I thought about it. “I don’t think so. My turn. What are we doing? You keep showing up. I push you away. But you don’t stay gone.”

He wiped his lips with his napkin, took his time with it. “I noticed that. But there aren’t any windmills I won’t tilt at, either.”

I bit into my pickle. “And I’m the windmill in this scenario?”

He chuckled. What a nice sound it made. “You interest me. I think I interest you. I like the way you handle yourself. You’re smart, ballsy. You don’t give an inch. Even right now. I have no clue why you keep pushing me away, but that’s you, not me. We could talk about it, if you want?”

I shook my head. “That’s okay. I got it.”

“It takes a lot getting to know somebody,” he said. “It’s a leap. You have a lot going on.”

I went back to my sandwich, listening to him reason it out. “There’s something else, too, something I’m drawn to. I saw it the first time we met in your yard. You told me to take a hike, as I recall.”

I held up a finger. “I told your partner to take a hike.”

“Right. Okay . . . I saw that something again in the ER. I see a little of it now.”

I bristled, waited, but Weber let the silence hang there. “Is that something extreme irritation?”

He pushed his plate away, folded his napkin neatly on the table beside it. “How’s some hippie kid afford a PI?”

“I don’t care. Answer the question.”

“I’d rather wait until you decide you like me.”

I took a sip of water, peering at him over the glass. The smile came slowly. “Neither of us has that kind of time.”

Weber laughed full-out this time, the sound of it filling the entire diner. I checked again for Muna, and caught her at the counter, fluttering her eyes, her hands over her heart. She wasn’t getting a tip from me today.

“I was separated from my wife for two years before we finally divorced,” Weber said. “That’s just me letting you know I’m beyond the rebound stage.”

“Good to know. Still waiting.”

He scanned the diner, turned back to me; the smile was gone now. “I shot a kid, too. He did not survive. We did a search warrant on a crack house on the West Side.” He stopped talking for a moment, and I knew he was back in the crack house. “I guess it doesn’t matter much where. He was sixteen, same age as my kid now. Jarrod Wigham was his name. He’d be twenty-two next month.”