all her daddy too.
“She’s judging me.”
“She is.”
“What have I done?”
“You want the whole list?” Nick said with a mouthful of cereal.
“Nobody asked you.”
Sparrow kept staring at him.
“See?” Nick said. “Even she knows.”
I’d had a year of this, and it still caught me sideways some mornings. When I arrived, I thought I’d stay with Robin until I found a one-bedroom place for me and the baby. These men wouldn’t hear a word of it.
Robin came in at seven, still in his jacket after working a night shift at the port. He relaxed when he saw us, then crossed the kitchen and put a hand on Sparrow’s head as he passed.
“Any trouble?”
“With who?”
“Anyone.” He filled a glass at the tap. “Anything. World’s full of people.”
“Dion made the coffee, but I survived it.”
“Jenny Wren.”
“No trouble, Robin Redbreast.”
Most people had Robin down as a carefree playboy, more interested in a good time than settling down. They saw the easy grin, the women, and stopped looking. I knew the man who’d been taking care of me since I was nine. This was the real Robin. He looked after the people he loved.
By ten, Sparrow was strapped into her car seat and I was driving down to the boathouse because Moff had texted me one word: food. Moff is not a man of many words. He’s sent me maybe eleven texts in a year. Four of them have been food.
Kettlewell was fogged in, the way it is most mornings from late summer on, the water the same gray as the sky. Gulls working the pilings. The whole harbor smelling of diesel and cold weed. I hated it the first month. By week six, I’d gotten used to it again.
JW Security runs out of a converted boathouse at the end of the working pier. Gray shingle weathered to silver, a sign so small that people looking for it drive past twice.
Before JW, the five of them worked security at the club where I danced my way through college. Robin ran the doors. Moff watched the cameras and saw trouble before it knew it was trouble. Dion worked the floor. Nick handled the back hall and the private rooms. Simon walked me the fifty feet to my car every night.
They guarded Blondie for four years without ever confusing her with Wren. The mask came off in the dressing room. What happened onstage stayed there. No customer followed me out, nobody put a hand on me, and nobody got my real face unless I chose to give it to them.
Best security in the business. They still were.
I brought sandwiches from the place on Harbor Row. When Moff was watching the cameras, he wouldn’t stop long enough to get food. Sparrow came in with me, wide awake in the carrier against my chest.
He was in the back office with three monitors and the reading glasses he denies wearing. Ex-army, gray at the sides, a man who doesn’t put a spare word in a sentence.
“Kerrisk.”
“Moffett.”
He took the bag. Looked in it. Nodded. That was as close to a thank you as Moff ever got.
