“To understand that deviation, especially with Andrew’s body dump implying a necessity to hide a personal connection, we need to know who the women were,” Larkin explained. “Did the perpetrator know them as well. Were they strangers all chosen based on nothing beyond a sexual compulsion unique to the killer. Where are their remains. How were they disposed of.”

“I can’t write this fast.”

“Shorthand classes should be brought back.” Larkin waited for Doyle to catch up. The moment of suspended quiet allowed him to realize that Doyle had flawlessly redirected Larkin’s energy from its escalating fixation on everything wrong between him and Noah to the case—something that required a considerable degree of emotional distance in order to properly investigate. That redirect had caused his accelerated heartbeat to slow, his breathing to even out, and the insistent craving for Xanax to wane, if only a little.

Larkin studied Doyle, who was bent at the waist and using his thigh as an impromptu surface to write on. Maybe, admittedly, there was a thrill—purely physical—in calluses and cardamon and whiskey and pyrite. And maybe there was also a wonder—something more abstract—of pencils over pistols and sweetened spice and the contrasting taste of austere and rich, depending on which way the light hit the smoke, and gold that was anything but the fool he presented as.

Larkin had been wrong about Nietzsche’s aphorism, that Doyle was the joy and he was the depression. Such an assumption was an insult to their characters—the suggestion that neither were complete without the other. A partnership shouldn’t fill missing pieces, but instead enhance what was already present. Doyle’s acceptance of extreme heartache in return for unbridled happiness was a representation of who Larkin, too, could be, if he wanted it.

And sure, he’d likely have more shadows than sunlight.

More night than day.

More despair than hope.

But there would be thrill and wonder and partnership too.

’Til death do us part.

And then, quite suddenly, Larkin’s mind silenced and only one thought rose to the top: I’m dying.

Doyle said something.

Larkin blinked, shook his head.

Doyle’s eyebrows rose.

“I didn’t hear what you said,” Larkin said, catching the tone in his own voice—the gentleness, the delicacy, like his breath would snap in two.

“Spoken like a true work husband.”

Larkin snorted, and then he started laughing. He clutched his middle and slid into a crouch as he was overcome with a full-bodied explosive sort of laughter that threatened to crack his ribs.

“He’s fine,” Doyle was calling to someone farther down the hall who was clearly startled by the outburst.

Still laughing, Larkin raised his head. Doyle squatted down in front of him with a confused smile. He was as alive as summer flowers and as warm as a lone campfire and—

“It wasn’t that funny.”