“Dunno about you, but I’m unable to concentrate as of ten minutes ago.”
“Roxiee!”
She laughed again until Tian’s inquisitive voice came from his office doorway. “What’s going on out here, ladies?”
“Nothing,” I called, while my almostformerassistant/best friend chirped,“Everything!”
Chapter 17
-Raf-
I wanted nothing more than to hear Greer moan into my neck as I made her come. Tearing myself away was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. Infinitely harder than…
I shook the ghosts from my head. It had been over sixteen years now, and while we were free, I still couldn’t completely shake the residual shadows that lingered in the deepest parts of me.
In an effort to get Boss Lady out of my head where she continually punished my libido, I set my sights on tracking down the kid. Thankfully Shades’ suspicion over him being the snitch turned out to be all for nothing. I’d done some digging and found absolutely nothing. While that was good, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to find myself loitering in the parking lot of UCLA like a fucking creeper looking for my next easy target. And my presence was beginning to attract attention.
Ignoring the fuck out of the curious stares, I kept scanning the waves of university students as they moved around campus.
“Yo, man, can I help?” came a voice from my right.
A confident guy in sweats and a polo jogged over as if we were brothers from way back. Despite wanting to tell him to fuck off, I decided he looked like the kind of guy who would know Linetti.
“You know Arlo Linetti?” I asked.
The guy’s large eyes narrowed into slits. “Why?”
That was confirmation enough. “Where can I find him?”
“Why?” man-kid asked again.
“‘Coz I’m his fucking dad,” I snapped, getting a little testy at getting nowhere fast.
The guy let out a massive laugh and bent at the waist. “Dude, I’ve met Arlo’s parents, and trust me, you ain’t nothing like them.”
“You wanna watch your fucking tongue?”
He immediately realized his mistake and held up both hands to placate my temper. “I didn’t mean it like that. You already seem ten-times more chill than his olds. Stuck-up snobs are what they are.”
A penny dropped in my mind as another puzzle piece of Arlo’s background clicked into place. Just from that one sentence alone, I’d categorized Arlo as ‘rich kid rebelling against mom and dad.’
“Is he in some kind of trouble?” the guy asked.
It was my turn to narrow my eyes. He knew more than he was letting on. “Why would you assume that?”
His eyes cut from my GTR, to the ink covering my arms and hands, and then to the sly smile forming over my mouth. Oh yeah, he knew something, for sure.
“No reason.”
I chuckled and dug in my pocket for a business card. “Look, give him this for me. Tell him he needs to call me. And no, he isn’t in trouble. I have a proposition for him. Alegalone,” I added, to combat the suspicion written all over this guy’s face.
He read my name out loud. “Rafael Ortiz.”
I waited for a reaction, and he didn’t disappoint; his jaw dropped and his eyes sprang wide again. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Sniggering because, fuck yeah, he had heard of me, I held out my hand. “The one and only.”
“Timmy McWade.” He shook my hand firmly. “I’ll get my boy to call you as soon as he gets out of class.”