by TA Moore
He grabbed Sean by the shoulder, twisted his fingers in his son’s Ben 10 T-shirt, and shrugged at Cloister. “He had nightmares,” he said. “I think that’s enough.”
Cloister nodded his understanding and asked, “Just a minute more? One more question.”
Sean’s dad looked reluctant, probably torn between concern for a missing boy he could put a face to and the idea that he could protect his own kid from anything like that—as though bad things couldn’t happen to Sean if he didn’t know about them. Instead of giving him the chance to make up his mind, Cloister asked his question.
“Is there anything that Drew did this year that was weird?” he asked. “Did he have any new friends or somewhere he played?”
Sean pulled a thoughtful face and twisted his mouth to the side.
“I ’unno.” He shrugged. After a squirming second, he blurted out, “He was really mad this was his last year? He said it was all Billy’s fault. He was really mad, I guess. Is that good?”
Cloister nodded. “That’s great,” he said and held out his hand. Sean put his sticky little mitt into it and grinned gappily at the solemn handshake. “You’ve been a big help.”
Sean got to shake Bourneville’s paw too as she gave her best lolling dog grin. Then his dad pulled him and his sister away. Cloister watched them go and then unfolded himself from the rock he’d been perched on. He brushed off the seat of his jeans and turned to look around, although he wasn’t sure whose benefit that bit of pantomime was for. Bourneville didn’t care, and Cloister already knew he’d keep track of where Javi was. Awareness of the dark, intense Javi was an itch at the base of Cloister’s neck.
Or maybe balls would be more accurate.
It was distracting, and that was disconcerting. He never got sidetracked at work, certainly not by nice shoulders in custom tailoring. Especially not when it was a missing-person case. Those were always bad ones. He didn’t sleep much anyway, but hardly at all when someone was lost. All of a sudden, though, his brain had decided to dedicate processing power to mooning over a hopeless crush.
Maybe he should get some sleep later.
Javi was standing in front of the Retreat’s office, dark head inclined toward a scruffy man in worn overalls. Groundsman, Cloister assumed from the dirt on the knees and the heavy-duty pruning shears he held as he talked.
Muttered, really. He kept his head down and shoulders up—awkward with either social interaction, authority, or sharply handsome men with elegant hands.
Cloister could sympathize. He wasn’t comfortable around any of those things either. His instincts made him bristle instead of cower. But then he had a gun and maybe a foot in height on the dark, scruffy gardener.
“Come on, girl,” he said as he clipped Bourneville’s leash onto her collar. “Fuss.”
Back to work. She shook her head, shedding chip crumbs, and took up her usual position at this side. Her shoulder bumped companionably against Cloister’s knee as they walked to the office. According to the girl he spoke to, Reed was away. He had an “important appointment.” Cloister assumed it was with his lawyer, insurance company, or both.
Up close the groundsman had the well-worn face of someone who worked outside. It made it difficult to tell how old he was. The stubble on his dusty jaw was patchy, but the skin was rough and full of dark pores. Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, Cloister guessed.
“I never saw a boy out on his own,” the man muttered, wrinkling his nose and blinking nervously. “Told the other cops that.”
“I’m just making sure you didn’t forget anything, Matthew,” Javi said. “Sometimes you say something in the heat of the moment and then realize you left details out. So you didn’t see any boys that night?”
Matthew hunched his bony shoulders, scratched at a welt on his neck, and fidgeted. “Saw lots of boys. Always lots of kids around. I don’t watch them, but I see ’em.”
“Did you see the Hartley boys?” Javi asked. “William and Andrew?”
The corner of Matthew’s mouth jerked, and he shifted in place. “Might have seen them.” He drew the words out like he was using pliers. “Weren’t alone, though. If they’d been alone, I’d have said something.”
“Who were they with?” Javi asked.
He snipped the air nervously with the pruning shears, and the rusted hinge creaked. “Each other,” the man said. “The older boy was going somewhere, and the kid wanted to tag along.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Late. I was going home.”
“Were they arguing?” Cloister asked as he leaned against the low fence. It creaked under his weight, but it held.
“I guess,” the man shrugged out the answer. “Bickering. Brothers do. Can I go?”
Javi finished writing in his notebook and snapped it shut. “Sure,” he said.
Matthew snapped the shears closed again, thumbed the lock into place as he stashed them in his pocket, and scurried away. They both watched him go. His neck was pimpled and red from a fresh shave.
“Why did you ask if they were fighting?” Javi broke the brief silence.
“Apparently Drew had been telling the other kids that it was his last summer at the Retreat. He said it was his brother’s fault. Also he told Millie that he had a girlfriend, but I think he was trying to impress her.”
“Did it work?”
“Don’t think so.” That sent a flicker of humor through Javi’s hazel eyes, but it faded quickly. Cloister waited as Javi tucked his notebook back into his pocket and then cleared his throat. “It doesn’t mean anything. Brothers fight. Kids get the wrong end of the stick.”
“Or it means something,” Javi said. “Bill said he left his brother at the cabin, not that he followed him through the park.”
Fair enough. Cloister pushed himself off the fence, and the wood creaked as his weight shifted. He twisted the lead absently around his hand and felt the sweat on it.
“Do you want to head down to where we lost the scent?” he asked.
The corners of Javi’s mouth were tight as he stared over the Retreat toward the Hartleys’ cabin. After a second he nodded. “Go there first,” he said.
It was an easier hike in the daylight, with Bourneville padding at his heel instead of ranging ahead, but it was hotter. The wind rattled the trees and slashed ribbons of sand around their legs and up into their faces.
Cloister squinted and spat. Javi pulled a pair of aviator sunglasses out of his pocket—as though he weren’t hard enough to read without hiding his eyes behind dark glass.
A single yellow evidence tag was jabbed into the ground where Cloister had found the bottle of soda. The tag had been canary yellow to start with, but between the sun and the sandblasting, it had already faded down to old egg.
“Did he just drop it?” Javi speculated. He turned to look back at the distance they’d covered from the Retreat. “He walked a fair distance, he was tired, and there was no one to see him littering.”
Cloister squatted down, balanced on the balls of his feet.
“It was hot that night,” he said. “Dry. I was parched. I wouldn’t have thrown away a drink, and the bottle had a third left in it when it dropped.”
Javi turned to frown at him. In the polarized curve of the glasses, Cloister could see his reflection with one eye squinted shut against the glare.
“That wasn’t in the report.”
Cloister switched the eye he was squinting and cupped his hand over his nose. “It was in mine,” he said. “I took a picture.”
A muscle clenched in Javi’s jaw. “There were just dregs in the bottle when it got to the lab. What did you do? Drink it?”
Cloister braced his hand, fingers steepled against the ground, and pushed himself to his feet. He walked to the tree and scuffed his foot over the hard crust of dried dirt. Ants scuttled around, disturbed and irritated. “The bottle leaked,” he said. “He threw it away for some reason.”
“What?”
Cloister shrugged. “He’s ten. I’m not. Ma
ybe he was angry about something? Or the soda tasted funny. Or….” He hesitated and then turned around and glanced toward where he knew the boundary was. In his mind a boy ran across the hard-packed dirt, sweating and swerving around obstacles an adult would have lumbered through. But it wasn’t dark, curly-haired Drew, who looked like his mother and brother but not at all like his father. “Maybe I was wrong? If Drew left the Retreat with someone, got to here, and realized something was wrong—”
“He throws away the bottle”—Javi took up the story and mimed the toss—“and runs. He gets as far as the road and then either trips, or whoever was chasing him caught up with him.”
The scenario sounded viable to Cloister, but it didn’t make Javi look any happier. Cloister supposed it didn’t sound good for Drew—or Billy, if Matthew was right about seeing them out together.
“The search parties are still out,” he said.
“Two days,” Javi reminded him.
They walked the rest of the way to the road. The ruts had been flattened by traffic, and a police van was parked on the shoulder to serve as a mobile HQ for the search. Tancredi was sitting on the bumper when they got there, her sleeves rolled up and sweat rolling down her face as she filled in a report. Across the road, yellow vests flashing as they went through the trees, the search party made their way down toward the main road.
At least Cloister didn’t have to crawl under the fence. It had been cut and peeled back to give them access.
“Tancredi,” Cloister said. “Anything?”
She wiped her hand over her face to flick the sweat away. “Nothing.” Looking up she caught sight of Javi and scrambled to her feet. “Sorry,” she said as she waved a fly away impatiently. “I didn’t realize you were down here, sir.”
Last year Tancredi had applied to join the FBI, Cloister remembered. She’d withdrawn after she got pregnant, but from the way she was trying to impress Javi, it looked like she was thinking about it again.
“No need to call me sir,” Javi said. “Agent Merlo will do.”
Tancredi sucked her lower lip between her teeth and bit down. A dull flush slapped her throat. “Yes, Agent Merlo.”
Turning his back, shoulder bumping against Javi’s arm, Cloister muttered, “Dick.”
Javi probably heard it. If he did, he ignored it.
“How far has the search perimeter expanded?” he asked Tancredi. She showed him around the side of the van and pointed to the maps inside.
The leash tugged at Cloister’s hand. He looked down and along the length of woven nylon. Bourneville pulled against her collar, her tail twitching as though she’d caught a scent of something. Probably a baggie of pot one of the volunteers had dropped. It was California, and the sheriff’s department always had a suspicion that the Retreat hadn’t gotten rid of all their pot plants.
Not what they were looking for, but it was an easy find for Bourneville, and she needed a win. She probably didn’t understand the details of a missing child or the deathwatch countdown of how long they’d been gone, but she knew she was meant to find what he told her to. Failing made her mope.
Besides, Cloister was soft enough to believe she understood some of what was going on—at least that some cases bothered Cloister more than others.
He let her have her head and doled out the leash as she trotted back and forth along the shoulder. The wind blew dust up her nose, making her stop and sneeze. Then she caught whatever scent molecules had been teasing her, and her nose stayed down as she scrambled up to the fence. She tried to squeeze into the roll of peeled-back wire and yelped in frustration.
“Bourneville, Platz,” Cloister barked. She grumbled in her chest but flopped down and lay trembling in place until he reached her. “Good girl.”
Cloister reeled the leash in as he climbed up to her side and looped the length of it around his wrist. There was blood on her paw, bright against the rusty fur. Cloister went down on his knee and lifted her foot to check it quickly. She’d caught her pad on the sharp-clipped wire, and a fat drop of blood oozed out between her toes when he manipulated it. It wasn’t dripping on its own, though, so it wasn’t too serious. Bourneville whined at having her hurt foot fiddled with, but her attention was still on the wire.
Easier to let her make her find than drag her away. Cloister leaned forward and hooked his fingers through the diamond-shaped gaps. A yank pulled it back, although he could feel the springy pressure of it cutting into his fingers. “Bring!”
Bourneville darted forward, pawed at the dirt, and turned up a battered white oblong that she carefully pinched between her front teeth and brought out with her. She sat up, dropped the phone on the dirt, and looked at Cloister expectantly.
“Good girl,” he told her absently and patted her head as he let the fence go. It snapped back into the curl, the sharp ends of it scraping rake lines into the dirt. He shook the blood back into his red-welted fingers as he yelled, “Tancredi. You got any gloves?”
She did. It was Javi who snapped them on, though, and reached for the phone without waiting for Cloister to okay it. Bourneville growled at him—a low noise that rattled up her throat and down her nose. Javi froze, and tension trembled in his shoulders.
“Easy,” Cloister said. He put his hand on Bourneville’s shoulder and dug his fingers into her ruff. “Let it go.”
She grumbled a bit but let her lips fold back down over her teeth, and she stepped back. Javi scooped up the phone. His mouth twisted in distaste at the slobber on it, and he wiped it on his leg. Once it was clean, he jabbed his thumb on the home button, and the thin latex stuck to the sticky white surface. The screen lit up at the pressure, and Javi flicked his thumb up and down.
“Unlocked?”
“Notifications,” Javi said flatly. His mouth was tight, and behind his sunglasses, the skin was pulled taut over his cheekbones. “Billy’s girlfriend wants to know why he’s been ignoring her.”
Javi stood up in one smooth motion and snapped at Tancredi, “Get me an evidence bag and a car to take me back up to the Retreat.”
She nodded enthusiastically, hair bouncing, and ran back to the van.
“It doesn’t mean the family was involved,” Cloister pointed out. “He might have dropped it when he was down here. The parents wanted to come down yesterday, help with the search.”
Even through the tinted glasses, Cloister could feel the glare.
“You do dogs, not detection,” Javi reminded him. He held the phone up with the corners pinched between his fingers. “Now it looks like you don’t even do dogs that well. So why not leave this to people who know what they’re doing?”
He gave a hard, brief twist of his mouth and stalked back down the shoulder. Cloister glared after him, his jaw set so tightly it ached, and tried to decide whether he wanted to kiss or punch the smug look off Javier Merlo’s pretty, damn mouth. Or his damn-pretty mouth.
What the hell, he decided as he clicked his tongue for Bourneville and headed back to the road. He could imagine both.
Chapter Six
KEN FOLDED like a man who’d lost his breath and deflated onto the huge creamy sofa. Grief and worry had worn the luxe off the glossy cabin. Dust and dirty footprints covered the polished wood floors, and torn-open boxes of freshly printed MISSING posters were stacked against the walls. The smell of hot paper and ink nearly hid the sourness of food that no one had the appetite to eat.
“We just need to talk to Bill,” Javi said. It was always a lie, but it felt like more of one than usual right then. “There’s some things about what happened that night, when Drew went missing, that we want to clarify.”
Lara’s face was taut, and dark circles bruised under her eyes, but the look of contempt she gave him was robust. She was hugging Billy, one arm wrapped around his shoulders to block the deputy who was trying to take custody of the boy.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she asked. “You can talk to him here or you can get out of my house.”
“Lara….”
Her lips trembled for a second, and then she grimly pressed them into a firm line and blinked the tears from her eyes. She shook her head, curls flying. “You don’t get to call me that. We aren’t friends right now. If you take my son away, we won’t be friends again.”
That caught in Javi’s throat like a pebble. It surprised him. He had friends—if you defined friend as someone you could ask for a favor in a pinch. Lara had invited him to Thanksgiving. He hadn’t gone, but it had still been kind.
“It’s my job,” he said. “If you want to get Drew back, I have to follow every lead. Even if you don’t like it.”
“No. No.” Lara said. “You do not get my baby back by taking my son. That is not how this works. No.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Javi said. He nodded to the deputy and gave a grim little dip of his chin to give permission to a grim little task. The man pried Billy out of Lara’s grip and walked him outside, one hand firmly around his elbow. Ken finally dragged himself up, caught her, and tried to embrace her while she shoved his comfort away.
“It’ll be alright, Lara,” Ken said. “We need to trust the police. They want to find Drew too.”
Lara clenched her hands so tightly that it had to hurt. Tendons stood out in her bony wrists, stark under her skin. She closed her eyes, swallowed hard, and wobbled in place for a second. Javi thought she was going to faint, but then she breathed in, and her spine went rigid.
“My son is missing. Someone took him. You should be looking for him, not trying to blame Billy. He loves his brother.”
“And I’m not saying he doesn’t, or that he’s done anything,” Javi said. “Right now I just need to talk to him, and for everyone’s sake, it’s best if it’s official.”
Lara sniffed stickily and pulled away from Ken. She twisted her arms up to yank her hair back from her face and snapped a band around the heavy mass of it. “You know what my dad would tell me if he were here?” she said. “Trust the police but get an expensive lawyer.”
She grabbed a set of keys and a handful of posters from the table. Then she gave Ken a sharp look. Even standing up he still looked somehow deflated, like something he needed to buoy him up had leaked.