The litany of Hazard’s sins faded into white noise as Hazard considered the Allen wrenches, which had clearly come as a set, and of which two, minimum, were missing. Had Marcus taken the Allen wrenches to use somewhere else? Had he lost them? What had he needed Allen wrenches for in the first place? Had he been assembling shitty furniture in the back of the PT Cruiser?

Nico lived in the newer, trendier side of Wahredua, where growth over the last twenty years had built a college-town community around Wroxall. Unlike the fieldstone and brick of so much of the rest of Wahredua, this part of town had glass and steel and stucco, with high-rise (for Wahredua) condos and lots of mixed-use spaces. They passed a barbershop aimed at young men who needed curly mustaches; they passed a clothing exchange; on the corner, in what Hazard assumed was a misunderstanding of the word irony, stood a restaurant called the Un-Diner. It clearly had a 50s kitsch theme: an Airstream aesthetic, lots of chrome and red vinyl upholstery. Through the glass, Hazard could see a woman dressed as Elvis working the griddle; when she bent over, her pompadour brushed the hot slab of metal, putting her in danger of bursting into flames.

“What?” Marcus said.

“I said, I hate people your age.”

Nico’s building sat in the middle of all that bullshit, and Hazard followed Marcus up to Nico’s unit. At the door, Marcus sorted his keys and then hesitated.

“Should I knock?”

“Do you think that’ll help us find him?” Hazard asked.

“I meant—in case, I don’t know, I made a mistake, or—”

Hazard hammered on the door. “Nico, get your scrawny ass out of bed this fucking minute. We’re coming in.” To Marcus, he said, “Now he’s prepared.”

Groaning, Marcus let them into the apartment.

Hazard grabbed Marcus’s shoulder and stopped him before proceeding into the apartment alone. Aside from a fried-egg smell, the apartment didn’t seem any worse than usual. In the kitchen, the usual dirty dishes were piled in the sink, including a melted tub of Food Club Rocky Road ice cream. The dirty frying pan on the stove might have explained the egg smell; Hazard guessed Nico had eaten something before heading out for the day. He set that thought to one side, though; he didn’t want to make any assumptions about a timeline.

Moving deeper into the apartment, Hazard spotted the usual chaos: textbooks stacked on the table next to a spread of primary-color jockstraps; a trail of socks and ripped t-shirts and athletic shorts heading into the bedroom; a cushion on the sofa pulled out and turned on its side, presumably because, as usual, Nico had lost his phone or his wallet or his keys and had, at the last moment, scrambled to find them. Hazard walked through the bedroom, checking the unmade bed, the bedside tables, the closet.

No blood. No signs of a struggle—although it would be hard to tell; Nico could have battled for his life, and it would still just look like a troupe of college freshmen had taken up residence here for the weekend. Nothing, Hazard had to admit, that made him think something had happened to Nico here. He flipped on the bathroom light, and something lunged at him.