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By Root 696 0

neighborhood. You know what they say about Chicago . . . that it’s a big city made up of small-town neighborhoods. My Streeterville neighborhood has its own feel and history. It got its name from Captain George Streeter. He’s actually got a pretty neat story.” Faith was babbling, and she didn’t care. “In 1886 his boat ran aground on a sandbar in Lake Michigan just offshore. He and his wife turned the boat into a houseboat and just lived there. He sold portions of the sandbar to contractors looking to dump rubble left over from the Great Chicago Fire. Eventually the landfill took shape, and since the old maps of Chicago showed the city limits ending at the old shoreline, Streeter declared the area the District of Lake Michigan and made himself governor. Then he sold small plots of the filled-in land, and a shantytown developed there. The ritzy inhabitants with mansions on the nearby Gold Coast were not happy campers, and they tried to get rid of him. But he hung on until his death in 1921. The city then used a loophole in the law to take the property from his third wife. It turns out Streeter hadn’t divorced his first wife, so the marriage to his third wasn’t legal. The city moved in and took over the land. But the Streeterville name remained.” Realizing she sounded like a history groupie, Faith paused. She had to stop thinking like a librarian and more like an investigator.

“So you live on a landfill,” Caine said.

She laughed. “That’s one way of looking at it. What about your neighborhood? What’s it like?”

He remained silent.

“You haven’t said where you live,” she pointed out.

“And I don’t intend to.”

“Why not?”

“I like my privacy.”

“I could find out if I really wanted to, which I don’t.”

He responded by peeling through an orange light at the intersection and pulling into a White Castle fast-food drive-through.

“What are you doing?” Faith demanded.

“Getting food. I’m hungry.”

He ordered a sack of sliders, the nickname for the four-bite, grilled-onion-soaked hamburgers that were an acquired taste. An addictive acquired taste that Faith happened to have. He opened the bag and handed her one.

He’d ordered two large Cokes without consulting her.

When he tossed a straw in her lap, she had to speak. “What is your problem tonight?”

“No problem.” He reached for another slider as he exited the parking lot and turned onto the main street.

“Are you upset that I pointed out you misspelled gnat?”

His “No” was very curt.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“Yes, you did.”

Maybe she had, but only to pay him back for grinning at her the way he had after his finger foreplay had driven her over the erotic edge. That knowing I-can-strum-you-like-a-guitar grin had infuriated her. Still did. So why was she sitting in his Mustang gobbling his sliders?

What was wrong with her?

A complicated question that was growing increasingly so by the second.

She turned her attention to the case. “Why do you think Weldon got cold feet tonight? Do you think he saw us there?”

“Possibly.”

“That’s twice that we’ve gone to a viable surveillance location only to have Weldon not show up. First at the theater and then at the Geek Meet. Maybe we’ve spooked him. Maybe we should rethink this approach and try another way of reaching him. What do you think?”

He just grunted.

“That’s real helpful.” Her voice vibrated with anger. “What is your problem tonight? You’re acting like part of you wants to stay with me and the other part wants to toss me out of your car.”

“How did you know?”

“Because I feel the same way,” she muttered while jostling the ice in her cup to cover her words.

“What did you say?”

“Because I feel the same way!” she yelled. “Are you happy now?”

“Not really.”

“Me neither.” She grabbed another slider out of the bag and sank her teeth into it.

“I never would have pegged you as a slider girl,” he noted.

“Which just goes to show how little you know about me.”

Caine knew enough. He knew she got through his defenses in a way no other woman ever had before. And that freaked him out.

So Caine remained quiet the remainder of the