Page 52 of Brazen Mistakes

His lips are soft against my forehead. “Nah. Nothing wrong with Spanish. Especially if it helps you communicate with your family.”

My post orgasm brain runs with the thought. “Part of me wonders if I’ll ever meet my other cousins. I saw them at my Abuelita’s funeral. But it was like there was an invisible wall between my dad and his sisters. And my aunts and uncles only spoke Spanish to each other, and with everything that was going on, I guess they forgot my mom and I couldn’t follow.”

“That was cruel.”

“I don’t know if it was on purpose, the Spanish part, at least. But I could see how badly my dad wanted to join them, and how tightly my mom held onto his arm. At the time, I thought she was comforting him. But now? It could have just been my mom being my mom.”

He holds me tight, and in the silence, I wait for him to talk about his family emergency. He doesn’t take the opening, so instead we cuddle, talking about nothing real, but enjoying each other’s company while the room brightens around us.

“I’ve got a question,” I say, after he shares a ridiculous story about doing surveillance with Jansen.

“About what?”

“I know Jansen lifts wallets and steals cars for regular cash, Walker sells fake IDs, and Trips runs poker games, but what do you do?”

Instead of answering, he sits up next to me. “Want to see?”

At my nod, he hops out of bed, pulling on clean sweats and a shirt, tossing me one of his sweatshirts. “I’d, ah, if you’d want to, you could wear my shirt?”

I jam my nose into it like the freak I am. Citrus and sage. “Thanks.” Dragging it on, it hits a little lower than Jansen’s sweatshirt, which reminds me of Trip’s roaring silence when we fell to the floor.

But now’s not the time to dwell on that strange midnight adventure, so I perch on RJ’s lap in front of his monitors. One of his hands takes a proprietary grip of my thigh and the move makes all the girly bits in me turn fluttery and gleeful.

“When I was in high school, I didn’t really know what I was doing yet. I bought credit card numbers off the dark web, things like that. Later, though, I started scraping social media and using the information there to access bank accounts. It’s crazy how easy it is to find references to someone’s high school mascot or childhood dog’s name. And almost everyone learns to play the piano. I don’t know why that’s even a challenge question at banks when everyone has the same answer.”

He navigates from one window to another, pulling up and closing things so fast that I’m struggling to follow, but he pauses on a familiar face, some guy named Aiden Johnson. “Take this guy. He’s one of Trips’ new players. A whiny bugger who texts on unsecured lines while insisting on entering the game with a fake name, Harrison Grant. He seems to think hisprivacy and security matter, but Trips and the other players don’t deserve the same respect. I’ve had to clean up after the guy, even after we reiterated the rules. He’s on probation now. But I want you to dig through his socials and tell me what you can learn about him.”

I twist to look at him. “Is this part of my criminal training program?”

“It can be. I’ll text Trips so he’s not pissed you’re in here instead of downstairs learning about his fucked-up family.”

“Deal.”

He pulls up something on his computer and sends a message to Trips on it, getting back a single letter in response.

K

Holding back my eye roll, I scan this guy’s posts, his comments, the things he’s liked and laughed at. I look at photos going back to when he was barely more than a kid, scrawny and pimpled. Then I follow my gut and dig into his parents and his new girlfriend. I’m taking down notes on the back of an envelope, the only paper here besides Post-it notes, while trying my best to ignore the appeal of RJ’s fingers absently rubbing my thigh as I work.

Once I feel like I’ve completed the assignment, I number my points, then clear my throat. “Okay, I don’t know exactly what you want, but Aiden looks like your standard rich, entitled asshole. He’ll soon be single, and his parents are probably going to divorce once his little brother graduates high school this spring, as both of them are cheating. Eitherthat or they’re in an open marriage, but they don’t seem open or loving, so that’s probably not what’s going on.”

RJ’s laugh rumbles through me and I turn, straddling him. “Is that a good laugh?”

“That’s a, ‘she’s such a fucking natural at this, it’s almost freaky,’ laugh. You didn’t pick out the things I would, but I don’t think I would have gotten the girlfriend, and I know I wouldn’t have caught the parents.”

“What things would you find?”

“His cat, Figaro, died this last year at twenty-one. If that isn’t his first pet, I’ll skip out on Mountain Dew for a week. He went to some private school out east, and their mascot was a wildcat. His mother’s maiden name is Jones, his first girlfriend was named—”

“Marcie. I saw that one.”

“And unlike most people, his first instrument was the viola.”

“Will that be enough?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes you need grandparents’ names, childhood best friends, his favorite color, favorite movie, favorite song, or first car. I have a list of common challenge questions. The more of them I can find, the more likely I’ll be able to get into their account.”

“And the answers are all just there, on the internet?”

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