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late for the new history teacher.”
    All Bridget could think about as she and Hector threaded their way through the hallway was Matt Quinn.
    How many times had she told him she didn’t need a guardian angel? But try as she might, she just couldn’t shake her old childhood playmate. Sometimes she wasn’t even sure that she wanted to. It didn’t help that he was so kind to Sammy. Bridget was grateful for anything Matt could do to help keep her little brother from getting picked on at school. The thought of Matt teaching Sammy to play baseball made her smile.
    Then he’d do something annoying, like get her grounded, and she was over him.
    Matt’s dad had been the referring officer in the Undermeyer case that landed in her dad’s office. Sergeant Quinn thought Undermeyer, the St. Michael’s facilities manager and a suspect in a breaking-and-entering case at the parish, was a certifiable whack job, and he’d asked Dr. Liu to give a professional opinion. Two of them had entered her dad’s office at Hugh Darlington’s Fallen Angels Clinic that afternoon—Dr. Liu and Milton Undermeyer—but only one walked back out. There were no witnesses, and the audiotape Dr. Liu had been running during the session had mysteriously clicked off just five minutes in.
    Sergeant Quinn threw himself into the murder investigation. There was no weapon, and no suspect other than the straitjacketed Undermeyer, who managed to get off with an insanity plea. Since that day, Sergeant Quinn had elected and inaugurated himself protector-in-chief of the Liu
family.
    Bridget was pretty sure that her mom’s hotness didn’t hurt.
    Matt had followed in Sergeant Daddy’s footsteps. She remembered him at the funeral, his light hazel eyes fixed on her from the other side of her father’s open grave. She hadn’t seen him since they were kids, but his eyes held all the sadness Bridget felt, as if he was suffering her anguish right along with her.
    Bridget had felt sick during the whole funeral, but there at the grave site, she thought she was going to pass out. Matt had walked around the grave and stood beside her, quiet and calm. He reached out and took her hand, and in that moment Bridget wanted to cry, to let all the pain and anger pour out while Matt held her.
    Then Sergeant Quinn had come up beside them. Her mom collapsed into his arms and wept uncontrollably while Sergeant Quinn stood strong and sturdy, stroking her mom’s hair. Bridget saw in Sergeant Quinn the same thing she saw in Hugh Darlington: They wanted to replace her dad.
    After that she had hardened herself against Matt. Sure they’d played together when they were kids, but they’d lost touch after Matt went to live with his mom. And now that he was back, he was different. Matt Quinn, star pitcher for Riordan Prep’s varsity baseball team, was Mr. Popularity. Mr. Perfect. They had nothing in common.
    No, that wasn’t quite true. She and Matt did have one thing in common: Alexa. Matt had dated her most of last year. And Bridget hated her with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.
    “Are you even listening to me?”
    “Huh?”
    Hector darted in front of her and stopped dead, hands folded across his chest. “Did you hear anything I said?”
    Bridget took a wild guess. “Asian barista, should you ask him out or not?”
    Hector’s eyes narrowed as he fell back into step beside her. “Lucky guess.”
    “I was totally listening.”
    “Sure you were. Thinking about Matt Quinn?”
    Bridget tried to control the hot flush spreading across her face. Damn half-Irish blood. “Don’t be stupid.”
    Hector opened the door to room sixty-six. “Whatever.”
    Bridget brushed past him and stomped to her desk, dropping her bag on the floor. The new teacher wasn’t there yet, but the room was all atwitter about Mr. Singh and his replacement. Bridget didn’t care. She felt tired and old and completely disinterested in the goings-on at St. Michael’s Prep. She folded her hands across her