Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4) Read Online Free Page B

You’re talking about—”
    “This could save a lot of lives.”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I want to make LA safer, too, I do, I do, more than anyone. But if this went wrong—think how bad it could go. If you didn’t get it right, people would start tearing each other apart. Normal people. I saw the test results.”
    I crossed my arms. “Does that mean you’re not going to give me the files?”
    Pilar wavered, her facial muscles pulling in all different directions. “I know you know what you’re doing,” she said. “I do. I don’t mean to say you don’t.”
    Since I wasn’t sure I knew what I was doing this time, her confidence outstripped mine, but it served my cause so I didn’t argue. “I’m very good,” I said instead, which was true. “A calibration problem is a cakewalk.”
    “I know,” she said, heaving a sigh. “You do seem to do the impossible on a regular basis. Checker and I have conversations about it, you know. Did you really lasso the wing of a fighter jet a few months ago and—”
    “I’m good at math,” I interrupted. “That’s all.”
    “That’s what you always say! If this were anyone else asking, and I mean anyone else…” She pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Promise you’re not going to do anything unless you’re sure it’s going to work?”
    “Cross my heart,” I said.
    She played with the edges of her neat stack of papers, and said softly, “I’ve got a lot of family here, you know.”
    “I know,” I said, confused by the non sequitur. Pilar mentioned her family a lot.
    “One of my cousins joined a gang a couple months ago,” she said. “My aunt is devastated. There was no reason, you know? He’s a good kid, good family, really nice boy—and my baby brother’s still in high school, and you know what an LA public school is like. It was a jungle when I went through and now…” She trailed off and cleared her throat. “My mom tells me he comes home with black eyes sometimes. From high school. Can you believe it? It’s not fair. My folks don’t even live in a bad part of town. That’s just how it is now. And the cities are all getting bad; my sister’s at UPenn and she and her friends are afraid to go out at night. I’m hoping my brother will apply to college in some small town in the middle of nowhere.”
    As much as Pilar talked about her family, I tended to forget they actually existed as people. But hey, if they were going to help my cause, I was okay with that. “That’s why I want to do this,” I said.
    “I know,” she said, the earnest trust in her voice assigning me more goodheartedness than I probably deserved. “I’ll look for those files for you. As long as you promise you won’t do anything unless you can make it work right, that this won’t hurt anybody. Promise?”
    “I promise,” I said again.
    “If you have any doubt it won’t work, then you’ll give it up? You won’t go ahead with it?”
    “I said I wouldn’t.”
    She took a deep breath. “All right. All right, I’ll send you whatever I can.”
    “Good,” I said, and got up.
    “Hey, Cas?”
    “Yeah?”
    She shifted in her chair and fiddled with her papers again. “Checker really misses you, you know,” she said very fast, not looking at me. “He didn’t tell me why you guys are fighting; he hasn’t told me anything—but he’s getting really depressed about it, I can tell. I don’t mean to be—I know it isn’t my business, but—I just, I, I thought you should know.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “We’re talking again.” Guilt crept through the back of my brain, like a rash on my conscience.
    “Really?” Pilar’s face lit up with one of her huge smiles. “That’s great! That’s—that’s really, really great. I’m glad. Okay, forget I said anything. Except—that’s good. That’s just really good.” She flapped her hands as if looking for something to do with them. “Okay, I’m just going to—I’m going to go work