Chapter Six
Brady
Okay, so Operation Angela Pines is off to a pretty good start.
This has the promise of a win-win situation.
I’ll get the information I need to keep my dad out of jail (win) and potentially get some action, too (double win).
Nothing too serious, though. No sex. The last thing I need is a brokenhearted mafia princess wanting me killed.
But her combination of blatant lies and occasional honesty has me intrigued, just like the scent of lime and oranges and warm girl skin that come my way whenever she gets close enough.
She’s a mystery and a threat wrapped up in long, tanned legs.
And the hell if I don’t want those legs wrapped around me.
Okay, so maybe if she really pushes the sex it would be okay… No, Brady. Down, boy.
All of this is going through my mind as I sit next to Angela in the lecture hall.
She shivers when the air conditioning kicks on.
I shake my head. Typical girl, always cold.
I reach into my backpack, pull out my old FDNY sweatshirt, and hand it to her without a glance.
As I attempt to pay attention to whatever Professor Kim is saying, I watch Angela put it on out of the corner of my eye.
“Thanks,” she whispers.
I tilt my chin up in response and keep my eyes straight ahead, not really wanting to get a look at her in my sweatshirt.
I can’t get ahead of myself here. Operation Angela Pines has to proceed cautiously if it’s going to work, and a hot girl wearing my sweatshirt…
That has the potential to make me throw caution to the wind.
To kill time, and my hormones, I type a few notes into my laptop and text my obnoxious little sister and a couple of buddies back home.
Thanks for the address. Send a picture of her.
The text came out of nowhere, startling me. I’ll see what I can do , I text back.
And whatever else you have to confirm.
You got it.
I put my phone away and send an instant message to Angela’s computer. I gotta go.
She starts to take off my sweatshirt, but I put my hand on her arm and shake my head. Give it to me on Saturday , I type. But don’t lose it or bleach it or anything. It’s important to me.
She looks at me with those outrageous turquoise eyes, her expression serious, and then types, I’ll take good care of it.
“Swear?” I whisper.
“I swear,” she whispers back. And I kind of get the feeling she’d protect that thing with her life. Okay, then.
Can I get your phone number? I type.
Her hands freeze on her keyboard.
I promise not to write it on the bathroom wall, I type. The side of her mouth turns up in a reluctant smile. I unlock my phone and hand it to her. She takes a deep breath and types in her number.
I take my phone back, save her number, and pocket my phone. For a good time … I type into the instant message app.
Angela covers her mouth to suppress a snort of laughter and nudges me with her elbow.
I can’t keep the grin off my face as I quietly pack up and steal out through the back.
When I’m in my car, I stare at my phone and the new contact that reads Angela Pines . I call my dad.
“How you doing, kid?” he says.
“Doing all right. How about you?”
“Everything’s good. Can’t complain.” He pauses for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet and somber. “What you’re doing, Brady…”
“I’d do it a thousand times, Dad.”
“I know.” I hear him take a deep breath. We’re not big on declarations. “How’s that school?”
“It’s good. It’s a lot of work.”
“Columbia would have been better, though, huh?” The guilt in his voice is like a punch to the gut.
Columbia is ranked the fourth best law school in the entire country. The California state school I’m stuck at for now is ranked around a hundred and twelve. And I’m pretty sure the year-round sunshine counts for a lot of those points.
“It’s just for one semester,” I say to my dad.
“I’ll be at Columbia in January. In the meantime, it’s nice not to have any distractions.
Not having to listen to Siobhan run her life from her phone is nirvana.
Not to mention Mikey and his partying.” The last thing I need is my dad feeling all guilt-tripped.
When he was younger, he got himself a little bit of a reputation as a forger.
Fake IDs and stuff like that for the rich Fordham University kids.
But by the time he married my mom, that was behind him.
He didn’t do anything like that again until after 9/11, when a friend he’d known his whole life, a guy from the Dominican Republic with a U.S.
citizen wife and kids, revealed that he was undocumented and wasn’t eligible for a green card unless he left the United States for ten years.
My dad took the guy’s expired work permit, made him a new one, and that was that.
Word got around our church, and every now and then he does the same for a family who needs that kind of help.
Everything went to hell a few months ago, when a Fordham student turned up asking for some serious documents so she could ditch her family.
The only reason my dad agreed to help her was because she was going to tip off the feds about her father’s human trafficking business.
Next thing he knew, my dad was being arrested, hauled into FBI headquarters, and questioned about his connections to organized crime.
I’m here to find the Fordham girl and get her to give up the information the feds want about her old man in exchange for them dropping the charges against my dad.
“This isn’t what I wanted for you, Brady. To get mixed up in this. You and your ma have been through enough for two lifetimes.”
“Stop getting your panties in a bunch over there, Dad,” I say, drawing more of an authentic laugh from him. “I’m in law school, there’re palm trees outside my window, and there’s Guinness in my fridge. Do I sound all down in the dumps and shit?”
“No, you don’t,” he admits. “You were always a good kid, Brady. Now, Mikey, on the other hand…” I picture him shaking his head. My younger brother is kind of a handful. And that’s saying something in my family.
“See what I mean?” I say. “I don’t need to get woken up by Mikey dragging his ass home at three o’clock in the morning the day I need to take an exam, right? Has he tried to sneak a girl in again, by the way?”
“Not after your mother ripped him a new one the last time.” He laughs. My mom has a temper like Mt. Vesuvius. “So how are things…going?” he asks.
“They’re going. I’m giving them what they need.”
“Yeah? You found her?”
“I found her.”
He exhales. “Thanks, kid.”
“How are things there?”
I sense his hesitation. “I don’t like keeping all this from your mom.”
“Lou said if you give them the names, it all goes away.”
“I can’t do that, Brady. There are lives at stake.”
Our whole family is at stake. “Hey, I gotta go, okay? Tell Ma I’ll call her later.”
“She’s looking forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks.”
“Yeah, me too.”
We hang up, and I huff out a frustrated sigh.
A bunch of stuff runs through my mind. Angela’s fingers, long and beautiful and surprisingly unmanicured, as they type her number into my phone.
The memory of a terrified six-year-old boy clinging to his mother as she falls to her knees and screams and screams. The feeling of a man, big and strong like the little boy’s daddy, wrapping his arms around them and making them safe.
The relief in my dad’s voice just now when I assured him everything was cool.
I pull up the number with no name and call it.
“Whaddya got for me?” says the deep, gruff voice on the other line.
“I got a number.”
“Great. We’re running out of time.”
“I know. You’re sure this is her, right?”
“Come on, son. Of course it’s her. Angela Pines, formerly Angelina Pini? Good thing the girl’s in law school ’cause she sure as shit don’t have a creative bone in her body. I wouldn’t send you out there without being ninety-nine percent sure we’d tracked her down. This ain’t amateur hour, ya know?”
“And it’ll work? It’ll get them off my dad’s back?”
He sighs, and I picture him rubbing his hand over his close-trimmed, gray-specked black beard. “I’m doing my best, kid. That’s all I can promise. Can I get that number now?”
I look at my contacts and read him Angela’s phone number.
“How you liking law school?” he asks.
“It’s all right.”
“Maybe you’ll be one of the suits upstairs here one day.”
I chuckle. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“Get that picture, son. And thanks for the number.”
“Yep.”
We hang up, and I lean my head back against the headrest. I think about how Angela put up a fight before letting me drop her off at her place. Maybe I don’t want anyone to know where I live. Yeah, I’ll bet you don’t, Angela Pines.
Well, like she says herself, a favor done is a favor owed. I don’t owe her shit, but she owes me big.