Father Complex (Hazard and Somerset: Arrows in the Hand, #4)

by Gregory Ashe

“Well,” Somers said, “do you want to pick a fight with Colt’s coaches now, or is that more of a weekend-ambush type of thing?” “You act like it’s a criminal offense to have a passing conversation on someone’s doorstep.” “Is that what they call it at eight in the morning?”

“He doesn’t have any tools at all except the gunsmithing and reloading stuff on the bench,” Hazard said. “I guess he doesn’t spend his Saturday nights replacing the wax seal on the hall toilet.” “It was one time, and you got some good thank-you sex after. Get off the cross.”

I swear to God, I said a prayer right then. I said, ‘Lord, don’t let Satan take me now.’ And he didn’t, praise Jesus.” “Yes,” Hazard said. “I’m sure that an omnipotent being had nothing better to do than intervene to preserve you from the soteriological threat of a dildo—” He had more, but it was hard to finish after your husband elbowed you in the gut.

Some of the existential blackout Hazard was experiencing must have translated into a noise because Somers elbowed him again. Harder.

Between Larenz’s screams and Shaw’s yammers, Hazard had a sudden, vivid fantasy of smashing his head through the glass and, if he were lucky, cutting his jugular in the process. Instead, he gritted out, “Child lock.” “Well, yeah, I mean, North is definitely in some sort of state of arrested development, and I guess calling it child lock is actually pretty accurate. That’s why I have to be the responsible one, you know, like doing surprise cheese-checks and making sure his salad gets tossed, which did you know actually has another meaning, and one time we were visiting this guy in prison and—” “The door has the fucking child lock set!” Hazard roared. “Open the fucking door!”

“Great,” North said to no one in particular. “This is fucking fantastic. You know what? You can deal with him when he decides to give all the drapes a ‘kitten haircut’ at three in the morning.”

Hazard found Somers standing by the refrigerator, holding an unopened Pepsi in one hand. Shaw was halfway inside one of the cabinets, the sari riding up. The clatter told Hazard that he was going to spend his next free day organizing the kitchen again. “Jesus Christ.” “Well,” Somers said, “he told me he wanted to see if it was, uh, quote, ‘drinkable,’ if he put lime in it. I told him we didn’t have any limes, and he said that was ok, he only needed the ethereal essence of a lime.”

“Hi, Colt,” Shaw said with an enormous smile. “I can’t tell if your soul used to be an eagle or a lion or a horse.” Colt’s eyes got huge. North breathed out something that might have been “For the love of fuck.”

Send Emery back up, and don’t take what he said too hard. He told me a few weeks ago I didn’t deserve to have a badge because I kept losing at Where’s Waldo?”

“I knew Emery would rescue me!” Shaw crowed. “I told you Emery would rescue me. Well, us, actually. But I knew North wouldn’t want to be rescued, on account of his toxic masculinity—” “First of all,” North said, “what the fuck?” “—and so when I encoded my telepathic message, I made sure I omitted North, you know, to protect his dignity, especially that part about how he might have peed a little when this guy tried to bunghole him with his gun—” “What the actual fuck?” Horror pulled at North’s features. “Nobody tried to bunghole me with anything.” “Well, you did a lot of bending over—” “He told me to drop the paper! And I didn’t pee at all, not even a little.” He set his jaw and looked like he tried not to say any more, but then words slipped out: “And I sure as fuck did not need to be rescued.”

“The castle doctrine doesn’t cover taking people at gunpoint and forcing them inside your house,” Somers said. “That’s false imprisonment. That’s a felony.” “That’s what I told these needle-dicks,” North said. “Didn’t I?” “Well, kind of,” Shaw said with an embarrassed shrug. “I mean, you peppered in a lot of ‘dongfuckers’ and ‘assmunches,’ and it was kind of hard to know exactly what you meant.”

When Hazard got out of the car, Shaw’s voice carried clearly in the still spring afternoon. “—the clinical use of vibrators—” “Stop talking,” North said. “It’s scientifically proven, North! It’s a time-tested method for curing hysteria.” “You’re not hysterical. You’re not nervous or anxious or whatever the fuck you’re talking about. You don’t need cold baths or hot baths or plunges or, Christ, Shaw, I don’t know. You saw a mouse. You tried to kiss it. You screamed when it bit your hand. That’s the end of that particular episode of horse-fuckery.” This was approximately the moment when Hazard reached them. “I thought it was a prince,” Shaw explained.

“It’s his baby, and possibly the only baby we’ll ever have because my hysterical uterus—” Shaw cut off with a cry when North pulled his hair. “North! What if that had been a wig?”

“Surprise!” Shaw shouted as he darted around Hazard and into the living room. “Surprise,” North echoed sourly from behind Hazard. “Oh my God,” Shaw said, stopping to turn around in a circle before his eyes came to rest on Aileen. “You must be Emery’s sister.” “I don’t have a sister,” Hazard said. “She’s obviously my mother.” “Bunny, don’t be unkind. He was being polite.” Aileen smiled at Shaw. “And you are?” “I’m Shaw. I’m Emery’s best friend. Well, soulmate.” “What the fu—” North seemed to catch himself, and he darted a guilty look at Aileen. “Excuse me?” “Quantum entangled soulmate,” Shaw said. “Not romantic soulmate.” “Uh huh,” North said. “That’s you.” “Fu—freaking fantastic.” “Probably.” “What the fu—” By now North was starting to sound strangled. “What do you mean, probably?” “My best friend,” Hazard said, “would have known that I don’t have a sister.”

“Maybe in that alternate universe you never became a private detective and you’re not here at all. Maybe you’re somewhere else. Maybe we never met.” “Oh my God,” Shaw said, voice thrilled. “Maybe I’m a lion tamer! Oh my God, oh my God, and maybe you’re the lion!” For a moment, Hazard’s silence sounded helpless. Then he bellowed, “North!”