“It wouldn’t be appropriate; I’m your employer.”

  Nico laughed about that the whole time he was herding Hazard out onto the landing, while they locked the door, and as they took the stairs.

  “Enough,” Hazard growled when they started up the street.

  Nico stopped laughing. He wasn’t even smiling, not really, not unless you looked closely at his eyes.

  They had to fight their way upstream, navigating the crush of bodies that grew thicker as they made their way toward the bars and restaurants still open at this hour. The men and women they passed were inebriated, which meant weaving their way along the sidewalk contained an additional element of difficulty as they dodged Wahredua’s best and brightest: an older man cupping himself and hobbling like he was about to pee himself; a girl who literally fell out of her sports bra and started screaming and covering her chest; a boy who looked approximately fifteen heaving up his guts on the sidewalk, right where Hazard had been about to step.

  “John keeps talking about these Purge movies,” Hazard growled as he pushed the puker out of his path. “I’m not entirely clear on the premise, but it sounds like they might be on to something.”

  “I saw those,” Nico said. “There was this part—”

  “That was not a conversational opening, Nico. Now, I want you to listen and, ideally, take notes as I explain the fourteen-part system that I’ve been putting together to get you dating. The core element is a patent-pending ninety-day interleaved system of dating app cycling—”

  Then everything happened too quickly. Behind Hazard, an engine roared, and headlights raced toward him. He turned. The movement was instinctive, and his brain told him that it had been a mistake; he should have moved away from the lights. Nico screamed. With the headlights blinding him, Hazard had only an impression of a dark bulk behind them—a half ton of steel and glass shooting toward him. He turned to grab Nico, planning on throwing them both clear of the car’s path.

  Before he could move, though, a man twice Hazard’s size squealed and ran. He checked Hazard with a shoulder, sending Hazard sprawling. Hazard landed hard on his back. Breath exploded from his lungs. His head bounced off the sidewalk, and for a moment, fireworks lit up his vision.

  Tires squealed.

  Everyone was screaming.

  Then Hazard’s face connected with something. Metal. And a moment later, his brain had caught up and told him that, no, his head hadn’t been crushed between a sedan and the sidewalk and, instead, he had somehow smacked his forehead on the leg of a patio table. Hazard got up onto hands and knees, bumped his head on the table again, and somehow extricated himself.

  Nico was standing over him, face bloodless, chest heaving. He was starting to shake, chafing his bare arms as though he were cold, and when he met Hazard’s eyes, he looked strangely guilty.

  “He was going to hit you,” Nico said, starting to shake harder. “He was going to hit you, so I grabbed you—”

  Hazard stood. People were still screaming, and the crowded sidewalk had turned into a nightmare of milling bodies, people struggling to push free, other people pushing back. But, as far as Hazard could tell, nobody had been hurt.

  “Em, I’m sorry, he was going to run you over, and I didn’t mean to hurt you—”

  Heat on Hazard’s face was the first sign he was bleeding. Hazard wiped it away as he put an arm around Nico because it looked like the younger man was about to fall down. He hushed him. Nico fell silent, but he was still trembling violently.

  “You did good, Nico. You saved my life. You did really good.”

  “Oh shit,” Nico murmured. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

  “Deep breaths,” Hazard said, pushing Nico’s head down to rest on his shoulder. “In through your nose, out through your mouth. Yes, exactly like that. I want you to count them for me. Eight seconds in. Eight seconds out. You’re doing very well, Nico.” He fished his phone out of his pocket and placed a 911 call. After making the report, he disconnected and placed another call. “John—”

  “God damn it,” Somers said; the ambient noise made Hazard think Somers was in the Mustang. “I am going to take the ass off whoever told you. Who was it? Was it Foley?”

  “John, something happened.” Hazard told him. “Everyone’s ok, I think. But it was luck. Or not luck, actually. It was Nico.”

  Nico’s hypercontrolled breathing whistled in Hazard’s other ear.

  Somers’s silence was a beat too long.

  “Where are you?” Hazard asked. “What were you talking about when you answered?”

  “It’s Colt. He—”

  “What happened? Where are you?”

  “On my way to Okashka Heights, which is fucking perfect because I can’t even turn around.” He let out a sharp breath. “God damn it. I wasn’t going to tell you that part. I’m still trying to process that someone almost ran you over; are you sure you’re ok?”

  “What about Colt?”

  Somers pent-up exhalation almost told the whole story. “There’s some sort of rave at Okashka Heights. A couple of deputies went out there and tried to break it up. According to them, Colt resisted arrest, and now the deputies are butt-hurt in their cruiser, and Colt’s at the top of the Dore County Sheriff’s Department’s most wanted list.”

  “Motherfucker.”

  “Ree, I wasn’t going to tell you because I want to handle this—”

  “I’m on my way,” Hazard said and disconnected.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MAY 16

  SATURDAY

  11:02 PM

  LIGHT GLIMMERING AMONG THE toadstool shadows of the abandoned development was Hazard’s first impression of the rave. Foxfire streaked back and forth, garlands of it strung around the half-finished mini mansions. Then, when he came around a corner, more light met him. Trucks and SUVs and even an old VW Bug with flower decals peeling from its shell lined the river, parked far enough back to shine their headlights and illuminate a stretch of muddy shore a few hundred yards long.

  Men and women, most of them in varying stages of undress, danced and humped and wrestled in the mud. Music pounded from speakers in the backs of trucks, and, now that Hazard looked more closely, he saw stripper poles mounted in some of the trucks as well. Girls—some of them covered in mud and leaving browns smears on the poles—spun and twirled in time to the twangy country rock that seemed to be coming from everywhere.

  A cruiser was parked at the edge of the chaos, lights whirling, and the Mustang was parked next to it. Nobody seemed to mind the presence of law enforcement. A couple of shirtless white guys with locs were passing a blunt back and forth, laughing and calling out to the girls who passed. A kid who might have barely—barely—been fifteen jogged past with a Mason jar of shine in each hand. A white girl and a brown girl were helping each other across a field that had been torn up in huge, circling troughs that suggested part of the earlier festivities had included donuts. Somebody in a mud-spattered orange jumpsuit was doing a line off the bumper of a Chevy Cruze. When Hazard stopped the Odyssey and got out, he heard a shriek. His gaze snapped off into the darkness, where he could make out the blurred shapes on a bluff. Another excited shriek came, and something flickered out over the river. This time, he could hear the splash.

  Somers got out of the Mustang. Face rigid with fury, he cast a look at the cruiser and then came toward Hazard.

  “Are those idiots cliff jumping?” Hazard asked.

  “That’s the least of it. Some asshole in dirty tube socks and a FUCK OBAMA t-shirt walked by here two minutes ago smoking crystal right out in the open.”

  Hazard shook his head. “Where’s Colt?”

  “They don’t know. And they’re being fuck-all help.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Pullman and Rasband. I hadn’t met them before, but they seem none too fucking worried about being on the chief of police’s bad side. They both look like they’re about eighteen years old, and Pullman has an honest to God icepack that he borrowed from one of the girls on the stripper poles. He’s bitching about a broken jaw, says Colt sucker punched him. Motherfucker, I’ll give you a broken jaw.”

  The swears scattered throughout the explanation made Hazard raise his eyebrows. The movement tugged at the cut on his forehead, and he raised one hand before catching himself.

  “How bad is it?” Somers asked, his gaze focusing on the wound.

  “Not bad. It would have been worse if Nico hadn’t been there.”

  “Jesus Christ, what is going on?”

  Hazard decided an observation might be the safest course. “You seem a bit…wound up.” To judge by the way Somers looked at him, Hazard realized he had been wrong. He added quickly, “Or not.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Ok.”

  “I am.”

  Silence, Hazard thought. Maybe silence was the safest course.

  “You don’t have anything to say about that?” Somers asked, the slightest hint of belligerence in the question. “You don’t have any insights or notes or remarks?”

  “Jesus help me,” Hazard said under his breath. More loudly, he said, “If those assholes are just going to sit there, why are they even here?”

  “Apparently there was a fire, and most of the department is out rerouting traffic. They’re supposed to wait for backup.” Somers’s voice tightened with bitterness. “I wouldn’t even have heard about this if Neecie Weiss hadn’t been on duty tonight and taken the initiative to call me. When I talk to Engels, I’m going to have him professionally prolapse those two dumbfucks.”

  On edge, Hazard might have said. Upset, Hazard might have said. But he was a smart man. Sometimes.

  “Then we need to find Colt.”

  “I know we need to find Colt,” Somers snapped. “Why do you think I’m out here?”

  One of the mud-slick girls slipped on the pole, and she landed on her ass in the bed of the truck and began to wail. The twangy country cut out. Someone started to play Nelly Furtado, “I’m Like a Bird.” Wrong fucking vibe, Hazard thought. And then he thought that Colt might have been weirdly proud of that internal moment.

  “Sorry,” Somers said and wiped his mouth. “Bad night. Dulac and Darnell—it hadn’t gotten physical, thank God, but it was bad.”

  “They’re ok?”

  “Gray was wasted. So much for the white-knuckle method to sobriety. I swear to God, I almost took him to the hospital, it was that bad.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Sleeping it off in a cell. And if the professional humiliation doesn’t kill him, maybe it’ll snap him the fuck out of whatever is going on with him.” He took another deep breath. “Ree, I’m sorry. I am. Bad night, bad day, bad week.”

  “I understand,” Hazard said, but he didn’t understand at all, and that was scarier than anything except the fact that Colt was in trouble.

  “I guess we can start by—”

  Hazard walked to the closest truck, braced a foot on the fender, and launched himself up into the bed. A stripper pole was mounted there, and a girl in her twenties was hanging upside down, her legs wrapped around the pole. It looked like she was trying to twirl as she slid down, but sans baby oil, she was mostly hanging motionless, with the occasional wince-inducing skid down a few inches.

  “Hey,” she said, her face red with pooling blood. “You’re way too old, Mister—”

  “Dental hygienist classes start at Wroxall every August and January,” he said as he passed her. He climbed onto the cab. “Do something that would make your grandmother proud.”

  She squawked in wordless outrage.

  “Shake it,” someone shouted from the crowd, and a moment later, a high-powered flashlight lit up Hazard. “Come on!”

  “Turn that off!” Hazard shouted.

  The light snapped off. From his new position, Hazard could better see the layout of the party—loosely defined chaos might have been a better term. In addition to the headlights from the line of parked vehicles, halogen work lights stood at irregular intervals, cutting razor-sharp patches out of the darkness before it closed in again. He guessed there were at least two hundred people here, although the number could have been double depending on how far the celebrations extended beyond the ring of lights. What he could see of the rave stretched along the length of the Okashka, though, and that was a bit of luck; the party seemed confined to the area near the river, where the development hadn’t been built up yet. Obviously the considerations were practical: you couldn’t do donuts where somebody had built a mini mansion, and it was a lot easier to make your own mud pit if water was at hand.

  As Hazard was scanning the crowd, he came to the bluff overlooking the river, and another body launched itself out over the water: a streak of slightly lighter gray against the darkness. He was about to get down from the cab and tell Somers it had been worth a try when he spotted something. At a distance, it was hard to tell, but it looked like someone was pointing at him. Two men broke off from a group and started toward the line of trucks.

  Hazard considered all the bad luck in the universe and, in this particular moment, the fact that someone had put a spotlight on him while he was standing on the roof of a truck. He dropped back into the bed, and the girl on the pole made a startled noise and skidded a few more painfully dry inches.

  “My mee-maw danced in Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club,” she said, her face almost purple now. “And she was a lady.”

  “They have financial aid packages that are very competitive,” Hazard said as he hurried toward the tailgate. “And the starting salary for a dental hygienist is above the national average.”

  “Dude, I want to see that ass jiggle!” That was the same girl who had catcalled him before, and she sounded like she had reached what Colt would have called Karen-level outrage. “Shake that money maker!”

  “Bold as fucking brass,” Hazard muttered as he hopped down next to his husband. Somers still looked exhausted and washed out in the halogen flood, but some of the pinched expression had relaxed. Hazard raised both eyebrows. “Is tonight the night?”

  Somers blinked, and then a huge grin crossed his face, and he held up both hands in surrender.

  “Thank you.”

  “But it’s a compelling image.”

  “Jesus God.”

  “I’m saying for a date night. Or when you want to knock my socks off.”

  “We’re already married, and I get sex whenever I want. I no longer have any need, as you put it, to ‘knock your socks off.’”

  Somers smirked and gave a one-shouldered shrug, and it was shocking how much the man could convey with that one movement.

  “God damn it,” Hazard said under his breath and added a mental item to his next VPN-and-TOR-browser search opportunity.

  “Did you see Colt?”

  Hazard shook his head. “But I have an idea of where he is.” He scanned the crowd; the two guys he had spotted were cutting through the crowd toward them, and one of them was carrying something long that looked like a weapon. “Come on; two brosephs are on their way, and I think someone told them to bash my head in.”

  “Wait, what?” Somers asked.

  “Colt watched all those Jack Black movies last weekend. I accidentally internalized it.”

  Before Somers could say anything, Hazard took him by the arm and steered him at a brisk walk. The line of vehicles gave them some cover, and he followed it for a hundred yards before cutting between two rusted-out Fords. A quick glance showed him that they had passed the brosephs; the two men were getting closer to the truck where Hazard had been spotted, and now their backs were to Hazard and Somers. Hazard broke into a run, pulling Somers with him as he headed for the bluff.

  A four-wheeler whizzed past them, engine whining, and then another. A huge guy with an even bigger beard was laughing like a kid as he raced his friend. The tires spun up mud, and their exhaust thickened the air. Hazard risked a glance back; the brosephs hadn’t noticed them yet. Hazard couldn’t make out what the one was carrying—it was long enough to be some sort of improvised weapon, but the shape was funny.

  “I meant,” Somers said—breathing annoyingly easily for a man who, when invited to go for a run most mornings, begged off for “five more minutes”—“why are those guys after you?”

  “I don’t know, John. Who fucking knows anymore in this town? Somebody pointed to me when that woman shone a flashlight on me—”

  “So she could see you shake your booty.”

  “Unhelpful. And then they started coming towards us. I don’t think it was to extend a personal invitation to the square dance.”

  “Are you more sarcastic when you’re emotionally off-balance from being objectified?”

  “I don’t know, John—” And then Hazard heard it and had to cut himself off.

  Somers was grinning and doing a piss-poor job of looking like he wasn’t.

  “Say something,” Hazard said.

  Somers’s grin got bigger, but he shook his head. After a moment, though, some of the smile faded, and he said, “Colt?”

  “I’m going to tan his ass for this.”

  “I meant, how do you know where he is?”

  “I’ve been formulating something that I’m tentatively calling Hazard’s First Law.”

  “Hold on, I need to record this.”

  Hazard gave him a yank that almost took Somers off his feet. “It states that the presence of teenagers and the presence of trouble are directly correlated. The more teenagers, the more trouble. It also works the other way; the more trouble, the more teenagers.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Therefore, maximum trouble—” He waved his free hand at the bluff, where teens were hurling themselves into the darkness, shrieking with glee. “Maximum concentration of teenagers.”

  “What if Colt takes after his father, though? What if he’s shaking his ass on a pole?”

  “Then we’re going to have some long, extensive talks about how he’ll be spending approximately the rest of his life in a monastery.”