Praise for Laura Caldwell’s IZZY MCNEIL novels

Claim of Innocence

“Caldwell’s trial scenes, breezy but effective, are key to the unmasking of the real culprit. Izzy’s successful juggling of personal and professional roles should win her more fans.”

–Publishers Weekly

Red, White & Dead

“A sizzling roller coaster ride through the streets of Chicago, filled with murder, mystery, sex and heartbreak. These page-turners will have you breathless and panting for more.”

–Shore Magazine

“Chock full of suspense, Red, White & Dead is a riveting mystery of crime, love, and adventure at its best.”

–New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds

Red Blooded Murder

“Red Blooded Murder aims for the sweet spot between tough and tender, between thrills and thought–and hits the bull’s-eye. A terrific novel.”

–#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child

“Izzy is the whole package: feminine and sexy, but also smart, tough and resourceful. She’s no damsel-in-distress from a tawdry bodice ripper; she’s more than a fitting match for any bad guys foolish enough to take her on.”

–Chicago Sun-Times

Red Hot Lies

“Told mainly from the heroine’s first-person point of view, this beautifully crafted and tightly written story is a fabulous read. It’s very difficult to put down–and the ending is terrific.”

–RT Book Reviews

“Former trial lawyer Caldwell launches a mystery series that weaves the emotional appeal of her chick-lit titles with the blinding speed of her thrillers … Readers will be left looking forward to another heart-pounding ride on Izzy’s silver Vespa.”

–Publishers Weekly

About the Author

LAURA CALDWELL, a former trial lawyer, is currently a professor and distinguished scholar in residence at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She is an author of eleven novels, including Burning the Map, The Rome Affair and the award-winning Izzy McNeil series. She is also the author of the nonfi ction book Long Way Home: A Young Man Lost in the System and the Two Women Who Found Him, based upon her work on a Chicago murder trial. She is a nationwide speaker and the founder of Life After Innocence, which helps innocent people begin their lives again after being wrongfully imprisoned. Laura has been published in thirteen languages and over twenty countries. To learn more, please visit www.lauracaldwell.com.

Question of Trust
Laura
Caldwell

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For AMB, who believes.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Amy Moore-Benson and Miranda Indrigo for shepherding the book. Thanks also to everyone at MIRA Books, especially Michelle Venditti, Valerie Gray, Donna Hayes, Dianne Moggy, Loriana Sacilotto, Craig Swinwood, Pete McMahon, Stacy Widdrington, Andi Richman, Andrew Wright, Katherine Orr, Alex Osuszek, Erin Craig, Margie Miller, Adam Wilson, Don Lucey, Gordy Goihl, Dave Carley, Ken Foy, Erica Mohr, Darren Lizotte, Reka Rubin, Margie Mullin, Sam Smith, Kathy Lodge, Carolyn Flear, Michelle Renaud, Kate Studer, Stephen Miles, Jennifer Watters, Amy Jones, Malle Vallik, Tracey Langmuir, Anne Fontanesi, Scott Ingram, Marianna Ricciuto, John Jordan and Brent Lewis.

A massive thanks to Loyola University Chicago School of Law—a vibrant, creative and generous place to work. And especially to Father Michael Garanzini, Dean David Yellen, James Faught, Michael Kaufman, Jean Gaspardo, Alice Perlin, Michael Patena, Alan Rafael and Joyce Marvel.

Much gratitude to my experts—criminal defense lawyer Catharine O’Daniel, former federal prosecutor Professor Mary Ramirez and my Cook Islands insider, Margaret Caldwell. Thanks also to Carol Miller and Liza Jaine.

Prologue

I didn’t know Kim Parkway very well. Sure, she moved into the condo below me. And yes, she reached out to me on a day when I really needed it. She even borrowed something a few days later because she hadn’t completely unpacked yet.

What I knew of Kim, I liked. I think she enjoyed me, too. But ultimately, she would have been one of those friends—an acquaintance, really—who fades from your life, remembered once in a while, and even then somewhat foggily.

But now I know that Kim Parkway will be in my life forever. I’ll never forget her. Because on a Monday night in November, I found her dead.

1

“We’ve got a boatload of cocaine. Literally.”

I looked at my friend Maggie, barely five feet tall, standing in the doorway of my office. (Technically it was her office, since I was employed by Maggie and her grandfather, Martin Bristol, at Bristol & Associates.)

“You know,” I said, “when I met you in law school, I never thought I would hear you say things like that.”

Maggie frowned for a second, pushing her blond, wavy hair out of her eyes. “It’s the Cortaderos.”

“Oh.” I leaned my elbows on the desk, interested. I’d been hearing about the Cortaderos for a long time. They were clients of Maggie and Martin’s. They were a Mexican drug cartel family (allegedly a cartel family, I should say), but I hadn’t been privy to the details of any cases.

She sighed and waved a hand. “They’re always getting into trouble.” This was not said without fondness. Maggie had a soft spot for most of her wayward clients.

Q, short for Quentin, stuck his bald, black head in my office, as if he’d been lingering outside the door. “Did I just hear something about a drug bust?” Q had been my assistant when we were at the white-glove firm of Baltimore & Brown. He was the office manager now at Bristol & Associates. But more important, Q loved a juicy story, especially on an otherwise slow Monday afternoon.

Maggie slumped into a seat across from my desk, then waved Q inside. “Have you ever seen the boats parked on the river? By Lower Wacker?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Sam and I did a sunset cruise once. We went through the locks and out onto Lake Michigan.”

“They did a post-Pride cruise one year,” Q said. “Epic.” He cleared his throat. “That was before I was monogamous, of course.”

“Of course,” Maggie and I echoed.

I nodded at her to continue.

“Right. Well, the Cortaderos own one of those boats. It was about to be taken down the Mississippi for winter, but it was seized today.”

“And cocaine was found on it?”

“A lot.” She sighed the way a mom would when discussing a teen who spent too much time in front of the computer. “Forty-five kilos.”

“What’s that worth?” Q asked.

“Millions. Many.”

“Many millions?” Q said.

Maggie nodded. “They usually wouldn’t have that much in one place. Strange. I don’t know what’s going on with the Cortaderos.” She looked out my window, lapsing into silence. There was nothing to see there except the blue-tinted high-rise across the street.

Q and I exchanged glances. Maggie had been like this lately—a little distracted, and also a little secretive, closing her mouth suddenly when she seemed about to disclose something, lapsing into long, thoughtful silences. I wondered what was going on behind the scenes at the firm.

“What were you saying, Mags?” I prompted her.

She blinked a few times as if clearing something, coming back to us. “Oh, um …” She looked at me. “Right. Right. So, I need you on this, Iz. I have a motion to suppress that’s taking a lot of time.”

The other thing Maggie had been doing lately was throwing a lot of casework my way. I appreciated that, since I was a civil lawyer by training now learning the oh-so-different criminal defense world. In general, I would do anything in the world for Maggie. Now that she was my boss, I’d certainly do anything she needed for one of her clients, no matter who they were. Drug lords from Mexico, though? Interesting, sure, but actually representing them? That made me nervous.

But this was my job now, I reminded myself. I had to make a living, and although I’d been on top of the world a year ago, I was far from that now. So, I was a criminal defense lawyer. When Maggie threw work my way, I would perform. Because this was my job. One of them. For better or worse.

I sat up straighter. “You need me on this in what way?” I asked Maggie.

“Well, in the short-term, I need you on the boat. Can you go now?”

2

I have known mad love. And once you have known that sort of thing, you don’t forget. So you don’t lightly enter into it (or what you sense could be it) because you know the absolute high that resides there is matched by a crushing low if it ends.

If you’re fortunate enough that the rest of your life is fairly good, you might think maybe you don’t need that high again. You certainly know you don’t need the crush.

I thought about this as I took a cab down LaSalle Street toward the Chicago River and the boat owned by the Cortaderos. I thought about how I had started to tell my boyfriend, Theo, that I loved him when I knew he couldn’t hear me—when he was asleep, when he was in the shower with the water pounding, when he worked on his laptop and the music from his earphones (some combination hip-hop, head-banging-type stuff) was so loud and screeching, it leaked into the room.

“Love you …” I’d say, my voice low, testing the feel of the words, experiencing a slight thrill and at the same time relief that Theo had no idea I was uttering them. Really, was I ready to go there?

It’s such a cliché when people say they’re “not ready” after getting out of a big relationship, but hell if I didn’t understand that concept now. Sam, my former fiancé, and I had broken up a little over a year ago. Then we’d considered and rejected putting our relationship back together at the end of the summer. (That’s making it sound easy. It wasn’t. But life’s struggles are always more simple in the rearview mirror.)

What I’ve learned is that plans only exist in the quiet space of our minds, because the fact is, the universe doesn’t respect them. Or at least the gods in my universe don’t. So I had taken great pains to weed the term fiancé from my vernacular, just like I was cleaning it of that plan thing. But also, if I were honest, I was unsure if Theo would return the sentiment.

A few months ago, we decided to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend. I had blurted it out unintentionally once during a fairly random discussion. Panic had flooded my brain at what Theo might think, but he just smiled that sexy smile of his and called me his girlfriend, over and over again. Never before had that word made every inch of my body tingle.

Now we were using the terms loosely—boyfriend, girlfriend. But I kept asking myself, what would the three words—those three little, but oh-so-big, words—do to him?

My cell phone bleated from my purse, as skyscrapers on LaSalle streaked across the cab window in a smear of white and gray.

I snatched the cell phone out of my bag, keen to get away from my musings. “Hello?”

“McNeil. I need you for a thing.” Ah, Mayburn. I could always count on him to dispense with the pleasantries.

“What kind of thing?”

John Mayburn was the private detective I occasionally moonlighted for. It was sometimes fun, though often I found myself in big, big trouble and had to do a fast scramble to escape. But Mayburn had helped me way too much to not at least listen. Plus, my father worked for him now.

“Super easy,” he said. “I need you to dress kinda … well, slutty and then open a checking account at a bank in the Loop tomorrow morning. Simple.”

I stopped myself from rolling my eyes. Nothing was ever simple with Mayburn. A simple undercover retail job at a lingerie store had almost gotten me killed once. “What aren’t you telling me, Mayburn?”

“Lots of stuff. But seriously, that’s all we need you to do. Christopher and I have the rest covered.”

Christopher. My dad and Mayburn had the rest covered. My world was so weird.

“All right,” I said. “Text me the info.”

A year ago, I almost married Sam. Shortly after, I’d been accused of a friend’s death. Then the father I thought was gone had returned. It had been a hell of a year.

But really, my life was returning to normal now. I was a full-time lawyer again. I had a wonderfully hot boyfriend. And the first holiday of the season, Thanksgiving, was just two and a half weeks away. What harm could a little P.I. work do?

3

By the time I reached the dock at murky Lower Wacker Avenue in the shadows of the Merchandise Mart, any contents of the riverboat were gone, removed, wiped out.

I headed toward a government evidence tech who was wearing gloves and a mask. I tried to put an officious jaunt to my walk, a concerned look on my face. “I’m here on behalf of the Cortaderos.”

“Better you than me.”

I asked him a couple of questions. He claimed not to know anything or have any information.

I climbed back over the ramp to the dock and called Maggie.

I waited for quick directives, sharp orders—that was the way Maggie usually worked. But this time she only said, “Umm …” Then nothing.

“Mags, I need some help here.”

She sighed. “Okay, ask for the warrant,” she said. “Be indignant.”

Back over the boat ramp, and I did as ordered. No luck from the tech. His boss had the warrant, he said, but his boss was nowhere to be found.

I called Maggie again.

“Order them off the boat,” she said.

“Can I do that?”

“Yep.”

“Really?”

“Yep.” Maggie mentioned a couple of federal statutes having to do with evidence collection, warrants and search-and-seizure that the government techs were clearly running afoul of.

“Sounds fun,” I said, and I meant it. I stood a second, thinking how much my career had altered. Instead of representing refined, elegant media moguls, I was now representing a Mexican drug cartel family. Instead of going into TV stations to negotiate contracts, I was going into a big, ol’ boat that had just recently held a big, ol’ pile of drugs. And I was about to throw some figurative muscle around.

I clapped my hands like a player in a huddle. “Break,” I said under my breath.

Once again, I was back on the boat, and this time, I raised my voice. I rattled off the statutes, hoping I was getting them right. Maggie must have nailed it because the evidence tech stopped and glared. He knew I was right. But still he didn’t move.

I was about to say, Don’t make me call the authorities. But I wasn’t exactly sure who I’d call. The Chicago police? That wasn’t right, because a drug case like this was federal. The Feds, then. But then, what did that even mean—the Feds?

Luckily, the evidence tech groaned. He then turned, gathered his people and left me alone on a cold, creaking riverboat that smelled strongly of chemicals.

“The smell is probably the stuff someone used to cut the coke,” Maggie said when I called her again. “We’re gonna put up a knowledge defense,” she continued. “We’ll argue that although the Cortaderos had some ownership in the riverboat, they possessed no information that the thing was about to be used for any packaging or transport of drugs.”

It was wild how much Maggie knew about the big, bad world of hard-core drug running and Mexican drug lords.

I made a couple of rounds through the creaking, freezing-cold boat, looking for anything I might have missed. Maggie and I discussed a few more details of our proposed defense, then said our goodbyes. I took pictures of various parts of the boat with my cell phone, but there was little to capture other than a ballroom with a wood bar, the stairwells, the decks and the captains’ lair.

As shadows fell across the city, they bathed the empty boat with a sinister icy feeling. I left and walked toward the Merchandise Mart. Climbing the stairs to the “L” train, I shivered in the late-afternoon gray mist that had rolled in around the river.

I got on the Brown Line and headed north toward my place. As I leaned my head against the window, I watched vaguely as the train left the Loop and passed over Chicago Avenue. I wasn’t really seeing anything, though. The more I thought about it, the more the Cortadero case made me uncomfortable. Did I really want to represent a large Mexican family who potentially—allegedly—had been storing millions worth of drugs on a boat?

But I had to remind myself that I was no longer the rainmaker I used to be. Maggie and Martin worked hard to pull in cases, and as their associate I had to focus on whatever case they wanted.

There was solace in being a soldier, too. In my former job at Baltimore & Brown, I was responsible for shepherding nearly all the legal work of a large media conglomerate, and after a while the responsibility had overwhelmed me.

My phone buzzed. It was Theo. “Can you go house-hunting with me tonight?” he asked.

I felt a warm flush of flattery. Theo’s lease was up, and he had decided it was time to buy a house and leave behind the rented apartment he’d occupied since quitting college. But so far, he’d been doing this mostly on his own.

“I’d love to.”

“Meet me in Bucktown in an hour?” He named an address in a neighborhood that had been gentrified in years of late but still kept its youthful edge. It sounded perfect. Theo, after all, was a big, gorgeous and decidedly edgy young man with ribbons of tattoos that snaked up his arms and seemed to brush at the tips of his hair, which hung to his shoulders.

“I’ll be there.”

The Bucktown condo was huge—four bedrooms with a modern kitchen stocked with top-of-the-line appliances, three balconies, two fireplaces and a tub in the master bath that could fit a family of five. But Theo kept pursing his lips as we followed the real-estate agent around the place, narrowing his eyes in the way that he did when he was thinking hard about something.

“It’s not right,” he said.

At the next home, I thought we had it. The floors were wide-planked, the feel was casual but cool. It had a game room, which Theo and his friends would love. I could see Theo’s shoes in the hallway, his jeans on the bedroom floor.

But then we saw the “outside space,” which was a metal balcony overlooking the Kennedy Expressway. “Nope,” he said.

The next place, near the Museum of Contemporary Art, had a striking view of Lake Michigan, its perimeter newly frozen like white crust. Theo shook his head again. “It’s just not right for us.”

I blinked a few times. Us? The word was thrilling. “It doesn’t matter if it’s right for me. What matters is if it feels good to you.”

He turned to me. His hand brushed my collarbone, my curls, then briefly touched my cheek. “It has to be good for you, too.”

Theo was discouraged going into the fourth stop, a three-bedroom condo near the Green Door Tavern that had once been a warehouse. But then we walked through the door and saw the raw, wood floors just like Theo wanted. Then we moved farther inside, gasping at the two-story vaulted ceiling, growing more and more excited. The bedrooms were spacious. The bathroom, with its intricately tiled circle tub, made me sigh. The real-estate agent excused herself, ostensibly to take a phone call, but I knew she’d seen our enthusiasm. She was giving us time to stroll some more, to think, to discuss.

I want you to fall in love with me.

I want you to fall in love with me.

I want you to fall in love with me.

That was my internal chant, my mantra, that night. I couldn’t believe I’d found myself here—in love again. It’s not that I didn’t think it would ever happen. I just thought (and I mean I really thought I knew) that my heart needed a while before it could bear weight again. Before it could hold someone there. But now, I wanted Theo. I wanted him there.

And I was scared. He’d said things, lots of things, like, Everyone who knows us tells me we should date for a long time…. You’re like my best friend…. You’re one of the most wonderful people I know…. And he would kiss me with that lush, greedy mouth. After some time, he would slow, then pull back to look into my eyes and it felt, in those moments, like he could see into every cell of me, into everything thought, hidden or not. He had me in those moments. He owned me.

I want you to fall in love with me.

We went into the kitchen, which bore taupe-and-white granite that gleamed, and brand-new appliances. I sat on the kitchen counter. “What do you think?” I asked Theo.

He walked over to me, nudged my legs apart and placed himself between them, his face close to mine. “I think this is it, gorgeous.”

We stared at each other.

Even though I’d been muttering “love you” to him when he couldn’t hear, I was only rehearsing the words. There was hesitation about getting the sentiment returned, and there was also the fact that I wasn’t sure it was a correct statement. I wasn’t sure I recalled what it felt like to fall in love, to be certain.

But at that moment, I remembered.

“I think it is, too,” I said.

Even though I didn’t say anything more, I was sure then of our place in the world. I thought that life could only keep moving one way—upward, and in the direction of good.

4

His office behind the restaurant was much nicer than the restaurant itself. Back here, in his managerial quarters, he had brocade couches and tufted leather chairs. The desk was from the 1800s and it was built to last. Just like him. That’s what his father had always told him, and unlike his younger brother, Vincente, he’d always believed their padre. Still, it pleased him to look around, to see what he’d created, what he was entitled to.

José Ramon sat at the desk now and took in his office. With its carved pocket doors, collection of Mexican art (including one Diego Rivera), and high-tech audio and visual equipment, the luxurious room was second only to his private residences. He hoarded such places, because if one showed too much luxury, he’d learned, people started asking questions. His competition, for example. The government, certainly. The only people to whom he could show the luxury he required, and had acquired, were the few women he took home. He liked best those women who could handle it—who could step into that luxury and not be impressed by it. Or at least not show it—but who could appreciate it. That was the type of women he wanted. They were hard to find.

But he wouldn’t worry about that now. Now, he was worried about the thing that would eventually get him those women. Money.

It fucking killed him that the wealth his family had amassed had been “invested” into a legitimate business—that’s what it looked like anyway, a legitimate business—and now, what the fuck was happening? Where the fuck was the return on that money? And if there was no return—the way he’d been promised—where the fuck was all the money that was supposed to be in that goddamned business?

José slammed his hand on the table and squeezed his eyes shut. But it didn’t help. He could still envision Vincente as a little boy who had always wanted to be like his brother. Except that “Vince,” as he called himself now, was smarter. That’s why he had eventually gotten his MBA after his father sent the boys to the U.S. from Mexico. And that was supposed to be why they could trust Vincente to find legitimate investments when they needed them. But Vincente had fucked it up. That was becoming clear.

He slammed his hand again, right as the door opened. “I told you never to just walk in,” he barked at the new restaurant general manager.

The man didn’t respond. Instead, he left, closed the door, knocked and then reentered.

“What?” José said in a demanding bark.

“The eggs that were delivered are spoiled. We’ll need more to get through the week,” the manager said with urgency.

He glared. This restaurant was not his identity. It was a front, like so many others the family had. He crooked his finger at the man, who came closer. Then he did it once more, slowly bending and extending and bending his finger in a methodical way. When the manager was close to the desk, he spoke in a low tone, threateningly. “If you can’t handle these issues, someone else will,” he said simply. “Do you get that?”

The manager had the audacity to return the glare before he backed out of the room.

As the door closed, he slammed his hand flat on the desk once more. It disgusted him that he continued to have such discussions with his underlings. But a “discussion” was not required with the people running that business, a business that was running off with his family’s money. No, something much, much more than discussion was necessary.

5

“Ms. Granger? Mr. Reynolds will see you now.”

I slid carefully out of my seat and smoothed the front of my pencil skirt. I undid one more button of my shirt to allow ample cleavage to show and made sure the tiny camera in my necklace was still pointing forward. After one last check in the mirror, I strutted my stuff across the bank lobby.

All right, Izzy, I thought to myself. Let’s do this.

Mayburn did a lot of work for banks. Sometimes the cases he worked were huge and complex—big-scale bank fraud and money laundering and such—requiring me to do something dangerous like invade someone’s home computer to download information. (Naturally, Mayburn always undersold such jobs, letting me figure out for myself—usually right when I was about to get caught—how much bigger and potentially threatening the situation was than I’d thought.)

Tatum Reynolds’s office was about as typical as they came. One Plexiglas wall looked onto the bank. The rest of the walls were gray, the carpet blue, the desk and bookshelves black metal. Mayburn had told me the bank hired him to prove Reynolds was hoarding enrollment incentives that were supposed to be given to all new clients. When a number of his clients complained they never saw the money they were promised, the bank suspected that Tatum was depositing the money into his own bank account. However, the transactions couldn’t be proven, and after watching him, Mayburn and the bank came to believe that he might be taking the money and then giving large sums to “special” clients. All the “special” clients were pretty women with almost no money to deposit into their new account. That’s where I came in. I was supposed to open an account with fifty bucks. If he failed to give me the hundred-dollar incentive, we had him. If he tried to offer me more, we had him. For once, Mayburn might have been right. This was going to be easy.

“Ms. Granger, welcome to Chicagoland Bank and Trust,” Reynolds said. “I understand you want to open an account?”

He was thin and pale and much younger than I anticipated. His voice had a squeak to it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this guy was a teenager, not a late-twenties, thieving bank manager. He had a bowl cut, for goodness’ sake.

“Yeah, I want a checking account. One of those online ones,” I answered, affecting a nasally voice. Was the fake voice a part of the undercover assignment? No. But I couldn’t help myself.

“We can certainly help you with that.” He gave me a crooked smile.

For the next twenty minutes, I listened to Reynolds give me options on checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards and investments, but no mention of the cash incentive. I did my best to play my part and noted with pleasure that he glanced down my blouse, where the necklace hung, quite a few times. He even blushed a little when I laughed at one of his jokes. I handed him the ID that Mayburn had given me and started signing the paperwork.

“You know,” he mumbled, “our bank offers an incentive program.”

I lowered the pen slowly. “Really? What’s that mean?”

“Well …” He cleared his throat. “There’s this really nice restaurant around the corner. It’s a French place called Tru.”

Tru was one of the most touted and expensive restaurants in Chicago. Where was this going?

“We could … ah … go there,” he stammered, his eyes firmly planted on his left cuff link.

I blinked at him. Did he just ask me out on a date?

“You see,” he continued, “our bank offers you two hundred dollars toward a dinner at Tru for opening an account with us. It’s impossible to get a reservation, but I know a guy who lets me in whenever I want.”

I know a guy. Such a Chicago thing to say. The city had a strange but wonderful pride that involved being able to help others. Sometimes this was meant to make the helper feel better about himself. Sometimes it was more altruistic. But almost always the phrase I got a guy (or some variation thereof) came into play as the person offered a connection to make it all better—a plumber who would show up in an hour and stop your basement from flooding; the cop who would arrive in minutes, assess the situation and then leave if you didn’t want to go through the hassle of a police report; a doctor who normally had a three-month waiting list, but who would get you in as a special favor to the one who said I got a guy.

“So if you wanted the incentive,” Tatum said, “I could get you in.”

Wow. Tatum was using the incentive money not just to impress women, but also to pay for a date? At Tru? Thank God the necklace cam was getting all of this or no one would believe me. (And thankfully Mayburn and my dad would be paying the tab on this job if they wanted to keep it going, because two hundred dollars wouldn’t buy much at Tru.)

Reynolds was staring at me with something akin to blind fear in his eyes, and for a second I felt sorry for him. But then I remembered I had a job to do.

“I’d love to, Tatum.”

At the sound of his name, his entire face exploded into an ear-to-ear smile. “Great! I’ll get the paperwork going.”

After saying goodbye to Tatum Reynolds, I made my way to the café across the street. Mayburn and my father had set up shop there so they could watch the feed from my necklace camera on a laptop. I weaved through the tables and to the back booth.

My father gave me a curt nod in greeting and Mayburn mumbled what was barely discernable as a salutation. It might have been my imagination, or the lighting in the coffee shop, but Mayburn looked a little red.

“Did you get all that?” I asked, trying to get a read on the situation between the two of them.

“Yeah, we got it,” Mayburn answered. “He offered you the money … to take you … out on a date….” Then he burst out laughing. His face turned more apple-red, his breathing came in gasps and tears sprung from his eyes. Even my father chuckled a little.

My father rarely laughed and Mayburn didn’t, either, not since he’d fallen in love and then broken up with a woman named Lucy DeSanto. I tapped my foot and waited. When the guffawing finally died down, Mayburn was completely out of breath, and I couldn’t help but smile a little.

“You did good, McNeil,” he finally managed to say.

“Poor kid,” my father said. “Tatum Reynolds might go to prison because he wanted a girlfriend.”

“The reason doesn’t concern us, Christopher. I just need to figure out how to tell the bank owners without cracking a smile.” Mayburn bit his lower lip then launched into another fit of hysterics.

“All right, gentlemen,” I said as I took off the necklace camera and set it on the table. “I’ve got to go.”

“Later, McNeil,” Mayburn said, finally managing to compose himself.

“’Bye, Boo,” my dad said, using his nickname for me. When I stood, he stood with me. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah, sure. You?”

He nodded but looked at my face with a concerned expression. “You can tell me if you ever want help. If anything isn’t all right.”

“Okay … Thanks.” I tried to think whether the cryptic remark meant anything. But my dad was new to Chicago, new to our family again. I figured he was just trying to get his sea legs, so to speak.

I looked at my father and allowed a small smile. It was good that he was working with Mayburn. It was good that he was loosening up a little. And I had to admit, it was good that he was in my life again.

6

“I don’t understand,” I heard Theo say, his voice pained. “Why would that be?”

Something was wrong. And on the day we were moving in together—well, not exactly moving in—Theo had decided to buy the place by the Green Door (offering nearly the entire asking price just so he could “avoid all bullshit”), and we figured that Theo might as well stay with me in the short-term since his apartment lease was up.

And so, a few uneventful days after my meeting with Tatum Reynolds, I left Bristol & Associates a little early and climbed the stairs to the “L” platform, heading home so I could help Theo situate his stuff in my condo. (I was also attempting to make sure he did not situate any of said stuff in places I didn’t want it.) Also, I needed the time to think; to process the fact that someone was moving in with me. I adored Theo, craved him, couldn’t believe how in tune he was with me when we were together, so dialed in, in a way that Sam hadn’t been. It was thrilling. It was scary. But I loved him, I reminded myself. Yeah, but you don’t know if he returns the sentiment.

The “L” train rumbled around the corner at Lake and Wabash, and I moved over for someone to sit next to me.

No reason for too much analysis, Izzy. I reminded myself that Theo and I moving in together was a temporary thing.

It was a chilly, sunny November day. As I rode the “L,” listening to its wheels screech awkwardly at stops, I let my mind meander into other things. I thought about how I missed my Vespa scooter, which I’d had to retire for the winter. I thought about Thanksgiving coming up in two weeks. I planned to go to my mom and Spence’s place, as I always did. For some reason, Theo and I hadn’t talked about what he was doing. Should I invite him to join? The fact that we were temporarily moving in together already seemed momentous enough.

When I got home, a nearly empty moving van was out front.

The numbered keypad outside the front door of the three-flat complex had been disabled by someone with the code; I could tell just by glancing at the display because I had overseen the installation of the keyless entry systems on the front door as well as the door to my condo on the third floor. (Okay, Mayburn had done the overseeing for me while I watched him watch the locksmith.) When it was first installed, we guarded the front-door code like the sphinx. But changing the code frequently quickly got cumbersome. First, my ground-floor neighbor sold his place, requiring visits of about fifty real-estate agents a week. Then my second-floor neighbor decided to rent his condo, and that allowed hordes of apartment hunters to roam the place. And now that Theo was moving in, with his buddies helping him and his moving vans, someone had given up the fight and disabled the keypad altogether. I really couldn’t blame them.

I made my way up the three flights of stairs—the only downside to my condo. When I’d reached the third floor, the door to the apartment was blocked with boxes. I’d managed to stick my head in the door when I heard Theo speak in a strained voice, a voice I’d never heard before. “I don’t understand,” he said.

A pause, as Theo listened to whomever he was talking to. “But why?” He sounded distressed. “Why would it be that low?” he continued. “I told you last night, I’ve never bought property before. All I’ve had are two credit cards.” Another pause. “Yeah, well, I guess that could be it but …”

As his voice died away, some kind of trepidation said hello to my psyche.

“The business has some kind of trust account,” he said. “Could we use that to get credit or cash?” A pause. “No, it’s a foreign trust. I don’t know much about it, but I could …” An exhale. Another moment of silence. “Oh, okay, so then …” Quiet. “Really?” I heard him say. He sounded now not so much distressed, but like a young man surprised at terrible news.

I hated to hear it. I nudged the door to shove aside the boxes and stepped inside.

Theo stood at the bar of my European-style kitchen, his hair pulled back away from his face, wearing an army-green T-shirt and jeans. He turned as I came in. He threw me a polite smile, as if to say, One minute. Or maybe, Everything is fine here. Yet I could tell it wasn’t.

“All right,” he said. “Yeah, talk to you then.”

I picked my way through boxes, across the room and gave him a hug. “Who was that?”

He held me longer than usual. His back muscles felt taut.

I looked up at him. “Everything okay?”

His brow furrowed. “That was Barb. The real-estate agent. She did a pre-application for my mortgage, and it was …” More furrowing. “It was denied.”

“You’re kidding?” Theo had money. A lot of it, as far as I knew. He and his partner, Eric, started their company—HeadFirst—while in college. HeadFirst’s software allowed people to create their own artistically beautiful websites. The company had performed—overperformed—beyond anything anyone expected, according to the frequent press about the company. Theo and Eric had left college and never looked back, walking into a dream life of travel, private planes and a constantly growing business.

Theo shook his head, still distracted, which was so very unlike his usual life state.

I kept my arms around his back, but I leaned away so I could see him better. “I heard you saying you really hadn’t owned anything yet. Maybe your credit isn’t extensive enough. Especially for the prices you’re looking at.” None of the houses that Theo had viewed had been less than a million dollars, and the one he’d decided upon was almost three times that. “Maybe you need to take out credit cards and then pay them off, that kind of thing?”

He shook his head. “She said there should be a high enough credit score, given my income. Also, I’ve had two credit cards, and I always pay them on time. I’ve never been delinquent on any bills.”

“Well then, what is it? What did she say was bringing your score down?”

“She couldn’t tell from the report. She’s going to have her contact at a credit bureau look into it.” The muscles in his back loosened a little, and he let me go, yet his expression remained stiff. “Right now, she said there’s no way I’ll be able to get a mortgage.”

Who is this guy? The thought boomed in my brain without introduction, without warning. And I could feel the question in my body, too—a wariness that took up residence somewhere deep inside and crossed its arms.

We both looked around my apartment at his stacks of books, piles of boxes, laundry baskets overflowing with jeans and shoes. We both knew that, as we stood there, a new tenant was moving into Theo’s old apartment.

I realized then Theo was staying with me a little longer than I’d thought.

Tick, tick, tick went the silence. It was, I realized, an old clock my mother had given me years ago in college. I’d never noticed the sound before.

“You want to go out for a drink?” I said.

He nodded fast.

Within fifteen minutes, we were seated at the bar at Topo Gigio, an Italian place on Wells. Thirty minutes after that, we were in high spirits, the owner having sent a bottle of champagne after hearing that we’d just moved in together. Soon, we were making plans for Theo’s condo, drawing game-room and bedroom designs on napkins and searching our phones for photos of furniture he could buy.

“Whenever you move to your new place,” I said, “it doesn’t matter.”

“We are what matters, right?” Theo said, leaning toward me, moving his bar stool over.

“Exactly.” I stared into those eyes, nearly breathless in his presence, the whole of him. Any irrational slices of fear were no longer cutting me.

An excited look took over Theo’s face. “I just remembered,” he said. “I have a folder of pictures from magazines that I’ve been ripping out. You know, from home magazines?”

“You’ve been reading home magazines?” I adored him even more, suddenly.

“Yeah, well, my mom bought me a bunch of them. And I just remembered. I’ve got pictures of beds, and oh, these kick-ass chairs for a TV room.” He looked so excited then. “Let me run back and get them.”

“No, let’s just go,” I said, but right then, the bartender delivered the three plates of appetizers we’d ordered.

“It’s a few blocks,” Theo said. He pointed at the appetizers. “You start on these, and I’ll be right back.”

I watched him walk from the room, watched everyone else stare at him as they always did. As always, he didn’t notice.

“I love you,” I whispered. I was sure about it then, sure that he would return the sentiment. “I love you,” I said, trying the words again. And it was then I decided I would tell him as soon as he came back.

But a few minutes later, he was calling my phone.

“Hey,” I said softly, without having to say another word. Because I felt like every word I would say to Theo now would carry those three words in it.

“We had a break-in,” he said.

My mouth opened and closed. In front of me, the bartender told an apparently hilarious story, because the two people listening threw their heads back, their mouths open. But I couldn’t hear anything.

“Back the truck up,” I said into the phone, still trying to meet the anti-swearing campaign goals I’d set last year, despite the situation. “What did you say?”

“You need to come home,” Theo said. “Someone broke into your place.”

7

When I got home, the downstairs door was closed, the keypad still enabled since we’d turned it on before we left for Topo Gigio and Theo had obviously used the code to get in. So then how had someone broken into my place?

I took the stairs fast to the third floor, then stopped when I reached my door. Immediately, my eyes drew down to the keypad. The cover of that panel had been pried off, exposing the wires inside.

I felt something like fear sweep a cold brush over my body. I stopped and thought about the entry system. Many people knew the password to the keypad downstairs. But the keypad to my own condo was known to only a few. Theo was one of the few people who knew it, along with my mom and Q. Apparently whoever broke in didn’t have the code. Or wanted to make it look like they didn’t.

I pushed open the door and stepped into the living room. My eyes moved over the fireplace, looked at the coffee table, where mounds of Theo’s belongings were stacked. I let my gaze scan the couch, the yellow-and-white chair that was my favorite piece of furniture in the house. I looked into the kitchen. The bar counter with the two stools in front appeared the same as when we left it—piled with towels and sheets of Theo’s.

“Izzy?” I heard a voice that sounded like Theo but also a little like someone else.

I jumped, flinching in spite of myself.

Theo stepped into the room. “Iz. Hey. I came home and saw the door panel all fucked up.”

“Are you okay? Was anyone here?”

He shook his head.

“Was anything taken?”

“I was just going through the place, and it doesn’t look like it, but it’s hard to tell, you know? Since I just moved in.” He waved his hand behind him toward the hallway, which was filled with boxes. “And I wouldn’t really know if anything of yours was taken.” It seemed, then, we knew so little of each other.

“You must have been scared,” I said.

He shrugged.

I went to him. “Are you okay?”

He wrapped me in those arms, and I smelled that Theo smell—there it was.

“Did you call the cops?” His shirt, made of a soft fabric that could almost make me think nothing was wrong, muffled my words.

The answer came in a rap on the door. Then another rap. “Chicago police.”

The responding officers listened to our tale while their radios squawked.

“You’re a lawyer, Ms. McNeil?” Officer Potowski asked me.

I nodded. “Yes. Criminal law. With Bristol & Associates.”

“That’s a good firm. High profile. You guys get a lot of publicity.”

I nodded again. Since Q had arrived at Bristol & Associates, we had gotten even more. Q loved a good press release.

“Since nothing is missing,” the officer said, “this is technically just a B and E. A misdemeanor at best. There are no prints on the doors or number locks, either. We’ll file the report, but we can file it closed if you want. And we’ll just check in with you in a little bit—tomorrow or the next day—to make sure everything’s okay. What do you think?”

I almost told them to close the case. I had explained to the cops that I’d been the subject of intense scrutiny from the media before, a place I distinctly did not want to go again. A closed case would be one of the best ways to keep the media’s nose out of our business.

But then a lick of fear swept over me again. Of what? It had something to do with a feeling that this—whatever this was—was not done yet. I looked at Theo. Strange that this had happened tonight, when he moved in.

“Leave the case open, please,” I said to the officer. “And yes. Please check in on us.”

8

Twin Anchors was known for its ribs, but neither person who sat at the middle of the bar was hungry. The restaurant was also known for its love of Frank Sinatra and the fact that Old Blue Eyes had been in that very joint on more than one occasion.

A guy who called himself Freddie (he’d all but forgotten his real name) ordered a glass of Scotch.

His partner asked the bartender if he knew how to make something called a Michelada.

The bartender not only looked stumped, but he also said, “Huh,” then again, “huh.” He looked behind him, as if for backup. “I just took bartending school. I don’t remember that.”

“Don’t worry about it.” A Tecate beer was ordered instead.

They took a few sips, companionably sitting next to each other, not needing to speak right away.

The bartender returned. Apparently, someone at bartending school must have told him that chatting with the customers, whether they wanted to or not, would bring hundreds in tips. The guy pointed at some photos and articles pasted and shellacked behind the bar. “Those are all about Sinatra,” he said. “And the guy from Chicago who wrote a book about him.”

“So fucking what?” Freddie said, taking a sip of his Scotch. The guy had no idea that in Freddie’s past, he had waited in alleys and cut people for reasons much less serious than bugging the fuck out of him.

“It’s true,” his partner said, who was apparently smart enough to sense his menace. “The Chairman of the Board used to hang out here. On occasion. We all know that. Thanks.”

Freddie made a single motion with his hand, shooing away the bartender.

The bartender gulped and had the sense to turn around and start rearranging a wine refrigerator.

A moment passed. “So you think they’re freaked out?”

“Hope so,” Freddie said.

“Do you think they’ll get it?”

“Yeah, I think they’ll get it. Left the downstairs entry system enabled. Let ‘em know it’s not so hard to find out their little code.” That was true, for him; he’d worked for the National Fire Alarm & Burglar Association and the Electronic Security Association just to learn how to master every kind of alarm. “Then messed up the panel by her door. Tells ‘em we can get in, easy. They’ll get that. They’re smart. She’s a lawyer, and he handles his own company.”

“The company that can’t get itself together.”

“Yeah. But even with all those moving boxes, they’re gonna know someone was in that house. And even though we didn’t find anything pointing our way, it’s a little message that says ‘be careful.’ Really fucking careful.” Freddie had taken another sip of his Scotch, when the dipshit bartender returned, nodding at the pictures of Sinatra.

“Man, I wanna hang out with Sinatra,” the bartender said. “Or at least just have him at the bar here.”

“He’s dead,” Freddie said. And you will be, too.

“Hey, I’m just saying, somebody like him.”

Freddie pushed his glass away. “There is no one like the Chairman of the Board.”

“I know, but I’m saying someone—”

“There is no one. That’s the point.” He looked at his partner. “I gotta get the fuck out of here before I hurt him.” There was no way he was going back to Stateville prison. He was hanging on, hoping to keep his natural violent flair pushed down inside. He was hanging on. Just barely.

9

“Hello?”

“I heard you had a break-in.” The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“Who is this?” I asked.

A laugh. “I guess I should be glad you’re over it. You’re clearly not traumatized by me any longer.”

Recognition grew in my head as the man spoke—the slightly snarly way of talking, the sense that a cruel laugh was right behind his words ready to be shot in your direction.

“Vaughn,” I said.

Across the bedroom, I saw Theo’s eyebrows shoot to his forehead. “Whoa,” he said.

He’d been pulling on a pair of jeans—we were heading out to meet his mother for Sunday brunch. After the break-in and then Saturday—one gray November day sliding into the next, barely a change in light—I’d jumped at the opportunity to get us out of the house, to maybe get back to that “us” that we’d apparently left sitting at the bar at Topo Gigio, along with our good humor and ease.

“You remember me,” Vaughn said in a jokey tone.

I said nothing. Detective Damon Vaughn had made my life a living hell twice in the past year—first when Sam disappeared, and second, when Vaughn suspected me of killing my friend Jane. The fact that I’d beaten up Vaughn on cross-examination in a trial a few months ago had helped. But I wasn’t close to getting over it.

“So I heard you had a break-in,” he said again.

“You heard?“

“Yeah, I heard from someone around here.” His words sounded false.

“‘Around here,’” I said. “What does that mean? You’re acting like you work at a small-town police station, where the guys all sit with their feet on the desks and talk about their ‘beat,’” I scoffed. “I think I know better than that.”

“Oh, that’s right, ‘cuz you’re a criminal lawyer now,” he said with scorn.

“That’s right,” I said, sharp on the heels of his words. “I am a criminal lawyer now. And next time I get you on the stand, I’m going to take you down. Again.” I stopped myself short of saying, How ya like me NOW?

For a moment I let myself bask in the glory of that moment when I had Vaughn on the witness stand. I had executed what felt like one of the best crosses of my career.

Vaughn interrupted my little reverie. “Jesus Christ, you’re a ballbuster! I take back that apology I gave you after court that day.”

“Too bad,” I said quickly. Then in a nicer, calmer tone, “I already accepted it.”

A pause. Then two or three.

“So,” I said, pleasant tone still intact, “you were calling because …?”

“Look, cops know what cases other cops worked. And so when you hear something about something—or someone—in one of those cases that someone else has—”

“Then you tell your buddy, the other cop,” I said, answering for him. “Yeah, I get that.”

“Good. I just wanted to remind you what I told you after court that day.” His voice was nearing pleasant now, too, but I didn’t fill in the blanks this time.

“If you needed a favor or anything, I’m your guy,” Vaughn said simply.

Something about his statement—the matter-of-factness, the authoritative assurance—made me feel okay suddenly. Safe. For a moment, the whirl of anxieties in my head stopped.

All morning those anxieties had been like shrieking bats flying around under a bridge, yelling one thing after another in my head. Your house has been broken into. Again! But what’s worse is that you have a pretty strong feeling this break-in has to do with Theo. Because he’s the one who just moved in.

But maybe it’s as simple as that? Maybe someone got in the condo building during the move and somehow hid.

But that doesn’t make sense because there is nowhere to hide on the two flights of stairs.

And hey, so what if it has to do with Theo?

It was always at this point in the shrieking conversation (in voices that all sounded like mine) that a really angry version of Izzy McNeil entered the scene. “So what?” you ask? You’re in love with him. Do you get that?

And quietly, I would answer internally. I get that.

And then the voices would round around. Your house has been broken into. Again!

But although his words had momentarily halted the cacophony in my mind, I didn’t entirely trust Vaughn. Not yet. Not after what he’d put me through, and not after what I’d learned about Chicago cops over the past few months—most of them are good, most have pure motives, but they don’t see evil the same way as everyone else. And when they believe something, they make things happen—practically appear out of nowhere—just to bolster their beliefs.

The truth was, I wasn’t too sure what Vaughn really believed. To say he was hard to read was an understatement.

“I’m not looking for a favor,” I said.

“Hey, I feel bad about how everything went down. I told you that. And I want to do what I can to make that up to you.”

I could almost hear Maggie yelling, Yes! Great! We can always use a cop on our side. Even if a police officer wasn’t involved with the particular case you were working, they could be excellent sources of information. And maybe it was time to truly forgive Vaughn. Clearly, my anger wasn’t hurting him very much, only me, making me cranky when I thought of it, making me see red.

“Yeah, well …” I said. “You’re right. I had a break-in.” I told him that no belongings had been disturbed. Or the front-door panel. Just the keypad on my own door.

He asked me about the front-door system, then added, “Who has the code for your own door?”

“Just a few family members. My friends Maggie and Q. And two cleaning ladies. And …” I trailed off, realizing more people than I’d thought had that code. “But it wasn’t used. The panel was ripped off.”

“You have an alarm?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t turned on that night. We were just running out for something to eat.”

“Sounds like a warning,” Vaughn said.

That made me feel cold again. “What do you mean?”

“Someone was either looking for something and didn’t find it, or they wanted to fuck up your head, let you know they could get to you. Or both.”

Theo had put on his clothes and left the bedroom. I felt very alone, Vaughn’s casually spoken words reverberating in my head.

“Who?” I said, taking a seat on the bed. “Who would do that?”

“You piss anyone off lately?”

“No! I never piss people off.”

He laughed.

“Shut it,” I said, using Mayburn’s favorite expression. “I seemed to have pissed you off last year. But that’s a rare thing. People usually like me.” I suppose that wasn’t entirely true. There were people at my old law firm who weren’t big fans of mine, but that was because I pulled in more work than any other associate. And there was that Italian mobster whose plans I might have thwarted. Not to mention the underwear drug dealers I sent away. Okay. Maybe there were a few people I’d pissed off.

“What about your boyfriend, Theodore?” Vaughn asked.

Vaughn had met Theo after Jane died, but he had no reason to know we were still together.

“How did you know he was my boyfriend?” I asked.

“The responding officers told me.”

“Oh. Well, he doesn’t piss anyone off,” I said. I thought of his silences lately, his refusal to talk about the mortgage and what was going on. “I don’t think so.”

“Could be random. That’s the case a lot of times. Someone who noticed the front door unlocked and was looking to see if you had anything good in there.”

I had the feeling Vaughn was trying to make me feel better, but now I was feeling worse, unsafe. I sighed. “Thanks for calling.”

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll watch the case.”

I didn’t know what that meant. Didn’t ask, either. I just said thanks again and hung up.

10

Toward the end of brunch with Theo’s mom, his phone rang. He pulled it out of his jeans’ pocket, looked at the display. “It’s Eric,” he said. “Sorry, guys, I have to take this.”

“Do what you have to do,” Anna Jameson said, giving her son a good-natured wave of her hand. “We’ll be more than fine.”

It was the first time I’d met Theo’s mom. She was beautiful—tall and lean, with a willowy, lightly muscled, yoga-type body. Her hair was brown but sun-kissed, natural-looking. Her skin was luminous, her big eyes alive.

When we’d first sat down with Anna at the Walnut Room, Theo had introduced me, then reached out a tattooed arm and squeezed my shoulder. Now, as he stood to take the call, he put his hand lightly on the back of my head, holding it there for a moment. That hand had the tenderness of a kiss.

His mom saw it. Anna smiled at me as he walked away. “Thank you for letting him stay with you until he gets in his own place.”

“Sure.” I searched her face for a sign of whether Theo had told her about the break-in or getting turned down for a mortgage. She looked unperturbed, which I took to mean he hadn’t.

“I’ve never seen Theo like this,” Anna continued.

“Like what?”

She shrugged. “Like he is with you.”

This was said without irritation or territorialism. I knew that my friend Grady’s mom always seemed to take it personally when Grady dated someone, as if it were a slight to her. But Anna didn’t appear to be that type of person.

She glanced around the Walnut Room. “I can’t believe it’s the holidays.”

“But it’s not yet. It’s not even Thanksgiving. I’ve always thought they get the decorations up too early.” The place was bedecked in holiday regalia—ruby ribbons and forest-green bows, glittering red lights and a massive Christmas tree in the center of the room that, this year at least, had a woodsy theme with a plethora of faux birds and forest animals covering its branches.

“I like when Christmas lights are up way before Christmas,” Anna said. “It’s one of the things that make me happiest.” A smile spread across her face. “Theo is one of those things, too.”

“He said you two are close.”

She gave a short laugh. “Yes. Well, his father and I got pregnant when we were college sophomores. Brad never wanted a baby. I guess I didn’t, either, not in theory. But once Theo was here, it was clear he was always supposed to be here. He was just the light that always shone. Brad and I stayed together until Theo was out of school. Then Brad wanted to move on, to be somebody different. I couldn’t totally blame him.”

“That’s big of you.”

She gave a shrug. “You can only do what you can do. My parents considered themselves hippies, and they always used to say that. You know, ‘live and let live.’ And I have to say, that kind of attitude applies to nearly every situation. I had breast cancer a few years ago, and that really helped me through that.” She sighed. “So many challenges.”

“Wow. That must have been tough. Were you and Brad still together then?”

“No. No. We’d just broken up, and we only saw each other like we do now—at events for Theo. We were together so long that we’re more like brother and sister.” She gave a rueful chuckle, shaking her head. “I ran into him the other day when I was with a girlfriend at Tavern on Rush. We sat down outside, and I looked over, and there was Brad with a woman who was Theo’s age, maybe younger.”

Was that a stab at the age difference Theo and I had?

But Anna just shrugged again. “Brad is like that. He’s a big boy in the business world, but he doesn’t want to grow up personally. It no longer affects me.”

“I haven’t met Brad yet,” I said. “We’ve been trying to meet up with him but it keeps getting rescheduled.”

A rueful smile. “By Brad, I’m sure, not Theo.”

“Sounds like it.”

She sighed. “Theo wants so badly to have a relationship with him. When he was eighteen or nineteen, he really turned to Brad and it was hard for me to watch him struggle when his father still wasn’t the fathering type.” She looked toward the restrooms. Theo was heading back our way. “I used to worry that Theo would emulate him, but I think it’s caused him to go the other way. He’s more grown-up.”

Theo reached our table. Another squeeze on my shoulder as he took his seat. He looked back and forth between us, as if trying to read the dynamics. I realized then that despite the call from Eric, he might have left to give Anna and me some time alone. “How are we doing?” he asked.

“Great,” I said.

“Great,” she echoed.

Theo looked down at his phone as if waiting for another call. Or maybe thinking of the one he just took. His forehead creased with what appeared to be deep concern. His mom was right. Theo was grown-up. And that grown-up person was worried about something. Was it his talk with Eric? Or was he not as happy with me as his mom thought? His silences and moodiness over the past few days seemed directly related to the mortgage situation and the break-in, but I couldn’t help worrying it was something else. Something having to do with us.

His phone dinged, the tone telling him he had a text. He read it, frowned. “I have to get to work.”

“On a Sunday? Anything wrong?” his mom asked. But she asked in the way people do when they’re sure the answer is no.

Theo cleared his throat. “Just some things I want to deal with.”

My phone chimed, too, and I looked down. Christopher McNeil, the display said. My dad. I noticed he’d called a few times. Since he didn’t text much, I was waiting for an open time to call him back and have a real chat with him. For now, I hit the ignore button.

We stood from the table. “Izzy,” his mom said, giving me a hug, “I’d love to meet up for coffee or tea sometime.”

“I’d love that, too.”

We smiled at each other. Although she was much more carefree and casual than my mom, they had a similar elegance.

We said goodbye to Anna outside the restaurant in the midst of a colorless, snowy day.

When she was gone, I turned to Theo. He wore a navy blue wool coat with a mandarin collar, a masculine design with a subtle flair.

“What’s going on with Eric?” I asked.

“He told me something that has me worried.”

“What’s that?”

“He said the company’s books are messed up.”

“Messed up how?”

“Look, Iz, I don’t know, okay?” His voice held more of a bite than I’d ever heard. He moved back as a bus lumbered down State Street. “I don’t know anything, all right?” he said, his voice loud, which I suppose was to compensate for the bus, but it jarred me a little.

I tried not to feel hurt. “All right.”

I started to turn away, but his voice, kinder now, stopped me.

“Wait,” he said. I turned back to him. He sighed, looked down as if gathering his thoughts. “What he knows is that we defaulted on a loan. A big commercial loan.”

“Whoa,” I said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“How did that happen?”

He shook his head. “Eric’s trying to analyze the situation. He keeps the books, right? So he should know. But I’m sure that’s why I didn’t get the mortgage. It was a loan we applied for when we first started the company, and we personally guaranteed it.”

“Oh, no, that’s not good.” Immediately, I regretted my words. “What can I do to help?” I asked quickly.

“Nothing.” He was shutting down. I could see it, even though I’d never witnessed such a thing before. I could see him distance himself from me. “I’ll figure it out by myself,” he said as if confirming my suspicion.

He kissed me and hailed a cab, its yellow sides spattered gray with slush. I watched it drive away, then I turned away and began to walk west down Washington. Mentally, I ran through the events of the past few days—from the mortgage denial, the break-in, now the troubles at HeadFirst. I thought the world of Theo. But I had serious doubts that he could figure it out alone. Maybe he would turn to his dad? Or his mom, with whom he clearly had a strong bond.

Later, I would think how it was the last time Theo’s mom saw him before everything started to truly crumble.

11

His cell phone vibrated again. Then again.

“Hold on a sec.” José Ramon shifted the woman who sat astride him and grabbed his cell phone. The woman, Lucia, was dressed. But just barely. And not for much longer. He would turn off the damn phone.

But then his eyes grazed the text messages appearing on his screen. Saw those messages were about Theodore Jameson. He scanned them. The last one read, He just left lunch.

“Give me a minute, baby.”

A woman like Lucia didn’t pout. It was beneath her. She simply stood, her lavender panties, sown through with tiny black ribbons, stretching across her hipbones as she did so. With a few elegant movements, she’d adjusted her breasts back inside the matching bra, and she strode quietly, confidently, from the room.

He almost moaned, watching the way the muscles in her ass moved, the purple thong tucked between her tanned cheeks.

He made himself look back at his cell phone, and he typed, What restaurant?

Walnut Room. He’s heading to work.

Why do you think he’s going to work on a Sunday? Don’t assume anything. Even though he was only typing, not speaking, he knew his underling would hear the snarl in his tone. How many times had he told his people not to assume? Never assume.

I assume nothing, the next text read. I got close enough to hear them.

Them?

T and his GF and his mom.

He let out a grudging exhale, impressed at the level of skill. The kid was good. Had proven that time and again.

He kept his people—the ones outside the legit businesses, like the restaurant—working in solitude. That way no one could collude with another. A coup would be hard, if not impossible, to stage. But often, forcing people into a lone-wolf situation made them paranoid, especially the type of people he had on the hook.

Yet every so often, someone like this went above and beyond. Sometimes the ones he’d strong-armed recognized the uselessness of resistance, had the sense and intelligence to not only join him, but also to stand up and be a soldier in his army. Incrementally, they assumed more responsibility. Slowly, without pissing him off, they thought outside the box. And this kid was one of them.

The girlfriend is the lawyer? he wrote.

Yeah.

We need to find out more about her. His face began to curl in a snarl again, but then he got the next text.

Way ahead of you, it read.

He gave a short laugh. The only kind of laugh he knew. Good work, he typed into his phone. He didn’t say such things often.

He was a little surprised at the slight gap in time it took to get a reply. But then, Thank you. I appreciate it.

He put his phone back on the nightstand and thought for a moment. Yes, suddenly he could imagine allowing this one into the next level of his business, might be told why they were keeping an eye on Theo Jameson.

Lucia was back. In the doorway. Her dark hair, turned copper on top from the sun—she had just been on a friend’s yacht in the Caribbean, she’d said—fell over her shoulders in rivulets, covering her breasts, which were bare now.

She locked his eyes in with hers. Then she hooked one finger through one of the black ribbons that ran through her panties. Then the other hand on the ribbons on the other side. Slowly, rhythmically, she undulated her hips, letting ribbons untie, then smoothly unfurl themselves until the flap of purple silk covering her in the front fell away. Nothing remained except two scraps of silk around the tops of each thigh. Nothing in between. Except heaven for José.

She strolled toward him. Slow, slow, almost predatory. Although she was a scientist, had a PhD and gave speeches at conferences around the world, she said nothing now.

When she reached him, she straddled him, not letting his eyes go anywhere but hers, and then, without warning, like he liked it, she moved herself over him.

Oh! Some primal exclamation had escaped him as he felt the tightness, the wetness and the scraps of silk on either side.

As she slipped him farther inside herself, Theodore and his girlfriend slipped away from his mind, knowing he could let them go. But not for long.

12

I heard my name being called. “Izzy?” There was definitely a question mark in the way it was said, but not as if the person were unsure whether they’d seen me, but rather they sounded surprised I was there.

I turned around. “Sam?” There was decidedly a question mark at the end of that, as well. And a touch of panic.

What in the hell was Sam doing at the River North nightclub Underground? Granted, Underground, with its military hideout vibe and revolving door of visiting celebrities, was a hot club, one that had survived when others opened and closed in six months. But it was still a nightclub. And Sam, my former fiancé, was not a nightclub guy. At least as far as I knew.

Then again, I also hadn’t realized that Brad, Theo’s father, was a regular at the city’s late-night, bass-thumping, the-stalls-in-the-bathroom-go-all-the-way-to-the-floor kind of places.

Theo had called his dad earlier that evening from home and, about ten minutes later, he’d come out of the office. “Want to meet my dad? Turns out he can swing it tonight.”

The air in the condo had been tense since Theo returned from HeadFirst not wanting to talk. So even though it was a Sunday night, and I felt the pull of my bed, I immediately said yes. We took a cab to the club. The wooden door was marked only with a triangular sign out front. But when the door was opened, even a crack, we heard the hard pumps of bass.

“Swanky,” I said after we’d walked through the place and stopped in a relatively quiet spot to look around.

“My dad has a thing for these kinds of clubs,” Theo said. “Ever since he and my mom got divorced. For a while, he said he had to be out at places like this for business, but …” Theo raised his shoulders in a distracted shrug, and his words died out as if he couldn’t be bothered to continue the sentence.

“What does he do?”

“He’s a venture capitalist. Sort of. He takes small companies and grows them.”

We got jostled by people packing the dance floor as the DJ began pounding on bongos. Theo looked around the club again. “Yep, this is my dad’s kind of place.” He peered. “There he is.” He pointed to a man in a taupe leather booth, tucked in a corner beneath a stone wall. Another guy—the friend of his father’s?—sat at the other end, while a few young women packed the rest of the booth, all boasting impressive cleavage. Theo’s dad was clearly telling some story, and the women leaned in, listening, then threw back their heads, laughing at the same time. In the center of the table was an ice bucket, highball glasses, bottles of whiskey and vodka, some mixers.

Theo didn’t move right away.

“You know what this place reminds me of?” I said to Theo. Or rather I shouted due to the rising volume of the music.

“What?” he said.

“When I met you. The club on Damen.”

When Theo and I had been introduced by my friend Jane, she’d practically shoved us together on a leather booth.

“That’s where it all started,” I reminded him, nudging my hip into his thigh. It was a small gesture that no one else would see but had become one of our habits, a thing we did, just the two of us, a signal that indicated so many things but mainly lust and love (or something like it) in equal servings.

Theo grinned, but it wasn’t one of those looks he usually gave me—one I knew was created just for me, that made me feel as if we were at the center of the universe. (A universe that was kind. And fair. And safe.)

No, it wasn’t that type of look. But unfortunately, I couldn’t read the expression. His mouth, normally so lush, was stretched straight across to show teeth. His eyes were lifeless. Where did you go, Theo?

“Is your dad going to remind me of you?” I asked to pull him back to the present.

“Nah.” He pointed at his dad, who wore a black blazer, clearly expensive, and a large watch. He pointed at the women. “And they are not like you.”

“Who are they?”

“Who knows? They change all the time.” He laughed then. “My dad will never change.”

“Sometimes that’s not a bad thing.” I thought about the changes I’d gone through—the ones my family had gone through—over the past year. Sometimes it felt as if we were hurtling through life at light speed. And many times that was hard to get used to.

We made our way to the booth. When we reached it, the syrupy smiles of the women dropped. All eyes shot to Theo. They all sucked him in with their gazes, shot each other glances that said, Who is THIS? I didn’t blame them one bit.

“Theo!” His father stood and grasped Theo’s hand, throwing his arm around him and thumping him on the back. When we spied him across the bar, Brad Jameson had looked like a player with all the women around him, but now, with Theo, he only looked like a happy, proud parent.

“Hey, Brad.” Theo had told me he called his father by his first name. Always had. I thought it was strange, but I also had one of the strangest father-child relationships around, so I wasn’t one to talk. Theo grasped my elbow gently and pulled me toward him. “This is Izzy.”

“Izzy.” Brad Jameson shook my hand. “I’ve heard wonderful things about you.” He gave me a genuine smile. As with Theo’s mom, I’d wondered if he might have some misgivings about the eight-year age difference between Theo and me, but based on the women at the table, he clearly was a supporter of dating the youth.

We spent an hour talking to Brad and his friend Kent and sometimes talking to the women—LaBree, Jenni (“with an i”) and Erin. (Or Karen? It was some variation on that theme.) LaBree was a cool girl—gorgeous and smart. The other two, though, weren’t much interested in conversation unless one of the men was giving them attention.

When I had the chance, I studied Brad. I couldn’t quite figure him out. I could see that Brad had given Theo his straight, strong jawline, the piercing eyes, the full lips. But those physical traits on Brad couldn’t help him in the crowd of injection-perfected twentysomethings. To me, he appeared like an older, somewhat shrunken version of Theo.

But he was pleasant enough and appeared to be a smart guy. Every so often, when LaBree went to the restroom, he and I had the chance to talk, just the two of us. The topics flowed from the Chicago political climate to a trip he’d taken years ago to hike in Machu Picchu, something he wanted to do again.

At one point in our conversation, I’d asked him the question at the top of my mind. “Theo told you he was turned down …”

Before I could even finish, or decide whether I should finish, he answered, “… For a mortgage?”

“Yeah. Why do you think that happened?”

Brad nodded right away. “It’s killing me. Theo has worked so hard. I don’t know what’s going on. HeadFirst just has to figure out their situation here and overseas. But hopefully, it’ll …”

LaBree returned then, and Theo, whose mood seemed to have lifted a little, began telling a story about a surf trip to Mexico. I watched Brad, and it was evident he adored his son, nodding enthusiastically, looking around as if to make sure everyone was noticing how wonderful Theo was. And since I thought Theo was wonderful, too (even with his absent nature the past few days), that made me like Brad Jameson a lot.

And then that voice coming from my right—“Izzy?”

My ex and I now blinked at each other, the thump-chucka-thump-chucka-thump of music reverberating around us.

In all the time since we’d broken up, we had never simply run into each other.

Sam’s blond hair had grown a bit long, darkened a little in the months since I’d seen him. His skin, too, was more fair than usual, but all this only made his green eyes more intense, like emeralds dropped in the snow.

Seeing Sam someplace random was something I’d feared for a while. What if we bumped into each other and he was with new/old girlfriend Alyssa? It would be so awkward, so … sad.

But thankfully my fears never materialized, and, in fact, I had stopped fearing it all together. And yet, here we were—Sam with his green, green eyes, and me in a booth with Theo, his father, his father’s friend and some very, very hot, young girls.

Sam looked at our little group, blinking. I glanced past him, fearing the sight of Alyssa, but only saw R.T., Sam’s musician friend, who wore a small smile that he was clearly trying to stop from spreading across his face at this amusing turn of events. I waved at R.T., and he waved back, then pointed toward the back, gesturing that he’d return in a minute.

I climbed over LaBree and Brad, careful not to flash anyone. For a moment, I regretted my dress and high-heeled boots. But when I saw Sam’s eyes drag up and down my body, revealing what I knew to be pure lust, I was grateful.

I took a step toward Sam and we embraced—a kind of brisk, pat-pat hug that was more like something you’d share with a cousin.

Theo stood from the booth, too, and I felt his presence next to me. I gestured between the two men. “Theo, this is Sam. Sam, Theo.” I almost giggled inappropriately, the moment was so weird.

Theo knew who Sam was and said, “Oh, hey, man. Great to meet you.”

He stepped forward and shook Sam’s hand, pumping it congenially, if a little forcefully.

Sam had heard about Theo this past summer when I was in Italy and Theo had come over to visit me. He knew I’d been dating someone, but I’d never used Theo’s name when we’d briefly discussed it. In fact, Sam had seemed uninterested, as if he preferred to not know the details. But now the details were right in front of him.

Sam’s eyes squinted for a moment, as if trying to figure out or remember who Theo was. Recognition broke across his face and he seemed to take in all of Theo then, all his gorgeousness. He shot me a look that I actually couldn’t read, then turned back to Theo. “Hi. Nice to meet you, too.”

“So what’re you doing here?” I asked.

“R.T. is the sound guy for some band that’s playing in the back room. Some party.” He said nothing further, asked nothing of me, and so we stared uncomfortably, my mind scrambling for conversation and finding none.

“What about you guys?” Sam said finally, the phrase you guys ringing like a self-conscious bell.

“We’re just hanging with my dad,” Theo said.

Brad disentangled from LaBree and slid out of the booth so Theo could introduce them. Sam reached out to shake hands when Erin/Karen barreled through from the dance floor with Kent in tow. She clamored into the booth, apparently not caring whether she flashed anyone her underwear (which matched her dress—what little there was of it). Kent dove in after her, grabbing her ass on his way. Karen/Erin giggled and reached for a bottle. Sam seemed to be waiting for an explanation of their presence as I tried to force my face into an expression less appalled and embarrassed.

“Brad Jameson,” Theo’s dad said, his voice loud in order to be heard over the music, offering Sam his hand.

Sam responded by shaking Brad’s hand, smiling gamely. “Nice to meet you. So you guys—”

But Sam was cut off by LaBree, who scooted between them, then reached up and planted a wet kiss on Brad’s neck, her hand sliding down his back. She whispered something into his ear and walked off toward the dance floor.

Brad stared appreciatively at LaBree’s body.

“Very nice to meet you,” he said to Sam earnestly. But then his gaze drifted. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said without looking at any of us, then headed off after LaBree.

Suddenly, I found myself alone between Sam and Theo again. I looked from one to the other. Strange, strange, strange. I liked both of them so much. They were two of my favorite people in the world. I felt like saying to Theo, Isn’t he great? Isn’t he cool? To Sam, I wanted to say, Okay, how hot is this guy? And isn’t he so sweet and smart?

I knew that wasn’t the way to go, however, and so, uncharacteristically, I once again found myself mute. A long awkward moment ticked by.

Theo was the one who finally spoke. He gestured at the table. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, I’m cool. Thanks.” Sam looked at me. “I should find R.T.”

“Right. Yeah.”

Theo looked between the two of us, giving me an expression I couldn’t read, then excused himself and left.

Sam and I just smiled at each other. “So how’s …” I stopped. I couldn’t say it. How’s Alyssa?

But Sam, apparently, could still read me. “I’m not sure.”

“You’re not …?” I glanced down at his left hand. No ring.

“Alyssa and I broke up. After we …” He pointed between himself and me.

After we almost got back together this past summer.

I felt bad at how happy I was that he wasn’t with Alyssa anymore—perfect, tiny, blonde Alyssa, his high school sweetheart, who seemed to love Sam even more than I had.

Sam glanced behind him. “I should see if R.T. needs any help.”

“Sure. I’ll come back there later and say hi.”

But when I did, there was no sign of Sam.

13

When Theo and I got home from the club, Theo turned on his Xbox to play Madden NFL Football. He played against people around the country and won a lot. Still, it was almost one in the morning.

“You’re playing now?“ I asked him.

“Yeah, I just need to blow off a little steam.” Theo scrolled through the Xbox menu, trying to find an opponent at his level.

I sat in my favorite yellow-and-white chair, yet it failed to comfort me as it often did. “Did you have fun with your dad?”

After Sam had left, I’d spent an hour trying to listen to LaBree and Brad, who were talking about the patent LaBree was working on and that Brad was helping her with—some kind of invention to hold bra straps in random places. The product actually sounded rather smart, but I couldn’t focus. Kept replaying over and over my run-in with Sam. Then Theo and his dad began having what looked like a serious discussion, and soon after that he had been ready to leave.

“Fun probably isn’t the word for it,” Theo said now.

“Right,” I said. Then, “What is the word for it?”

He didn’t reply, just clicked a button to enter a game.

I put my head against the back of the chair for a minute. Then I lifted it again. “Hey, have you ever given anyone the code for the door?” I asked him. “Talking to Vaughn yesterday made me think about it.”

“I haven’t given it to anyone.” Theo mashed a few buttons. “If you think about it, anyone from the street could watch and see us using the code, then use it to get in when we’re not around.”

“But why not steal something if you’re going to all that trouble?”

Theo stayed silent, his jawline set.

“What about people you’re with when you come in the front door?” I asked.

“Like who?”

“Well, didn’t you meet Eric here before that show at the Congress the other night?”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“Did you come here from work together?”

Theo nodded, tucked a lank of light brown hair behind his ear.

“So he could have seen you entering the code downstairs.”

“What about people who’ve been here with you?” Theo said leaning toward the TV.

“Spence was with me a few months ago. Other than that …” I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “My mom was with me once, too, but she already has the code.”

“What about Sam?” There was a little something bristly in Theo’s tone.

“What about him?”

“Does he have the code?”

“No, I’m sure I changed it since we broke up. But wait … There was that time that we hung out.” I shook my head. “But no, that wasn’t here.”

“What do you mean, you hung out?”

My stomach clenched, as if I had something to hide. And I guess I did. “Last summer. We met up. He’d gotten engaged …”

“And he said he’d get back together with you if you wanted.”

“Yeah.”

He focused on his game.

“What?” I said to his back. “What’s wrong?”

He kept playing for a moment or two, then paused the Xbox. He turned around from his seat on the ottoman, and now we faced each other. “There’s something between you guys,” he said.

“Oh, is there?” I started thinking about it. He was right. Even though we’d hugged like fishing buddies, I’d seen the way Sam looked at me. “I mean, there will always be something, right? We were sorta family, you know? Almost sorta married.” It sounded sorta brainless and deranged.

“When’s the last time you saw each other?” Theo asked. “Before tonight.”

“Hmm.” I thought to myself. “Maybe at the hotel? No, no, it was after that. In court.” I focused back in on Theo. “Yeah, in court during Valerie’s trial.”

“What hotel are you talking about?”

“Oh, you know. What’s it called? The one right off of Michigan Avenue? The Peninsula, that’s what it is!” I sounded way too enthusiastic, and I was talking faster than normal.

“So you guys went to the bar at the hotel, right?”

“Yes,” I said with assuredness. So far I hadn’t lied. I just hoped he didn’t ask any more questions.

“And then did you go upstairs?” The hope got shot out of the sky. “Like, did you get a room?”

Oh, this was not good. Not good. Not good. “Here’s the thing …” How to explain this?

Theo crossed his arms and looked at me with something approaching disappointment on his face.

“Here’s the thing …” I tried again. “We did get a room, but we didn’t use it, if you know what I mean. We didn’t sleep together.”

We had, in fact, made out in a major way, and there was some nudity, but no sex.

“You never told me that,” Theo said, the disappointment apparent.

“There was nothing to tell. We wanted to see if there was anything left between us to rekindle. There wasn’t. We weren’t right for each other.”

Silence.

“We aren’t,” I said, liking the present tense of that word better. “We aren’t right for each other.”

“Whatever.” Theo turned and picked up the game controller.

“Are you mad?”

Nothing.

“Jealous?” I was oddly flattered at the thought, but I didn’t want him to feel bad. I stepped behind him and began to rub his shoulders. He shrugged me off.

“Look,” Theo said without stopping his game, “we’re not married. You can do what you want…. And so can I.” He started mashing the buttons harder and harder until he growled in frustration and tossed the controller to the floor. “Damn it,” he blurted as Game Over flashed across the screen.

“I’m going to bed,” he mumbled with a gruffness I wasn’t ready for. Then he strode purposefully to the bedroom and slammed the door.

14

If I thought that once I joined Bristol & Associates my life would be one big, rollicking murder trial after another, I was wrong.

“Your Honor,” I said, “the defense requests supervision on this matter. As you know, Mr. Hemphill—” I gestured to the fourteen-year-old kid on my right “—does have one other obscene-conduct offense involving public urination. However—”

I heard a little snort. I glanced at Johnny Hemphill, Maggie’s cousin’s kid, who tried to conceal a laugh. He’d told me when we first met that he couldn’t help it. He found the term public urination funny. It hadn’t helped when Johnny’s father, sitting next to him, also guffawed.

Johnny shot me an apology shrug.

I tried to muster a glare, but these kinds of cases didn’t inspire me enough to do so.

Since we’d started working together, Maggie insisted that handling criminal defense matters that were small and mundane was good for me. She said I had to learn the ropes of Chicago’s criminal legal world, and the only way to do that was to start from the ground floor. So when her neighbor’s brother’s boss got a speeding ticket or Maggie’s grandfather’s dry cleaner was accused of stealing a pearl button from someone’s coat, Maggie assigned me as the go-to girl. Maggie said that criminal defense warriors like her had to take a lot of these little cases because your brilliant handling of them put you on people’s speed dial. Then the dry cleaner would call you from jail after a hit-and-run accident and the boss might give you a quick jingle when he was arrested for sexual harassment or when some other large-ticket, moneymaking, cunning-intelligence-required case emerged.

I understood the marketing aspect. And I also knew lawyers had to be available for their clients on matters both great and gratuitous. Even more, I needed busy-ness to distract me from thinking about Theo—Theo and HeadFirst, and more important, Theo and me.

Now, I scrounged up a stern look for Johnny Hemphill, then squared my shoulders back to the judge. Raising my right index finger, I made my impassioned plea for one more round of supervision for this kid who simply thought it was funny to pee behind the movie theater on Roosevelt Avenue.

Thankfully, I won. This is the last time, the judge had intoned, looking at me and not Mr. Hemphill.

I thanked him, did a geisha-esque bow and hustled out of the courtroom before he could change his mind, leaving Johnny with his guffawing father.

I took the elevator to the first floor of the courthouse at 26th and California Avenue and ran to the big bulletin board that hung on the wall. There, sheets of paper in rows were tacked, each listing a courtroom and the cases to be called that day. Next to each case number was a description—armed robbery, murder, assault, drug trafficking, etc.—the sight of which made me remember I was far, far away from the civil courthouse where I used to spend all my professional time.

I elbowed and jostled my way toward the front of the small crowd huddled there, everyone craning their necks. Maggie had assigned me four cases to handle that morning, but I’d forgotten to find out what courtrooms they were in. Frantically, I searched the multitude of papers. The 26th Street Shuffle, I’d heard other criminal lawyers call days like this.

As I ran toward the elevator, I paused for a brief second, as I always did, in the old vestibule of the courthouse. And maybe it was that pause that allowed me to feel the faint vibration from my shoulder bag. I glanced at my watch. I had more time than I thought—at least five minutes until I had to be in Judge Johnson’s courtroom. I pulled the phone from my bag.

My father. I hadn’t been able to call him back since he called yesterday while I was at brunch. I hadn’t seen my dad in almost a week, and I knew he had no one in this town. He’d been here only a few months. He’d been in our lives only a few months. And it had occurred to me that when I’d seen him at the diner last week, he had said something to me—You can tell me if you ever want help. If anything isn’t all right. I’d been wondering if he might have been referring to himself, subconsciously or not.

On the far side of the vestibule were marble stairs, each worn sufficiently in the middle from the hundreds who had climbed them in the hopes of justice.

I sat on the first one and was about to answer the phone when a security guard started toward me. “Miss,” he said, “you can’t …”

I knew what he was about to say. The stairs were closed now, part of the old glory of the building, the glory that had mostly given way to ruin.

I gave the guy a pleading smile.

He raised his hand and gave me the you’ve-got-one-minute gesture, then respectfully turned his back.

“Hi,” I said to my dad. “So sorry I haven’t called you back yet, I’ve been running from one thing to another.” And trying to figure out what’s going on with my boyfriend and worrying even more now that I confessed I’d been with Sam. And didn’t exactly tell him the whole story of that night, which had come very, very close to being sex-filled.

“Boo, I’ve got some bad news.”

“Bad news …” My stomach clenched.

“It’s about Theo.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t expected that. My father had met Theo only once, only briefly.

My dad paused. And it was a weighty silence.

“What?” I said.

“Something’s going on with him.”

True. “How do you know that?”

He sighed. “Izzy …” There was a slight layer of irritation in his voice.

“I know. I should stop asking how you know these things. But it’s just—” what was the word? “—off-putting.” My father had disappeared from our lives decades ago. But he had watched us during that time. (I suppose I would say “watched over us,” except that would make him sound angelic, which wasn’t exactly right.)

“It’s not good, Izzy,” my father said.

I’d gotten better over the past year at taking bad news. And things were easier, I learned, if such news was simply laid out flat.

True to form, my father gave it to me. “Theo is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

15

Bristol & Associates was on LaSalle Street near Monroe in an old high-rise, home to a host of criminal defense firms. Like 26th and Cal, you could tell the lobby was once impressive, but now the marble was yellowed and the lighting spotty.

On the tenth floor, Bristol & Associates wasn’t much better. Maggie and her grandfather made more than enough money to afford a sleek office overlooking the Chicago River, but like many criminal defense firms, they didn’t care about image. They cared about the work, the clients and the cash. Q had already started a campaign to get them to move. So far, Maggie and Martin had been impervious.

I walked in and blew by the receptionist, Leslie. Usually, I stopped and talked to her, or at least waved. She called out to me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, thanks,” I lied. I was still replaying the conversation with my father in my mind.

“He’s what?“ I had blurted after my dad said those words—Theo is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

I knew Theo had financial issues. Or his company did. But how did any of that rise to the level of a federal/criminal investigation? I tried to muster all I’d learned from Maggie over the past few months as I shifted from civil to criminal work, but there were too many layers of feeling and concern for me to sort through them for possible facts.

“We’d better meet,” my father had said.

“Does Theo know this?” As soon as I’d asked the question, I heard its odd nature. Why was I asking my father what my boyfriend might or might not know?

“Doesn’t look like it from what I can tell,” he said.

“Then I have to tell him. I should—”

“No,” my father said forcefully. “I didn’t get this information from … uh … mainstream sources.”

“Do you ever?”

“Izzy,” he said with a cautionary tone like you would with a young kid. Instead of pissing me off, it reminded me of being a kid. When he was still around. When he was still a regular dad.

“Let me tell you what I know,” he said. “Then you can decide how to handle it. I will leave it to you. Do you feel comfortable coming to my place? We’ll have privacy.”

The truth was I’d only been to my dad’s mostly empty studio apartment a few times, and it had mostly depressed me. “I’m in court for a bunch of things,” I told him. “Then I’ve got to get back to the office to drop off orders Maggie will be waiting for. I’ll come right after that?”

“Make it one o’clock,” he said. “I have a few more things to track down.”

The thought had made me woozy. There was more?

Now, as the receptionist hit a button under her desk that unlatched the door to the inner sanctum, I wondered what that more meant. And I feared it. Felt like old demons were coming back to grab me, choke me, make me doubt myself and who I loved.

I tried to push the thoughts away, just as I pushed through the door and began walking the hallway toward my office.

Q popped out of his office as if he’d been waiting for me. This was fairly typical. After I’d been let go from my old law firm, Baltimore & Brown, Q could have worked for another lawyer, but he’d met his wealthy boyfriend by then. For the past year, while I tried a variety of different gigs, Q had lazed and lounged, now leaving him energized and raring to go. Since he’d accepted the manager position—Maggie had been doing it herself before—he’d gotten the law firm an incredible amount of PR and marketing. So much so, that Martin had to tell him to lay off on the press conferences. Q hadn’t exactly listened.

So when I saw Q waiting for me, I wasn’t surprised that he was wide-eyed and kind of clasping his hands the way a coach might when he was about to talk to a player. One of the things he’d kept from the life he’d led when he was straight (or pretending to be) was a love of football. He would be the first openly gay football coach of an NFL team if someone let him.

Q wore navy pants and a tailored gray jacket that matched his gray eyes and set off his black skin nicely. The lights in the hallway glinted off his bald head.

“I know I’m supposed to tone it down,” he said when I reached him. Per our usual custom, he hadn’t bothered to say hello. “But check this out—NBC needs someone to talk about what it’s like to be a suspect in a case, and they want that person to also be a lawyer. I mean, you’re perfect for this, right?”

“Local NBC?”

“National, girlfriend. You would discuss how horrible it is to be wrongfully accused and explain that’s the reason Bristol & Associates work so hard for their clients. Maggie and Martin already gave it a green light. You know how Martin is about wrongful convictions.”

I nodded. “Is Maggie here?”

“Not yet.”

I wanted to tell Q what my father had said about Theo. I told Q and Maggie nearly everything. But after our discussion last night, after seeing Theo walk away, seeing the hurt on his face, I realized that I had a responsibility to him. I had to find out more and help him. And keep his confidences, what little I had of them, in the meantime.

“Maggie had a hearing in Markham,” Q said. “So, about NBC—will you do it?”

I tried to focus on his question. He was right that I’d be ideal for the interview. A year ago, Vaughn suspected me of killing my friend, Jane Augustine. And as a result, my face had been splashed across TVs and newspapers. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about that time. And I wasn’t sure I could talk about anything, given my distraction about Theo and the U.S. attorneys.

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