We had drinks at a small place called the Malmar until the sun went down. There Fearless told stories about the old days and the war. I was at the front more than once in that conflagration, but Fearless spent most of his time behind German lines—causing all kinds of havoc. He didn’t regale us with tales of bloodshed, however. He talked about the countryside and the wildlife, about people he’d met and the solitude that only a terrorist could appreciate.

At nightfall Lola invited us to a club she knew called Venus Cove, an intimate nightspot that had only nine tables.

No one questioned a white woman accompanied by two black men being guided up to the front. We had steaks and bourbon with baked potatoes and broccoli cooked so long that you could have mashed its green stalks with a fork.

After dinner and four rounds of top-shelf whiskey, Lola’s defenses started to lag behind her words.

“Women don’t have it easy in this world, Mr. Jones,” she said.

They don’t have it easy and most of them loved Fearless.

“Ain’t that the truth,” my friend agreed, patting her forearm. “From birthin’ babies to buryin’ their men.”

Lola took the hand and squeezed it.

“You think anybody cares about a woman or a girl gets dragged by her hair and fucked or beat up just so a man could pretend he’s a man?”

Fearless was too well-mannered to answer that question.

I sipped on my whiskey and waited.

“You wouldn’t let that happen, now, would you, Mr. Jones?”

Fearless clasped her hands in his. She looked up at him with moist eyes and I knew that at least her feelings were for real.

“You know we’re trying to do right by you, Miss Kilian,” he said softly.

Lola pressed her forehead against Fearless’s steel-band fingers.

That’s why I had brought my friend. He worked for the detective agency from time to time. Fearless was the best bodyguard money could buy. But it was his power and the honesty in the eyes of most women that I hoped would solve the riddle of Craig and his mother. Lola could sense that Fearless would protect her no matter the odds. And in the face of those odds he was most likely to come out victorious.

“I know you are, Mr. Jones. I know you are,” she said. “I don’t deserve it. I did introduce my baby boy to that woman. She was just like me. I’d look at her and see myself.”

Fearless lifted her chin with a finger and asked, “What did she do?”

“Women like us don’t do things,” she confessed. “Not really. We motivate the men that mistreat us, make them do things.”

“Like what?” Fearless asked.

“Rob and steal and, and kill.”

“She made somebody do all that?”