“Too much?” Reck asked with those crinkles back.

“Oh fuck you.”

“I wasn’t sure. You’ve got a vibe. I thought maybe it was a daddy thing.”

“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck me. And most definitely fuck you.” Shaw tried to push past, but Reck corralled him easily with one big arm. “Get the fuck off me, or this is going to be a police brutality report on the front of the Post-Dispatch.”

“Butch cop strangled to death by chicken legs,” Reck said. “Ok, I admit, I misread the vibe. Just hold on. Hold on, would you?”

“What do you want?”

“I’m serious. What do you know about Fennmore?”

This time, absent the shock of Reck’s earlier question, the meaning of the words filtered into Shaw’s mind. He shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m asking because I’m worried.” Then, after seeming to weigh something internally, Reck added, “About you.”

“I’m a big boy. I don’t need a daddy. Particularly not one who is probably younger than me. And anything I know about my client is confidential information.”

Reck stared down Shaw with another mocking slant to his dark blond brows, but all he said was, “Do you do much investigation into your own clients, Shaw?”

“That’s Mr. Aldrich.”

“Do you, Mr. Aldrich? Before you take a case? Or after? Do you want to know who you’re working for?”

Shaw could feel his cheeks heating. “I’ve got a better question: what are two detectives for the Metropolitan police doing investigating a breaking and entering call?”

“We’re trying to raise our customer satisfaction scores.”

“What’s going on, Reck?”

“Call me Jadon.”

“What’s going on, Reck? First you’re at Mark Sevcik’s apartment, hiding out and waiting. How long were you there? Hours? Days? And who were you waiting for? Not Sevcik—that’s pretty obvious. There’d been a break-in at Sevcik’s. Someone was obviously trying to find something—maybe Sevcik, maybe something else. You and Barr try to pump us for information about our client. You dropped just enough hints about blackmail to get us interested, but you wouldn’t have done that unless you thought we knew something you didn’t. Now, miraculously, here you are responding to a random 911 call. That’s some pretty excellent work by the Metropolitan PD.”

The crinkles around Reck’s eyes smoothed, and he buttoned his jacket. Those honey-dark eyes ran circles on Shaw’s face, looking for something. “All right. We’re working a case. It’s a big deal.”

Shaw rolled his eyes.

“It is,” Reck said. “And we think Mark Sevcik is involved. In fact, we pretty much know he’s involved.”

“I already knew all of that. What’s the case?”

Another of those internal judgments passed, and Reck nodded. “Blackmail.”

“I’ve heard this one before; give me something new. Who’s being blackmailed?”

“Quite a number of people, actually.”

“You?”

Reck laughed, and the sound was so loud and so genuine that Shaw actually grinned in automatic response before he could force the expression off his face. “No. My first time was with a very, very, very good-looking summer ranch hand named Robbie Phillips, and it was in a hayloft in Iowa. After Robbie went back to Stanford, I never heard from him again.”