North. North might come back. North might be in danger.

That was enough. North was enough for Shaw to fight against the pull of that dark, warm nothing.

“You killed Mark Sevcik.”

Matty made a circular motion with the tip of the knife, a kind of carry on.

“Do you want me to start at the beginning?”

“I want to know where the flash drive is.”

“The beginning, that’s pretty far back. You were in St. Louis already. You knew Regina—knew of her, anyway. And somehow you learned about the blackmail. That’s it, isn’t it? Somehow you learned. Somehow you found out. It was never Mark blackmailing people; it was Regina. The evidence was there—the mysterious donations supposedly to renovate the Lucky.” Shaw paused. He was fishing deep inside himself, in that quiet stillness under the crust of consciousness, that place where his mind did its best work. This would be easier, so much easier, if he could do his free association or his sketching or anything, really, except grope in that darkness. But every minute he spoke was another minute he stayed alive, and so he kept talking. “You told us you were a victim, that you were being blackmailed. But that doesn’t hold up. Regina couldn’t have blackmailed only first-timers; that’s too specific, too rare. You told me that because you knew how it would affect me. Regina targeted closeted men; she told me that much at the Lucky. She liked the power of it, sure, but she also liked the hypocrisy, the vulnerability, of someone indulging in a vice that they tried to hide from the rest of the world. You were hustling years before you came to St. Louis, so you didn’t learn about Regina’s blackmail scheme because you were a victim of it.” Shaw blinked. He could see it now, and he focused on his breath moving in and out of his lungs. “You were an accomplice.”

Matty offered a mocking, silent applause.

“You were the perfect bait,” Shaw said, and that darkness surfed across his vision again. “Of course you were. You still are. Guys who don’t know exactly what they want, guys who might not even be able to verbalize what they’re feeling, but they remember drinking too much in college and they remember the guy in the frat that everybody knew you could fuck around with and keep it quiet. Guys who know they like guys, but they’re in politics or they’re religious and they can’t come out. Married guys. All sorts of guys that want to fuck a boy on the side, with nobody else knowing about it. And there you are, innocent, vulnerable, available. They feel powerless until they’re with you, and you make them feel like they’re in control.”

“You did,” Matty said. “Didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“Keep going. You’re doing so well.”

“You didn’t like how Regina was running things. You . . .” For a moment, Shaw swam again in the icy blackness of his subconscious, trying to articulate. “You didn’t feel appreciated. You didn’t like someone else telling you what to do; someone else had been telling you what to do your whole life. But you didn’t know how to change it until you met Mark. Did you care about him? Or was that an act as well?”