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North opened his mouth to answer, but his phone buzzed. He checked it and saw a series of missed messages. The most recent one was from Tean:Did you just drive by Bamford Place? Jem told me to call you asshats, but I didn’t want to be rude.
“We did,” Shaw whispered with an unnecessary amount of excitement. “We did just drive by Bamford Place! That’s the street Gid turned on.”
North texted back:Yes. Why?
His phone buzzed with an incoming call from Tean. He answered on speaker.
“I saw that text message, and I know he didn’t call you asshats,” Jem said. “Also, since your method of private detecting involves driving a car that’s literally noticeable from miles away, I was wondering if you’d ever considered adding one of those light-up signs on top. You know, like the Pizza Hut ones. It could say ‘Private Detectives’ or ‘North and Shaw are Right Here.’”
“That’s a really good idea, North,” Shaw said. “That could be really useful. Sometimes I don’t know where you are. Like when it’s time to trim the puppy’s nails, but you need to run to the store for just one thing—”
“What do you want?” North asked.
“Well, I want you to help me trim the puppy’s nails because last time he used that submission bite on me—”
“Not you!” It was slightly above a whisper, but North managed to put on the brakes. Barely.
On the other end of the call, Jem was laughing.
“I’m hanging up,” North said.
The sound of laughter faded, and then Tean’s voice came across the call. It sounded like he was speaking away from the phone as he said, “Enough already,” and then his voice became clearer and he said, “We saw you drive past. We’re staking out Adam Ezell’s house.”
North had to process that for a moment. “The missing deputy, huh. And let me guess, Gid went inside his house.”
“Bingo bango bongo,” Jem said in the background.
“I should start saying that,” Shaw said.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” North told him. He tried to remember what he’d seen of the dead-end street and finally asked, “Where are you?”
“He tried to find us and couldn’t,” Jem said, apparently to Tean.
Tean shushed him. “Inside one of the houses. It was vacant—”
“How did you know it was vacant?” North interrupted.
“The grass in the backyard,” Jem said, “plus the lockbox on the door, plus the Realtor sign that said For Rent—”
“Ok.”
“—we looked in the windows—”
“I said ok!”
More laughter drifted across the call.
North decided to be mature and do mature things and react maturely. He tapped the screen, pulled up the keypad, and used his middle finger to hold down the asterisk. That was symbolic. The tone filled the call until it disconnected.
North refused to look at Shaw as he got out of the car. It was the mature thing to do.
They got their guns out of the lockboxes in the trunk of the GTO: North’s CZ, and Shaw’s Springfield. A quick glance at the backyards of the houses lining the dead-end street showed North the overgrown lawn and, therefore, the house where Tean and Jem were staked out. It was past one in the morning—closer to two, actually—and this part of the world had shut down for the night, so they started across the lawns. North did a wobbly vault to get over the chain-link fence, ignoring the fact that Shaw sprang over it like a fucking gazelle. At the next fence, the whole goddamn thing tipped and started to fall, and Shaw—already on the other side, of course—had to catch him.
“It’s not your fault,” Shaw whispered. “The psychic gravity of the masculine identity you’ve invested in those boots—”
“I. Will. Murder. You.”
Shaw shut his mouth.
