LITMIR.BIZ

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She bit down on the metal ring of her key fob, holding it in her teeth to leave two hands free for typing. She wouldn’t forget about work as long as she had her car keys in her teeth.

      Another blue line appeared on-screen. They say most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

      Chloe raised one eyebrow. They slipped in famous quotes now and then, just to see if the other person would identify the quote, their own little nerdy game. This one was no challenge. How very Thoreau of you. (Too easy.)

      He replied, You, however, are not like most men. (I knew it was easy.)

      For starters, I’m a woman. Her words showed up in hot pink as she typed—the app’s choice for female users, not hers.

      He sent her a laughing-face emoji. I was thinking more along the lines that you don’t seem to lead a quiet life. You also never sound desperate. I don’t think you’d be quiet about it if you were.

      She was typing while holding car keys in her teeth. Quietly desperate? He didn’t know the half of it.

      Were you able to procure the tots? Tell me you did it noisily.

      Shamelessly. I bought a big bag of frozen tots at the grocery store a couple of hours ago. They didn’t survive long.

      You killed them already? All of them?

      All of them. A one-pound bag.

      Blink, blink.

      For a moment, just one tiny, insecure moment, she worried again that she’d turned him off. Ballerina Baby didn’t sound like the kind of woman who would eat a whole bag of tater tots at one sitting, did she? The next second, impatient with all these self-doubts, she sucked in a faintly metallic breath around her key ring and shoved aside all the insecurity. This was her friend—yes, her friend—and sometimes a pause was just a pause.

      I’ve shocked you into silence with my brutal killing of a bag of tots, haven’t I?

      Not at all. I’m deciding how best to advise you so that you won’t be tried for murder. I don’t think they’d let you write to me from jail. I’d miss you.

      Chloe’s fingers fell silent. He’d miss her, and he wasn’t afraid to say it. He was so different from all the other men she knew. So much better. Would he find it weird if she suddenly switched gears and wrote that?

      Instead, she wrote: If I hadn’t killed them all, they would have sat in my freezer, taunting me, testing my willpower. No, they needed to die. ’twere best to be done quickly.

      Very Lady Macbeth of you. (Too easy.)

      Yes, well, unlike Lady McB, I ate all the evidence. I guess I shouldn’t feel too superior. In order to eat her evidence, she would have had to eat the king’s guards. Rather filling, I’d imagine.

      He had a quick comeback. If Macbeth had been about cannibalism, English class would have been much more interesting.

      Ha. She smiled around the car keys in her mouth. At any rate, ’tis done. Half with mustard, half with ketchup, all with salt.

      Then you’re safe. We can keep talking. How was the rest of your day?

      If only the last guy she’d seriously dated had been so open about saying he liked her. If only any guy she’d ever dated had been like Different Drummer.

      But the car keys in her teeth did their job. They were getting heavy; she had to go.

      I wish I could stay and chat, but I gotta run. And then, just in case he thought she was an unhealthy glutton, she added, Time to go burn off a whole bagful of tater calories. Talk to you tomorrow.

      There. That didn’t sound desperate or obsessed or...in love. She couldn’t fall in love with a man she’d never met.

      Looking forward to it, Baby.

      But if they broke their unwritten rule and arranged to meet in real life...

      The alarm on her wristwatch sounded again.

      If they met in real life, he’d find out she was no ballerina—not that she’d ever said she was, but she’d never made it clear she wasn’t. She certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who was any guy’s baby. Most guys were a little intimidated by her, something it had taken her a few years to realize.

      But with him? She could show so many more sides of herself. The soft side, the insecure side, the side that worried about making friends, and yes, the side that adored the ballet. A lot of pop psychology criticized the digital age for enabling everyone to pretend to be someone they were not while they were online, but Chloe felt like this situation was the opposite. The anonymity let her be her whole self with Drummer, not only her work self. She’d be crazy to mess with a good thing. She’d follow the rules, and not try to figure out who he really was.

      She picked up the last item she always wore for work, her patrol cap. The way she slid the camouflage cap over her hair, the way she pulled the brim down just so, were second nature to her. The cap was well broken-in; she’d been wearing this exact one throughout her four years as a cadet at West Point, the United States Military Academy.

      Although she was so familiar with her uniform that she could dress in the dark in a matter of seconds when required, Chloe checked the mirror to be sure her uniform would pass inspection, as she’d been trained to do. The American flag on her shoulder and the name Michaels embroidered over her pocket were the same as they’d been since she’d first raised her right hand as a new cadet at the military academy and sworn to defend the Constitution.

      The embroidered gold bar on the front of her hat was new. She’d graduated in May, so now she owed the US Army five years of service in return for her bachelor’s degree. She was going to serve those years in her first choice of branch, the Military Police Corps. She was a second lieutenant now, the lowest rank of commissioned officers, but she was a commissioned officer with all the responsibility and authority that entailed. After four years of West Point in New York, three weeks of Airborne School in Georgia and four months of military police training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, she was ready to lead her first platoon of MP soldiers here in Texas. So ready.

      Tonight, she’d be riding along in a patrol car with the officer on duty, the first of a few mandatory nights familiarizing herself with the post she’d call home for the next three or four years. Once she knew her way around the streets of Fort Hood, she’d take shifts as the officer on duty herself, the highest-ranking MP during the midnight hours, the one who had to make the final decisions—and the one who had to accept the blame if anything went wrong.

      First impressions were important. After West Point, Air Assault School, Airborne School and Military Police Basic Officer Leadership Course, Chloe knew exactly what was expected of her. She looked at the officer in the mirror and wiped the smile from her face. She could be Ballerina Baby tomorrow, cozying up to her Different Drummer and being as soft and girly as she liked.

      In private.

      Tonight, it was time for Second Lieutenant Chloe Michaels to go be a badass.

      * * *

      First Lieutenant Thane Carter was done being a badass—at least for the next twelve hours.

      He was almost home. His apartment building was visible through his windshield. He kept moving on autopilot, parking his Mustang, getting out, grabbing his long-empty coffee mug and locking the car. He put on his patrol cap, an automatic habit whenever he was outdoors in uniform, pulling the brim down just so, and headed for his building, a three-story, plain beige building, identical to the five other buildings clustered around the apartment complex’s outdoor swimming pool.

      His primary objective for the next twelve hours was to get sleep, and a lot of it, ASAP—as soon as possible. Perhaps he’d wake up after a few hours and have a pizza delivered to his door later tonight, but then he’d go right back to sleep until dawn.

      At dawn, he’d get up, put on a fresh uniform and return to duty at Fort Hood, where he was both the senior platoon leader and the acting executive officer

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