I hope, Jerry thought.
“Daddy!”
The little girl transferred her grip from her mother’s thighs to the waist of the man who appeared suddenly, silently in the doorway. He was no taller than the woman who leaned over the child to embrace him as well. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed like the girl and his skin was tanned from long exposure to the sun. He put one hand on the little girl’s back and hugged her close, saying, “Hello, sweetie.”
His hands were large and strong-looking and his arms muscled, not with the kind built by pumping iron but rather lean muscle won from hard physical labor. His face was weathered and harsh-featured, but its strong lines relaxed as he embraced his girl and leaned over her to briefly kiss his wife.
“The boy?” Jerry asked, still uncertain if he should use Fortune’s real name.
The man shook his head. “Vanished in the woods. I lost his trail where he stumbled on the county road. Couldn’t tell which way he went, right or left. But I’ve still got my people out looking for him. Don’t worry. He wasn’t wounded. And the men hunting you didn’t get him.”
“How do you know?” Jerry asked.
The man only looked at him. “I know.”
Jerry cleared his throat. It didn’t seem reasonable to press the point.
“I’m in your debt, mister...?”
He reached down and picked up his daughter, holding her on his hip with one arm around her waist. “Brennan,” he said. “Daniel Brennan.” He put his other arm around the woman’s waist. “This is my wife. Jennifer Maloy Brennan.”
“My mom’s an ace,” the little girl said.
“Jeez.” The boy, silent until now, rolled his eyes. “You don’t go just telling people that.”
Jennifer Maloy Brennan smiled. “We all have our little secrets. Don’t we, Mr. Creighton?”
“Uh,” Jerry said.
Brennan smiled at him. In other circumstances, Jerry could see how that smile could look disturbing. Dangerous, even. He felt that somehow, someway, he should know this man.
“Would you like some breakfast, Mr. Creighton?” Jennifer Brennan asked.
“Yes, I would, thanks,” Jerry said. “Mind if I change first?”
The Brennans looked at each other, quizzically.
“No, not at all,” Jennifer said.
“Thanks. I’ll be along in a minute.”
He had decided to get rid of the Dagon face. He’d had even worse luck than usual since acquiring it, and he definitely wanted to change it before running into Billy Ray again.
New Hampton: Camp Xavier Desmond
Ray felt pretty good when he awoke, even though he’d only had a couple of hours of sleep in the guest cabin that had been turned into a command post in the effort to find John Fortune. He lay back in the bunk, thinking over the past night’s events.
It had begun with promise that soon petered out into the drudgery of fruitless searching, though it had not been without its high points, especially the initial battle at the administration cabin.
Pann, Starfin, and Schaeffer had been doing their best to hold the line against the Allumbrado assault team, though they were not the ideal combat force. The blind telepath was somewhat limited in his capabilities. Elmo, though very tough when he could get his hands on someone, had to face armed Allumbrados, and Pann, though competent with a gun couldn’t get his tinks to do anything more useful than occasionally momentarily blind an opponent by blinking brightly in their vicinity.
Once Ray had arrived, however, the odds turned drastically in favor of the good guys. He single-handedly transformed what had been a moderately desperate situation into a cakewalk, going through half a score of numbnuts with guns as if they’d been a troop of girl scouts out for a midnight hike. Ray’s only disappointment was that he didn’t run into any aces while he was cleaning clocks. He knew Dagon was somewhere in the night, as supposedly was that blonde jerk who’d teamed with Dagon in the Vegas assault. Witness. Ray had hoped to run into him, but never did.
As soon as all of their opponents were groaning on the ground, Ray and the others lit out for the cabin where Creighton had stashed the kid, but Sascha knew that it was empty before they even got inside. They figured that Creighton had headed for the woods with the kid in tow, and went in after them, but it was a hopeless job.
They even brought Sascha along, hoping he could pick up the scent telepathically, but gave it up after a couple of hours of trying to lead a blind man through a forest at night. Ray broke away from the others after they’d heard a couple of gunshots in the near distance, but noises like that are notoriously difficult to track, especially in hilly, heavy forested terrain. Ray couldn’t do it.
He stumbled along in the dark. It was more luck than anything else that brought him back to the camp a couple hours before dawn. The whole area was quiet and secure. The Allumbrados, aces and numbnuts both, had all disappeared. Even their casualties. Camp administrators had the kids back in their bunks, fobbing them off with a story about a botched robbery. Ray and the men from the detective agency realized their best course was to get a couple hours of sleep, get up early and call for reinforcements, and then start the search in the morning when they could actually see what they were looking for.
Ray opened his eyes wide. He suddenly smelled coffee. The dwarf came into the cabin with two mugs and handed him one when he realized that Ray was awake. Ray sat up and took a sip. He grimaced. It was awful, but he didn’t care. It just felt good to be in the field again.
“Any news?” he asked.
“Creighton just showed up.”
“Alone?”
Elmo shook his head. “Didn’t have the kid, but he was with some guy. Also a joker, a little guy covered in fur.”
“Little guy?”
Elmo nodded. “About two feet shorter than me.”
Ray was about to crack a joke about that being really little, but caught himself in time. He was working on his sensitivity, and besides, he’d fought next to the dwarf the night before, and Elmo had done more than carry his own weight. Ray only nodded.
“The guy with Creighton was a local. In fact, apparently owns a lot of land around here, including the land the camp’s on. Knows it pretty good. He also has a team of these little jokers working for him, or something.”
“Doing what?” Ray asked, reminding himself again to refrain from the short jokes.
Elmo shrugged shoulders that would have been massive on a six-footer. “Got me. Maybe they gather nuts and berries for him. None of ‘em seem much bigger than squirrels, anyway.”
Maybe, Ray thought, short jokes are okay after all.
“They’ve been out scouring the forest since dawn. They’ll find the kid, if anyone can.”
“We should go, too,” Ray said.
“Creighton said to hang on for a bit. Ackroyd’s coming up from the city with reinforcements from the agency. Between us and this Brennan guy and his gang of munchkins, we should cover the area pretty good.”
Ray grunted. Ackroyd. He and the P.I. weren’t the best of friends, but what the Hell, that never stopped him from working with anyone before. “And the Allumbrados?” he asked.
Elmo shrugged again. “They may be out in the woods, but we haven’t seen ‘em or heard ‘em. Brennan has his gang keeping an eye out for them, as well.”
Ray nodded. “In the meantime, how about breakfast?”
“You read my mind. This way.”
Breakfast. It made Ray think of Angel. He wondered where she was, and if she was getting enough to eat.