“I just don’t want pancakes, okay?”
Mim decided not to press the issue, turning instead to Cutter. “Are you teaching them your famous flip?”
“They’re watching this time,” Cutter said. He looked at his watch. “Okay. The batter’s made and we’ve waited a couple of minutes for the magic-y science stuff to happen with the buttermilk and baking soda. This way they’ll be nice and fluffy.”
Matthew poured a quarter cup of batter into the hot frying pan.
Mim checked the time on her cell phone, then looked up at the boys and smiled, clearly appreciating what Cutter was doing. “Now you just wait for the little holes to app—”
Matthew raised his hands like a traffic cop. “We know how to cook it, Mom. Uncle Arliss let us cut the bacon into pieces and weave it into squares.”
“Cool,” Mim said. “I’m starved. Where is this bacon you speak of?”
“In the oven,” Michael said, still waving the batter-covered spatula. He quoted something Arliss had told them at least a dozen times over the past few months since he’d arrived from Florida to help out. “Grumpy was bakin’ bacon before anyone knew it was a thing.”
“Holes!” Matthew sounded the alarm, pointing at the pan. “Time to flip it!”
Cutter drew a chorus of oohs and aahs with his pancake-flipping skills. Even Constance looked on, but sideways, as if it was the most boring thing she’d ever seen.
It took the boys less than fifteen minutes to eat, wash the syrup and bacon grease off their faces, and help pile their dishes in the sink. They fled out the front door at the first sound of the school bus. Constance had gone well before the boys, taking her yogurt on the fly. Cutter saw her snitch a piece of bacon and fold it in a pancake, but pretended he didn’t.
Mim set her coffee on the table and checked her phone again when she and Cutter were alone. “I’m late,” she said. “I’ll do the dishes when I get home.”
“I got it,” Cutter said. “Grumpy’s pancakes are light as a feather, but the batter turns to indestructible concrete in an hour.”
“Thank you, Arliss,” Mim said.
He gave her a rare grin—the dangerous kind, the kind with dimples that had gotten him married four times. “It’s okay. I like doing dishes.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “You hate doing the dishes. In fact, I’m not a hundred percent sure that’s not what caused your second divorce.”
“I can confirm or deny nothing.”
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Thank you for everything. Those boys were crushed when Ethan died. I didn’t think Michael was ever going to come out of it. Now you have them leaving the house each morning trailing pancakes and confidence.”
“They’re good kids,” Cutter said. “Constance will come around eventually.” He changed the subject quickly so she didn’t have to dwell on how long that might take. “How about cowboy chili pie for dinner?”
He stood to clear the table, wincing at a new pain in his back.
Mim raised an eyebrow. “Need some ice?”
“I’m good,” Arliss said, carrying the dishes around the bar to the sink. He’d probably overextended a tendon in his hip kicking the shit out of Twig Ripley, but that wasn’t something he wanted to talk about with Mim.
“I heard you come in late,” she said. “Rough night?”
“We got our guy.”
“Grumpy Man-Rule twenty.” Mim nodded. “Let no guilty man go free.”
Cutter rinsed the plates. “Yeah, well, I got to this one a little slow. He beat the crap out of a police dog.”
“Is he okay?” Mim asked. “The dog, I mean?”
“I don’t know,” Cutter said. “But it was bad . . . Anyway, sorry to start your day on a downer.”
“Oh,” Mim said, “I can do that without any help from you . . . What were we talking about before?”
“Cowboy chili pie,” Cutter said.
“Right. That sounds outstanding.”
“Good,” Cutter said. “Because I promised the boys they could cut up onions.”
“They don’t even like onions.”
“I didn’t either when I was a kid.” Cutter shrugged. “Grumpy had a rule about that too . . . well, an axiom really. ‘It’s more about the knife than the onion.’ ”
“Touché.” Mim sat with both hands resting in her lap. “It’s supposed to rain all day,” she said. “Want to go to the Dome and run if you get home in time?”
“Works for me,” Cutter said, drying his hands.
“Good, because, you know, pancakes and cowboy chili pie in the same day. Constance thinks only she has a problem.” Mim put a hand on her hip and winked. “For some of us, the struggle is real.”
Cutter started to say something that bordered on flirtatious, thought better of it, and made do with an awkward hug goodbye.
CHAPTER 6
Cutter parked his government vehicle-colloquially called a G-ride—beneath the James M. Fitzgerald US Courthouse and Federal Building. His parking space put his driver’s-side door against a thick concrete support pillar so he had to suck in his gut to get out. He’d learned from Grumpy that a boss should always take the oldest car in the fleet and leave the best assigned parking to the troops. He grabbed his war bag from the passenger seat and took the elevator to the ground floor.
The Alaska Fugitive Task Force offices were down the hall and around the corner from a bank that rented space in the federal building, in a separate location from the rest of the Marshals Service. Cutter had just punched his access code into the scramble pad beside the door to the task force suite when Lola stepped out from the USMS gym across the hall. As usual, her bronze skin was slightly flushed from a recent workout—Cutter doubted she ever went more than a few hours without some form of exercise. She wore a pair of black jeans, loose enough she could fight in them, but tight enough to look stylish. A dark blue pocket T-shirt with the short sleeves rolled up past her biceps revealed the border of a Polynesian tattoo on her shoulder. The hallway was a dead end and generally out of view of the public, so she carried her brown leather jacket, leaving the Glock on her belt exposed. The silver circle-star of a deputy United States marshal was clipped to a round black leather case just forward of the pistol. Two spare magazines and a flashlight rested over her left hip. Her handcuffs rode over her left kidney. A CZ folding knife nested in her right pocket slightly back from the leather holster. There was room for a Taser too, but not much, so she customarily left it in her desk while she was in the office.
“Morning, boss.”
Cutter pushed open the door, stepping to the side so Lola could go in ahead. “Have a good workout?”
“Leg day,” she said. Anyone who’d ever experienced leg day wouldn’t need an explanation and anyone who hadn’t wouldn’t understand anyway.
Cutter walked into his small office, which was barely big enough for his desk and a couple of side chairs, and dropped his war bag before sitting down. Lola followed him in, standing there like something was on her mind.