“The first thing I’m getting is a shower and my own clothes,” Drue said.

When she emerged from the shower fifteen minutes later, her hair hung damply on the shoulders of her clean cotton T-shirt, and she was dressed in drawstring pajama pants. Jonah’s head was tilted back and he was snoring, openmouthed.

She went to the sliding-glass doors and opened them, and he sat upright, giving her a sheepish grin. “Some bodyguard I turned out to be. I’m here fifteen minutes and I fall asleep on the job.”

“It’s okay,” she reassured him. “There is zero chance Ben is coming back here.”

Jonah thought about it for a moment. “I still don’t get it. Any of it. I know you say he probably got a payoff from the insurance people, but it’s not like Ben ever cared about money. I mean, did you ever see the place where he lives?”

“No,” Drue said. “I got the feeling he was a little embarrassed by it.”

“He lives like a damned hobo,” Jonah said. “I mean, the dude makes decent money. But he rents a room from this little old lady in Woodlawn. He doesn’t even have his own kitchen. And he buys most of his clothes at Goodwill and brown-bags his lunch most of the time.”

“Did he ever tell you about the video game he was working on?” she asked. “His side hustle?”

“Insect Assassin? Yeah. He actually had me play it a couple times. Like as a beta tester. I’m not that into gaming. I had an Xbox, and I played some in undergrad school, but I kind of outgrew it, I guess. Anyway, it was more than a side hustle. He really believed Insect Assassin would make him rich. And it was a pretty cool game, I’ll admit. But the graphics were lame. He had some famous artist chick in Korea he wanted to work with, to design the graphics, but he said she was crazy expensive.”

“And that’s why he did what he did. To get the money to take his game to market,” Drue said.

Jonah nodded in agreement. “Where do you think he is now?”

“In hell, I hope. It’s what? Nearly two-thirty?” She picked up her cell phone and frowned. “Hernandez hasn’t called yet. You’d think by now they would have picked him up.”

“You know what?” Jonah slapped his knee. “Ben told me he was playing in a gaming tournament this weekend.”

“You’re right. That’s where he was the first time I tried to call him Friday night, and where he called me from yesterday,” Drue said. “But that wouldn’t still be going on now, right?”

“Maybe. These tournaments? I went to one with him once, to watch him play Madden NFL. Which he sucked at, by the way. These guys, they play around the clock, they only stop for pee breaks.”