Somers sighed. “Goodbye, Father. Thank you.”

  “I expect regular updates, John-Henry.”

  “You’ll get them.”

  “And, if it’s not too much to ask, I would appreciate it if your husband and foster-son could avoid further jail time. Believe it or not, your personal life reflects on me, and for some inexplicable reason, voters balk at sprees of criminal behavior—”

  Hazard reached over and disconnected the call.

  Letting his head sag back against the seat, Somers closed his eyes. “Thank you for that. I’m going to be paying for it until Christmas.”

  Silence came back at him, a silence jangling with all the sounds that weren’t speech: the van’s tires, the hiss of the air conditioning, the protest of the suspension when they hit an uneven patch. The headache lessened—the cool air, the break from the light. For a few minutes, the relief took up enough of his attention that Somers didn’t realize how long the silence was stretching out. Then the van turned, and Somers opened his eyes.

  Hazard sat stiffly, arms locked at the elbow, hands clutching the wheel like he was trying to choke the life out of it. His gaze was fixed on something in the distance. A muscle in his jaw flexed.

  “I know you don’t like him,” Somers began, “and I know he was pressing your buttons, but it would mean a lot to me—”

  “Ramona called.” The words sounded like the broken pieces of something much larger, spilling out of Hazard. “Someone called her and told her Colt got arrested. She—she said she doesn’t know if things are working out.”

  For a moment, Somers’s brain raced to catch up—not just with the facts of what Hazard had said, but limning the rest of the story, all the gaps Hazard had left: his silent agony over the last day, wrestling alone with his fear.

  “Oh, love. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Hazard shook his head. He was blinking furiously, and it was frightening to see him like this, at the end of that tremendous self-control. “It was at Loretta’s talk. And then I was busy playing bodyguard, and I thought I’d tell you in the morning, but then Ayelet called, and—” He swallowed; it looked difficult. “If they decide to take Colt—”

  “Stop, stop, stop.” Somers sat up. He reached to take Hazard’s hand, peeling it away from the steering wheel. “That’s not going to happen, so stop right there.”

  “It could happen, John. Ramona’s not wrong; Colt’s been in a lot of trouble since he came to us—”

  “He’s a teenager. He would have gotten in trouble wherever he was.”

  “—and he’s been hurt, almost killed, a few times. Maybe this isn’t the right place for him. If he’s not safe—” Hazard cut off. His breathing was heavy, his chest rising and falling too fast. “And maybe we’re not the right ones to raise him. Maybe we’ve been too indulgent, or maybe it’s the opposite, maybe we’re too hard on him, and—” The words picked up speed, a torrent pouring out of him. “I have no fucking idea what I’m doing, John, I really don’t. It doesn’t matter how many fucking books I read or how many articles, I have no fucking clue. I’ve talked to him about acceptable behavior, about right and wrong. I’ve tried to explain long-term costs and benefits. Lord knows I’ve threatened him. But it doesn’t seem to change anything, so maybe I’m the problem. Maybe your dad is right; if I’m fucking up all the time, why should I expect Colt to do any differently?”

  Somers held his thoughts the way he held his breath, and he held them until his mind was empty. They drove along a quiet street lined with plane trees, the leaves tender and a fresh-edged green. The houses here had two-car garages with basketball hoops screwed under the eaves. The sidewalks looked new—none of the wear and buckling that you saw in older neighborhoods. Blank windows stared back at them. People grew up here, lived here, died here. On the other side of the empty glass. People talked with their spouses about their kids. In that house, in the one with the red shutters and the cardinal painted on the side of the mailbox. But, Somers told himself, drawing in breath, his thoughts coming together and splintering again. But that was them, on the other side of the mirror. And this is us.

  “He loves you,” Somers started with. “He’s not going to leave you, not willingly.”

  “If it’s what’s best for him—”

  That pulled a laugh from Somers. Hazard shot him a glare and tried to work his hand free. Somers struggled to hold on, fighting the laugh.

  “Cut it out, dummy! Let me hold your hand. I’m laughing because this is scary and it’s a reaction and because I honestly think you’d cut off your arm if you thought it was best for him, so there’s this part of my brain that can’t figure out how you can believe that you might be having a bad effect on him.”

  “My feelings are irrelevant, John. We’ve seen parents who love their children and still make all the wrong choices. It’s obvious that my own problematic behavioral patterns are impacting Colt—”

  “Oh, it’s obvious now? Because a moment ago, it was a possibility. I believe you said ‘if.’”

  Hazard fixed a furious look on Somers. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Listen, love. Raising kids is terrifying; believe me, I get it. When we had Evie, I’d get up three or four times a night to check if she was still breathing. I would only hold her if I was sitting down because I didn’t want to drop her. Raising teenagers is apparently the exact same, only now they’re driving two tons’ worth of metal down the highway at eighty miles an hour. Nobody has all the answers.” He smiled. “No matter how many books you read.”

  This time, Hazard managed to yank his hand away, and he fastened it around the wheel. “You’re being obtuse. And I don’t need you to—to make fun of me.”

  Somers held his thoughts again, trying for that place that was still. All this moving, and he wanted the spot that was unmoved.

  “When Colt missed curfew last Friday, what happened?”

  Hazard’s jaw tightened. He must have been fighting the urge to speak, but the words fought their way free, and he gritted out, “He was grounded. Saturday and Sunday.”

  “Without his phone?”

  The blinker clicked for the next turn.

  “I’m pretty sure he lost his phone privileges, so let’s go with that. Did he miss curfew by a lot?”

  Hazard reached for the radio. He ran the dial blindly until somebody came on talking about baking blackbirds in a pie.

  “It must have been by a lot for him to be grounded for two whole days. And no phone. An hour? Two hours? I was already asleep, but he must have gotten home at, what? Two in the morning?”

  “It was twelve minutes. And you’re missing the point because this is completely different—”

  “No, Ree, you’re missing the point. He’s a good kid. When he messes up, you hold him accountable. If he doesn’t do his homework, you make him turn off the TV. If he doesn’t do his chores, he’s stuck at home until he finishes them. Yeah, he’s got a mouth on him—and that actually might be your fault because you’re such a smartass yourself—but most of the time, he’s respectful and he’s polite and he’s trying really hard to make you proud of him. He screws up now and then because he’s a teenager and his brain isn’t fully developed. That’s every teenager in the world, all right?”

  “I’m not saying you’re not right—”

  “No, why would you ever make something that easy?”

  Voice tight, Hazard continued, “—but even if my assessment is…skewed, it doesn’t matter. If Ramona decides to take him away from us—”

  “No.”

  “John—”

  Somers shook his head. “No. We’re not going down that path. Colt’s staying with us; we’ll figure it out.”

  After another moment of holding himself rigid, Hazard relaxed against the seat. He brushed a hand over his face. His throat moved.

  “Come on,” Somers said, taking his hand again. “It’s going to be ok.”

  Hazard closed his eyes for a moment—only a moment. He was, after all, Emery Hazard and, therefore, a relentlessly safe driver. Then he nodded. Then he shook himself loose from Somers, the movements brisk and businesslike, and took the wheel again with both hands. His voice was crisp as he stated, “And I am not a smartass.”

  “So, the last time we went to the grocery store, when we were checking out and Marcia asked, ‘Just coming in for some groceries?’ and you said, ‘No, Marcia, I’m here to see my urologist,’ and she said she knew they had a pharmacy, but she didn’t know anything about a urologist, and your face got really red—hey, a little like right now—”

  “All right,” Hazard said loudly. “Your input is no longer required.”

  “Do you even have a urologist?”

  A little more loudly: “I said be quiet.”

  Which was about as close to an all-clear sign as you ever got from Emery Hazard, so Somers carefully folded up his smile and pretended to read something on his phone.

  The Ace in the Hole sat in an up-and-coming section of town—the asphalt was old but well patched, the mailboxes aluminum and marked by dings from hail and rocks thrown up by tires, and most of the houses were solid little bungalows with the paint kept up and crabgrass lawns. Some of those houses, though, had been bought and flipped in the last few years, as the college and new businesses brought fresh life to the town. Other houses had been torn down, little McMansions built over their graves. If things kept up like this, in another five years, there would be coffee shops and expensive private gyms and nail salons coming up like weeds.

  For now, though, it was still a comfortably middle-class place, and the Ace in the Hole, set on a corner lot, had the air of an institution. Somers spotted the animated neon sign first, which he figured was kind of the whole point: a gunslinger in a ten-gallon hat drew down on an unseen opponent, and then a star-shaped effect signaled what must have been a gunshot. Then the sign reset itself and played the whole thing again. The restaurant was a long, low-slung building with log siding and a ribbed metal roof painted barn red. Somers suppressed an internal groan; Hazard had spent three weeks in January researching metal roofs, and Somers anticipated a fresh bout of conversations that ended with him leaving the bedroom with a pillow under his arm and shouting something over his shoulder along the lines of, “It doesn’t matter if the roof lasts fifty years if I kill you because you won’t stop talking about it when I’m trying to go to sleep.” He hoped it sounded slightly less hysterical outside his head.

  Hazard turned into the lot, and gravel crunched under the tires. Cars and trucks, almost exclusively domestic, filled the spots closest to the doors, and Hazard ended up having to park behind the building, next to a pair of overflowing dumpsters.

  “Lunch rush is still in full swing,” Somers said as he unbuckled himself.

  “Really, John? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “This is what I meant about being a smartass.”

  Hazard had the decency to blush, but he undermined it by slamming the door.

  Inside, the light was low, and at first all Somers could make out was the river-stone fireplace and hearth dominating the far wall. Overhead, antler chandeliers held dim electric bulbs; the sepia light was almost the same hue as the honey-colored wood, and it messed with Somers’s vision, making it hard to tell where the light ended and the shadows began. People filled the room, crowding around tables, the chairs inches apart. If they weren’t at capacity, they were within sneezing distance of it, and Somers made a mental note to ask the fire marshal to stop by another day at dinner. Giclee prints of oil paintings—the Old West, the empty plains, the Rockies—mingled on the walls with black-and-white photos of raw, rangy men with lassos and chaps and spurs, one of them with a saddle over his shoulder. A longhorn skull hung prominently over the hostess stand, and although Somers wasn’t an expert, he didn’t think it was a reproduction.

  But all of that faded into the background as two other decorative choices occupied Somers’s attention. The first was the number of acrylic standees placed throughout the restaurant. At first glance, Somers had taken the life-size cutouts for patrons or staff, but as his eyes adjusted, he could see that these were meant to be another element of local color—eat dinner with Wyatt Earp or Billy the Kid or Jesse James and the gang standing next to you. It was, as his mind caught up with what he was seeing, one of those things he filed away as creepy as fuck, and it made him wonder about the people who didn’t seem to mind it—hell, some of the diners were getting their pictures taken with the cutouts.

  The other thing he noticed was the guns. Guns on the walls—real ones, not plastic replicas. Guns on the staff, all of them old enough to take advantage of Missouri’s open carry law. The hostess, who might have been sixteen by a stretch, carried a little cap gun six-shooter strapped over her Daisy Dukes. She did a double take of Somers’s bandage before smiling at them.

  “Good Lord,” Somers muttered. “No wonder I’ve never been in here before.”

  Hazard was staring to the right as he said in a low, warning voice, “John.”

  Somers followed his gaze to the bar. It took him a moment to spot what had caught Hazard’s attention: Dusty Keller and Miranda Carmichael. Miranda was in jeans and an American flag tee because she was off duty, but the fact that one of his detectives was drinking in a bar owned by the Sturgis family made Somers swear under his breath. Derrick Sturgis was tending bar, dressed in another knit polo—teal, today—and as Somers watched, he waved off Carmichael’s offer of a credit card.

  “Drinks are on the house,” Hazard said.

  Somers didn’t trust himself to answer that.

  “Table for two?” the cap gun hostess asked with a perky smile. “That’ll be about thirty minutes, or—”

  “We’ll try the bar,” Somers said, stepping around her and threading a path between tables.

  “John,” Hazard said behind him.

  Somers didn’t look back.

  He reached the bar as Keller was finishing a drink. The man jerked the glass away from his lips, beer dribbling down onto the Harley-Davidson shirt straining over his belly, and he swore and slapped the drops away with his free hand. Carmichael was sliding her credit card back into a slim wallet. She looked up, her expression hard. Somers let the moment drag out. All sorts of noises filled the dining room: mingled voices, an announcer speaking on the flatscreen TV, cheers, the clink of flatware. It faded into a background static as he kept his eyes on his detective.

  Finally, she rocked her weight onto one hip, slid the wallet into her back pocket, and said, “What happened to your head?”

  “Detective Carmichael, I hope I didn’t just see you accepting free drinks. The department has clear guidelines about gifts and gratuities.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Keller asked. “She’s off duty. It’s none of your business what she does.”

  “Is there a problem here?” Joyce Sturgis wore her bleached hair down and loosely curled, and today she had ditched the pantsuit and opted for jeans and a Western-style button-up. The strata of makeup, though, looked even more rigorously applied. It had to have taken a significant amount of time to make herself look like that every day. No rest for the wicked, apparently. “Hello, Chief Somerset. May I help you with something?”

  “I’m having a word with a member of my department, Mrs. Sturgis.”

  “There’s no problem, Joyce.” Carmichael slid down from her stool. She barely came up to Somers’s shoulder, but she had a way of looking up at him like she was the one looking down. “Dusty and I were just leaving.”

  “Detective Carmichael, we’re having a conversation—”

  “I took personal days, remember? You suggested I take some time for myself. So, that’s what I’m doing. If you want to talk, you can do it when I get back.”

  She pushed between Somers and Hazard, and it was either let her go or grab her and turn this into something else. Somers let her go. Keller followed, a wannabe-thug glower on his face as he checked Hazard with his shoulder. Hazard’s face remained impassive, and he rocked away from the blow, and then Keller was gone.

  “Well,” Joyce said brightly. “I have two seats that just opened up. Why don’t you—”

  “Mrs. Sturgis, we need to talk.”

  Joyce’s smile stayed within the acceptable parameters of all that makeup, but the gleam in her got brighter. “As you can see, I’m getting run off my feet. Another time—”

  “No,” Hazard said flatly.

  A hint of color showed underneath all that foundation. “I’m sorry, now is not—”

  “You had plenty to say the other night at the board meeting. And, because you’re a law-abiding citizen, I can’t imagine why you’d refuse to help the police. Jesus Christ, look at all the flags you’ve got in here.”

  “Mom?” Kirsta stopped as she passed them, a bus tub full of dirty glasses and plates in her arms. She wore the Ace in the Hole uniform: a branded t-shirt and jean cut-offs too small for her thighs. The thick pastiche of makeup looked even worse in the dim, sepia light. “What’s going on?”

  “Twenty-seven needs water,” Joyce said without looking at her daughter.

  “What’s the problem here?” Derrick asked, leaning across the bar.

  “Robbie needs another shot; he’s trying to get your attention.”

  “If you think you can come into my place,” Derrick said, “and mess with my family—”

  “Did you hear me?” Joyce snapped, her head swiveling toward him. “Do what I tell you to do.”

  A flush filled Derrick’s fleshy face. He sank back behind the bar, his hands curling into fists at his side, and then he scurried down toward the man who was holding up an empty shot glass. The patrons seated closest to the encounter shrank into their seats, eyes blank with the kind of polite pretense that nothing untoward had happened.

  But one face was different. Kirsta watched her father go with an expression like glee. “He didn’t do the trash like you told him to,” she said in a low voice to her mom. It had all the thrill of a grade-school tattle. “He just stacked the bags by the back door.”