Hazard silently counted to ten. Then he said, “Goodbye.”
“Hey, wait. Are you too busy today? You’ve already got plans?”
“John.”
“Because if you’ve already got plans, like, maybe you’re going to breakfast at Big Biscuit, and the wait staff already know it’s your birthday, and they’ve got balloons all over the place, a big number 3, a big number 5, and they’re going to sing to you as soon as you walk through the door, and then, after breakfast, you’re going to go shopping at the mall in Columbia, and your fiancé is going to make you try on some new pants, real, grown-up pants that don’t look like a thirty-five-year-old man bought them for eighteen dollars at Walmart and has worn them down to rags—”
“Those jeans are really comfortable.”
“—and then lunch at Shakespeare’s Pizza, where the wait staff already know it’s your birthday, and they’ve got balloons—”
“Where are you?” Hazard growled, grabbing a flannel shirt off the back of a chair and slipping into it as he headed out of the bedroom. “I do not deserve to be threatened on my birthday.”
“Does that mean you’ll take the case?”
“No. It means I keep promising to paddle your ass, and now I’m going to do it.”
“It’s a really important case. This brunch would be perfect for my fiancé: quiet, private, those little quiches with bacon and white cheddar that he likes. Did I mention private?”
“This is a game. You are trying to blackmail me into playing a game. I do not like games.”
“You got a little Dr. Seuss-y at the end there. What do you say? Will you take the case?”
“I hope you’re not planning on sitting down anytime soon.”
Somers just laughed. Hazard broke the main floor of the house into quadrants, searching them one by one. When he got to the dining room, with its windows looking out the front of the house, he paused. Then his fingers tightened around the phone until he heard the glass and aluminum groan.
Out on the driveway, Somers was in the Mustang. He gave a cheery wave and then, over the phone, came his voice.
“Glad you’re up, sweetheart. But before we start playing, you should probably put on some pants. Not those jeans, though. Real, adult pants. I left some in your dresser.”
“No, John. No. No. No. I will say it however many times I have to say it. I am not playing some ridiculous game you invented.”
“Then I’ll see you at Big Biscuit?”
Hazard didn’t even know what to call the sound he was making.
The line went dead. A moment later, the phone buzzed once: a text message.
Do not look at the screen, Hazard told himself. Don’t even look.
The message said, I’m glad your name isn’t Evangelina, something I never thought I’d say; go to the place where we saw Brangelina, and later, we went downstairs to play.
Hazard tapped furiously at the screen: That is a fucking terrible poem.
A kissy-face emoji came back. Picture, please, when you get there.
That was when Hazard screamed.
II
APRIL 24
WEDNESDAY
7:41 AM
HAZARD WAS ABSOLUTELY NOT going to play this game. He didn’t like games. He didn’t like nonsense. Instead, he marched upstairs.
But his mind was turning already, spinning up, teasing out the lines of the poem. Evangelina sounded like nonsense that Somers had thrown in just to have a rhyme with Brangelina. And the rest of the poem wasn’t hard to decipher. Last summer, a local movie theater had tried to drum up business by running a Summer Romance theme, which included matinee showings of a mixture of older movies that patrons could pay five bucks to see again. One of those movies had been Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which had Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Hazard and Somers had gone to see it because Somers liked shit like that, of course, and because they’d both been so unmoored by everything that had happened over the Fourth of July that they’d been desperate for ways to get out of the house, to spend time together, to try to normalize themselves after horrors that could never be normalized.
And then, because, well, Brad Pitt, Somers had gotten a little handsy. And handsy had escalated into a make-out session in the parking garage. In the middle of the day. With a lot more handsiness. Hazard blamed the recent trauma for letting himself get so carried away.
Hazard’s brain unpacked all of this from the poem before he had gotten into bed, and he couldn’t deny a little tug of satisfaction in his gut. But he was not playing this game. No way. He crawled onto the mattress, pulled up the comforter, and closed his eyes.
It hadn’t been a particularly difficult riddle. But, still, it had been kind of fun to solve. Hazard couldn’t pretend he hadn’t liked it. Just a little. And, of course, knowing Somers, the riddles would escalate. And some of them might be really difficult. Really, really challenging. The kind that would take some serious brainpower. Because, after all, Somers was smart. And he had obviously prepared for this. And he would have expected Hazard to solve the first riddle almost instantly, because Somers never underestimated him. And a really tough riddle, a real challenge, seeing Somers work his hardest to stump Hazard—well, Hazard had always been attracted to smart guys, and Somers throwing down the gauntlet was, to say the least, inspiring.
Hazard fluffed the comforter and pulled it over his head. Absolutely not. No way.
But the thing with Somers was that he never left well enough alone. And he really wasn’t one to bluff—well, most of the time. If he said that either they were playing this game or they were going to a huge, public breakfast at Big Biscuit, well, he was telling the truth. And if Hazard tried to ignore him, Somers would just take things to the next level. Dragging the pillow over his face, Hazard tried not to think about what that might look like. A parade of strangers coming
