“Crystal,” Shaw said.

“Like a mountain spring,” North said.

“You’re both fucking assholes. Reck, see if you can get anything else out of them.”

Barr didn’t wait for a confirmation. Instead, he pushed through the broken door to Sevcik’s apartment and resumed a search.

Reck looked like one of those pro athletes at a charity dinner: coiffed good looks that didn’t hide the raw mass and strength under the suit. He sent Shaw down the hall and ran North through a line of questions. North barely listened; he barely even heard himself responding. His attention was on the open door to Sevcik’s apartment and on Barr, who was picking his way through the front room, obviously still searching for something.

When Reck had finally finished his questions, he ordered North to remain at the end of the hall, and then he proceeded down to where Shaw stood. North kept them in the corner of his eye and focused on the apartment.

The most obvious, most important thing was that the place had been wrecked: a dining table had been overturned, glasses shattered, a canvas print slashed, two holes knocked in the drywall—about chest height on a normal man, as though someone had thrown punches and caught the wall instead of a body. In a steep arc against the far wall, a spatter of rust red ran toward the baseboards, where broken glass piled. Blood. Someone had thrown a glass, broken it, and cut somebody else. But there must not be a body because otherwise—

Laughter.

Who was laughing?

North checked the hall. He almost dismissed what he saw and then the shock of it hit him and his gaze doubled back.

Reck. Detective Reck was laughing, a low, easy chuckle. A kind of you-got-me laugh. He was leaning up against the wall, one arm up and curled to show off his fucking bicep even under the wool suit jacket. He kept running his fingers through his hair. It was a fuck-me pose if North had ever seen one.

And Shaw, the little reprobate. Shaw was doing his one-hundred-percent typical Shaw routine. He rubbed the back of his neck. He pulled his hair out of its bun, combed it, put it up again. He shuffled his feet and his hazel eyes danced up, down. He kept reaching up, reaching back, the fine tone of musculature visible under the stretched-out, sheer fabric of the Lululemon shirt. Fucking shameless. And the worst part—visible to North, visible to anybody who talked to Shaw for more than five minutes—was that Shaw honestly had no idea he was doing it. On most guys, that would be an act. On Shaw, it was the real deal, and it somehow magnified everything by a thousand. It was certainly working on Reck, and North had to reevaluate the pretty boy. Apparently the LGBT task force wasn’t just a name.

North tried to turn his attention back to Barr. He tried to focus on Sevcik’s apartment. He tried to gather details. The painting that had been slashed, for example, was a close-up of a sunflower. Was Sevcik a gardener?