Shaw screamed into the pillow. Then he hurled it at North’s head.

Hands raised in surrender, North retreated to the stairs. As he pulled the door shut, he said in a mock whisper designed to carry, “Dude, those pants he was wearing were totally false advertising. For a skinny white boy, that kid has got one hell of a—”

Something clunked against the door, and North dragged it shut, laughing. He laughed on the first step down. He laughed on the second. He’d tripped acid one time, his second year of college, and that one time had been plenty, but he still remembered laughing and laughing and laughing, until it almost felt like the laughs were being dragged out of him. And this was like that only worse, only so much worse, because this wasn’t a trip, this wasn’t just the shitty acid that Tank Jessup had passed around. This was real. Upstairs, that was real. Shaw and Matty, that was real.

He stopped laughing when he hit the bottom step. He walked through the kitchen. He walked through the front office. He passed Pari, still asleep in her chair, her long hair spilling like a wave, and he let himself out onto the street, and he made his way around the side of the brick house and tried to work the loose brick free from behind the downspout. His hands wouldn’t cooperate. He could toggle the brick back and forth. He could rock it side to side. But he couldn’t grip it, couldn’t slide it out, and then, just once, North screamed, and he started kicking, kicking the brick as hard as he could and still screaming that single scream until he’d burned through all the air in his lungs. Then he sagged against the wall, sweating, shaking, smelling the brick dust and the mortar. And then his hands were steady enough, and he wormed the brick loose and retrieved the smokes, and of course they were all smashed to hell now, but he smoked one anyway with the tobacco spilling out on his fingers. He barely felt it when the cigarette burned down to a stub and the tip scorched his fingers. He barely felt anything.

Chapter 21

Somehow, after all of that, North made himself go back inside. Shaw was up and dressed (in an electric blue rain jacket and capri pants with peace signs embroidered on the bottom) and waiting in the office. They talked. Shaw told about the events of last night—the phone call after they had left Pigs and Pups, finding Matty, and the information that Detective Jadon Reck had revealed.

“So there’s somebody blackmailing people with videos,” North said. “Not just Matty, and not just Lee Brueckmann. Somebody’s doing this on a wide scale.”

“Something Reck said, I don’t think he meant to let slip.” Shaw was frowning as he spoke, trying to put his hair up into a bun, exposing the long, pale lines of his neck. “I asked him if he was being blackmailed. You know what he said?”