Chapter 12

Present

I was halfway between my cubicle and the stairwell, keys in hand and intent on picking Kenzie up from school when my name was called across the floor, halting my progress. I knew that tone. Turning on my heels, I found Bobby hurrying down the corridor between cubicles, still stashing his cell on his belt.

"Lawson. Drunken Weaver," he stated, effectively giving me a wealth of information and re-organising my plans for the afternoon all in the space of three words.

Working at Rangeman and being in tight with the boss afforded me the flexibility I needed to give Kenzie as normal a childhood as possible. Being picked up and dropped off at school by Daddy was important to her at the moment, so I worked my schedule around that. Most days it worked, but every now and then something like this would happen at the wrong moment and the whole routine would be thrown out the window.

There was no way I could reschedule this. We'd been after Lawson for months, and every time we got near him, he vanished into thin air. And then, to make matters worse, about four weeks ago he'd disappeared off the radar completely. No one had seen hide nor hair of the guy, and time was running out on his bond, so if we didn't hightail it over to the Drunken Weaver pub right this second, Rangeman could be thousands of dollars out of pocket.

"Kenzie," I uttered, glancing at the clock above the elevators as Bobby reached my side. There was still twenty minutes until school ended, but I doubted we could capture Lawson and make it over in time.

"Auntie Steph to the rescue!" Steph announced, popping up from her own cubicle. In the next second, she too was racing toward me, hitching her handbag over her shoulder. She'd probably been itching for an excuse to bust free of her desk duties. No way was Ranger going to let her chase down skips with a bun in the oven. "Sounds like a Donut Date is in order."

"Only-" I tried to warn her, but she cut me off.

"Only one donut, yeah, yeah," she said with a signature eye roll as she jabbed at the elevator call button. "You and Carlos both have the same rules. We'll have our donuts – one each, I promise – stop by here to say hi to the boys, then straight up to seven for homework."

I slung my arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to her temple. "Thanks, Beautiful," I called over my shoulder as I quickly released her and ducked through the stairwell door that Bobby was holding open. "I owe you one!"

"I think that's actually two you owe her," Bobby pointed out as the door snicked closed behind us. "This is the second time she's saved your ass in as many days.

I shook my head. "I'm calling yesterday a draw. She went full rhino on Miss Moon and I had to sweet talk the devil into letting Kenz do the recital this weekend. I need to find a new dance school."

At the SUV, we slid into our respective seats without hesitation; communication wasn't necessary at times like these. "That's what you said when K-Pop had that stomach bug," Bobby said, punching the address into the GPS while I backed out of the car space. "It's what I've been saying practically since she started there."

"I know, I know, I know," I nodded, frustrated more at the fact that he was right than the fact that I had to knuckle down and actually find a new dance school. The problem was, every time I had time to do the research, some emergency cropped up, or they'd start working on a new dance that Kenzie was really excited about and the thought of changing schools was put on the back burner. "I should have done my research before taking her there in the first place, but it was where Phoebe learned to dance. I thought it might be a nice connection for her to have with her mother. I didn't think it would be this bad."

Bobby sent me a look as I paused at a stop sign, and I almost laughed. As much as he'd tried to hide it when she was around, Bobby had never liked Phoebe. Not even during the brief period of time when she and I were actually getting along. He'd been the first to dust his hands off and proclaim good riddance. And clearly, he didn't think highly of the thought strategies that went behind my selection process if it involved Phoebe. "At least tell me she's not going back after the recital," he implored, checking his weapons as we approached our destination. "I will personally kick your ass into next millennium if you take her back to class next week."

"She's not going back," I conceded on a sigh. "She's not happy about it, but I don't want to see her berated like that anymore. I've let it slide long enough because she has all her friends there, but yelling at her because she needs to pee is the last straw. Miss Moon is lucky she didn't wet her pants right there on the studio floor. I need to make Kenzie's mental health a priority."

The conversation ended there as I pulled the SUV into a space behind the Drunken Weaver and we made our way inside to get our guy. It was an easier operation than I imagined it would be after the way he'd avoided detection for so long, but by the time we arrived he was already three sheets to the wind. I doubt he even realised what was happening until we reached the copshop and he was shoved into a holding cell. Why he couldn't have crawled out from whatever rock he'd been hiding under to get drunk and babble on about his ex-wife weeks ago I had not idea. It certainly would have saved us a lot of stress.

Typically, despite our easy capture, it was still another hour and a half before we made it back to Rangeman thanks to a break in at the jewellery store on Hamilton and our geographic location in relation to it. Like Mom always liked to say when things weren't going her way: It never rains, but it pours.

We didn't bother stopping off on five to fill out a capture report or any other related paperwork, instead taking the elevator all the way to the seventh-floor penthouse and letting ourselves in. Technically, it was still Ranger's personal domain, but he didn't use it anywhere near as much as he used to since he and Steph moved out to what Steph dubbed "The Real Batcave" three years ago. These days it stood empty except when he was pulling all-nighters, when he and Steph snuck off for a nooner, or for family dinners, like tonight.

Steph, Ranger, Tank and Kenzie were all gathered around the kitchen island when we entered, appearing to be concentrating on something that was spread out on the counter. If it hadn't been for my daughter's presence I would have assumed it was some case they were analysing, trying to come up with a plan of attack, but they'd never do that with Kenzie present.

"What are we doing?" I asked, coming up behind the stool Kenzie was perched on so I could peer over her shoulder at the mess of construction paper and markers on the counter.

"Daddy!" she exclaimed, spinning around so fast that she would have fallen off the chair had she not wrapped her little arms around my neck as I grabbed her in our customary bear hug. "We're making a family tree like in the book, but we don't know where to put Uncle Tank."

I looked to the man in question to find him holding a green piece of paper that was clearly supposed to be a leaf. The letters T-A-N-K had been spelled out on it in my daughter's messing handwriting, and someone with a much steadier hand had squeezed the word 'Uncle" just above it. Tank was staring down at the poster board where a large tree and various other named leaves apparently depicted the shape of my family. His expression was that of someone doing complex math in their head, or analysing a strategic plan for obvious faults, and I had to wonder if he was trying to figure out where to put his leaf or how to explain to a five year old that he wasn't actually related to her despite the title that had been bestowed upon him. Another complex concept to add to the list of things Kenz would need to know in time, I guess. Just file it right beside the birds and the bees.

"What about me?" Bobby asked, wedging himself in between Tank and Ranger. "Do I get a leaf?"

Her reaction to Bobby's presence was just as enthusiastic as it was to mine, possible even more so. She squealed and threw her hands in the air in celebration that her favourite uncle was here and then hurriedly snatched up a scrap of green paper and the safety scissors that were lying on the table in front of her, holding both out to Steph. "Can you please make another one?" she asked politely.

As Steph silently obliged, Kenzie gather a handful of markers and held them out toward Bobby, commanding him to pick what colour he wanted his name to be. His careful consideration, and accompanying monologue detailing the merits of each colour filled the entire time it took Steph to cut out a leaf shape and then Kenzie was slowly sounding out Bobby's name as she wrote it down.

"Buh-o-Buh…" she frowned up at me as she finished sounding out without writing. "…ee… Daddy, there's too many letters that can make the 'ee' sound."

I nodded my agreement. "It's a sneaky one, isn't it?" I said, leaning over her shoulder once more so I could see what she'd put down so far. "We need another 'b'," I instructed, watching as she wrote it down. "And then a 'y'."

"And that's it?" she checked.

"And that's it," I confirmed.

"Bobby!" she called, thrusting the leaf in his direction as she wiggled excitedly on the stool.

Bobby accepted his name leaf and scribbled 'uncle' onto it with the pink marker that was closest to him, then held it up in an identical fashion to how Tank was holding his. "But where are we putting it?" he asked, joining everyone else in staring down at the names already littering the tree.

"What if we make a new branch over here?" Steph suggested, tapping a small blank space with the brown maker.

I could see the logic in that suggestion. Bobby and Tank, by rights, didn't belong on the tree at all if we were basing it purely on blood relations, which is what every other name on the tree was. But The Great Big Book of Families had celebrated all kinds of families and relations, and no one could deny that Tank and Bobby were part of the family. All the guys at Rangeman were her uncles, but only Bobby and Tank were included in family functions. They were important to Kenzie, so we had to find an appropriate place to put them on the tree that represented their standing in the family.

"We should put them here," Ranger announced with his usual authority, pointing to the area between his own name and mine.

"Why there?" Kenzie asked curiously, prompting Ranger to lock eyes with me, silently requesting permission to explain the non-relation relationship situation. I just nodded. If he thought he could explain the situation in a way that she'd understand then he could go ahead. I was more than happy to pass on some of the hard topics to my cousin if he was willing. God knows I had enough of them ahead of me as it was.

With a patience I'd only ever seen him afford for the children in his life – nieces, nephews, his own daughter – Ranger explained the circumstances surrounding how the four of us had become brothers in arms. Kenzie was, of course, enthralled, because her Uncle Los-Los was telling a story, and stories were her favourite. She oh'd and ah'd in all the right places, and interrupted him with questions in a way no Rangeman employee save for Steph had ever had the guts to do. And by the time he'd finished, and we'd attached the last two leaves, Ella had snuck in, laid our meal out on the dining room table, and disappeared again, all without Kenzie noticing.

After dinner was consumed, and Kenzie's face was washed of the gravy she'd managed to spread across it, we moved to the couches in the living room to play Snakes and Ladders while Steph did a much better job at braiding Kenzie's hair than I could ever do. And inevitably, the conversation turned to Phoebe and what happened after she moved into my house.

"How did you get to know enough about mommy that you lived with her?" Kenzie asked, watching me count out my five spaces on the board.

"We, uh, dated a bit," I explained, eliciting snorts from the assembled adults.

Kenzie frowned at Tank, who'd been the loudest. "Why is that funny?" she enquired.

Tank gulped down a mouthful of his water, probably stalling to figure out a child friendly way to reply – now he knows what I've been dealing with all week. "Well, your daddy had never really dated before, Nugget," he pointed out, rolling the dice for his own turn.

"He wasn't very good at it," Ranger added.

Bobby nodded. "He didn't know how to do it at all, which made your mommy annoyed."

Her eyes went round, mouth falling open. "Why was mommy annoyed with you, Daddy?" she whispered. "You were trying your best, weren't you?"

"He was," Steph assured her, leaning forward from behind Kenzie to take her turn. "But sometimes even when we try our best we can still get it wrong, and your mommy liked for things to be right all the time."

"And then Daddy went and asked her to marry him," Tank added, like it was the climax of the story.

Kenzie's eyebrows shot clear to her hairline as she looked from face to face around the coffee table before settling on me. "What did she say?" she asked urgently.