Rason & Eliza - Cee Bowerman Page 0,45

part at some point, son.”

“Thank you for all your help.” I shook his hand and he turned to walk away.

“I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something about her bail. Try and get some sleep.”

I watched Detective Lake walk to his car and then I turned around and looked at Harley. “I’ve got a few hours at least. How about breakfast at Martha’s Diner? It opened about ten minutes ago.”

“I’m in!”

I pulled my phone out and called Eliza. It rang twice before her breathless voice came on the line. “Rason?”

“Hey, sweetheart.” I smiled at the sound of her voice. “Some things happened and I have a window of opportunity to live a normal life for at least the next few hours. Meet me at Martha’s Diner and I’ll buy you some of those pancakes we both love.”

“Really?” Eliza squealed excitedly. “I’ll be there as quickly as I can!”

She didn’t even say goodbye; she just hung up the phone.

“Your girl’s going to meet us there?”

I grinned. “My girl is going to meet us there.”

◆◆◆

“That is just fucked up.” Stoffer, one of my co-workers who was also a good friend, shook his head. “That’s crazy. She’s crazy.”

“I’ve got to call Cindy,” Jamie, Daughtry’s wife, laughed as she walked away. “That’s her hospital. She’s going to want the juicy details.”

“Are your parents okay?” Lout asked. “Your mom is a pistol. She was talking a mile a minute, but we didn’t understand a single word she was saying. Your dad translated though. I guess she hates to waste food? Anyway, she sat us all down at that little table in her kitchen and fed us like we were kings. Her leftovers are better than any other Asian food I’ve ever had.”

“That food was unbelievable,” Grady agreed. He was another co-worker who also belonged to the same MC as our boss, and he’d ridden along with Daughtry, Lout, Stoffer and a few of the other men from their club to escort my parents to the airport yesterday. “There were these dumpling things that had this stuff in them. I don’t even know what it was, but I want like three dozen more. Maybe four dozen. They were like two bites each and man, they were good.”

“All the guys that had saddlebags got to take food home.” Lout laughed.

“I ate mine for breakfast this morning,” Daughtry admitted. “Jamie stole a few bites and swore she’d never tasted anything so good.”

“Mom hates to waste food. When she was a kid, there wasn’t a lot of food for her family. Even all these years later when she should be used to how easy it is to just pop into the grocery store for more of something, she still makes sure nothing goes to waste.”

“Can you cook like that?” Lout asked me. When I nodded, he shook his head. “You’ve been holding out on us, man. That’s shitty.”

I laughed for a second. “I didn’t know how much you liked Vietnamese food.”

“I didn’t either until yesterday,” he replied. “Now I do. I’ll need a weekly meal, please. You can come over and cook for the family in our kitchen. Willow loves to learn new recipes.”

“Let me get all this settled and I’ll . . .” I trailed off when my cell phone rang. I looked down and saw it was Detective Lake. “I’ve got to take this. It’s the detective about Robin’s arraignment.”

I answered the phone as I stepped away from the guys, and when I heard Detective Lake’s voice, I knew it wasn’t good news.

“Rason, where are you?”

“I’m at work. What happened?”

“The judge set bail. Her parents were in the courtroom, and they brought the damn bail bondsman in with them. She’ll be out of jail within the hour.”

“Dammit!”

“She’s been brought up on quite a few charges, and all but the ones concerning practicing without a license are federal. She’ll be tried at the federal courthouse, which is good because they come down much harder than the local state judges we have in town.”

“I just have to survive until she goes to trial.”

“I talked to the prosecutor and he said that her lawyer has already said she’s going to file a motion for a quick trial and waive a jury. That means this could be over in a month, maybe less, but you’ve got to stay safe until then.”

“I’ll figure something out,” I sighed.

“I’ll keep in touch. You do the same. I’d like for you to let me know where you’re staying just in case I need