Laura Caldwell - Red, White & Dead

The good thing was that if Dez and Ransom knew the neighborhood where I lived, it would have been hard to search for us through the hundreds of people strolling the streets. To be safe, I got out of the car and bought a scarf at a tent to throw over my hair. Two minutes later, Mayburn had checked out my place, found nothing and said he would stand downstairs while I packed.

“And don’t call anyone,” he said as I began to climb the steps to my condo, thinking of Theo on those steps, missing him already.

“I should tell my mom I’m leaving.”

“You’ll call her from a payphone at the airport. Give me your phone.”

“Why?”

“I want to check it out.”

“I really should call my friend Maggie.”

“No.”

“I have to at least text…”

I was about to say Theo, but Mayburn cut me off. “No texting, no e-mailing, no calling. I don’t know yet how those guys found you or if they’ve been watching you.”

“You think they’ve tapped my phones?”

“Your house phone, maybe. Your cell, unlikely. Very unlikely. Now, give me your phone.”

I handed it to him and he flipped out the battery, poked and prodded. “It’s clean,” he said, handing it back to me. “But I still don’t want you on any phones or sending out any smoke signals. I just want to get you out of here. Now, go upstairs and pack.”

“Jesus, no wonder Lucy broke up with you. You’re demanding as hell.”

“Only when I’m worried about people I care about.”

I put my hand on my hip and looked down at him. His eyes were squinting as if he were thinking too hard. Worry lines cut across his forehead. “You care about me?” I said.

He groaned. “Please. Please go pack.”

“That’s only the second time I’ve heard you say please.”

Upstairs, I made sure my passport was up-to-date, then packed it along with outfits I’d been wearing lately in Chicago-a few dresses and skirts, a pair of jeans, a bathing suit, a couple of T-shirts. I threw in some slacks and three pairs of sandals of varying heights. I was about to zip up the bag, when I remembered the twisted ankle I’d gotten in Rome years ago from attempting to wear high heels on the very cobbled streets of Trastevere. (I’d heard that only Roman women could pull off such a feat, and I should have listened.) I opened the bag again, took out the pair of stiletto heels and replaced them with wedges.

As I pulled the bag to the front door, I felt a release of energy inside me-a kind of nervous force, unsure and yet thrilling. Because although Dez Romano had tracked me down, and although I was technically running from him, I was also running toward Elena, and I could ask her whether there was any chance my dad was alive.

When I got downstairs, I asked Mayburn, “When can I use my phone again?”

“Once you get overseas. Then it’ll be nearly impossible to tap it or trace any calls.” He stared at his own phone.

“Mayburn,” I said, as kindly as possible. “I know you’re hoping Lucy will reach out, but when someone tells you they need some space, they usually need space.”

Yet even as I said it, I thought of someone who had told me he needed space. Sam. It was Sam who made the call that we were done for now, because he wanted us to be firmly into our relationship, no in-betweens, no maybe we’re dating, maybe we’re not, we’ll figure it out, we’ll see how it goes kind of thing, while I had grown more fond of, or possibly more comfortable with, the maybes and the in-betweens.

But Sam was still the person I had checked in with every day for years; the person who, for years, had made all life decisions with me. And even though we weren’t together anymore, I wanted to tell him that I was leaving town. It was a courtesy he hadn’t given me last year when he’d disappeared, but what was done was done, and I didn’t believe in punishing.

I looked at my watch. It was Saturday, which usually meant Sam was with the Chicago Lions rugby team. Sam wasn’t one of the starters, but he was one of the guys who trained with the team or helped out when they traveled locally. The Chicago Lions schedule was still in my datebook, because I used to have to plan our social stuff around it. I glanced at the schedule. The team was on a road trip to San Francisco, and Sam didn’t usually attend cross-country games. Instead, he was probably at his apartment, strumming his guitar, maybe having a Blue Moon beer. Just the thought made me miss him.

I told Mayburn Sam’s address. “I need to stop by on the way to the airport.” When he opened his mouth to protest, I held up my hand. “Look, if I can’t make any calls, then I have to stop by. I’m not getting on a plane unless I talk to him first.”

Sam’s apartment was in Roscoe Village, sandwiched next to a bar called the Village Tap. He’d been there for years, to the chagrin of his mother, who, every time she visited, told him he should move out of his bachelor-esque pad and head downtown into a place more “grownup.” The plan had been that Sam would move in with me when we were married, but since that hadn’t happened, the apartment with the funky gray door was still his home.

“Hurry up,” Mayburn said, pulling up to the curb, putting on the hazards and focusing nervously in the rearview mirror. I jumped out.

“The Tap,” as everyone in the neighborhood called it, already had a hopping lunch crowd. You could hear happy outbursts of laughter from the beer garden in the back.

Sam had stopped carrying my keys a few months ago, a fact that had surprised and wounded me, but I’d never stopped carrying his. I guess I wasn’t ready to put away the idea of Izzy and Sam.

If he was home, I’d tell him I was going out of town, and if he wasn’t, I’d leave a note and call him when I landed. But at least I’d make the effort. He would know that I still missed us. I still thought about us. I still thought there was a chance for us.

I got out my keys, opened the street door and walked up the flight of stairs. I rapped lightly on the door, the way I used to, then let myself into the apartment. The living room was dark and looked the way I remembered it. His leather couch was slouchy and slightly dusty looking. The blue afghan with the Cubs logo, which Sam’s grandmother had knitted for him, was tossed over the side of it. On the coffee table were financial papers and magazines like Barron’s and the Fenton Report, and next to those were two empty Blue Moon beers. Sam had stayed home last night apparently, a fact that made me feel slightly sick with guilt, since I had spent the night, and the last few, with Theo.

Something glinted on the coffee table, something next to the beer bottles. I looked closer and saw they were two tiny diamond earrings, set in gold. I picked them up. For a moment I thought they were mine, but my diamond earrings were fake and set in silver. As I held them up to the sunlight filtering through the window, I could see that these were clearly the real thing.

Sam didn’t wear earrings.

A shuffle from one of the bedrooms. I froze, irrationally scared for a second. What was I scared of? I looked down at the earrings. I thought I knew.

The door to Sam’s bedroom opened, and there he stood. He was wearing boxer shorts, only that, over his short powerhouse of a body. He wiped sleep from his eyes, despite the fact that it was already noon.

“Iz?” He pushed up at his cropped blond hair, making it sexily jagged with angles. He blinked his eyes, which were a sparkly olive color, so much so that I’d always thought of them as martini-olive eyes. But he was staring curiously at me now, and his eyes didn’t seem to be sparkling so much as squinting. “What are you doing here?”

He pulled the bedroom door closed behind him as he asked the question. And it was that movement, more than the earrings, that told me everything.