Frozen on the screen, the car’s license plate showed in the narrow frame that the camera had caught.

When North looked up, Shaw was stunning: auburn hair up and back in a tight—and newly re-secured—bun; the long lines of his face and neck clean; his wiry frame showed off to good effect by the jeans.

Shaw’s face pulled North back to reality, though. Color burned in the sharp triangle of his features, flamed on the high cheekbones, and for a moment, North thought Shaw might be ready to cry. And then he recognized the emotion for what it was. Excitement.

“I found the fucker.”

“Shaw, where did you get this?”

“It was one of the blackmail recordings. One of the earliest ones. And before you make that face, yes, I’m going to turn over the flash drive. But I made copies, North. And thank God because I found him. I found him, North. I found that miserable fucker, and now I’m going to—” At the other end of Shaw’s apartment, the front door swung open, and North launched forward on the bed, his Red Wings slapping the boards. He had never heard anyone use Shaw’s front door, and his immediate, irrational reaction was that somehow, Matty or Regina or Lee Brueckmann had come for Shaw.

“Shaw?” The voice was familiar, but transformed by echoes along the hardwood and the open spaces. “You said to just walk in. Hello? Shaw?”

“Back here,” Shaw called. In a hissing whisper, he said, “Don’t say a word. Not a word.”

In the same low voice, North said, “We’ve got to talk about this. We’ve got to think really—”

Suddenly, he forgot what he had been about to say.

The turquoise guayabera.

Those insane, painted-on jeans.

The way Shaw looked perfectly, unspeakably fuckable—even more so than usual.

“You’re going on a date. You—you—Shaw!”

The color on those high cheekbones deepened, but Shaw just smiled and shrugged. “I’ve got to get my information somehow.”

Those words skipped across the surface of North’s mind like stones on smooth water. He was still focused on this totally impossible fact in front of him. “You can’t. Shaw, you can’t—you can’t because—”

You can’t because you’re mine. That’s what North had been about to say. It had seemed so clear to him. Everything that had gone wrong with Matty, every way it had gone so horrifyingly wrong, seemed like a print-out from the universe: Shaw belonged to North. But it seemed like Shaw hadn’t gotten the same memo.

Shaw, whether fortunately or unfortunately, misunderstood again. “Because of the stuff with Matty?” He shrugged. “I’ll be in therapy for another thirty years because of that piece of shit. This is an opportunity.”

An opportunity.

I’ve got to get my information somehow.

“No,” North whispered, the sound ragged with horror.

Shaw’s grin was like the fucking daystar.

“Are you back—oh, hey.” Jadon Reck stepped into the room, and North had a peculiar sensation, a totally unique sensation in his twenty-six years of life: like his heart had withered, dried out, and blown away on a sirocco wind. It didn’t even hurt; there wasn’t anything left to hurt. “You look really nice,” Reck said, and his eyes must have caught North because his posture changed slightly, and then he leaned down and kissed Shaw’s cheek. There was something unexpected as Reck bent, a hesitation and uncertainty so at odds with the pretty-boy-jock-cop aura that, even in that wind-blasted hollow place of his chest, North actually found it endearing. “Um, hi, North.”