Criminal Minds Read Free

sky wasn’t. ‘‘She really digs Ozomatli.’’
    ‘‘ Your mom is into multiculti hip-hop rock?’’
    Benny nodded. ‘‘She’s not a hundred years old, you know.’’
    Part of the reason she loved Benny was she never knew for sure when he was serious and when he was just kidding her. Like now, for instance.
    ‘‘Which song’s her fave, then?’’ she challenged.
    ‘‘This one,’’ he said, skipping to song number eight on the live album—‘‘Love and Hope.’’
    She listened carefully. The chorus was about how love and hope never die and, no matter what, your heart and soul will survive—a positive message sung over an almost traditional Mexican song with horns and hip-hop drop-ins.
    Addie liked it immediately and wondered if she really was listening to one of Mrs. Mendoza’s CDs.
    Benny gave her a sideways look. ‘‘You’d believe anything I told you, wouldn’t you?’’
    She realized he had been pulling her leg the entire time. She smacked him in the shoulder. ‘‘You!’’
    ‘‘Ay, querida , you’re way too gullible.’’
    Mildly annoyed he’d fooled her yet again, she turned the tables. ‘‘Does that mean I should never believe anything you tell me?"
    "Like what?"
    ‘‘Like if you said you’d be careful not to get me pregnant, if we ever . . . you know.’’
    ‘‘ Querida , I don’t joke about serious things.’’
    ‘‘Oh? Then tell me something I can believe.’’
    Benny, casual as could be, said, ‘‘You can believe I love you.’’
    Addie sat there for the longest moment, not knowing what to say. She adored hearing him finally say those words, but even the throwaway way he’d spoken them seemed to have sucked all the air out of the car.
    When the Dixie Highway veered at One-hundred-eighty-third Street, Benny turned left. They stayed off the expressways—one of the rules Benny’s mom had laid down for him being able to use the car.
    Finally finding her voice, Addie said, ‘‘You love me? Really love me?’’
    Benny didn’t hesitate. ‘‘Sure I do.’’
    ‘‘You better not be fooling.’’
    ‘‘No way, querida ,’’ he said, his voice softer now. ‘‘I told you before I don’t joke about serious things. I love you.’’
    Once Benny graduated in June, he would almost certainly be drafted by a major league team, meaning he would spend the rest of the summer playing minor league ball. Addie wasn’t sure how or where she fit into that plan, but she knew two things for certain: they were going to prom together, and she was in love with Benny Mendoza.
    ‘‘I love you, too,’’ she said.
    He grinned at her and she smiled back.
    Leaning over, Benny gave her a quick kiss.
    ‘‘Drive,’’ she said, pushing him away. She wanted to pull him to her, but waiting until they weren’t driving in a rainstorm with cars all around them might be a safer plan.
    He took the right that jogged back to the Dixie Highway and once again headed south. Addie had learned a long time ago that few things ran straight in the Chicago area. Streets veering off in odd directions all over the place was an accepted part of living in the city. She still remembered, as a child, commenting about nothing being straight in the city, and her father replying, ‘‘You think the streets are something? Wait until you’re old enough to understand politics.’’
    The answer had stuck with her because it made no sense when she was six, but now, as her government class studied how things in the city worked, Addie realized what her father had meant. The streets weren’t the only things in the city that were crooked.
    They wove southeast until Benny took the short right onto Ashland that carried them south to Joe Orr Road, then right again and back west to Travers Avenue, and a left south until the right onto her street, Hutchinson Avenue.
    Technically, Addie lived on Two-hundred-seventh Street, but since she lived on the corner, Benny liked to park next to her house on the Hutchinson