It was great to see. No reason a girl like Willa shouldn’t have tons of friends. But it made me think about my own life in New York, how fitting in hadn’t exactly been my specialty after moving here. It was so different from my hometown upstate, from college. Even my roommates now, whom I’d been living with for almost a year, were still strangers to me. We kept such different schedules that I hardly even saw them. And the fact that I was now involved in some kind of criminal spying operation only made me feel more isolated.
At least I was making progress with Willa. She continued to play with the other kids, and I slowly ate my ice cream.
The moment I finished, someone sat down on the bench next to me. As I looked at him, my heart stopped.
“Hey, sis.”
I froze.
It was Mike. My brother.
Mike was long and lean, his slender body clad in skinny jeans and a white V-neck shirt. A Yankees hat was pulled down low, covering his face in shade. He sat next to me, his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands in his pockets.
“Mike? What are you doing here?”
I looked at him more closely, noting the bruises on his face, the redness around one eye.
“What’s the story?” he asked in a low whisper. “You got the information?”
I took a moment to compose myself before I spoke.
“Mike, are you OK? What happened? Did you break out or something?” My heart raced.
“Is that the kid? Jason’s kid?” He nodded at Willa, who hadn’t noticed him.
“OK, Mike, you need to slow down. The last time I saw you was in a picture Anton showed me of you beat to hell. How are you even here?”
“Anton sent me here to check in with you. And I guess he wanted you to see that I was all right.”
I looked over his bruises. “Mike, you don’t look all right.”
He shook his head. “This is nothing.”
“Are you serious? You can’t be that careless—these guys want to kill you.”
“I know. Believe me, I know. And you know too. So why aren’t you doing the job?”
Worry painted his lean face. I couldn’t blame him.
“Because this is part of the job. I can’t just get hired and get the information right away. I need to build trust with Jason and figure out how to not get caught.”
He gave a quick nod to say he got it. “April, these guys, they’re not fucking around.”
My eyes flicked up to Willa. I was scared as hell at the idea of her seeing me with Mike, wondering who the hell this strange man talking to me was. What if she told Jason about it?
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” I said, trying to stay cool. “That’s why I’m helping you, remember?”
“I know, I know. And like I said, Anton sent me her to remind you of what’s going on. You’ve got thirty days, April—remember?”
“Yeah, thirty days.” I glanced up at Willa again, who was still playing. “But Mike, you can’t just show up like this. If someone saw us together…”
“They won’t see us. And I was going fucking crazy stuck in that room.”
Mike was being careless. He wasn’t thinking clearly, not thinking about the consequences of him being with me like that. It was that sort of behavior that had gotten him in this mess in the first place.
“You need to hurry, April. If you don’t…Well, they’re gonna do a hell of a lot worse than this.” He gestured to the bruises on his face.
Then Willa glanced up, an expression of curiosity on her face as she finally noticed Mike beside me.