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“You’re welcome Shaw kept your twinky ass alive,” North called after them. “That’s what you’re welcome for.”
Auggie looked like he tried to turn back, but Theo said something too low for North to hear and kept a tight grip on him. A minute later, the Audi was pulling away.
As the rush of the shouting match faded, the prickle of a flush worked its way across North’s chest, up his neck. Emery and John-Henry were staring at him. Worse, so was Shaw.
“Those dumbasses shouldn’t have followed—”
“You’re lucky they did,” Emery said. “You’re lucky Auggie followed you, and you’re lucky he saw that you were pinned down. You’re lucky he had the brains to understand what it meant and acted quickly to help you. You’re lucky that he had the guts to do something like that for a couple of assholes who screwed him over. You’re lucky he bought you an opportunity to move to a more defensible position after you walked into an ambush like a couple of amateurs.”
“Hold on—”
“But it shouldn’t have been an ambush,” Shaw said. “It doesn’t make any sense—”
“What doesn’t make any sense,” John-Henry said, and his voice was raw, “is why two of my investigators would meet with a state representative without telling the chief of police. Do you understand that this is my job? That I have people I report to? It’s not a two-bit detective agency operating out of a strip mall. I’m working two murders. I’m already down a detective, and I’ve got the Highway Patrol breathing down my neck, and believe it or not, I’d like a couple of hours of sleep. Instead, I’ve got to spend three hours out of the first forty-eight driving halfway across the state to keep you two out of jail. And you know what really gets me? You could have gotten Auggie killed because you two wanted to play Lone Ranger instead of picking up the fucking phone!”
The shout echoed down the empty street.
“Nobody asked you to—” North began.
Shaw’s voice was sharp and pitchy: “North!”
Even Emery, one hand on John-Henry’s shoulder, stared at him with a kind of wide-eyed disbelief, like he’d never seen this particular degree of idiocy before.
It took some doing, but North shut his mouth.
“I can’t deal with them right now,” John-Henry said.
Emery nodded. “See what you can get out of Brey, and then come home.”
John-Henry headed into the Auburn station again. A hot wind stirred, pushing on North, pushing on everything: kicking up eddies of dust, riffling the copper-colored water in the harbor, sweeping an old Drumstick wrapper under one of the Focus’s back tires.
Emery held out his hand.
North gave him the keys, and they started back to Wahredua.
13
Somehow, Shaw slept.
It had seemed impossible at first, the heat trapped inside the small room of the motor court, the mini-split struggling and failing to keep up. Even after a cold shower to sluice away the dirt and sweat and stink of gunpowder, even lying naked on the bed as he dried, Shaw had known he was too hot to sleep. And then, later, he had felt the bed shifting, awareness rising like something swimming up from that deep place inside him, and North had said, “Go back to sleep.” So, he had.
When he woke the next time, North lay next to him, and the room was dark. It was starting to acquire what Shaw, after years of experience with hotels and motels and motor courts and little hot pillow joints, thought of as motel funk—the smell of damp towels that never fully dried, mixed with day-old clothes and air that didn’t circulate properly.
North lay on his side, breathing the deep, measured breaths of sleep. The weak light softened his face, smoothing the hard edges of cheek and jaw, erasing the strain of always trying so hard to protect himself—and Shaw, of course. He looked younger like this, in the weak, refracted glow of the security lights that filtered through the curtains. Not like the boy Shaw had seen standing in their dorm all those years ago, not really. Maybe younger wasn’t the right word. But something like that. Like something he carried every day had been, for a few hours, lifted.
North slid a hand across the mattress and rested it on Shaw’s belly. Then he scooted closer until his face was pressed into Shaw’s side.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Shaw whispered.
“Can’t sleep,” North mumbled into his side. “Horny.”
Shaw laughed and tickled the back of North’s neck. “Oh yeah?”
But North didn’t move. Didn’t roll onto his back, didn’t do any fiddling or fooling or fumbling, and he was good at all three. Shaw ran a hand down the line of North’s spine, and North arched slightly into the touch.
“Jesus Christ,” North said, still speaking into Shaw’s side. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“Nothing’s wrong with you.”
