“GET UP. NOW, Miri.”

I stirred, but not very much.

I didn’t wake up enough to think about it deeply, but I’m pretty sure I was hoping he didn’t really mean it. That, like the last few days before this one, he’d give up after a few tries and go away.

Black didn’t give up, though. He didn’t go away.

Not this time.

“Come on, honey.” His voice grew gentle, even as it pulled on me more insistently. “Get up. No more of this. It’s been long enough.”

I’d been sleeping in for days.

It felt like I’d been sleeping for days.

I’d definitely been sleeping too much.

I think I was in denial about why, about what was happening to me, but I couldn’t quite make myself think about that, either.

When I opened my eyes, it was dark outside.

“It’s night,” I informed Black, who stood by a glowing orange salt lamp, which only illuminated half of his body by the dresser. The salt lamp was mine, but he turned it on every night now, and every morning when we got up.

He said it was perfect illumination for fucking.

He didn’t look like he was getting ready to seduce me now, though.

He wore his running clothes. Black shorts, a fitted T-shirt that looked almost like what bike racers wore, an armband that tracked steps, heart-rate, and a bunch of other things I’d never bothered to ask him about. He’d gotten serious about training again recently.

He’d left me alone with it for the most part.

Well, up until now.

“Go without me,” I said, burrowing deeper under the covers. “I’ll never keep up with you anyway. I’ve got burrito body.”

He laughed.

I’d been eating burritos pretty much every night since we got back. I’d sometimes even sent one of Black’s people down to pick one up for me at my favorite taqueria in the Mission District, if I couldn’t get away from things happening at the business offices.

More often than not, I walked myself.

I’d been walking a lot the past week or so, too.

I walked for hours sometimes, often with no real destination in mind.

“Bullshit,” he said, still smiling, although that smile turned faintly predatory. “If anything you’re still too skinny. And you’re coming with me. So get your ass up. Or I’ll add a mile for every minute you lie there like a lazy slug.”

I let out another half-hearted groan.

I knew he was right about the skinny thing, but that didn’t mean I’d be able to keep up with him on one of his insane, fifteen-mile runs at breakneck speed.

“It won’t be fifteen miles,” he assured me.

I grunted, even as I conceded defeat, flipping back the covers. “Right. So it’ll be fourteen and a half miles.”

He laughed, clicking at me softly before he sat down on a bench near the dresser. I dragged myself up even as he was tying the shoelaces of his––probably eight hundred dollar––running shoes.

“It’s night out,” I grumbled, looking out the window at the skyline of downtown San Francisco. “It’s not even dawn. It’s actual night.”

“So?” he said. “I’d rather run now. It’s quiet.”

“And dark.”

“And quiet,” he repeated, his voice a touch warning. “Come on, doc. I’ve left you alone for days. You’re sleeping too much. You’re avoiding everything. You’re starting to avoid me. You need this. More than I do.”

Frowning, I didn’t answer.

I did want to argue with him.

I really did––badly enough that I bit my tongue, thinking about things I might say. But more than I wanted to argue with him, I didn’t want to hear him say anything more about me, or how much I’d been sleeping, or why, or what he thought about that, or what I hadn’t been talking about since we got back from visiting Yumi Tanaka.

To avoid all of that, I got up.

Standing by the mattress, I grimaced, stretching briefly and fighting to focus my eyes while my body screamed for me to go back to bed.

I made myself walk to the dresser instead, standing near him as he started tying the laces on his second shoe. I began rummaging through my sports clothes drawer, still blinking and fighting to focus my eyes as I stared down at my clothes.

Something like twenty minutes later, we were both walking through the front doors of the California Street building.

Black was wide-awake.

Black was… annoyingly awake.

Unlike his more high-tech running gear, I was wearing ripped sweat shorts, a hoodie over a threadbare T-shirt, and running shoes that were decent, but nothing like his. My eyes were still fighting for focus. Before we left the penthouse, I hadn’t done anything in the bathroom but pee, splash water on my face, brush my hair to put it up in a ponytail, and throw on some deodorant.

I normally ran with music, but I wasn’t in the mood for that, either. If I had to be honest, I didn’t want the emotionality that went with music, whether the good or the bad of it.

Black jerked his head northward, in the direction of the bay.

“Come on,” he said simply.

Resigned, I broke into a jog/run when he did.

Normally, I liked running.

It was my thinking time, my alone time… my quiet time, like he said.

I even liked running with Black.

His legs were longer, and he was damned fast, but I was decently fast too, just from having run for so many years. He generally didn’t pull punches when it came to telling the truth, so I believed him when he said I set a good pace for him, better than anyone else he’d run with regularly, including Cowboy and Dex.

Today, though, I highly doubted I would be able to keep up.

I hadn’t gone running since we’d been in Paris, and that had mostly been to burn off the same anxiety and grief I knew Black was trying to burn off in me now.

I knew Black, though.

He wasn’t going to let me off the hook for this, not this time.

Besides, he was right. This would be better for me than lying in bed until ten o’clock in the morning for the fourth day in a row. It would be better than me staring up at the ceiling of our bedroom, trying to think up ways to spend my day that would allow me to avoid Angel and Jem and anyone else who might want to talk about Nick, or even just remind me of him.

Black hung a left when we hit the Embarcadero, taking me with him towards Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf, then west, towards Fort Mason.

It was strange being in the heavily-touristed areas of the city at what must be three or four o’clock in the morning, when everything was closed.

By then, I was sweating pretty heavily, but I also felt better.

The first few miles up the Embarcadero, every muscle in my body was screaming, loudly enough that I found myself worried that I hadn’t even bothered to stretch, much less warm up, before we started this. By the time we hit Ghirardelli Square and then Fort Mason, I’d found my rhythm somehow, in the mess of my stiff arms and limbs, and the fog that had fallen over my brain since we’d given up on Nick and come back from Europe.

We didn’t give up on him, doc, a voice murmured.

Thinking about that, I shrugged, my mental voice blunt.

I did, I sent. I gave up on him, Black. I decided he was dead.

Black didn’t answer that, not at first.

Nudging me with his mind, he lengthened his strides, angling us to the right after we left Laguna and Beach Streets.

He sped up his pace, taking us down towards the Marina.

Do you still? he sent, once we had the San Francisco Bay on our right once more. Do you still think he’s dead, Miri?

I bit my lip.

Emotion tried to rise at the thought, a cacophony of reasons why Nick could and couldn’t be dead. I heard all of my inner voices competing for air time, for space, for my emotions, but I believed none of them. It was the quiet part of me, the part that sat somewhere in the middle of my chest, that I believed.

Yes, I sent, after a pause. Yes, I do. I think he’s dead.

Black didn’t answer.

We ran in silence for a few seconds more. Only the heart pounding steadily in my chest, and my heavy breaths echoed in my ears.

Some part of me wished I’d opted to bring my music after all. Even now, I knew I needed that silence more, though.

I know that doesn’t make sense, I added, when Black still didn’t speak. After what his mom said, I should be hopeful. I should be happier. We should be going back to Europe, looking for him. But I don’t think we’ll find him there, Black. I don’t know if someone killed him deliberately, or if my uncle or Brick killed him on accident. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what happened to him exactly, but I think our only chance of finding him is to find Brick. And Brick won’t come out of hiding until he’s damned good and ready.

Briefly, the grief in my chest and head twisted, turning into a cold, hard fury.

It coiled through me like metal snakes.

I want that son of a bitch, I sent. Just like you, after Louisiana. I want him, Black. Maybe even more than you did then.

I considered sending more, elaborating in some way.

I didn’t.

There was no need.

Black remembered New York. He remembered the nightmares after he got out of that prison, how obsessed he’d been with hunting down Brick. He remembered the months of careful planning he’d put us through, all of it designed to draw the vampire king out of hiding.

I knew Black understood.

I do, he sent, cautious. I do understand.

He paused.

Do you think Brick killed him, Miri?

I bit my lip again, oblivious to how much it hurt.

Thinking, I shook my head, even as we were reaching the edges of the Presidio, where Marina Boulevard veered left. We took Mason Street on Black’s urging, running alongside Chrissy Field and towards Fort Point.

It was still pitch black out.

It struck me that I never would have done this, even a few years ago. Running alone, in a city in the middle of the night, wasn’t something I’d ever been able to do as a woman, not even with a male partner. It wouldn’t have been safe.

With Black running next to me, and both of us monitoring the space around us with our living light, it never even occurred to me that we might be in danger.

It was a strange thought.

I don’t know, I sent, answering Black belatedly as we ran through the dark. I know Brick has something to do with Nick’s disappearance. I know it.

Biting my lip, I added,

I also don’t think Brick just “accidentally” left Nick in that tree, because he couldn’t carry him out sooner with the others or whatever. If Nick is dead, he didn’t die that way. Brick took him… somewhere. I don’t know if he took him so he could turn him into some kind of vampire puppet, like they did to Uncle Charles’ girlfriend, or if Brick meant to keep him for blackmail and killed him on accident. I don’t know if it was Nick who called Mrs. Tanaka, or if it was a vampire pretending to be Nick, or if Nick was hypnotized to tell her all of that stuff and they’ve got him chained to a floor somewhere…

I grimaced, fighting a surge of nausea that made it to my throat.

The only way out of that nausea was rage.

Luckily, I had that in spades right now.

…I just know Brick is behind this, I finished after a beat. I can feel it. Hell, I can smell it. Brick did this. Maybe he took Nick prisoner and Nick fought back too hard. Maybe Nick only feels dead to me because he’s drugged out on vampire venom, locked up somewhere with Brick and his vampire pals, wherever they’ve gone underground.

I grunted, that rage flaring hotter in my chest.

And that’s the best-case scenario, really. That Nick is alive somewhere, getting fed on and raped daily by a bunch of psychotic vampires.

Black didn’t answer.

I felt a flicker of pain on him, though.

He also didn’t disagree with me.

I don’t know why, I went on, maybe needing to talk about it now, or maybe needing to talk over what I’d just said. I don’t know why, or where he took him, or who has him now… but I fucking know Brick did this. He’s behind this, Black. He has Nick. Had him, anyway.

Without slowing my pace, I turned my head, glancing at Black through the dark.

And I know Angel’s right, I added. Somehow, this is about you. He did this because he wants something from you. He thought Nick would help him get it.

There was no accusation in my mind, or in the thoughts I aimed at him.

There was no accusation towards Black, anyway. Even so, my own thoughts enraged me, without me being fully able to articulate why.

That wasn’t entirely true either, though.

I knew why.

It wasn’t just Mrs. Tanaka who blamed me.

I blamed me, too.

Not Black––me.

On Koh Mangaan, I was the one who felt something had gone wrong with Nick. I was the one who kept getting misgivings, warning pings, warning sirens, bright red waving fucking flags over my head about Nick being in danger. I felt those warnings and misgivings off and on for days, hell for weeks for all I knew, given how out of it I was at the time. I felt them for a good chunk of the time Black and I were in that bungalow together, and I did nothing.

I didn’t do a damned thing.

I knew something was wrong.

I knew Nick was in danger, long before Yarli and Manny came looking for us, and we finally did something about it. I could feel it. I could feel it had something to do with Nick, even though I didn’t understand what I felt.

I mentioned it to Black here and there.

I asked him to send someone.

But mostly? Mostly, I fucked my husband’s brains out. Mostly, I went swimming between bouts of gorging myself on food from Black’s personal, Michelin star chef, and taking naked naps on the floor of an air-conditioned bungalow on the beach.

Black couldn’t feel what I felt.

Black wasn’t to blame for any of this. It was my fault.

I did this.

“No.” Black grabbed hold of my arm.

He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road, and I did too, almost before I’d thought about it.

“No,” he growled, staring into my face.

It was dark out still, apart from sporadic street lights. I could see his face in the faint orange glow of the nearest one, especially his eyes, which reflected gold light back at me.

“No! Goddamn it. Miri…”

His voice rose in frustration, mixed with a kind of helplessness.

“Miri, we weren’t in any condition to help anyone right then. Not Nick. Not Angel. Not Cowboy. Not anyone.”

I frowned, feeling my jaw harden.

I shook my head, but he talked over me.

“We weren’t!” he snapped. “Miri… there’s a reason bonding seers are sequestered. It’s because they’re not fit to be around other people. It’s because they can’t be trusted to be rational. They can’t be trusted not do crazy, reckless, nonsensical things. They’re certainly not fit to lead anybody. We only would have gotten more people killed.”

He shook me lightly by the arm.

“You didn’t do this. You didn’t take Nick! You didn’t kidnap him… or give him to vampires. Hell, I called Brick! I brought Brick to that island! If you want to blame someone, blame me!”

“You asked me.” I stared up at him, biting my lip, even though it hurt like hell, even though I tasted blood. “You asked me if you could call Brick. I said yes.”

“We were trying to get help to him––”

“We snapped out of it just fine,” I said, my voice louder, harsher than his. “When Yarli and Manny came for us on that beach, we were fine, Black. It wasn’t easy, but we were perfectly able to lead the team out to––”

“We were finished with the fucking bonding by then!” he exploded, gripping my arm tighter. He lowered his voice, but it still came out in a near-growl. “We’d finished by then, Miri! We were still dopey and kind of nuts, but we were able to snap back as soon as we understood there was a need. You didn’t do anything wrong, doc! Don’t you understand? Yarli and the others wouldn’t have let us take off into the jungle in that state. They probably would have hit us both with tranq guns… and they would have been right to do it!”

Releasing my arm when I didn’t answer, he placed his hands on his hips.

Exhaling, he clicked under his breath, staring around at the dark field.

“Fuck, Miri… I doubt we even would have found them without Brick. It would have taken us weeks, given what Kiko told me. Brick and Dorian could smell them. They hunt humans as food. They can track them in the physical, in ways we can’t. They bypassed all of that crazy mountain interference and just followed their goddamned stomachs.”

Tears welled in my eyes.

They came out of nowhere, blinding me, even as my breath caught in my throat and chest, suffocating me. I stood there, gasping, hanging over my thighs, and Black walked closer, enveloping me in his arms.

“Gaos, doc… I’m sorry.” Pain rippled through his light, reaching his voice. “I’m so, so sorry.” He clutched me tighter against him, pulsing that furnace-like heat of his into my chest. “I’ll do anything you want, Miri. Anything. Do you want to go back to Europe?”

Clenching my jaw, I shook my head.

“We wouldn’t find him,” I said, after I forced myself to take a breath. “We wouldn’t find him, so it doesn’t matter. There would be no point.”

My voice came out deadened, but the words felt true. I knew that, I knew we wouldn’t find them, but I didn’t know how I knew.

“We won’t find Brick until Brick wants to be found,” I said. I knew I was repeating myself, but couldn’t seem to stop myself from doing that either. “We won’t find Nick until Brick allows it. Or until he tells us what he did with him.”

Black nodded.

I felt him agree with me.

I also felt that pain in his light worsen.

I could tell he believed the worst about Nick, just like I did.

He just didn’t want to say it.

Standing there, I let my light and body sink into his.

I fought to open to the pain, to at least open to Black himself.

I knew I was a million miles away from processing any of it, and not only because the last time I’d felt like this, it had been Nick who I first opened up to. Nick was the first person who really comforted me when my sister Zoe died. My sister Zoe––who’d also been killed by vampires. I wouldn’t have survived that without Nick.

Black’s arms crushed me tighter against him.

I felt love on him, anguish about Nick, grief about how helpless he felt to do anything about it, how helpless he felt to make me feel better in any way.

After another minute of that, he released me.

I watched him step back, wiping tears from his eyes. I still hadn’t managed to get much in the way of real tears out of myself. I’d cried once or twice in the shower when we’d been in Europe, but never for very long.

Never for long enough.

Clearing his throat, Black motioned his head back towards the road.

“Come on,” he said, gruff. “I want a good view when the sun comes up.”

We were on the west side of the city.

We wouldn’t see the sunrise from here, not well anyway.

But then, Black hadn’t actually said sunrise. He said a good view, so I supposed it didn’t really matter. There would be good views somewhere up ahead, even if we were on the wrong side of the city to see the actual sun rise up over the rim of the world.

Whatever Black meant or didn’t mean, I didn’t argue.

When he turned, and began to run, I just followed him.

WE WATCHED THE light rise from the edge of Land’s End, where a stone labyrinth lived just past the forested running track that wound around the edges of the Legion of Honor museum.

We stood on a sandy cliff overlooking the ocean, just before that ocean reached the mouth of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. To my left, I could see more cliffs. I knew just beyond that lay the Sutro Baths, the Cliff House, and then Ocean Beach.

To my right, I saw more rocky shoreline, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, reflecting light from the early morning sun.

Standing on those cliffs, looking down at the crashing waves, we just stood there, not talking as the landscape grew visible around us.

I listened to the birds as they grew louder with the rising light, looked down to see seals all ready to start sunning themselves on the rocks. The white curls of foam rose and fell, crashing into the bottoms of the cliffs only to roll back and do it again.

We stood there for what must have been twenty minutes.

We stood there until we caught our breaths from the last few miles of up and down rises through the wooded areas of the coast, through the Presidio, along China Beach and then down the Coastal Trail. We stood there until I started to shiver a bit, as my sweaty clothes grew cold in the morning wind, sticking to my wet skin.

Black glanced over at me then, noting my arms wrapped around my torso.

“Come on,” he said, wrapping his hand briefly around the back of my neck and massaging the muscle there. “Breakfast is waiting.”

Without lingering to hear my reply, he turned on his heel, and began jogging up the path back towards the trees. After a bare breath, I followed him. Once we rejoined the main jogging trails above the cliffs, he aimed us right, in the direction of the Sutro Baths.

The muscles in my legs, which had been stiffening as we stood there, protested when I took the first few loping steps uphill after him.

They warmed up again slowly as I made my way with him down the hill, then past the Cliff House until we were above Ocean Beach.

Not long after that, he swung to our right again, and we were running on the beach itself, right at the edge of the lapping waves, where the sand was the firmest.

By then, I was genuinely tired.

Panting, I managed to increase my speed enough to pull up alongside Black, who still managed to look like he could go another fifteen or twenty miles.

“I’m about done,” I told him, between gasped breaths.

He glanced at me, smiling faintly.

“Almost there, doc.”

Before I could protest, he shifted directions, taking us back up the sand towards the road.

The softer and drier the sand got, the harder it was to run in, until I was panting, sweating, fighting my way up the slight rise of dune to get to the beach wall and off the sand altogether.

When I finally reached the road, I groaned a little when Black grinned at me, motioning with his head for me to follow him across the street.

By then, we’d already run past the west entrance to Golden Gate Park.

Hurling and forcing my body back into motion, I followed him.

He loped across the Great Highway, heading back east now, onto Noriega Street.

I’m not running all the way back to Market with you, I informed him in my mind. You go, if you’re intent on running a full marathon today. I’m taking a fucking cab. Probably macking on a burrito and chili fries the whole way.

He laughed. I heard him with my ears up ahead, and in my mind.

Not that far, doc, he sent, pluming heat into my chest. Almost there. I promise.

You’ve been saying that, I grumbled.

We ran another few blocks up Noriega, until I really thought I would drop dead from exhaustion. I was just about to call a halt for real, when I saw Black slowing his long steps, until he came to a loping stop in front of a glass shopfront.

I stopped when he did, even though I was a good twenty feet behind him.

I stood there on the sidewalk, gasping for breath, my hands on my thighs.

He watched me pant, his hands on his hips.

He didn’t speak until I’d more or less managed to control my breathing, even though I was still gasping like someone on their last tank of oxygen.

“Come on, lazybones,” he said, grinning. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re the devil,” I told him, only half-joking.

“Maybe,” he said, quirking an eyebrow at me. “But I know all the best places for blueberry waffles at eight in the morning.”

Still smiling, he grabbed hold of the door of the shopfront, jerking it open and disappearing inside.

Groaning faintly to myself, and still muttering at him in my mind, I jerked myself back into a stumbling walk-jog to follow him.

HE WASN’T WRONG about the waffles.

It’s probably the only reason he didn’t get a fork in the arm at some point during the meal, after I’d more or less recovered from Black’s idea of a “therapeutic morning run.”

I knew I’d be sore the next day.

And probably the day after that.

“Only if you don’t run again,” he observed, plunking another forkful of blueberry waffles in his mouth. …Which isn’t going to happen, sweetheart, he added in my mind as he chewed.

He almost got a fork in the arm for real that time.

As it was, I could only laugh.

He ate waffles the way Angel did. Covered in about a quarter inch of butter, then another half-inch of maple syrup. He was shameless in his decadence.

“Should I be ashamed?” he said, his words muffled through his chewing. “Get me another coffee, sexy lady wife, and I’ll buy you a burrito on the way home.”

I laughed again, smacking his arm, even as I waved down the server.

Even the coffee here was fantastic. We didn’t settle for the normal cups of brewed, but each got our own small pot of French press. I ordered him another pot as I dug my fork into the next layer of waffle on my plate.

Black did have good taste in restaurants.

“We need to visit Cal,” he said, swallowing and taking a sip of my coffee while he waited for his. “He’s been bugging me to come down to his restaurant for a meal… and to bring you. He thinks I’m avoiding him after last time.”

I snorted, rolling my eyes.

“Are you going to threaten to beat him up this time?” I said.

“I’ll try to restrain myself.” He grinned at me, leaning back in his booth seat and stretching. “He does have a crush on you, though. He couldn’t even hide it on the phone.”

I snorted again, not bothering to comment.

Black leaned over the table, resting his weight on his arms, studying my eyes.

“Feel better, doc?”

I met his gaze.

Instead of answering flippantly, I thought about his question.

After a pause, I nodded.

“Yes,” I said.

He held my gaze, the scrutiny sharpening in his gold, cat-like eyes.

“Do you know what you want to do now?” he said.

Taking another sip of coffee without lowering my gaze from his, I thought again, then nodded slowly.

“Yes.”

He waited, folding his hands in front of him on the table. He’d decimated his extra-large stack of waffles. The empty plate, still swimming in syrup, had been pushed to the side, along with the sides of sausage and bacon he’d also inhaled.

“And?” he said, when I didn’t speak. “Are you going to share, my love?”

“It’s not all strictly… ethical,” I said.

“I’m all ears.”

Exhaling, I found myself copying one of his sweeping gestures, leaning back in my own booth seat, my coffee cup in my other hand.

“Okay. Then I say we bug all of the Tanaka’s phones,” I said, taking another sip of coffee. I held his gaze, toying with my coffee cup on the Formica table after I set it down. “I say we get records of their previous calls, and find out where that one call Yumi told us about actually came from, and see if there’s any way to get ahold of Homeland Security or other records that might tell us something. And I say we send seers over to read the Tanakas. All of them. His sisters, too. And his father.”

Black blinked.

His facial expression didn’t change.

“Can you do that, honey?” I said innocently, raising my coffee mug and taking a sip as I batted my eyelashes at him. “Your pals at the Pentagon record all international calls, right? I know they don’t look at most of those records without cause, but they have them, right?”

Black’s eyes sparked with a faint humor.

“That would be correct, my beautiful wife.”

“So?” I said, shrugging, taking another sip of coffee. “We trace all contacts. We listen to the originals where we can. Then we send our people to go get Brick.”

“And then?”

I set down my mug. My voice remained calm, despite the tightening of my jaw.

“Then we drain him of blood,” I said. “And skin him, until he tells us exactly what he did with Nick.”

There was a silence.

A faint smirk formed at the edges of Black’s mouth.

Leaning back on his own seat, he threw his arm over the back of the booth, taking a long drink of coffee.

“I’ve definitely corrupted you,” he observed.

I shrugged. “It’s for a good cause.”

“My corrupting you?”

“Sure.”

He chuckled, shaking his head.

“Any objections?” My voice came out a touch harder. “I’m not going to get some moralizing lecture here, am I, Black? About how vampires are people too, and––”

“Want to go swimming?” he said, apropos of nothing.

When I stopped, staring at him, he smiled at me, sipping off his fresh coffee cup as he studied my face. When I didn’t speak, he shrugged.

“I have the car coming to get us,” he said. “But do you want to jump in the ocean first? I know it’ll be cold, especially after Thailand, but I don’t mind if you don’t.”

Looking at him, I snorted another laugh.

“Does that mean the moralizing is coming later?” I said.

He shook his head, setting down his coffee mug with a deliberateness.

“No moralizing, love. I told you… the call is yours. I’m 100% on board with however you want to handle this. All of my resources are at your disposal. That includes whatever contacts I have left inside the Pentagon, as well as––”

“But what do you think?” I cut in, pursing my lips.

There was a silence.

Black met my gaze, his lips quirked in a faint smirk.

“Well… you might have just given me a hard-on.” He gave me a predatory stare. “Is that relevant? Or too much information?”

I snorted a laugh.

“…And my offer to go swimming just now might have a slight ulterior motive,” he added, gripping my hand from across the table and tugging it closer to him. “I might be angling for a post-run ocean fuck, just to see what it’s like in the Pacific… at sub-zero temperatures… versus that no-wave bathtub in Thailand. We’ll have to look out for surfers, though. And sharks. You’re not on your period, are you?”

That time, I laughed for real.

Even I heard the relief that came with it.

Black was going to back me on this.

He was going to back me all the way.

Sooner or later, we’d find Brick.

We’d find him, and then I’d get the truth out of him about what he’d done to my oldest friend––even if I lost my fucking soul in the process.