“And no one else has called for her or come around?”
“Look, I don’t live with her.” Jason spoke with the cigarette in his mouth while he got up and grabbed something off the cabinet. “She left her phone here when she dropped the kid off that night. You can look through it for yourself, but there’s nothing weird on there.” He tossed the phone through the air and Reno caught it.
“Where’s the baby?” I asked.
“You mean the terror?” He snorted and sat back down, fumigating the room with his smoke. “Sleeping, I hope. I gave her some cough syrup before I went swimming, so that should keep her down for another hour.”
“Is she sick?”
“No.” He laughed and shook his head.
Rage ripped through me. This man was drugging a child for his own benefit, and then I realized no one else lived here and he’d left her alone!
“Give me the phone back when you’re done,” Jason said. “And when you find Skye, tell her to get her ass over here. She owes me big for this.”
“For taking care of your blood? You pig,” I spat out. “And how exactly is it that you earn your living?”
“Kidsitting,” he said proudly. “I also fix cars.”
“Something tells me you earn more for watching your own family than you do earning a real wage. What decent man charges his cousin money to watch her baby? Family takes care of their own.”
His pale brows sloped as he flicked the ashes into the cup. “You must be one of her stripper friends. Your kind is always high and mighty. You think because you pull in good tips for shaking your ass that you’re somehow better than the rest of us? If my cousin wants to earn money by showing her tits, then I’m charging her money for watching her kid. You can’t judge me on that shit, because she’s the one in the wrong.”
“You are ridiculous!” I launched to my feet and kicked my chair aside.
Reno sat back and looked at the phone. “If you hear anything from her or anyone else, I want you to call me.” He laid down his business card and stood up.
“Mommy,” a little girl cried, walking into the room.
I clutched my heart. The little baby didn’t have on a shirt, only a pair of green shorts. She was even prettier than in the picture, with spirals of curls down to her shoulders and skin the color of caramel. Her blue eyes were sleepy and looked like she’d been crying. She had a few smudges on her face and hands that someone who loved that child would have cleaned off.
Jason’s bare feet slid across the floor as he went to get her. “You’ve got what you need. The front door is thataway.”
“Mommy?” Lola began crying. “I had a bad dream.”
“Come on, kid. Quit being a crybaby.” He held her hand and she yanked it away. “I said come on.” Jason roughly grabbed her arm and that’s when a chair went flying.
Reno’s chair. It knocked over when he charged at Jason and latched his hand around the guy’s throat. “Let go of her.”
Jason obeyed, his face turning redder than the sunburn. Reno pushed him toward the counter until his head rested against the overhead cabinet.
“I don’t like what’s going on here. Not one bit. Family or not, you don’t ever handle a child like that. I should snap your neck. I’m thinking about it. Thinkin’ real hard.”
The cigarette had fallen out of Jason’s mouth and onto the floor. Reno finally let go and knelt down in front of Lola. “I’m Uncle Reno. Does this princess have a name?”
“Lola,” she sniffed.
“Princess Lola. We’re going on an adventure. Do you like pizza?”
She nodded.
“Good. Because on our way to the castle, we’re going to get some for lunch.”
“The fuck you are.” Jason pushed Reno’s head, and I guess he thought that might be enough to knock the man off-balance.
He thought wrong.
Reno rose to his feet so slowly that I thought I could hear Jason’s heartbeat racing like a stampede of wild horses. Reno towered over him a good six inches. When he put his sunglasses on top of his head and centered his eyes on Jason, that was the last complaint we got out of him.
“Naya, go get her clothes and let’s get out of here.”
I hurried past them to the only bedroom in the apartment. The mattress on the floor didn’t have a sheet, and clothes were everywhere. I frantically grabbed whatever looked like Lola’s and stuffed it all in a paper sack I found on the floor. I also took the only toy I could find—a blue pony with a pink mane.
When I returned to the living room, Reno had Lola perched on his left arm. He glowered, keeping an eye on Jason, who was sitting in a chair by the television, his legs wide apart. Lola had put on Reno’s sunglasses and was resting her head on his shoulder while sucking her thumb.