Free The Lost Prince by Edward Lazellari

baked ziti, but when you play southern hen with that drawl of yours, it’s hard to believe you grew up with me in Brooklyn of all places.” Colby smiled and walked out the front of the trailer.
    “Noodles was all they had left,” she shouted behind him. He could see her giving him the finger in the reflection on the window by the front door. There was still some Brooklyn left in the girl after all.
    Luanne was on a beach chair on the front “porch” filing her nails, feet up on a wooden table that used to be a large cable spool. Her dirty blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. If her Daisy Dukes frayed any higher, there’d be no point in her wearing the pants at all—unless it was to warm her abdomen.
    Colby looked around the trailer park—he was sure any one of these neighbors would rat him or Daniel out for a buck. He wondered how long it would take for Dorn’s tail to pick up the trail again. The man was a piss-poor spook, but Colby assumed they had magical means to track him, and probably a phone tap on his mobile as well. He didn’t turn on his cell phone in the trailer park. He needed to go back north to Baltimore and find his shadow again, the short stout man in shabby butler’s clothes with the bowler hat that reminded Colby of Jack the Ripper. That’s where he’d put the battery back in the phone and place his call.
    “Hey,” Colby said to his niece.
    Luanne popped her bubblegum and kept right on filing.
    He noticed a tattoo by her ankle that read Cody & Luanne 4EVAH on a little banner flying over two red hearts. If she was willing to let an illiterate tattoo artist stick needles into her, what else might she be letting Cody do to her? He wondered if Bev knew—or even cared. Bev was a notorious flirt in her youth as well. Colby realized Luanne’s free spirit might be just the thing to help him out of a jam.
    He lifted her feet off the spool and put them down gently. Then he took a seat on it in front of her.
    “What are you doing?” she said. “This is my house.”
    “And a lovely house it is, but I have a proposition for you.”
    “A what?”
    “An offer. Hear me out. Where do you want to be five years from now?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Here?”
    “Heck no,” she said with a dash of attitude.
    Colby was tempted to say, What, and leave all this behind? but decided to stay on message.
    “What do you make at the Walmart?” he asked. “Hundred a week?”
    “About.” Luanne perked up. She figured out that this was about earning some money. Colby had her attention.
    “Know that kid I’m with? Daniel?”
    “Mama says he’s in some kinda witness protection. I thought the cops put people up in hotels for that.”
    “They do, but this is a very special case. Not quite as official, but just as serious. Point is, I’m his protector. But I need to be in two places at the same time. I have to go north and follow up on some elements of the case. He’s okay here; no one’s going to find him. But I can’t take him, and I can’t have him leaving here on his own. He’s antsy, like all boys are.”
    It took a moment for Luanne to process what her uncle had said.
    “So what do you want me to do?”
    “First thing … be nice. Second … don’t let him find out I put you up to making sure he sticks around. He needs to want to stay. Third … keep him away from your mom’s cooking. I’ll pay for meals out of my pocket.”
    “Well, doesn’t he know he ought to stick around for his own good?” she said. “I mean, if people want to hurt him…”
    “It’s complicated.”
    “I don’t know what you expect me to do, Uncle Cole.”
    Colby pulled out a roll of money—part of the operating budget Dorn had given him. Luanne was fixated on the money. She’d likely never seen so much come out of a man’s pocket before.
    Colby began pulling out hundred dollar bills and laying them on Luanne’s thigh, starting at the frayed ends of her shorts and stopping at her knee. When one leg was