10.

Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile;
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

(LLL, I.1.14)

Fredag, november 4:e, klockan sex på kvällen

Dear Cole,

Today your name is Cole. And, no, Cole, if I've told you once then I've told you a thousand times, the word 'sex' in the date has nothing to do with sex! It the Swedish Fish's way of saying "six." Sex is actually kön, except you don't pronounce it like "KAAAAAAAHHHHNNNN!" Like you're yelling at Ricardo Montalban, but kind of like, well, there's this silent T and Y sort of sound, and … yeah. We'll leave it at that. Leave it to people who eat dried up fish to make a TY sound from a K.

Here I am! Back at the Precinct. I was hoping that Gus or the Chief or Juliet or SOMEONE would be here to listen to my excited puppy-dog yapping. You know who IS here? NOBODY. The most notable absence is that of my poor, harried and blighted boyfriend. He left a pile a cold cases on his desk. Tyas, who is also here but is still scared of me—even though I promised to never dress like Hans Trapper again for Christmas and throw a bag over his head like I was going to carry him off—but Tyas said that Lassie (Tyas called him "Detective Lassiter" because Tyas gets very AR TIC YOO LIT whenever he talks to me—do I slur?) that Lassie dashed out of the building about twenty minutes before I dashed into it.

I'm very proud of myself: I didn't touch the cold cases. Didn't even lay a hand on them. All I went to the desk for was to snoop through his pile of missed calls (three, and we must remember to pick up his dry-cleaning on the way home) and I found that Mounds bar that I shoved far, far back in the middle drawer. There's an Almond Joy in there, but I don't feel like a nut today. (Bada-bump-ching! Thank you. Lamest joke ever.)

Now I'm ensconced in the older, less used video room, where I tend to hide away and nap. Someone's getting a psych-eval in the next room, and sometimes snippets of conversation drift through the ventilation and down into the wells of my comely ears. I can't say it's very interesting, although I have heard the words "in bed together" often. Long money's on it being someone with a healthy sex life. In this precinct, uh, that leaves three people out of, like, eighty-five: Lassie, Dobson and Sergeant Knack. I only know that about Sergeant Knack because I've already overheard one of her psych-evals, and, wow, it was very—eesh. I think she's in the wrong business. She should be writing erotica or at least some very good Vampire Diaries fanfic.

Oh, wait, there's that phrase again. "He acts like an ass whenever we're IN BED TOGETHER."

Okay, much more definition that time, and it's definitely a woman, and it's definitely Knack. There are so many puns that I could make with her last name and her favorite private past time, but I think I'd better leave it be.

At least I know the person in the next room isn't my father. Thank the gods for small favors.

Anyway, I am now sitting here all by myself waiting for Lassie to come back. It occurred to me that I could call him, or call Gus, but I don't have much more to say than "ZOMG there's a blue chair in Mr. Scobie's room!" Even saying it nice and loud, with decent projection, will not make it sound more impressive. It's a chair. In a man's bedroom.

The book of Shakespeare takes an explanation that I haven't got. It must be Waterstone's. It matches the set I saw in Waterstone's house. Why does Mr. Scobie have it? Did Waterstone give it to him, or did Scobie take it? Even a dull man who's spent his life around horses knows it would be dumb to take a book from the house of a man you've just helped die. Ergo, Waterstone must've given it to Scobie. The two know each other. That also explains the chair. What's the Connect Four between them?

It's certainly not enough to bring the man in for questioning. The Chief is right: Waterstone killed himself. My job is to figure out why. And who is Christopher Sly?

Gus is probably at home, still doing laundry. I'll call him when I'm done at Tanglevine. He won't be as excited or entranced about the chair as I was. It's usually his reprimanding voice I hear in my head. "You found a chair, Shawn? Congratulations, you've bothered me again for no reason!" But I know that he's intrigued about the whole thing—chair notwithstanding—and he can say all he wants to about my method of stringing together improbable likenesses. That's why they pay us the big bucks.

-x-

Shawn had to stop his therapeutic nonsense to answer his phone. He expected a call from Lassie or Gus—but not his father. When the caller I.D. displayed "Balding Cranky Old Man," Shawn groaned. If he sent it to voicemail, Dad would just call again, and again, until—

"I'm answering now just to get this out of the way," Shawn said instead of a hello.

"Nice to hear your voice, too." Henry lapsed into a second's worth of silence. All right. So Shawn wasn't eager to talk about his first day of work. Henry let them travel another path. "Are you done with my paint chips yet?"

"No, I'm not. And, really? Really? That's the reason you're calling me?"

"One of far too many to name. How are you not done with them yet? I don't understand. Does it take two guys that long to pick out paint for the living room?"

"Exactly how attached to these paint chips are you? They've been out of your sight forty-eight hours, and you're already more worried about them than you were about me the last time I was out of your sight for forty-eight hours."

Now was the time for a diversion. Henry would've called it a segue if he'd had a neat way of flowing from one topic to another. He didn't. Diversion was more appropriate. Shawn continued to beat the paint chip drum.

"You know, Dad, it'll take us more than a couple of days to decide on a color. I know you probably think that all gay people have built-in color-enhancing and superhero decorating skills, but we don't. You might as well strike that off the list. This is Carlton Lassiter we're talking about. The same Carlton whose idea of 'a splash of color' is a wooden picture frame."

"He wears lots of colored ties," Henry threw in, feeling suddenly defensive and not sure why.

"Ties, yes. But he's not like that when it comes to walls. Well, you know—you've seen them. It's so gray and gloomy in there, Richard Simmons would sob, and he is the happiest person in the world. What's another reason you called me?"

Diversion. Right. A little less significant now than it would've been a harangue before. "Did you get yourself fired on your first day?"

So that's why Henry was calling, to see how the job had gone? Shawn had a hollow pang in his chest, a slight touch of guilt. It was nice of Daddy to check on him. "No, I didn't. Did you expect me to?"

"My expectations of you are naturally low."

"That's a mutual thing between us."

"But I've also heard that Scobie out there at the stables doesn't like anyone. He's fired everyone he's hired. And apparently he has some kind of test to see if you're an idiot or not."

"What's the test?" Shawn zipped through each "test" that he'd known to be a test.

"I-I don't remember exactly. Kendra, she does my mani-pedi—"

"Dad, that is disgusting," Shawn grumbled, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Go on, quickly, while I'm still breathing."

"Her sister works at the Country Club, and I was asking her—Kendra, not her sister—about the stables. She said something about a certain horse out there that Mr. Scobie uses to see if his potential underling—"

"Appropriate word."

"Kendra's word, not mine. To see if his potential underling has instincts with horses and also the ability to take his—Scobie's—word for it."

Shawn hummed and nodded, as if his dad were watching. "Yeah, I know what you're talking about. A horse named Timber."

"That was it. Timber."

"The Hayworths own him. Do you know the Hayworths?"

Now Shawn was dangling his father along, not answering the first question but instead moving them along. Henry still didn't know if Shawn had passed the test, if he was still employed, or if he'd failed the test and not been hired at all.

"They own half of Santa Barbara."

"Besides that. I know they own half of Santa Barbara."

"They used to own more than half. I think they used to own the Tanglevine Club back in the day. Before it was the Tanglevine Club. They weren't just into real estate, but I can't remember what else they did. They had their stronghold on the city back before my time."

"If I run into Neanderthal Bob, I'll ask."

"Ha, ha."

"Seriously, though, I'm going over there later to help out the Mikes. I'll ask them."

"So."

"So?"

"Dammit, Shawn, did you get fired or not?"

"Oh." Shawn ceased drawing a little sketch of a horse in the journal margin. "No, I didn't. I didn't touch Timber, chiefly because Scobie told me not to. And the horse just had an attitude. 'I'm the best horse ever! Look at me, look at me!'"

"The two of you should get along really well."

"Bah. I'm going back to work tomorrow morning. Late morning. Scobie does the morning feeding, then I go in, and I'm guessing that I'll be cleaning out the stalls once the horses that go out in the field get to the field. And should I get to spend some time with Carlton later tonight, I'll ask him about the paint colors. Again. He's still slightly resistant to the idea."

"If you two are going to paint, you'd better do it this upcoming week. The weather's going to get bad soon."

"I'm hanging up now, because I don't want to talk about this with you. It's weird for me. I can't take it."

Shawn was saved by the opening of the door, a flash of light into a room whose overhead fluorescents Shawn rarely turned on—and the long, thin shadow attached to Lassie.

"Really gotta go, Dad. Hugs and kisses."

"Shawn—!" Henry stared into the receiver that'd gone dead. Discouraged, he put it back on the cradle. "Figures. Just when I was going to offer to help."

Far before Lassiter decided he'd miss Shawn's flip-flops under the table, his motorcycle jacket thrown carelessly over the beige chair—in other words, long before they were an item—Carlton's stoic expressions were no match for Shawn's cutting intuition. It took neither of them more than a scant look at one another to spot excitement. Each had a piece of news. Rarely had Shawn seen Lassiter so animated. That one time that he and Jules were selected to speak at 21 LES in front of all twenty people that'd attended. And when Mr. Brandt's pig escaped in Barrel Creek, and the whole town—about twenty people—got together to hunt for it, with torches, horses and tranquilizer guns. And once, of course, in bed. Shawn felt the pooling of sexy Carlton stood plenty erect against Weapon-Demonstrating Carlton and Pig-Chasing Carlton.

Shawn tipped into him for a squeeze. He petted his fingers lightly down Carlton's lapel. "Hello, lover. You go first. I'll wait." Shawn found himself pushed away, gazed at, not exactly lovingly but—but there was something odd about Carlton. "Wait, wait, wait, is this a bad surprise? I don't like bad surprises, they make me—"

Carlton smashed his palm against Shawn's mouth. His excitement mingled with alarm. "I'll take my hand off in a second. Just don't want you to fly off the handle when I say this. Not that you exactly fly off handles. More like—glide gently into a firestorm."

Shawn's head tipped. Again, proof that Lassie had actually read all those literature books in college, still sitting in the Nautical Room at home. He lifted his shoulders, gesturing, trying to hurry this along.

"The Chief had me going through some cold cases."

Yeah—and? Shawn seemed to ask.

"There was one in that there caught my interest. It was like Waterstone's case. A suicide. But nearby was a note that saying that the woman had killed someone else and that's why she couldn't live anymore. I didn't say that very well, but you get what I mean. No, it wasn't Christopher Sly she'd killed. It was Adriano de Armado. Do you know who that is?"

One of the more unpopular of Shakespeare's works, no doubt, since Shawn was drawing a blank.

Lassiter let his hand down. Shawn exhaled dramatically, but he did not glide into any firestorm. He dangled beneath a droopy little cloud, really.

"He's from Love's Labour's Lost," continued Carlton. "A Spaniard who was kind of an ass."

Shawn's gesture swooped as he spoke. "I didn't read that one in school."

"Can't say I can blame your educational system there. It's hard to read, it's style is a little—odd. It's like one giant tongue twister. I went to the library to look up some Shakespeare stuff, to be sure I was right—about de Armado."

Shawn had two words to say. "The internet!" He almost smacked Lassiter's forehead for him.

"It's out," Carlton stated. "They've been putting in new routers. Why do you think there's nobody here? They all went home to play with their computers or tablets or whatever the hell they're using these days. And you know I'm not smart when it comes to smart phones." Carlton decided to halt there, at least for the time being. It was Shawn's turn to explain how his day had gone, though they were more used to doing this as they prepared dinner in the lushness of home, but he supposed the video room would suffice. "What happened at work?"

"Nothing too serious. I signed all the papers, so I am legitimately employed as a stable boy. Feel free to live out your Medieval and-or Victorian fantasies now. Well, not now now. But maybe when we get home." Shawn paused, ruminative. It wasn't a good time to mention the chair. Lassie's news had weighed down any importance the chair might've had. "Which probably won't be until after nine. I promised the Mikes that I'd go over and help them out. Looking through the archives. You want to come along? You might like it. You'll get to see parts of Tanglevine you've never seen before." His eyebrows waggled. "The Secret Dungeon!"

Carlton's frown tightened, and his eyebrows wrinkled together. "I'd rather spend my time seeing things of you I've never seen before. There are still bits of you I don't understand."

"Only bits?"

"Great big galaxies."

"That's better. Why would you want to?" Shawn said, deflecting. "Then you'd know and I'd be boring. Will you go or not? The sooner we go the sooner we'll be done. And I can't expect that the Mikes think I'll be there until I've gone through all the papers and photographs."

Yet unconvinced, Carlton wondered what he'd get out of the bargain. Shawn understood what he was thinking.

"They're going to feed us."

That was all Carlton needed to hear. "Let's go! Don't forget your—" the journal was handed to its owner, "your little friend."

-x-

Tanglevine had gathered a good crowd for a weeknight. Shawn zipped through the round tables, able to name the menu items by sight, by smell, and impressing himself with the feat if no one else. The new chef was talented, but Shawn hadn't exactly warmed up to him yet. It wasn't to the kitchen Shawn led Carlton, but into the deep well of the proscenium, then into the wilderness of the backstage, the metal spiral staircase, one of the oldest architectural pieces left from the original 1880's saloon, and up to the office of the Mikes. It was two doors ahead of the object Shawn called now The Terrible Door. He didn't think of it except in passing, to let his eyes catch on it, black and rectangular and serviceable, like other doors. In its present life, it was a storage room: filing cabinets, kitchen goods, napkins and packets of ketchup, that had been over-ordered to explosive surplus. Shawn never went in there, had no reason to go in there. He'd rather be shunned to the pits of Tanglevine than step a foot beyond The Terrible Door.

He rapped knuckles on the Mikes' door, wasn't bade entrance but was surprised at Mike C. suddenly standing there. His long finely-boned cheeks were flushed pink, the underside of his eyes in myriad shades of gray and lavender and green. Mike was prone to headaches.

"You're here." The lameness of his voice definitely indicated headache. A green pill bottle was spotted on his desk. "I'll show you to the doldrums. You sure you don't mind doing this?"

"I've got Lassie to keep me company," Shawn explained, now following Mike, and Lassiter following him. "It's okay that he's here, isn't it?"

"The more the merrier," Mike responded absently. It occurred to him that he didn't know a whole lot about Carlton. "Did you grow up in Santa Barbara?"

The innocent question stunned Carlton. "Not exactly."

"Lassiter associates himself with no particular location. He's my nomad. Think General Custer, but without the useless man slaughtering and the possible gonorrhea."

Mike had grown used to Shawn's jokes, quips and jests. The unpredictability was part of Shawn's persona. He'd never known anyone to walk around carting a spotlight at all times, the way Shawn did. The traditional blare of Shawn's brilliance had begun to wane, not all at once, the way a light bulb burns out, but slowly, the way the sun goes down. He didn't know what good Carlton would bring to the mess of disorganized archives in the lower level of Tanglevine, yet Carlton's mind, completely opposite Shawn's, nevertheless worked furiously, tirelessly, and melded well with his partner's.

Mike guided them into the dark, spooky realm of Hank's Corner. He laid his elbow into the secret latch of a masking panel. The panel hung loose on lintel latches. Mike's fingers guided into the wall. Carlton was amazed. He'd never known that was there, and mumbled words to that effect, while Shawn stood aloof, the casual observer, haughty because he'd known the whole time, and because being let into the cave escalated him into the status of the Tanglevine elite. Mike expounded.

"This used to be the Gambling Hall, back when the Vine was a speakeasy during Prohibition. Only Santa Barbara's richest and LA's worthiest were allowed down here. A big man named Henry Acer used to be the door's bodyguard. We think that's how this got to be called Hank's Corner. Other than the plant. Nobody knows how old Hank the Plant is. Could've been here since the place was built."

They descended a set of limestone steps, narrow, worn, with an ironwork handrail hewn into the wall to keep the steepness from being dangerous. Carlton could imagine that a few people might have fallen to their depths on that staircase, drunk or pushed or careless. Shawn took the steps with ease, but, of course, Shawn had grand foot dexterity. Carlton had witnessed it as they romped through the woods of Uncle Fenz's land (and probably some of the neighboring acreage, too—oops).

"How long did that go on? The speakeasy, the gambling." Carlton made it to the bottom of the stairwell alive. He didn't know that he breathed a heavy sigh of relief, noticeable to Shawn. "I mean, was this a private visiting quarters for celebrities even after Prohibition ended in 1933?"

"Most definitely." Mike grabbed a box of black and white photographs off the Old Patriarch's desk. He shoved it to the detective. "And I have the proof."

Carlton picked up the first photo his fingers came to. He gaped. "Is that who I think it is?"

Shawn, excited, peered over Lassie's arm to acquaint himself with the photo. Early 40's, as told by the woman's hair, the man's short tie, the homburg set back off his forehead. He frowned loosely. "I don't have a clue who that is."

"I don't know who the woman is," said Carlton, "but the man is Milton Hackett. He used to write crime novels. Real pulp fiction kind of stuff. Like Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler. Only whereas Chandler died alone and sad, Hackett died rich, fat and happy. He based a lot of his stories in Santa Barbara, even invented this whole seedy underground to it, and a mob family that ran it—and had one of the few women private investigators ever written—back before it was considered cool. His last novel was unfinished, and the fragment was supposed to be released posthumously, but it disappeared."

Mike clapped his hands together, rubbed them. "I need to get home before I get any sicker."

"Yeah, I noticed," Shawn said, clapping Mike on the shoulder. "Take it easy, man. Carlton and I will work for a little while, then head home around nine. You didn't want us to do all of this tonight, did you?"

Shawn scanned the cavern. It was enormous. File boxes, varying in ages from ancient and moldering to new and bright, were scattered around the grotto, and boxes of smaller size, filled with papers, some folded and some curled, and filled with photographs, dotted every standing piece of furniture, from dusty ladder-backed chairs to the bar on the far wall. The place wasn't as creepy as Shawn remembered from his first and only other visit, but it had something to it, a faint melancholy, or an impenetrable mystery.

"Don't even try it," Mike advised. "Mike is still here. He's in the kitchen. I'll tell him to send down your chili cheese fries and beverages. Thanks for the help."

"Oh, thank you," Carlton replied, grinning, shaking sickly Mike's hand. He looked again into the box of photographs. "This will be a real pleasure, believe me."

"And the scary thing is, he's not just saying that to be polite. Go on," Shawn told Mike, nodding toward the staircase, "get out of here. We know what to do."

Mike left speedily, and Shawn waited to hear if the panel door shut—but a peek around the corner confirmed his suspicion: the hidden door was to be left open, though there was a chair in front of it. On the chair, Shawn could barely make out a piece of printer paper, no doubt its message was "Employees Only Do Not Enter." Just for the sake of consoling his screaming instincts, Shawn checked for cell phone reception. He shifted around a little, trying to get a bar to appear.

"Shawn."

"Yeah?"

"Look at this."

The photo Shawn was given contained a beautiful woman—the 50's, no—early 60's—judging by the handkerchief pulling back her hair, the clamdiggers and blouse she wore on an obviously warm Santa Barbara summer's day. He had no idea who she was. Carlton saw Shawn's mind try to identify the woman, but even Shawn couldn't do that.

"You were talking about the Hayworths, weren't you?"

Shawn gaped at Carlton. "Yeah—to my dad. Are you talking to my dad now?"

"He might've called—but that's not the point."

"So it's one of the Hayworth girls?"

"More like the Hayworth girl."

"Rita?"

"No," but Carlton slipped in an appreciative smirk. "Olivia Hayworth. She was a big patron of your new place of employment. That picture might've been taken there."

"Big into horses, were they?"

"Big into everything. They did everything big."

"How very J.R. Ewing of them."

Carlton fanned the picture. Shawn noted the tells: Carlton was hesitant to say a particularly intrusive line, something that both thrilled and frightened. "You know that woman I told you about, the suicide with the note about killing de Armado?"

Shawn's palms began to tingle, then sprouted a thin coat of cold sweat. He stuck them in jeans pockets. "What about it?"

"Her name was Maria Monroe. She was Olivia Hayworth's best friend."

"Oh, that's not so shocking. Except that I keep running into the Hayworths. And the chair at Scobie's house doesn't tie into the Hayworths."

"Chair? What chair?"

Shawn deflected. Now was not the time to talk about the chair. It seemed like such an unimportant clue. It was aggravating to have Carlton stumble upon clues, when Shawn felt like he was digging—literally—through horse crap just to find one. "I'll explain later. What else can you tell me about Maria and Olivia? Were they illicit lovers? Did her father disapprove? Was she lost after Maria's death?"

Carlton was only able to answer the last question. "She was already dead when Maria died."

Shawn's throat tightened. It did that sometimes when he sensed the joining of strange things. "All right, well, you know the next question I'm going to ask."

"How did Olivia die?"

"I don't suppose she was stabbed by de Armado, so how did she die?"

Carlton zipped through photographs with nimble, loose fingers, sorting them into piles by decade, and unable to look at Shawn. "Nobody knows."

"What do you mean, nobody knows?"

"She was presumed dead. Nobody ever found her body. Or her horse. She'd gone riding at the country club and just—vanished. The Virginia Dare of the SBCC."

The nearest space for Shawn to rest his rump was covered in papers, but he sat anyway. The crinkling under his butt inspired him to pull free the bundle of papers. Deeds, copies of deeds, employment records from the 1950's. Why the hell didn't this junk get thrown away years ago? Shawn set it aside.

"What about the rest? Olivia and Maria's friendship."

"I don't know much about it. It's all lore. I only remembered the bit about Olivia Hayworth disappearing because it was mentioned in Maria Monroe's case file. It was suggested by the detective at the time that Maria probably killed herself from grief."

Shawn did not think of himself, or what his life would be like if any of his friends, or Carlton, were suddenly gone. But he thought of Summer Preacher, the guilt and shame she had gone through. "People do die of broken hearts. Two years ago, I would never have said that was possible. Or it's possible the two of them had a quarrel—there are some pretty secluded spots at the country club—and Maria killed her. Although that doesn't explain the lack of evidence—and no body. No body," he shrugged, "no crime."

Away from the rummaging, Carlton faintly fingered the front of Shawn's shirt. A playful light gave a misty, playful dance in his eyes. "Can I ask you something?"

"It's the light bouncing off the limestone that makes me look even more irresistibly handsome." The joke was well received, but Shawn let Carlton ask what he wanted.

"Why are you so obsessed with figuring out the Waterstone case? I know why I am. But why are you?"

Part of it was a reflex, a sensation that he had somehow let down Summer, though he hadn't known her at all, and she had been troubled beyond repair. Part of it was the belief that bad things could not happen to good people, not all the time, and if it seemed that that evil plagued the non-deserving, he simply wanted to find the spark that had started it. "Because it was a terrible way to die. If I'd been the one hanging from that tree, and all I could leave behind was a cryptic message, I'd want some handsome psychic detective and his trusty set of pals to come along and inculpate or exculpate me, whichever was possible."

Carlton pinched Shawn's jaw and pecked his cheek. "You're a good man."

"Not really. I smell nice, though. It has you in my thrall."

The two of them looked to the staircase when a series of thumps echoed. "Might be Mike with our chili cheese fries. About freaking time, too. I'm starving," Shawn said, edging to the stairs, and tilting into the stairwell—just in time to see the secret door close tight against the wall.

"H'mm. Odd. The door just shut." Shawn was far from panicked.

Carlton pushed him out of the way and, all the way up the fourteen narrow steps, he rammed his elbow into the door. It didn't budge. He slammed his palm on it.

"Hey! Open this door! Now! I am a detective with the Santa Barbara Police Department, and if you don't let me out right now you're going to be in serious trouble!"

The incident might've frightened Shawn more if he'd let it. He claimed his usual air of insouciance. He wasn't destined to die in the basement of the Tanglevine Club. "Way to tell them off, Lassie. Keep pounding. Someone will hear you eventually. I'll wander around and see if I can get a signal with the phone and give Mike a call."

Lassiter pounded, but nobody came in the next two minutes. Shawn wandered, trying to find a reception bar. He found one, once, but as soon as he had Mike's number sent, the connection dropped. Fuming, frustrated, Shawn continued to wander, staring at his phone, not watching where he was going. His shoes tangled with a short pile of shoeboxes, full of papers, photographs, small ledgers. They spilled six feet in front of him, clogging up the biggest bare space in the grotto. Disgruntled, Shawn started tidying the mess. He reached down to pick up the next set of photos, and stopped.

"Hey, Lassie, come here."

"But—"

"Will you just come here?"

Lassiter obeyed, but reluctantly. He grabbed the photograph Shawn handed to him. Two men, outdoors, late 1950's. There was no name on the back. Carlton didn't recognize either face. "Who are they?"

Shawn had no trouble explaining. Perhaps it was the reason he'd been summoned to basement work, and the reason the door had shut. "The man in the hat is my new boss when he was probably twenty. The man on the right, in the suit and tie, is Mr. Waterstone. I knew that they had to know each other! That explains the chairs! And the book! And—what? What is this? What? Why? Why now?"

The lights had gone out. The underground room was now the deepest, most impenetrable black. Shawn's outstretched hands reached Carlton's.

"Shawn."

"What?"

"You know I love you, but I'm so pissed at you right now for making me come down here."

Shawn huffed. "Yeah, that's fair. We didn't even get our fries! Dammit." His phone showed no signal. "Any luck with yours?" He saw a flash of blue from the screen of Carlton's phone, then blackness as the screen and keypad went dark.

"No. Use your phone to guide us up the stairs. We'll pound until someone lets us out. The restaurant was crowded. Someone's going to have to use the toilet sooner or later."

A tiny possibility rose a lump of fear into the back of Shawn's throat. He wasn't going to say it. He wasn't even going to think it. But there were easy ways to clear out a restaurant in a hurry. Shawn's nose betrayed his vow of silence.

"Lassie."

"What?"

"Do you smell smoke?"

"Just don't even start, Spencer."

"Still love me?"

"Ask me again in ten minutes."