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North snapped his fingers. “Water, lady.”
She startled. “We’ve got a staff kitchen—here, I’ll show you.”
“Don’t get lost,” North said sourly as Shaw followed. He did, unfortunately, manage to dodge the backwards kick that Shaw sent in his direction, and he was wearing an annoyingly self-satisfied expression.
“If you think about it,” Shaw said as he followed Marcy across the office and into the kitchen, “it was a kind of domestic violence, on account of them living together, and I did see one lady kiss a cat’s behind. And Jadon was very nice about it. He didn’t even arrest me, not even for the weed. That’s because we used to, um, do you know what rubbing weasels is?”
Marcy was fumbling with a stack of paper cups next to the water cooler. She had the same look on her face that North did when he said he didn’t want to talk about Shaw’s latest idea yet, even though the colon rake was going to revolutionize, well, everything. “I’ve really got to get back to—”
Shaw knocked a plastic fork onto the floor and said, “My donkey cure! I dropped it!”
Marcy let out a surprisingly frantic noise and, after a moment of fluttering indecision, set down the paper cup and said, “Ok, I’ll help you look.”
They looked for the pill with zero luck, which Shaw guessed might have something to do with the fact that he didn’t actually have a donkey pill, although now he kind of wanted one, and he certainly hadn’t dropped it. He let Marcy burrow into the crevice between the fridge and the cabinets, and he took the opportunity to move over to the water cooler.
“Did you know that if you leave your water out in sunlight too long, it becomes too acidic? Wait, or is it too alkaline? Anyway, you have to change it out frequently.”
Marcy must have suspected something was up because she was trying to extricate herself from the crevice. “Wait, hold on, don’t—”
Shaw picked up the five-gallon bottle, and water went everywhere.
Marcy screamed.
Shaw dropped the bottle, and it made a surprisingly loud crack when it hit the floor. More water rushed out.
“Wow,” Shaw said. “That is a lot of water!”
Marcy, a total trooper, had taken the brunt of it because she was still on her hands and knees. “Get out!” she screamed.
Shaw splashed out of the kitchen.
He found North in the office that clearly belonged to Brey: the picture of Brey at the swearing-in ceremony was a good clue. Nothing looked particularly out of the ordinary: particleboard desk and cabinets, steel filing cabinets, a few more pictures of Brey, these showing him fishing and kayaking. Papers covered the desk in neat stacks around a laptop, and North was flipping through one.
“You made her cry?” North asked and tilted his head in the direction of the kitchen, where it did sound like, possibly, Marcy might be crying.
“It’s all the water,” Shaw said as he moved over to the phone on Brey’s desk. “It’s very good for blocked emotions. What’s going on with Theo and Auggie?”
“Who knows? Maybe Super Dad and Wundertwink are actually being useful for once, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Shaw picked up the receiver, pressed the redial button on the phone’s base, and listened. After a moment, a woman said, “Representative McCarthy’s office, how may I direct your call?” Shaw hung up.
“He’s not going to call his accomplices on his office landline,” North said.
“Worth a shot.”
North grunted. He was still flipping through the papers as Shaw settled at the desk. The laptop woke when Shaw tapped the touchpad, but the screen was locked.
“That’s private property,” a man said, “and you have no right to be in here. I’m calling the police—North?”
Shaw recognized the note in the man’s voice. He didn’t even have to look up from the laptop to know what it meant; he’d been hearing that note on and off since freshman year, and although—thankfully—their run-ins with North’s former fuck toys and friends with benefits had dwindled since they’d left Chouteau College, Shaw would never forget the sound of a Chouteau boy North had lined up and knocked down. Sometimes, knocked down multiple times.
The man in the doorway had the kind of slim-hipped, broad-shouldered athleticism that made Shaw think of swimmers, and layered over the natural good looks—the short, dark hair; the hazel eyes (not unlike his own, Shaw thought with a flash of—what?); the bone structure that had doubtless sent pretty boys to sob in a corner—was the sheen of money and breeding and class that had always been like crack to North.
“Park?” North said. And then, a beat too late, “Parker?”
Confusion battled a smile on Parker’s face. “Oh my God, I can’t believe—what are you doing here?” And then reality seemed to settle in, and he said in a different tone, “What are you doing here?”
North shot Shaw a look rife with too many emotions for Shaw to parse. Then he said, “Park, close the door, would you?” Parker was already shaking his head, but North said, “Please. Two minutes, that’s all I’m asking.”
