“What’s the question?”
I turned around when I heard Jay’s voice, but what I saw certainly wasn’t what I had expected.
“What the fuck is he wearing? Has he lost his fucking mind?” I blurted when I finally regained my composure. It took my brain a second to realize that the tall, homely woman standing in front of me was actually Jay. I’d heard he was running around in a dress to disguise himself, but seeing him standing there all dolled up was almost more than I could bear. It was bad enough that he was an escaped convict, but now he was an escaped convict in drag. And to think I used to look up to this guy.
“Damn, Wil, lighten up. You ain’t never seen a man in a dress before? Where’s the love?” Jay joked.
Allen and Kyle just looked on in silence. I wanted to rip that stupid dress off of him, but we had more important things to discuss at the moment. I took a deep breath, walked over to him, and shoved the pictures into Jay’s hand. “We ain’t got time to be joking around, man. We have serious things to discuss.”
He nonchalantly looked through the stack of pictures, then looked back up at me. “What the fuck is this? You act like you’ve never seen naked women.”
“Look at them closer, Jay,” Kyle said, stepping up. “What do you see?”
Jay thumbed through the pictures again, a little more slowly this time. “What do I see? I see a party that got started without me.”
“Aw, hell no! He did not just say that,” I heard Allen groan.
I shot Kyle a look that said, Is this guy for real? Clearly Jay was not seeing what we were seeing, which was mind-boggling. Finally, Allen walked up and snatched one of the pictures out of Jay’s hand and waved it in front of his face. “Don’t you recognize your own fucking daughter?”
Jay looked at the picture again but shook his head. “That woman looks nothing like Kiana. She’s way too dark,” he said confidently.
“Last time I checked you had two daughters, one of them being my goddaughter,” I said, wondering how much longer it was going to take for him to put all the pieces together.
Jay’s face fell as recognition finally settled in. “Stephanie?” he muttered under his breath, looking at Kyle like he wanted to hear him say it wasn’t really her in the pictures. Kyle nodded, and Jay flinched as if he’d been punched in the gut. He covered his mouth, and I could see he was trying to hold back tears. “Fuck. That’s my baby, Kyle.”
Kyle placed a hand on his shoulder and said sadly, “I know, bro. I know.”
“Al’s right. I didn’t even recognize my own kid,” Jay said, lowering his head.
Kyle tried to comfort him. “It’s been a long time since you’ve seen her. She’s grown up a lot in ten years. Become a young woman.”
“Where’d you get them from?” he asked, still hunched over.
“Kenya,” I replied.
“Why did Kenya give you naked pictures of my daughter?” Jay asked, anger simmering just below the surface.
“Because I’m Steph’s godfather and someone is blackmailing her. The photos are going to be posted online if she doesn’t pay a hundred thousand dollars. She’s studying to be an elementary school teacher, Jay. What school district is going to hire her with these pictures of her online?”
Jay threw the pictures down on the table. “This shit is crazy! Who would do something like this to a nineteen-year-old kid? And who’s the other chick in the pictures?”
“I don’t know,” I said. In every photo, the other woman’s face was either turned away from the camera or her head was cropped out of the picture. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t even think to ask Kenya if she knew who it was. I was too damn shocked to even think straight.”
“Oh my God, Kyle!” Jay said frantically. “What if it’s Ashlee?”
Kyle considered it for a moment, then said, “I doubt it. During both your trial and your appeal, my investigators went over her life with a fine-tooth comb. They found plenty of evidence that she’s more than a little crazy, but she’s not a lesbian.”
“Fuck!” Jay punched his fist into the air like he wanted to hurt someone.
“Calm down. We’ll figure this out,” Allen said.
“Fuck calming down!” Jay yelled back at him, pacing nervously in those stupid high-heeled shoes. “I am not going to let this shit happen to my daughter.”
We all watched him helplessly for a minute while he paced around and ranted. There was really nothing we could say to a man whose child was being threatened. Nothing could make that better.
“What am I going to do?” Jay buried his head in his hands.
“We’ll give them the money,” I said.
“And where the fuck am I supposed to get a hundred grand?”
On that note, all eyes turned to Kyle.