When they reached the double security doors, Detective Jadon Reck was squatting and snapping pictures of the lock and showing off an ass like two soccer balls stuffed into very expensive trousers. He glanced at them, snapped a few more pictures, and then he stood, stretching both arms over his head, exposing the powerful lines that lay hidden under his suit.

For a moment, North’s reaction to Jadon came back to Shaw: All that playing with your hair and batting your eyelashes, you were working him for information. Right? And then the way North had kept saying Jadon’s name like a dog shaking a bone.

Jadon was all right to look at, Shaw guessed. Jadon was fine. He still looked like a pro athlete who had crossed over to sit behind a desk: the suit couldn’t really disguise the packed-on muscle, and his jawline could have cut steel. That dark blond hair was gelled up like a guy trying to blend into a frat-boy lineup. He wasn’t Shaw’s type, of course—and that thought slammed into Shaw like a foul ball, flying so hard and low off the playing field that it knocked the wind out of him for a moment.

“Well, well, well,” Jadon said, stretching again, and holy Christ did he have a fucking 28 waist or something? Jadon grinned, and Shaw knew he had caught Shaw looking. “Did you change your mind about dinner?”

“What’s going on here, Detective?”

Jadon’s dark eyebrows quirked at detective like he’d caught Shaw saying a dirty word, and the playfulness left his voice—but not his eyes. “That’s exactly what we wanted to talk to Mr. Fennmore about. This is Mr. Fennmore, I assume.”

Matty shoved his hands deeper into his cardigan, twisting the sweater, and nodded.

“Well, Mr. Fennmore, what’s going on? You called 911, and we got here as fast as we could, but where have you been?”

“Excuse me?” Shaw said. “What are you doing?”

Jadon blinked. “I’m asking a few questions.”

“You’re interrogating him.”

The playfulness died in Reck’s—that was the only way Shaw could think of him now, as Reck, not Jadon—eyes. “Not at all. I’m just trying to establish what happened. Mr. Fennmore?”

So Matty talked through a disjointed account of what had happened, repeating parts Shaw had already heard, expanding in a few places where Reck probed, but adding nothing that helped to explain why someone might have been following him—or why someone might have tried to break into his loft. And those, of course, were the only questions Shaw cared about.

“I’d really appreciate it if you could accompany us back to the station,” Reck began.

“He’s had a horrible day,” Shaw said, taking Matty’s arm and interposing himself between them. “A horrible week, actually. I’d like to get my client some clothes and toiletries and then get him somewhere safe. Somewhere he can sleep.”

“A hotel?” Reck said, and there was absolutely nothing in his tone, nothing in the word, nothing in his face except a slight, mocking crease above those dark blond eyebrows and a crinkle of laugh lines around dark eyes. The implication still connected like a slap in the face.