Page 16 of A Favor Owed
“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.
Chapter Seven
Angela
I have a lot of debts to pay. Blood debts that no amount of money can cover. Technically, they aren’t my debts. They’re my family’s. But the knowledge of what my family is involved in, what they want me to be involved in, literally keeps me awake at night. If someone were to ask me, “How do you sleep at night?” I could honestly answer, “I don’t.” Drug running, money laundering, and the worst of it: human trafficking. It’s enough to keep anyone with a conscience addicted to sleep aids.
When I first moved to this sleepy little college town back in May, the first order of business was finding a job and a place to live. As soon as that was taken care of, I looked for a way to start repaying those debts. Much to my relief, it was easy to find.
The regional Legal Aid office maintains its offices in the well-worn “downtown” area, sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a juice bar, close enough that I can bike there from home or school. I read up on the kinds of services they offered and saw that they were a member of a statewide anti-trafficking task force. Anti-trafficking! That was perfect. I immediately applied to be a volunteer, explaining that I was starting law school and wanted to work on human trafficking cases.
About a week after submitting my materials in person, I got a call from Elisa Perez, the head of the Legal Aid anti-trafficking team, inviting me in for an interview. We met in her windowless office, the only decor for which was her UCLA undergraduate degree, Harvard Law degree, and battered oscillating fan. A gray suit with a generic label on the jacket slouched on a hanger behind the door. Piles of manila case files covered every available surface. Despite the dingy interior, she and the space around her crackled with energy and optimism as she explained the work she did. I was hooked.
“Why are you interested in human trafficking cases?” Elisa had asked. She looked like she wasn’t even thirty years old, with black hair braided and wrapped into a bun at the nape of her neck, dark eyes, and lips pink from red lipstick that had worn off.
I fidgeted slightly in my Chanel suit, acutely aware that she was wearing jeans and a blouse. “It was all around me, and I didn’t know it,” I said, keeping as close to the truth as I could. “I learned about it in college and wrote my senior thesis paper on it. Now I want to do something real to help.”
She looked at me and nodded, then smiled. “That’s good enough for me!” she said, slapping her hands down on her cluttered desk and making me jump. “When can you start?”
I started the next day. I cut the Chanel tags off of my suit and dressed in my new thrift-store casual style. When I got to work, Elisa made room for me to hang my suit jacket up next to hers. I started out stapling and copying, but before a month had gone by, I was sitting in on client meetings, accompanying Elisa to court, and attending Anti-Trafficking Task Force meetings.
I’m at one such meeting, taking notes on a new law enforcement training program the group is developing, when my phone vibrates with a text. When I see that it’s a New York number, my stomach drops into my feet. But then I see the message:
Got your number from the bathroom wall. Can I hit you up?
I smile with relief and…Oh, no, Angela. No, no, no. You can absolutely not get excited about hearing from him.
I turn my attention back to the meeting. But now all I can think about is green-eyed, copper-haired, freckle-faced Brady McDaniels. Damn it.
