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As though hearing the thought, the man in black stepped forward. The sickle seemed to be a hundred places at once, spinning at the end of the strap. North slid along the shelves, trying to find space to move. The roar of the fire was so much bigger now, and the superheated air, with its stink, full of the smoke of manmade materials scorched and smoldering, made it impossible to breathe. He could feel the shallow, panting breaths he was taking. His whole body burned for one good, clean breath. The man in black darted forward.
A shot rang, and the man in black threw himself sideways. Shaw stood in the doorway to the burning front of the shop, blood matting his auburn hair, and gumming one eye shut. But his hand was steady as he lined up another shot. The man in black ducked toward Ezell’s body. Shaw fired again, and splinters exploded from the floorboards. The man in black grabbed something, and too late, North realized what it was: Ezell’s phone.
Shaw fired a third time, and the man darted out into the night and was gone.
20
It was sometime near dawn, and in the emergency room cubicle, Shaw was having trouble keeping his eyes open. This little room was full of the usual hospital smells: the slightly stinging scent of a disinfectant, too many bodies, the cleaner they used on the floors. It smelled like fire, too, and greasy smoke. When Shaw moved, the paper on the examination table rustled.
North, in the chair he’d pulled next to the table, had his eyes closed, and he looked paler than usual, but his voice was its familiar hard smolder when he said, “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“You’re supposed to be resting too.”
“Huh,” North said. “I wonder what keeps interrupting me.”
Shaw wriggled around some more until he lay on his side, facing North, and the paper rustled and pulled and finally split along the edge. North opened his eyes to slits. They looked like sunlight, Shaw always thought. The way sunlight would look the moment it caught a sheet of ice. A blue so pale it speared through him, every day, every time, ever since that first day when he’d seen him in the dorms.
“I feel fine,” Shaw said.
North grunted.
“I don’t even have a concussion. The doctor said so.”
Nothing came from North this time, but those blue eyes were still slitted open. A pair of men walked past the cubicle, voices drifting with the lazy meter of people without a care. “It’s fine if you can get past that ninth hole; the rest of it plays like a dream.”
“I’m not talking about the course. The guy with the carts acts like he’s doing me a favor every time I give him my credit card. Give me a break; I can take my money somewhere else.”
One part about being in a relationship with someone was that, even after years and years, they could still surprise you. For example, Shaw hadn’t known until right then that North could roll his eyes when they were barely open.
“They sound nice,” Shaw whispered.
“They sound like that guy we caught humping his putter.”
“They could be your friends. We need more friends.”
“We need more friends like I need a hole in the head.” He put on what Shaw thought of as his Chouteau accent and said, “The ninth hole is a dream.”
Fighting a giggle, Shaw shook his head. “No, the ninth hole is the whole problem. Weren’t you listening? This is why we can’t ever make any new friends.”
North looked like he was trying not to smile. Then the expression guttered and went out, and something dark and collapsed was all that remained. He reached out, brushing that spot of Shaw’s hair he loved to touch, the one he always went back to, even though Shaw couldn’t see anything different about it. He swallowed, and his fingers trembled. “Jesus Christ. I thought—”
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Emery asked as he blew into the cubicle. The curtain billowed in his wake, and John-Henry had to catch it and pull it shut behind him as he joined them. Emery continued, “I’m perfectly well aware that you do a lot of stupid shit, but this is a new order of magnitude for you.”
North surged up from his seat, his face hardening as he crowded Emery back. “I was doing my fucking job, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for you.”
“Both of you—” John-Henry began.
“Please—” Shaw tried.
“You had a lead,” Emery said, “and instead of bringing it to us—which is the definition of your job, since you seem to have forgotten—you had to hare off and be Pecos fucking Bill. And now our last lead on our case is dead because as usual, you can’t do the one simple thing that’s been asked of you.”
“It’s not your case! Did you forget about that? Here, I’ll remind you: you’re not a cop. Not anymore. You’re a fucking nobody just like the rest of us. You can play with your balls and fantasize about the good old days and sniff around after him, but don’t give me that bullshit about ‘our case.’ You’re in the same position we’re in, and if it’d been you, you would have done the exact same thing.”
“I would have told John, and we would have brought Ezell in without getting him shot to death in the process! But that’s apparently too much for you—”
“Emery, enough,” John-Henry said.
“Too much for me?” North asked.
