I fell asleep again with my head on his thigh, and as such, there was a repeat of him carrying me to bed where I woke up just long enough to feel my head hit the pillow.

The second night, he came home late, had a beer and gave me another update on my issues (brief, since nothing was happening, which included no sign of Tia). He then told me he’d talked to his kids, he’d spent the day at Ace and that was the extent of our conversation.

I was learning Buck needed to unwind at night and unwinding didn’t mean deep, soul-bearing conversations.

It meant greasy food, beer and zoning out in front of the television.

This was okay since he liked doing the last with my cheek on his thigh and his fingers playing with my hair.

And anyway, I wasn’t up for soul-bearing conversations. I had enough of that for a while.

I needed a rest.

Although all of this was uneventful, the state of play of my life had shifted substantially.

I had my stuff, such as it was, but at least I had conditioner and clean underwear. And I didn’t have my unpaid rent hanging over my head.

I also didn’t have my car. I’d left it sitting too long, and in one of his updates, Buck informed me the repo men got it before his boys could get it.

This stunk.

Buck told me to kiss it good-bye and stop thinking about it, and since I really didn’t have any choice, I did that.

Though, I did worry that they took the homeless man’s tarp when they took my car. He needed it. It didn’t rain much in Arizona, but when it did, I suspected a tarp came in handy.

And not incidentally, when I shared this fear with Buck, he told me, “The boys’ll handle that too.”

Later, after he got a phone call, he confirmed that they did handle it.

I mean…

This guy.

And “his boys.”

Seriously.

On Mrs. Jimenez front: she was back at home. Buck’s men had located my purse and returned her nest egg. She reported to me she was fine—though Raymundo was looking for new accommodations for her.

She promised me this was not about me except for the fact she liked me next door and whoever might replace me might not be a quiet neighbor.

Unsurprisingly, Dallas didn’t expend a great deal of effort vetting his renters. Except for me, Mrs. Jimenez and Mrs. Ramirez, who lived on the first floor, all of our neighbors were loud due to screaming matches or being rowdy or both.

“Sometimes, life gives you signs,” Mrs. Jimenez told me over the phone. “You get tied to a chair, that’s a big sign.”

Well, at least she could be philosophical about it.

My bruises got angrier on Thursday, but now they’d begun to fade, as had the aches and pains. I was days away from being back to myself, but the healing was kicking in.

And last, but very much not least, it bore repeating, Tia remained unfound.

When I allowed myself to think about it, I came up with the good part about this being the fact that Esposito didn’t have her. And word on the street (according to Buck), neither did any other bad guy.

The bad part about this was she was smoke (Buck’s vernacular).

So I was all in for visualization.

Thus, after the time had come when she would have made it to Seattle, I tried to visualize her applying for jobs in coffeehouses.

But, if I was honest, my visualization wasn’t working.

I was scared for her.

She knew Mrs. Jimenez’s phone number, though, and I just hoped she’d give Mrs. Jimenez a call. And Buck told me the word was still out, they were still looking for her and he still seemed confident she’d be found.

I tried to suck confidence out of his confidence, but this wasn’t working either.

I was worried about my friend.

“Clara! They’re waitin’ and I gotta go!” Buck shouted, and I jumped.

“Coming!” I shouted back, finishing putting in an earring, and my eyes dropped to the framed photos on his dresser.

I’d had time to explore his house the last couple of days and I’d spent a goodly amount of time studying those photos.

I did this because I was curious about Buck, I was curious about the pictures and I was curious about the people in them.

Some of them, I could guess.

His kids, both of whom were gorgeous, not just Tatiana. They looked like him. Dark hair, dark brown eyes, the boy tall and filling out, the girl was short though, and in some of the photos, getting curves. None of the pictures were recent but they weren’t older than a couple of years.

The others I could guess.

Parents, definitely.

And a brother and two sisters, one of which was married (there was a wedding photo, and although she wore a pretty, albeit skimpy white dress, her other half was definitely a biker if the leather jacket he wore over a nice dress shirt to his wedding was anything to go by).

There were a lot of photos, something I thought strange for a man like Buck to have on display in frames spread across his dresser in his bedroom.

The frames weren’t designer chic, they were no-frills, but he made the effort to buy them and put the pictures in them.

The photos ranged a lifetime, from when he and his brother and sisters were kids, to when they were young adults. None of these were recent either and they were a whole lot less recent than the ones with his kids.

But all of them, his kids, his folks, his siblings, were close. There were smiles, even laughter. Arms thrown around each other.

Hugging.

Good times.

Happy times.

I liked this for him.

I liked that he was a man who would display something like this, showing openly the people in them, and the times they shared, meant a great deal to him.

I wanted to ask Buck about them.

But I didn’t.

He seemed very comfortable with our arrangement, but I was not.

It didn’t escape me that I still barely knew him, I hadn’t even known him a week.

Sure, asking him about those photos, his family, would be getting to know him, but I was hesitant.

I was this because I didn’t want to pry. I didn’t want to seem pushy. Buck was definitely capable of sharing, but I figured he was the kind of man who did it when he was ready, and he wouldn’t welcome nosy questions.

So I didn’t ask those questions.

I walked to the bed, sat down and slipped on one of my high-heeled, strappy sandals, bending cautiously, as had become my habit to treat my body the last few days, to buckle it.

I did this thinking that I’d also had time to explore the rest of his house.

Along the landing, there was his room and master bath, another full bath and two more rooms.

The one next to Buck’s was an office—desk, battered couch, computer and full-on mess.

At the other end was another big bedroom, just without the master bath, and I guessed Tatiana slept there.

This was a guess because there was abandoned makeup scattered on a low dresser, some underwear and T-shirts in the drawers, some jeans and a very cool leather jacket in the closet, and a vampire novel on the nightstand by the bed. I’d also found tampons and hair straighteners in the hall bathroom.

But there was nothing else there that hinted at the personality of Buck’s daughter.

Girls, I thought, claimed their space, made it theirs with posters and pictures of friends and boys they liked, jewelry dangling from mirrors, Christmas lights with flowers on the bulbs, stuff like that.

But it looked like a guest bedroom where the guest left in a hurry.