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I don’t exactly know what to do, so I pat her on the head. That seems to be the correct response. She pulls away and peers around me. “Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s still resting.” I catch Bambi’s skeptical stare, but for a change, I’m actually telling the truth. “She’s still got a fever, so she’s sleeping as much as she can.”
Okay. Maybe that part’s less accurate.
Bambi’s arched brow nearly reaches her hairline. That’s how I know she knows, and I keep my happy face plastered on for the sake of the kid while silently shooting mental messages for Bambi to keep her mouth shut. Telepathic or not, she seems to receive those messages and relaxes back into whatever she was doing before I sauntered in.
“Yeah.” Willow brushes the hair of one of her new dolls as she scrunches her face thoughtfully. “Mommy works really hard. She’s always tired. She needs sleep.”
Kids. Gotta love them. Not me, necessarily, although this one is pretty great.
I settle onto one of the overstuffed bean bags. This will be the easiest interrogation I’ve ever conducted in my life. “Do you know where Mommy works?”
Willow frowns. “Why?”
Sharp kid. She’s catching onto something, and I’m impressed. “Well, if Mommy’s sick, they’ll need to know, right? So they know she won’t be coming in until she’s better.”
“I don’t know.” Willow shrugs, still focused on meticulously brushing the doll’s hair. “She gets all pretty and says she has to go serve drinks to people. She never lets me go with her.”
Bambi catches my eye and blinks a few times. That’s the signal to check my phone.
BAMBI:Canyon Sun Cocktail Lounge. They haven’t heard from her. Assumed she quit, so no one’s looking.
Fair enough.
“That’s okay.” I offer Willow a friendly smile. “It’s probably for the best. Some places are too boring for kids. And I’m sure your dad wouldn’t want you to go, anyway.”
Yes, I’m fishing for information. I figure any bits and pieces I can casually glean here and there are better than nothing.
A shadow passes over Willow’s face. I suddenly feel an immense hatred for the man who makes his own child respond like that at the mere mention of him.
“He doesn’t care.” She shrugs and sets aside the doll, then picks up another one. I focus on her words and not the fact that I’m pretty sure Bambi bought an entire zip code’s worth of dolls.
“Your dad doesn’t care?”
She shakes her head slowly. “He doesn’t play with me. Or talk to me. He just tells me what to do. But one time—” Her face suddenly lights up and she looks at me with a smile. “—he took me to the Ice Cream Palace and let me have the biggest sundae I’ve ever seen! And then we went and got fairy wings and I got to meet a princess.”
Both Bambi and I feign awe. “That sounds so cool!” she chirps.
“Did you have fun?” I ask.
Willow nods. But then her smile fades and she picks at the Velcro back of the new doll. “He said he was sorry. He didn’tmean to, so he took me out for ice cream and wanted me to be his pretty princess.”
I really, really don’t want to ask. But I need to know.WhyI need to know is up for debate. “What was he sorry for?”
She steals a quick little glance at me. Her words come out mumbled. “He hit me.”
And just like that, Martin has a death warrant.
I catch Bambi freezing in the corner of my eye. She’s never had a taste for the kind of violence I dole out to traitors and assholes, but the fire in her eyes at those three tiny words tells me she may be rethinking her policy.
“He hit you?” she asks the kid as gently as possible. I can still hear it in her voice, though. The shock. The fury.
Willow shrinks back. “Yeah. I spilled his beer.”
Thank God I’m sitting too awkwardly to pull my gun out. I have a sudden urge to clean it and, I don’t know… play target practice with the bastard’s head.
“Hey, Willow.” I say her name just firmly enough to get her to look up at me. For a moment, I see fear in her eyes—and that strikes a sharp chord in me that I never want to feel again. “You know that you’re safe here, right?”
