The hospital, for example. It kept going back to the hospital. Seven years ago, after the attack that had almost killed Shaw and that had left Carl dead, Shaw had woken up in Barnes, in a private room, the air afire with the setting sun. He had been doped to the gills. He had been swimming up from the deepest part of the trauma. But he had been awake, and he had heard, out in the hall, Tucker’s voice.

A burst of laughter. Then North. Then another burst of Tuck’s laugh like machine-gun fire. Then North’s voice, this time closer, right outside the door, saying, “No way, Tuck. Just leave him alone, ok? He’s been through hell, and his mom just stepped out to go to the bathroom. You can talk to him tomorrow.”

“You’re here,” Tucker said, and even through the narcotic fog, even through the closed door, Shaw could hear the drunken wobble. “Of course you’re fucking here.”

“I’m sticking around until he wakes up. Then I’ll see what he wants me to do.”

“Like a dog.” Tucker’s voice grew louder, and sounds of a struggle filtered into the room. “You’re just waiting around like a dog.”

“Go home. You can come back tomorrow.” Another round of scuffling, and then the squeak of rubber on vinyl, like somebody stumbling and catching himself. “Go home, Tuck.”

Shaw wasn’t sure how much time passed—maybe seconds, maybe a minute. The drugs made it hard to tell. But when Tucker spoke again, his voice was hard even through the mist of booze. Hard and amused.

“I heard the guy cut off his balls. That true?”

In Shaw’s room, a machine beeped in time with his pulse, accelerating. The words filled Shaw with a horror that went all the way down inside him. He wanted to touch. To check. But he was swathed in bandages down there—and wasn’t that an answer in itself?

“Shay the Spay. That’s what I’m going to call him. Shay the—”

Shaw heard the punch. Then he heard the clatter of furniture, Tucker’s shocked cry, and a man shouting, “What’s going on?”

Lying on his bed, Shaw stared up at the ceiling, gathering fistfuls of the sheets. His heart was beating faster just with the memory. Part of it was Tucker—Shay the Spay had been a line that haunted the dorm halls for what remained of freshman year, mercifully short. But so much of the thrum of his heart, right now, was about North. Looking back like this, with distance, the moment was full of questions that Shaw had never considered. Why had Tucker gone to the hospital? Why had Tucker come up with that hateful name? Why had Tucker cared enough about Shaw to bother with any of it? And why—this was the real question—hadn’t Shaw ever considered one, simple, stunning fact: that in the entire time Shaw had known Tucker Laguerre, only one person had ever gotten the best of him. Trace Montenegro had tried, Trace Montenegro had thought he’d pull one over on Tuck, and Trace had gotten a head butt and a broken nose. No, the only person who had ever gone up against Tuck and walked away was North McKinney, late one night in a hospital hallway seven years ago. How the hell did that make sense after what Shaw had seen the night before, the pop of the leather strap, the broken skin around North’s eye, the bloody weal on the back of his hand?