Page 77 of A Favor Owed

An email I get a couple of days later confirms that. It pops up from my old account while I’m lounging in bed one late weekend night, organizing my notes into study outlines. It’s from my mom.

Lina, I hope you’re okay. How is the fasting going at the Buddhist monastery? Sorry I haven’t written in a while, but I’ve been getting a head start on holiday wardrobe shopping. You know how Bergdorf’s gets this time of year. Anyway, it might be a good idea for you to come home soon. Daddy’s having some issues with the clubs. For some reason he thinks you can help. I told him not to be silly and to get one of the boys to help, but you know how he is once he gets an idea in his head. Let me know when you’re flying back and we’ll send a car for you. I hope you’re not drinking the water there. Love, Mom.

I shut my laptop, a rushing sound in my ears. Some issues with the clubs? I quickly google my dad’s clubs. What I see almost makes me throw up. His two largest clubs have been raided and the managers, my dad’s closest young associates, whom he’s grooming to eventually take over from him, have been arrested. What does this mean for me? And what was that cryptic remark about me helping?

I hear the front door open, and I slam my laptop shut. A minute later, Brady comes into the bedroom, bringing the scent of the desert night in with him.

“Hey, princess.”

“I wish you’d drive to the gym at night,” I say, my voice catching.

“Huh?” He stops on his way to the bathroom and looks at me. Then he changes course and comes to sit next to me on the bed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just—you know, it’s dark out—you should drive…”

“Okay…” he says, looking at me warily. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

I shake my head. “No,” I whisper. “But you need to be careful.”

The light in his eyes dims. “You need to be careful, too,” he says, pulling me against him. I breathe in his scent, touch his warm skin, feel the recently worked-out muscles of his body, and want nothing more than to lose myself in him. I don’t want the road to end.

We pull our clothes off each other. His hands on my body and his mouth on my skin feel like fire, like an uncontrolled, raging fire. There’s a wildness to both of us, angst and foreboding mixed with passion. My secrets are coming closer. I’m going to have to let him go. One night, it will be the last night. Just not tonight. Please, not tonight.

Angela.My name on his lips, in my ear, is something between a whisper and a growl, a plea and a demand. He’s inside me, gripping my hair with a fierceness and a gentleness that match the graze of his teeth on my lips as he kisses me. I’m lost in the pleasure of it, bound and drugged by everything Brady, until I remember and freeze.

“Brady!” It comes out like a whimper, frustrated and angry, but not at him. “Condom.”

He barely pauses. “I’m clean.”

I tell him what he already knows. “I’m not on the pill.”

“I don’t care.”

“We can’t… Brady, we can’t.”

“I know.” It’s a whisper, a kiss. “I’m sorry.” He releases his grip on my hair and wraps his arms around me, presses his forehead to mine as I wrap my legs around him. He gets a condom on.I’m sorry. I’m sorry.The wildness is gone, sadness and desperation in its place.

Afterward, I cling to him, too shocked and scared to do anything else. All of a sudden he doesn’t care if he gets me pregnant? There’s only one explanation for that. A baby is a connection to me that would survive a dead end.

I know it now. Whatever he’s done, whatever secret he’s hiding, it’s at least as bad as mine.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Brady

She’s scared. That’s the worst part of all this. The most important job of my life is to tell her everything’s going to be okay, to be there for her, to protect her, and I can’t do it. Because any day now Lou is going to make contact with her. I don’t know when. I don’t know how. But as soon as it happens, she’ll know. It’s not a dead end. It’s a cliff she doesn’t know she’s headed toward, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Special Agent Luis Rivera

I don’t need to be at this California anti-trafficking task force meeting. I do enough of this kind of community-building stuff back in New York. But, since surveillance warrants are somewhat hard to come by without some evidence of wrongdoing, I had to think outside the box a little. When I told my L.A. counterpart what was up, she greased the wheels and here I am.

I go through the whole song and dance. “Hi there, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Special Agent Lou Rivera with the FBI’s Manhattan Field Office…” Blah, blah, blah. I give a pretty basic overview of the intersection of organized crime and human trafficking, take some questions, and hand it off to the do-gooder nonprofit lady who seems to be in charge of this thing.

The real reason I’m here is seated at one of the tables, laptop open, occasionally taking notes but mostly listening. I’m surprised at the sharp look about her. She meets the McDaniels kid’s description to a tee—silver hair with purple streaks, blue eyes that are a damn good lens job if I’ve ever seen one, and a tall drink of water like her pops.

After two excruciating hours of reports, brainstorming, and God only knows what else, the meeting comes to an end. Angelina starts to head out with a pretty young Latina sister in a shapeless suit, but I intercept them.

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