“What was your secret?” Matty said, his voice so low Shaw might have imagined it.

That I loved him. That I couldn’t stand the thought of being without him, even though I knew he didn’t love me.

“I had dropped out of college,” Shaw said, forcing a smile. “It had been going on for a while—I tell people I’d been sliding out of college for sophomore and junior years, grades so bad that they only kept me because when I was a freshman, well, that doesn’t matter right now. And senior year I finally called it quits. So I wasn’t going to Harvard Law like my dad wanted. I wasn’t going to Chicago’s English Ph.D. program like Mom wanted. I wasn’t going anywhere.” I wasn’t even going out of my shitty apartment, Shaw thought. I wasn’t even opening the blinds. I was just levitating inside a bubble of light the color of dishwater. And I would have stayed there the rest of my life if he hadn’t kicked in my bedroom door and dragged me out.

But Shaw didn’t say any of that. What he said was, “Then I went on for disappointment number two: I became a private detective. Something bad happened to someone I care about, and I . . . wanted to know why. I wanted to know what really happened. And I wanted to make sure it never happened to anyone else. If you thought dropping out of college was bad, you should have seen my parents’ faces when I told them about Borealis.”

“But you’re doing something brave,” Matty said. “You’re doing something wonderful. You’re helping people. I’ve heard about some of the cases you guys take. You’re amazing.” Matty paused. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, his lips parting. “You’re amazing.” Matty leaned forward, and Shaw knew what was happening, and he couldn’t bring himself to pull back—didn’t want to pull back, in fact, because this was Matty instead of a parade of guys like Hank that stretched all the way back to Percy. Matty was the first one since—Carl, Shaw wanted to say Carl, but a part of his brain hammered on the glass and shouted North, since North—

Shaw’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and it startled him so badly that he actually fell off the couch. Matty, poised above him with lips still parted, looked down with something that might have been anger or humiliation or both.

“Sorry,” Shaw mumbled, dragging the phone out of his pocket. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“What are you sorry about?” North asked.

Shaw sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was North’s other voice. The voice Shaw hated.

“I wasn’t talking to—never mind. What’s up?”

“I’ve got an address for Brueckmann. I want you to meet me there.”

Matty was already rising, turning his back on Shaw, just a shadow against the dying light across the city.

“Where?”

Shaw could hear the smile even in that other-North voice that he hated.

“A leather club.”