Page 21 of Angel's Share

He rested his forearms on the table, leaning slightly forward in his chair. “My dad used to work on cars. I’d watch him like a hawk. He died when I was five, before I could get under the hood myself.” Jamie didn’t call attention to Angel’s jolt or his widening eyes; just kept talking, kept offering connections. “My mom worked at a local diner. I’d hang out there after school, and there was a go-cart place next door. As soon as I was tall enough, I was behind the wheel, and if I tweaked a couple things on the engine that was right there in front of me...” He shrugged and rested back in his chair, legs crossed.

Angel tracked the movement, from Jamie’s toe all the way to his head. “Guessin’ you hit that ‘this high’ signpost early?”

“You could say that.”

They shared another laugh, Angel’s trailing off first. “I’m sorry about your dad,” he said.

“I’m sorry about yours too.” The silence that settled between them felt more comfortable than awkward. Jamie was getting somewhere with him, slowly but surely, and so, despite how much Jamie wanted to lean forward before delivering his next thought, he hung back, giving Angel space to react. “You know... what he did, he did to protect you and your family.”

Angel quickly averted his gaze. “He left us.”

“I didn’t know him,” Jamie said. “But from what Aidan’s told me, I’m fairly certain that was never Tom’s intention. Just like you’d never voluntarily leave Bev either.”

Angel’s gaze whipped back to his, and all those earlier signs of anxiety and exhaustion manifested in his wide blue eyes, along with a heaping side of fear.

Jamie did lean forward then. “We can help you, Angel. We can help Bev, whatever the situation.”

He shook his head. “If I talk, they won’t let her come back.”

“To school?”

Angel didn’t nod, just locked his desperate gaze with Jamie’s. Then, after a seemingly endless few seconds, he blinked. Was he...

Jamie tested his theory. “Did White give you the briefcase?”

Another blink.

It was a razor-thin interpretation of “not talking” but a technicality Angel was smart enough to see and use. A way to communicate the help he needed because he and Aidan were right: Angel was protecting someone.

Beverly Kildare.

“Is White’s sister, Deidra, working with him?”

A slower blink, and Angel dug his teeth into his lip so hard he winced.

“She doesn’t want to be?” Jamie tried.

Two blinks—not quite right—and when Angel stared back at him, his bright blue eyes were watery, pity and anger swirling together in the glassy sheen.

“Or Deidra just doesn’t care,” Jamie guessed, his stomach sinking at the reality of a too common story. “As long as the state and White pay her.”

Angel caved, unable to hold the emotions in any longer. “Get Bev out, please. I tried, I did what White wanted, both times, at the port and then taking that briefcase for him. He was supposed to get paid and leave. And once he paid Deidra, she’d go on a bender like she always does, and I could get Bev out of there. But I screwed up and got caught, and now I don’t know what’s happened to Bev.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Jamie covered his hands that were splayed on the table. “You did good, Angel. Real good. We’ll take it from here.”

FOURTEEN

Jamie had already been in the field once on this case—with questionable authority. There’d been no one around on Saturday morning to argue with an SAC over whether his former-agent husband should be involved in a high-speed car chase. Matt and Rick knew him, vouched for him, and the other agents involved that morning were familiar with his reputation.

But today there was a man who indeed looked like a Rooster—a mane the color of hay, a dark suit so shiny it reminded Jamie of an oil slick, and words that were sharp as a bird’s beak—who made it clear that whether Angel was charged with a felony or misdemeanor depended on White’s arrest and that nothing, including a former-fed-now-civilian, would jeopardize the joint task-force takedown and the leverage they needed to make White talk.

And Aidan asked Jamie to stay with Angel and Izzy.

Jamie didn’t argue. Instead, he drove his precious cargo by their home so they could grab clean clothes and toiletries, then took them to the condo he and Aidan were borrowing, all under guard. Once inside, Jamie insisted mother and son catch up on much-needed sleep while he caught up on game tape from the tourney. Which he did for a while, then anticipating it could be a long day and night of waiting, he started a batch of chili in the crock pot and modeled a ’66 Chevy C10 on his tablet. He also hunted down every handbook and manual he could find on the beast and called the best mechanic he knew in San Francisco to chat engines and other modifications. He’d just hung up with her when Angel shuffled down the stairs.

Jamie wrinkled his nose at the kid’s attire—Lakers sweats and a Dodgers T-shirt. “All of that is wrong.”

Following his nose, Angel snooped around the crock pot in the kitchen. “Well, I’m not wearing Warriors or Giants shi—stuff.”

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