Final Orders Page 2

  Then one of the camo boys turned on Hazard and took a swing—it had a mile of windup behind it, giving Hazard plenty of time to get clear. He set his feet and popped the son of a bitch in the face.

  The fight ended quickly after that, as more officers poured into the gym and as the men in the fight lost their enthusiasm.

  Hazard didn’t realize how wrong things had gone until it was too late.

  “All of them,” Joyce was shouting from the side of the gym, being held back by her daughter. “You have to arrest all of them! They were all fighting!”

  Hazard caught his husband’s eye; Somers’s chest was rising and falling quickly, and a flush rode under his golden skin. Somers set his jaw and gave a tiny nod.

  “Fuck me,” Hazard said. “This is why I didn’t join the fucking PTO.”

  Then he turned and let Yarmark cuff him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MAY 15

  FRIDAY

  8:26 AM

  HAZARD DROPPED INTO THE seat behind his desk. So far, the Astraea office was quiet, but he knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Morning light came in from the window in the reception area, and he squinted against it as he eased open a drawer. He shook out two tablets from a bottle of Tylenol and laid them on the desk. Squinting wasn’t cutting it, so he decided to rest his eyes. Just for a minute.

  Last night had been long. Every step of it, long. Waiting for Somers and the rest of the police officers to finish getting the situation under control. Waiting to be loaded into the back of a cruiser. Waiting to be processed at the station. And then waiting some more, crammed into the holding cells with the rest of the fuckwits, for Somers to bail him out. It ought to have been some satisfaction that Joyce Sturgis’s husband, Dusty Keller, and their friends had also been arrested, but the fact that Dulac had been arrested as well put a damper on that.

  When Dulac said to Hazard, “Bro, they started it,” for the fourth time, Hazard wondered if he could crack his own skull against the cinderblock walls.

  And then there had been the long, silent drive with Somers back to the school to pick up the Odyssey. The long, silent minutes after they had both gotten home, interrupted only by the splash of water, the whisper of a towel, their steps as they moved around each other.

  When Somers turned off the bedside lamp, Hazard said to the dark, “I understand that I didn’t have any official standing in that situation and, consequently, I should not have involved myself.”

  The response had a ponderous quality, like it was being dragged up in spite of its weight. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

  The silence flickered in and out with harsh breathing.

  “I see, now, that I should have let you and your officers handle it.”

  Somers rolled onto his side, his back to Hazard.

  “To be fair, though, you and Yarmark were severely outnumbered, and tactically—”

  In one fluid movement, Somers slipped out of bed. He padded toward the door, pillow under his arm. The door clicked shut behind him. After that, Hazard had slept in fits and woken with a headache that not even a run and a shower and soaked oats could touch. Somers had already been gone; the locker room at the station, Hazard guessed, and a spare uniform.

  In the reception area of the Astraea office, the front door opened, and steps moved inside. Hazard started up his laptop. He shifted in his seat so that the morning light wasn’t stabbing him right in the eye. When the computer was ready, he opened up a client report he’d been working on—a Jeff City bureaucrat who was convinced he was being cheated by his mechanic. The investigation was going to cost more than finding another place to get his oil changed, but the guy hadn’t cared when Hazard told him that. It was the principle of the thing—that had been the response. Hazard nudged the aspirin. He thought about the long night, the ambient light, the snatches of waking, staring at the ceiling, which at that hour was the color of uncarded wool. It was the principle of the thing, he told himself. And when the fuck had that ever gone the way it was supposed to?

  The steps moved closer to the open door to Hazard’s private office. Then Nico appeared there. He looked more like what he had been, an underwear model, than what he was, a theology grad student with an overdue thesis: shaggy hair, coppery skin, a kind of leanly muscled beauty that looked great in clothes or out of them. He was wearing a button-up, the sleeves cuffed, and chinos and loafers. All appropriate. All aggravatingly casual on Nico, where on someone else, they might have looked stuffy. He was holding a paper cup, and when he came into the office, he hunched over slightly, his shoulders curving in, and as soon as he had set the cup within reach, he backed out of the room. He was almost bowing. The smell of coffee—good coffee, not what they made for clients—wafted up.

  “What is this?”

  Nico gave a nervous laugh. “Good morning! It’s coffee, Em. From that new place you like, the one you said only missed four of the eighteen items on your coffee shop checklist, uh, I think you said that, even though you don’t take milk in your coffee, theirs was only sixty percent frothy enough and—”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you know, everything last night, and—”

  Hazard held up a hand. His head gave a particularly violent throb, and he slid one eye half-shut. “I do not want to talk about last night.”

  Nico’s eyes got bigger.

  “I do not want to talk at all. Period. Is that clear?”

  After a moment, Nico swallowed, nodded, and slipped out of the doorway. Casters squeaked against the chair mat, keys clicked, a drawer rattled open and shut.

  For the next two or three minutes, Hazard tried to get some traction on the report. Then he gave up and had some of the coffee. Black, which was how he took it. And hot. And God, so good.

  He went back to the report. He was about to start the summary of when he had taken his own van to the mechanic for an oil change. Footsteps made him pull his hands away from the keyboard, brace himself with a swig of coffee, and try not to sigh.

  In the doorway, Nico stopped. He raised one foot, rubbed the back of his calf with the loafer, and held up a sheet of paper. He was smiling a hundred and twenty percent too much.

  “I, uh, made those corrections on my paper. The one you helped me with. For the conference.”

  Hazard stared at him.

  “Even, you know, the paragraph that you said was, uh, I think the words were ‘Derivative, a boiled-down mash of other people’s thinking, the intellectual equivalent of baby food,’ even though it was, um, the conclusion and kind of the whole point of the paper.”

  Hazard’s pulse beat in his temple.

  “And I wrote an even better one, you know, just like you told me.”

  “Nico.”

  “Yes, hi, hey, Em.” He gave another of those nervous laughs. And then, mother of God, he waved. “Morning! Again!”

  “Go away.”

  “Sure. Uh huh. I’ll just leave this, you know, right here, so you can see, um, how much it meant to me that you were willing to help me, especially considering—”

  “Get out of my office!”

  “And a thank-you card!” Nico squeaked as he shoved everything onto the corner of the desk. Then he bolted.

  Hazard stared at the stack of pages. He glared at the card in its kraft-paper envelope. He turned his gaze back to the computer.

  He got two more sentences out before he had to open the damn card.

  Dear Em, thank you, and blah blah blah. Then there was a twenty-dollar gift card to the lesbian coffee shop that had, if Hazard were being honest, met fifteen and a half of his eighteen-point checklist.

  He dropped the card in the wastebasket. He tried to write. He retrieved the card from the wastebasket and slid it into a desk drawer. He tapped out a sentence and a half, and then he pulled the stack of pages toward him.

  It wasn’t just a better conclusion. It was a very, very good paper. Hazard didn’t know the field—something to do with
queer liturgy—but he knew that Nico was smart, and he knew that the paper was tight and intelligent and clear. And the conclusion, fuck him, was the best part.

  The whisk of leather soles on the boards brought Hazard’s head up.

  “Um, oh my God, Em, this is so embarrassing.” Nico came into the office at a pace that was a little too hurried, a little too clipped to be casual, no matter how hard he was trying. In his hands, he was carrying a pastry box stamped with the WAHREDUA FAMILY BAKERY logo. “You’re not going to believe this, but I had an extra piece of that double fudge cake that you like, and I was going to throw it away, but then I thought, why waste it, and then I thought, Em likes this cake, and then I thought—”

  “Jesus Christ, Nico.” Hazard shot up from his seat. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “I had this leftover—”

  “No!” Hazard held up a finger. “Enough. I have a headache. I’m tired. I’m in the doghouse, just about literally, with my husband because of those fucking lunatics last night. I am in no position to listen to your pathetic attempt at lying. Nobody has an extra piece of double fudge cake, Nico. Least of all you. And you didn’t accidentally remember that I like it. And nobody, Nico, has ever, in the history of the universe, considered throwing an extra piece away.” He swiped the box, opened it, and was met by the sweetly bitter smell of the chocolate. “So, what the fuck is going on?”

  Nico’s lip trembled.

  “Jesus,” Hazard muttered and set down the cake.

  “No!” Nico’s voice was sharp, but it flexed under that one word. “No, I am not going to cry.”

  “Ok, well, I updated the employee handbook. You’re allowed to cry.” Honesty compelled him to add, “Quarterly.”

  Nico made a wet noise and wiped his eyes. “I am not crying. Because I’m mad at you. Because I’ve been nice to you all morning, and you’re being a jerk.”

  “Yes, fine, I’m a jerk. Although, to be fair, usually most of this stuff rolls off you. I don’t know why today you’re—”

  “I should have been there last night, Em!”

  Hazard tried to catch up. “Last night?”

  Nico made an annoyed noise and waved a hand. “At the school board meeting! I should have been there with the rest of you!”

  “Oh. Well, thank God you weren’t. You still can’t throw a decent punch, and this way, you didn’t spend the night in jail with a sprained wrist or a broken finger. And it’s only a misdemeanor charge, which has no bearing on my investigator’s license—”

  “Emery Hazard!”

  “What?” he shouted back, although that was mostly in response to the volume.

  Nico spun and marched out of the office. “Why are you so fucking dense sometimes?”

  “What the fuck is going on? You bring me coffee and you bring me your paper and you bring me cake, and why am I the fucking bad guy?”

  “Because, you idiot, I am trying to tell you I’m sorry for having a panic attack and not being there when you needed me!”

  It took approximately ten seconds for Hazard to come up with words for that. Then he followed Nico out into the reception area. Before he could speak, though, Nico made a choked noise, stepped into the bathroom, and slammed the door. The sound of running water swallowed up any other noises, but Hazard thought he had a good idea what was going on. He counted to sixty. He rapped on the door. Nothing. He counted to sixty again. Still nothing.

  After retrieving cake, coffee, and acetaminophen from the desk, he sat in the reception area. He swallowed the pills. He drank the coffee. He hit the cake like a runaway train because it was only going to get stale if he didn’t.

  As he built up his strength, as his grandmother would have put it, he considered the reception area. The second-floor office looked out over Market Street and, beyond, the Grand Rivere. So much had changed and been improved since Nico had started working there—better furniture, a better layout, little touches that made the space comfortable and welcoming and pleasant instead of utilitarian. Even the cracked front window with the draft had been replaced. It was open today—Nico had opened it—and sweet morning air mixed with the smell of the sandalwood diffuser. Lately, the improvements had been plants. After consulting Somers—a conversation from which Hazard had been ejected after his fourth proposal that they only buy plastic plants, for economic reasons—Nico had started adding plants: potted aloe, bamboo, what Nico called a bird’s nest fern, along with a ficus and a Swiss cheese philodendron. Twice since, when Somers had dropped by for one reason or another, Hazard had emerged from his office to find Somers handling the philodendron’s leaves and smiling. As Hazard finished the last bite of cake, he resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to acknowledge the plants in Nico’s annual evaluation.

  The bathroom door clicked open. Nico stepped out. His eyes were only slightly red, and his hairline was damp, his face fresh from a quick wash-and-dry with paper towels.

  “The cake is delicious,” Hazard said, displaying the empty box. “Was. As is the coffee.”

  “Oh my God,” Nico murmured, but a bent smile slipped out.

  “And the paper is much, much stronger.”

  “Because you fixed it.”

  “There is one dangling modifier—”

  “Oh my God,” Nico murmured again, and the bent smile was a little straighter.

  “I am sorry that I didn’t understand you were upset and trying to apologize.”

  “Well, it’s not like I came out and told you. I can’t expect you to be a mind-reader. That’s one of the things my therapist and I—” He stopped.

  Hazard kept his face neutral.

  “One of the things my therapist and I are working on.”

  Hazard nodded. “But I was…severe.”

  “You were being a grump.”

  “As I’ve told you before—” But Hazard caught himself, corrected course. “Nico, if you’re continuing to experience panic attacks, have you considered trying a different therapist? Or medication to supplement therapy? You don’t need to jump ship, but there are different approaches to treating PTSD and anxiety disorders, and maybe this therapist isn’t the right fit for you.”

  “Well, it would be hard for him to do much,” Nico said, mostly to himself, the words barely loud enough for Hazard to catch them. “Considering I haven’t told him what happened.”

  What happened—two of the most condensed words in the English language—meant Nico being attacked, drugged, abducted, and held captive, convinced he was going to be killed by a guy he was at least somewhat romantically involved with. A serial killer, it turned out. One who had infiltrated Hazard’s life. And the effects of that infiltration were still making themselves manifest.

  “You haven’t told him—” Hazard began.

  The door opened, and a woman walked into the office. She was olive skinned, her dark hair up in a high ponytail, and she had big, brown eyes that looked even bigger with ’70s blue eyeshadow. She was tall, taller in heels, in a linen smock that was barely long enough to be a paper towel. She came into the room like she was stepping in dog shit, and to judge by the twist of her mouth, she didn’t expect things to get any better.

  “Good morning,” Nico said with a bright smile. “Welcome to Astraea. How may I help you?”

  “Just a minute,” Hazard said. “I asked you a question.”

  “It can wait. Are you looking for private investigation services?”

  “She can wait,” Hazard said. “Are you seriously telling me that you haven’t even talked about what happened with Mitchell—”

  “Em.” Nico’s smile was as tight as his voice. “You’re being rude. We have a client.”

  “It’s my agency. I can be rude whenever I want, particularly when it comes to evasive, weaselly administrative assistants who can’t be trusted to look out for their own wellbeing or welfare or—” He felt like he was on a roll, but then all he could come up with was, “—wellness.”


  Nico didn’t exactly cover his eyes or look away, but a lot of it still came through in his body language.

  The woman tracked the back and forth, her head swiveling as she looked at each speaker. Now her gaze settled on Hazard. “You’re Emery Hazard?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Nico said. “It’s been a rough morning. Yes, this is Emery Hazard. You may have read about his work in the Washington Post, and—”

  “I want to hire you.”

  “The earliest I can start is in two weeks,” Hazard said. “My caseload is full.”

  She shook her head. “It has to be today. And tomorrow. It’s a two-day job, and then we’ll be gone. I can pay you five thousand dollars a day.”

  Hazard set aside the pastry box and asked again, “Who are you?”

  “Ayelet Ames. My mother, Loretta Ames, is here for an author visit. She’s speaking at the high school. Of course, you knew that already because you got arrested last night at the school board meeting.”

  “What do you—”

  “Someone is trying to kill my mother,” Ayelet said, her smile wry, almost droll. “I’d like you to stop them.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  MAY 15

  FRIDAY

  9:01 AM

  WHEN THEY SAT IN his private office, Hazard realized some of the cool was an act. She crossed her legs at the knee, the smock riding up high enough to give a straight man an aneurysm, and her foot bounced steadily. Her manicure looked recent, but she’d chewed one of the nails already. And faint but buried in whatever perfume she was wearing—something floral and teeny-bopper sweet—was the sting of cigarette smoke.

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Hazard asked.

  “It’s like I told you: someone is trying to kill her.”

  “How?”

  “However they can! I don’t think it really matters to them.”

  “No, I meant, how have they tried? Describe the attempts.”

  She lifted one hand to her mouth, seemed to catch herself, and dropped it again. “Don’t you want to talk to my mother about that?”