“Pari, for Christ’s sake, shut up.”

She stared at him, her mouth open, her dark hair still spinning in the cyclone of her momentum.

“Is that a picture of North?” she asked, her voice calm and reasonable as she pointed to Shaw’s desk. “Wearing a dog collar?”

“No,” Shaw said, crumpling the paper and shoving it into the cycling shorts. “Now get out of my way. I’ve got to take care of this.”

He strode past her—the effect somewhat ruined by his bare feet and cycling shorts and the crinkle of the paper—and Pari touched his arm.

“You should take your gun.”

Shaw shook his head. The last time he had taken his gun, he had ended up at the bottom of a flight of stairs, staring up at North through a fluorescent halo. “I’ll be ok. Just keep an eye on Matty, will you?”

“Of course.”

Shaw plunged down the corridor that led to the garage, and as he padded out on to the cement, Pari’s voice came after him.

“And pick me up some donuts on the way back, will you?”

Chapter 30

North jimmied the front doors on the Lucky. He considered going around to the side, but the side door seemed to be the most likely place the theater saw morning traffic. At this hour of the morning, on a Sunday, every reasonable person should either be sleeping one off or enjoying brunch. If Tuck hadn’t gone to the office, that’s probably where North would be right now—sitting through another interminable meal with the finance bros that Tuck called his friends, listening to them brag about the girls, or guys, they had banged, about the stupid ways they had dropped stupid amounts of money, about the ticks and tocks of the finely-tuned machinery of social power as they all struggled to outdo one another. It was enough to make a guy want to be poor all over again, and North had never expected to find himself thinking that.

The Lucky’s ancient lock popped easily, and North slid into the quiet darkness of the lobby, pulling the door shut behind him. He left it unlocked—he might need to get out of here in a hurry. Then he paused to take in his surroundings.

By day, without guys crowding the bar and shouting and laughing and catcalling, the Lucky was cavernous. The worn red carpet muffled North’s first step, but his breathing sounded enormous, echoing back from gilt-trimmed wood and the high, coffered ceiling. Two flying staircases swept up to the balcony, where shadows hung so thickly that North could barely make out the archways that led into the theater proper.

He crossed the lobby. He wasn’t running. Jesus, he wasn’t even close to running. He was just hurrying because he needed to find the recordings and deal with Regina before something happened to Matty. And really, that only mattered because North knew how much it would hurt Shaw. But as North took another glance at the high ceiling lost in darkness, as a frisson lifted the tiny hairs on the back of his neck, he had to work really, really hard to convince himself he wasn’t running.