Shaw’s thumb slid across the screen. His heart beat so fast that he was worried it might detonate. And then a cold wave flushed the energy and excitement out of him.

The text wasn’t from North. It was an unknown number.

I want the recordings. Deliver by end of the day, or Matthew Fennley goes back to prison.

Shaw stared at the text. Then he texted back: Who is this?

No reply.

Matty was singing Cher, and even through the numbness, Shaw recognized that he was doing a really great job. His thoughts chugged forward, trying to gather momentum. Someone was threatening to send Matty back to prison. After everything Matty had been through, after all the horrible things Matty had been forced to do just to survive, someone wanted to send him back.

I want the recordings.

Who wanted them? They were blackmail material—and if Reck and Barr had told the truth, they were being used to control and manipulate important people across the city. For a moment, Shaw felt like he was looking over a sheer cliff, his internal axis flipping, and he thought about Barr and Reck. Were they behind all of this? Reck had been so friendly. Overly friendly. Reck had talked about the investigation—not too much, but more than another detective might have. Had he been working Shaw? Had it just been one more angle to try to get to Mark Sevcik’s stash of blackmail?

Up the block, a city bus popped its air brakes and pulled away from the curb with a metallic groan. Shaw stared out the window, following the bus, his mind still moving. No, he decided. Reck and Barr didn’t make sense. There were too many holes, too many things Shaw couldn’t explain. And North had told Shaw that he had seen the security footage: Regina Rex had found Mark at Hog Hollow Hocks, had waited for him in the parking lot, had marched him off to his death. Regina must have reached the end of her rope. Or maybe she had simply hoped that Mark was vulnerable, that Shaw and North’s investigation signaled the beginning of the end for her blackmailer, and she had taken matters into her own hands. Shaw closed his eyes and wanted to groan. Regina had very likely overheard them when they went to Teddi’s and asked about Mark.

Stumbling back into the bedroom, Shaw tried to focus. The important question, the question that he had to answer as soon as possible, was where Mark had hidden the recordings. Once Shaw knew that, he could bargain. He could figure out a way to keep Matty safe. He yanked open the dresser drawers again and pulled out clothes, heaping them on the floor. He had to have a pair of pants in here somewhere. He owned pants, didn’t he? At some point, North had probably made him buy pants, so where the fuck were they?

As Shaw scooped out an armful of brocaded silk shirts—how long had it been since he’d thrown his last Shakespeare’s Birthday party? Long enough for him to forget about the shirts, apparently—he tried to think. Where would Mark have hidden the recordings? Shaw doubted that he would have trusted something that sensitive exclusively to the cloud. He would have wanted a physical backup. An external hard drive? A flash drive? Christ, Shaw hadn’t even seen so much as a computer in Mark’s apartment. Someone must have already taken it by the time Shaw and North had an opportunity to search the place, but even that didn’t quite seem right because Shaw hadn’t seen a desk or the impressions in a carpet that a tower might have left or spare cables or all the junk that accumulated around a computer or a laptop.