“We’re living in benighted times,” North said.

“It’s not like we practice,” Shaw said. “We don’t even have time to practice. It’s all just natural talent, but think what we could do if—hey.”

The big man turned away.

“It’s about Mark Sevcik,” North said.

The big man stopped. He put a walkie to his mouth, listened, and turned. “He doesn’t know any Mark Sevcik.”

“Are you sure? He doesn’t know a Mark Sevcik who owns a video camera?”

The question came from Shaw so fluidly, so incisively, that a frisson ran up North’s spine. That was the real Shaw, the one who was so brutally, complicatedly smart that even he wasn’t really sure why he understood things sometimes. But then he did things like that, right there. A question that made the big man clench the walkie so tight his knuckles popped out, white and scarred.

The big man spoke softly into the walkie again. Listened. Then, “Come with me, please.”

“Did you hear that, Shaw?” North said. “He said please. Isn’t that impressive?”

“Don’t let it go to his head,” Shaw said. “I bet he wasn’t fit to be around after he learned how to pee straight.”

“Probably because he was peeing all over everything.”

“Pups and pigs and pee.”

The big man walked off.

North threw his partner a look, surprised at the smile ghosting across Shaw’s features. When Shaw noticed the attention, he shrugged and took off after the big man.

With a swipe of a security card, the big man opened a door at the back of the club and led them up a staircase. On the second floor, music still pounded, but the wet sponge smell faded, and in its place came familiar, office smells: toner, coffee, furniture polish. Sure enough, the stairs opened onto a suite of offices. The big man led them to the end of the hall, knocked, and walked inside after a voice answered.

The office looked like the set from a 90s legal drama: chunky wooden furniture—desk, liquor cabinet, bookshelves—and lamps that might have once looked sleek and futuristic and now looked like, well, they were left over from the 90s. There were even two potted ferns that looked sickly under the fluorescents. There was a back door to the office and a wall of cabinets, both of which North took special note of.

Behind the desk were two men: one, a toothpick ginger, was naked and kneeling. Judging by the puffy lips, the spittle glistening on his chin and chest, and the hint—just visible from where North stood—of his erection, North had a pretty good idea what they had interrupted.

The other man was more interesting. He wasn’t particularly impressive physically, but he had an air of authority about him that had nothing to do with the leather he was wearing, nothing to do with sex games or plastic whips or fuzzy handcuffs. This man, who massaged an impressive bulge as he studied them, might enjoy dominating other men, but North was willing to put money on the line that sex was very much a secondary part of that. This man was dangerous.