beckoned. He set down the razor, beckoned again, and undid the tie. He knotted it again, slid the knot tight, and flattened the back of Somers’s collar. The blond man observed all this with a wry smile.
When Hazard picked up the razor again, Somers kissed him on the cheek.
“You’re not mad? About last night, I mean.”
Hazard grunted again and stiff-armed his boyfriend out of the bathroom.
“Ree?” Somers said, poking his head back into the bathroom.
Hazard facepalmed him out again.
“It’s just,” Somers said, finger combing his hair as he slid into the bathroom again. “If you’re mad—”
“For the love of Christ, I am not mad, I am not upset, I am not passive aggressively ignoring you. Now can I please just shave in peace?”
For some reason, that made Somers get a huge grin, and the blond man barely made it out of the bathroom before he started to laugh.
Hazard paid careful attention to get the spot under his chin and, at the edge of conscious thought, decided he would never understand his fiancé.
“If you have time,” Somers said, “could you take the laptop to Darnell?”
Clicking off the razor, Hazard said, “Where do you think Dulac is?”
“I don’t know. That’s kind of the whole problem.”
“I’m asking where you think he is.” Hazard moved into their bedroom, discovered that the Baby Shark tee Somers had bought him was the only clean thing he had left, and dragged it on. When his head popped through the collar, Somers had a hand on his chin and was watching. “Don’t ogle me,” Hazard said.
“I like ogling you.”
“It’s objectifying.”
“Hell yes, it is.”
“Could you please focus?”
“Have you been doing more crunches? How is that even possible?”
Snapping his fingers, Hazard said, “Hey.”
Somers’s face stilled, and he said, “Honestly, I don’t know. He’s never done this before. Disappeared like this. I can’t think of a single rational explanation for why he’d go AWOL. The last message I got from him was about checking out a lead, but there’s no reason he wouldn’t have followed up by now. Even if he were out of state, he could have called and let me know.”
Hazard spoke slowly: “He might not be contacting you on purpose, John.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think,” Hazard said, picking his words carefully, “it’s very unlikely that Nico and Dulac coincidentally disappeared at the same time.”
“Wait a minute. You think Dulac had something to do with this?”
“I don’t have any evidence of that.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“I think that he fits a lot of the criteria for this killer,” Hazard said. “So do a lot of people. Noah fits them too.”
“And Darnell,” Somers said. “He was on your list too. But it wasn’t Darnell.”
“No, that was a hypothesis. The evidence didn’t bear it out.”
“Who else?”
“Wesley.” Hazard shrugged. “And Nico, although honestly, Nico is a long shot.”
“Because you dated him.”
“No,” Hazard stopped and studied Somers: the color high in his cheeks, hands clenched at his sides. “Why are you angry?”
“I’m not angry. I just think it’s funny that you’re dead set on Dulac being part of this somehow, and Nico barely merits a mention.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“They both disappeared at the same time. Did you think it might be the other way? Maybe Nico had something to do with Dulac disappearing.”
“Maybe,” Hazard said. “Although Nico would have needed some way to overpower Dulac, since, based on what we know, Dulac would be more likely to have an advantage in—where are you going?”
“Work.”
Hazard pounded after him; in her bedroom, Evie was shrieking something about her play kitchen. He caught Somers at the stairs.
“I am not mad,” Somers said, sounding very reasonable again.
“Great.”
“I just have a hard time believing that one of our friends is a psychopath and a serial killer.”
“We talked about why—”
“And we talked about why it might not be, too.”
Hazard cocked his head, and then he hooked a finger behind the knot of Somers’s tie, dragging the blond man up a step.
“Stop messing around.”
Hazard tugged a little harder, and Somers came up another step.
“Stop,” Somers said, “you’re making me late.”
“For someone who’s not mad,” Hazard said, tugging again, “you’re yelling at me a lot.”
Stumbling onto the landing at the top of the stairs, Somers swiped at Hazard’s hand, but Hazard didn’t let go. Instead, Hazard kissed him once and said, “You are the one I’m loyal to. You are the most important thing in my life. If I have to rip down the rest of the world to find this asshole, I will. But you come first.”
Somers squirmed a