Leaning forward, Matty set the knife’s tip against Shaw’s bare stomach with just enough pressure to blanch the skin. “It was Mark, actually. Mark always liked to shoot from the hip. I told him it was stupid—what if Brueckmann demanded proof?—but Mark didn’t listen. That thing about subbing, that was another of Teddi’s rumors. And that whole plan went spectacularly badly, but somehow it just gave Mark a taste for it. Making Brueckmann squirm. He liked that, even if he didn’t get the money. So Mark was planning on going big with the blackmail game. For Mark, it didn’t have to last. It just had to work in the short term. I warned him that the blackmail would be diluted—that’s your word, right? People wouldn’t want to pay two blackmailers. But Mark was stupid.” Matty pressed a little harder, and blood slicked down Shaw’s stomach, running into the patch of reddish-brown hair between his legs. “I’m getting bored, Shaw. Where’s the flash drive?”

In Shaw’s mind flashed the picture of that ancient gas oven, and he scrambled for something to say, anything, just to keep Matty talking. The longer he kept him talking, the better chance Shaw had of freeing himself. Or maybe Pari would show up because she’d forgotten a cupcake in the fridge. Or North would swing by because he wanted to talk about that kiss—that stupid kiss. But even as Shaw was thinking those possibilities, despair was settling inside him, dark and heavy on his lungs and heart and gut. Nobody was coming. Not tonight. Not soon enough.

“You picked me because you knew I was a soft touch,” Shaw said. “But you couldn’t tell me all of it, so you had to come up with a story. You gave us enough bread crumbs to lead us to Mark’s apartment, and you thought we’d find him, beat the blackmail out of him, and send you on your way. But it didn’t go like that.”

“No.” Matty seemed to consider the knife for a moment before pulling it back and easing the hot prick of pressure in Shaw’s gut. “No, I didn’t think Mark would be able to hide as well as he did. And I thought you two would be better detectives. Then you asked me about Mark. You said people are stupid when they run. They go back to familiar places. And he loved that fucking barbeque shack, so all I had to do was check the lot each night for his car. One night, there it was, and I called you, and I put on the wig and the dress and the trench coat, and . . .” Matty shrugged and grinned.

“If the cops hadn’t been waiting, looking into the blackmail, we might have gotten onto his trail earlier.” Shaw smiled. “And when Regina showed up at the barbeque joint, standing in plain view of the cameras, I assumed that she had followed Mark the same way we had: she had analyzed the contents of his apartment and deduced where he’d gone. Of course, that didn’t make any sense in hindsight. North and I are good at what we do. Very good. Why would an aging drag queen with no history of investigation be able to track him even more easily than we were? I should have seen it then.” Shaw tilted his head, studying Matty’s pallor, the hectic color in his cheeks, the brilliant hardness of his eyes. “Regina bragged about how everything she wore in drag could be picked up in stores on Gravois. It wasn’t hard for you to replicate the wig or the nails or the dress. You had to stay far enough back, at a safe distance, so that the security camera couldn’t pick up your skin color, but that worked just fine. When did Mark recognize you?”