Red, White & Dead. Laura Caldwell

gave me a smile. “Even though I think you’re a little delusional, sure. Tell me what you need.”

      I told him about my dad’s flight instructor being someone from the federal government, someone named R. J. Ohman. “Can you find him?”

      “I’ll kick it around.”

      My cell phone rang. I looked at the screen. Theo. My pulse picked up. I answered. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound calm. I stood and moved away from Mayburn.

      “Girl.” He’d been texting me, but I hadn’t heard his voice in months. And with that one word, I felt a little short of breath.

      “Hey,” I said again. I went to the front window. The night sky was a sexy, deep orange from the last bit of the sunset.

      “I’m by your house,” he said.

      “Oh, yeah?”

      “Had a beer with a friend at Border Line.”

      “That’s not near my house. It’s in Bucktown.”

      “But it’s on North Avenue. And your place is near North Avenue.”

      “And so this is what? A booty call?”

      “Like you’d let me get away with that.” He laughed. “I had to drink a beer to get up the courage to call you since I screwed things up with you last time.”

      “You didn’t screw up. You just didn’t tell me something that I wish I’d known about.”

      “Exactly. I wasn’t totally honest, and I don’t feel good about it. Give me another chance.”

      I turned away from the window and leaned back against the wall. “At what? Theo, I’m about to turn thirty—”

      “When?” he interrupted.

      I told him the date. “But that’s not the point. I’m almost thirty and you’re twenty-one.”

      “Twenty-two.”

      “When was your birthday?”

      “May.”

      “I cannot believe you were born in the Eighties.”

      “You owe me a birthday present.”

      “I owe you?”

      “Let me say that a different way. You want to know what I want for my birthday?”

      “The ability to rent a car by yourself?”

      He laughed. That was one thing, among the several, that I enjoyed about Theo. Unlike many men, he had the ability to see himself with a sense of humor. Maybe it was due to the fact that he was gorgeous. And smart. And sexy. And wealthy.

      “I want to see you,” he said. “Just see you. Let me stop over and say hi. We can sit on your front stoop if you don’t want me to come up.”

      “We never did get to sit on the stoop last time, did we?” When we’d dated in April, my friend’s murder and me being a suspect meant the media had been camped out on my front lawn much of the time.

      “So what do you say?”

      I walked back toward Mayburn. I decided not to think too long about Theo, but rather to go with what I wanted. A baseline want, maybe, but I really didn’t care. “I’ll see you outside my house,” I told him.

      Fifteen minutes later, truly night now, and I was sitting on the stoop with a glass of water, moisture beading on its sides, waiting for Theo. Mayburn had given me crap about dumping him for, as he called Theo, “a twelve year old.”

      “He’s not twelve,” I said.

      “Sounds like he might as well be.”

      “He’s cool. Really.”

      “Oh, I’m sure your boy toy is cool.”

      “He’s not a boy toy! He’s—”

      “Look, Iz, you don’t have to explain it to me.” He pulled my beer toward him. “I’m going to sit here and finish the rest of your beer and then I’m going home.”

      “And you’re not going to call Lucy.”

      “Right,” he said. Then, again, “right,” as if he needed to convince himself.

      I put Mayburn out of my mind when I saw Theo turn onto Eugenie Street, a tall figure, solid and dark with the streetlights behind him. I could see the outline of his muscled shoulders, the rounded dip and curl of his biceps. I pushed my sundress between my legs and closed them.

      I waited until he was standing before me—looking down, his chin-length hair falling forward onto his face— then I said hello. I put my water down. He held out a hand and pulled me to my feet. He wrapped his arms around me and I thawed, curving myself around his abdomen, his chest, hugging him tight, surprised at the relief. The feeling was quickly followed by desire—shots of it, stinging through me, hitting my brain, my body.

      Theo looked up at the building above us. “Are your neighbors home?”

      I looked up with him. The lights were on in all three condos. “Yeah.”

      “Think they’ll come downstairs?”

      “Why?”

      “You think they’ll come downstairs?”

      “No. My neighbors usually have to be up early. They both work.” Unlike me.

      Theo reached an arm out and pushed the front door, which I’d propped open with a rock. He kicked the rock away and pulled me into the stairwell, a place constantly too dark, a complaint I’d made more than once to the management company. But now, with the door shutting behind us, Theo pushing me against the wall, kissing me deeply, I didn’t mind that the stairwell was shadowy and hot.

      Desire turned into frantic craving. I kissed him back hard, threading my hands through his hair, hearing myself pant, gasp.

      He lifted me up, legs around him, then pushed me back against the wall. I kissed him deeper, gulping at his mouth. I felt my body temp soar, my mind open.

      “Should we go upstairs?” His words were muffled by his mouth on my throat, my collarbone.

      “No. No way.” I yanked at the skirt of my sundress, pulling it up, and I wrapped my legs around him tighter.

      7

      The next morning, Theo was up by six and ready to leave ten minutes later, kissing me on my closed eyes, his soft hair brushing over my face.

      “I’ve got to get to work,” he said. “Bunch of meetings today.” Theo had founded a Web design software company while he was in high school. He went to Stanford on a full-ride scholarship, but dropped out after a year. I’d been told he was making millions and millions now. We didn’t much talk about work. Truly, we didn’t talk much at all.

      I pulled him toward me and kissed him, then we murmured our goodbyes. When he was gone, I lay in bed, eyes still closed, replaying the night. My bedroom felt thick with heat from the memories.

      I fell back to sleep, and when I woke up at eight, my mind drifted to my dad. Or, should I say, to that man in the stairwell.

      I called my brother. “How are you?”

      “Nervous. I have to go into the radio station today to fill out paperwork and meet with the head producer.”

      “Don’t be nervous. Everyone loves you.”

      He laughed. “Thanks, Iz, but c’mon, everyone loves me at a party. Everyone loves me at a bar. This is a job.”

      “It’s so weird to hear you say the J word. You want to do this, right?”

      “I do. I really do. I was up all