by TA Moore
Javi thought that was why he heard Cloister’s voice—it was an auditory hallucination caused by regret. He realized he was wrong when Matthew staggered backward, and his face sagged with desperation. He brought his hands up, and there was blood on his forearms. Then he decided to make a run for the barn.
He didn’t have a hope. Bourneville shot across the clearing like she’d been shot out of a catapult, all black fur and bared teeth. She hit Matthew square in the back and bowled him over. He hit the ground, rolled, and managed to come up on all fours. Bourneville knocked him back down, stood on his chest, and snapped and snarled into his face. Drool dripped on Matthew’s face as he writhed like a broken-backed snake.
“Stay still, and I’ll call her off,” Cloister snapped, his voice pitched to carry. He loped into view, coated in dust and breathing hard. “Stay. Still.”
Matthew tried to punch her instead. It was a flailing, ineffective swipe. Bourneville ducked, twisted like a cat, and sank her teeth into his arm. She snarled around the mouthful of flesh and shook her head from one side to the other.
“Stay still,” Cloister repeated, “or she’ll chew your fucking hand off.”
That time Matthew did as he was told. He went as limp as he could between the obvious shock and pain. His body trembled as he sobbed, but Bourneville was still attached to his arm, and a low, muffled growl escaped her clenched teeth.
Instead of calling Bourneville off, Cloister dropped to his knees next to Javi. He cupped Javi’s shoulders gingerly and then checked his body from chest to ribs.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Javi, you okay? You with us?”
Javi propped himself up on his elbow. He gripped Cloister’s bicep in his free hand and thought about kissing him, but before he could get carried away, he saw Tancredi stagger up to join them.
“Help me up,” he said instead.
Cloister helped haul him to his feet. He grasped the back of Javi’s neck, his broad palm rough and his fingers gentle. “You look like shit,” he said.
“I think I have puke in my hair,” Javi said.
Cloister showed him his hand. “It’s blood.”
“Oh. Good,” Javi said. He grabbed the edge of the ATV and sat down on the cracked vinyl seat. Nothing really hurt yet. The pain was somewhere under the pulse of energy behind his eyes. It would hurt later. He doubled over, rested his elbows on his knees, and decided to let Cloister get away with rubbing his shoulder. “I haven’t seen Drew.”
“We’ll find him,” Cloister said.
Tancredi came over with a bottle of water, and Javi took it with a grunt of thanks and poured it down his throat. It didn’t do anything to quench his thirst. The liquid just seemed to soak into his body and disappear. So did Cloister. When he looked back up, Cloister was pulling Bourneville off the sobbing Matthew.
“Good girl,” he praised the dog effusively as he pulled Matthew up onto his feet and cuffed him. Blood dripped down Matthew’s arm. “You did a good job, girl.”
Bourneville sat at Cloister’s feet and listened attentively to the praise. She tilted her head from one side to the other every time she heard the word “good,” and her ears flapped in the wind.
“We’ll find Drew,” Tancredi told him. She leaned against the ATV next to him and ducked her chin down to the radio to call in their location. “He’s going to be home with his family soon.”
Or he wouldn’t be, Javi thought bleakly. Him screwing up and walking in on Matthew without having a plan could cause a ten-year-old’s death.
Chapter Thirty
BOURNEVILLE GAVE two piercing barks and raked at the door to the shed. It was old, and the dry-rotted wood crumbled under Bourneville’s nails, but the padlock screwed into it was brand new.
“We’ve found something,” Cloister yelled. He loped through the scrub of half-grown saplings and hopped over a foot-wide groove in the ground that, in wetter years, probably held water. Bourneville barked at him again. She backed away from the door and circled the structure with her tail wagging eagerly as she sniffed, barked, and raked each wall.
By the time Cloister reached the shed, she was back at the door. She pressed her nose against the crack and whined fretfully as she waited for him to open it. He grabbed the padlock and wrenched as hard as he could. Half the screws tore out of the wood and dropped splinters and sawdust on Bourneville. She shook her head and sneezed but didn’t move. Another wrench, and the lock came away in his hand.
He dropped it, and Bourneville pushed the door open with her nose before he had a chance. She wriggled through the gap and barked again. Her tail thumped against the walls. Cloister pushed the door open the rest of the way and ducked inside.
Drew Hartley lay on the floor. He was flushed, his hair sweat spiky and his eyes sunken, and he wasn’t moving. Not even with Bourneville barking in his ear. There was a big bottle of water next to him, but it was empty.
“Ruhig,” Cloister told Bourneville. “Shut up, girl.”
She obediently stopped barking, and he absently praised her as he crouched down. People ran around outside, yelling orders and commands through the trees. It felt very distant as Cloister leaned over and tucked his fingers under Drew’s chin to take his pulse.
It was slow, but it was there.
Relief made Cloister sag. He slid his hand back to cup Drew’s skull for a second. “You’re going home, Drew,” he said.
“IT WAS the Santa Anas that set him off,” Cloister said. He sat on the bench of the ambulance as it bumped and shuddered its way along the backroads. “They were bad that year when his family died.”
Javi lay on the thin white sheet, his jaw clenched and an IV plugged into the crook of his arm. There was gauze over his eye, and bruises had started to bloom on his ribs and jaw.
“I knew it,” Javi said. “The car?”
“Same one,” Cloister said. He paused and corrected himself. “Same make and model, anyhow.”
“And the boy?” Javi opened his good eye enough to squint at Cloister. “How’s he?”
“Alive.”
Javi closed his eye again. “There’s a lot of leeway there.”
The ambulance hit a bump, and Cloister reached over to steady Javi on the bed. He pressed down on Javi’s shoulder as the driver yelled an apology back to them.
“Sorry,” Cloister said after a second. He took his hand back. “Drew was drugged and dehydrated, but he didn’t seem hurt otherwise. The paramedics seemed optimistic, but until he wakes up….”
He shrugged his helplessness.
“And you?” Javi asked. “You found the missing boy. You’re going to be the hero of the moment.”
There was a faint, resentful edge to Javi’s voice that made Cloister feel awkward. He didn’t have any ambition. He was a man of simple tastes—he liked dogs, finding people, and the occasional beer. But people who did have ambition never believed that.
It wasn’t as though it even made him feel any better, finding Drew. It never did. He was glad Drew was unhurt and was going to get to see his family, but it didn’t lift any weight off Cloister. Tonight he wouldn’t sleep any better.
There was probably a way to explain that, but it seemed hard. Cloister reached down and petted Bourneville instead, and she curled up around his feet. “She did the heavy lifting. Maybe she’ll get the key to the city.”
Javi snorted. He lifted the hand that wasn’t tethered to the IV and ground his knuckles into his forehead hard enough to leave dents in his skin. It took him a minute to breathe through whatever drug-cocktail peak he’d just reached. Once he did he let his arm go slack over his forehead.
“At least Mr. Utkin will know he was right about his daughter’s boyfriend.”
The bumps and sharp corners of the back roads turned into the stop-and-start progress of the center of town. Cloister stood up as much as he could with the low roof and checked out the back window.
“Nearly at the hospital,” he said.
Another grunt.
Cloister tu
rned back and studied the long sprawl of Javi’s battered body, the scrapes and bruises. He hardly knew him, and Javi had made it clear he didn’t want Cloister to get to know him, but he would have liked to.
The ambulance pulled into the hospital and stopped outside the ER. The driver and his partner opened the back and helped Javi out into a wheelchair. It made him sneer, but he slouched down into it anyhow.
Cloister stopped them before they pushed Javi through the grubby, sliding glass doors.
“Special Agent Merlo,” he said as he put a hand on Javi’s shoulder. The muscles tensed under his fingers, taut as cords under the bruised skin. “You’re not as much of an asshole as I thought.”
Javi gave him a dry, unamused look. “But I am still an asshole, Witte?”
“Well, yeah. Have you met you?” Cloister stepped back and lifted his hand in a lazy farewell. “Take care of yourself, Merlo. See you around.”
He waited until they pushed Javi into the hospital, and then he went to cadge a lift back to the station with one of the other deputies.
TWO DAYS later there was a bottle of wine in a classy black gift bag on Cloister’s desk when he came in to drop off his paperwork. Lara Hartley sat on the other side of it. Her eyes were still bloodshot, and her nails were bitten down to ragged nubs, but her smile when she saw him was free of shadows.
“Deputy Witte.” She stood up and held her hand out to him. Her handshake was firm. “I just wanted to let you know how grateful I was for everything you did.”
“I’m glad we could help bring Drew home,” he said with a crooked smile. “But it was mostly Bourneville, and she can’t hold her wine, Doctor Hartley.”
She sniffed at him. “I’ve already donated to the K-9 retirement program in her name, Deputy,” she said. “But Billy told me what you did for him, and I wanted you to know I appreciated it too. I think I could have forgiven him, that I would have trusted that he hadn’t hurt Drew… eventually. I don’t think he could have forgiven himself if he hadn’t talked to us. You helped both my sons, Deputy.”
Cloister shook his head and gestured for Lara to sit down opposite him. When she did he took a seat as well.
“That’s my job,” he said. “Expecting thanks on top of my wages is why Plenty doesn’t have a separate police department anymore. I appreciate the thought, but that’s all I need.”
Lara folded her lower lip between her teeth and studied him for a second. “Billy told me what you said about your brother.” She paused for a second and then pushed the bag toward him. “It’s a onetime gift, Deputy. No strings.”
The bottle sat between them on the table.
“I don’t even like wine,” Cloister protested, although he left the bag where it was. He could donate it for the Halloween raffle, he supposed.
Lara stood up and absently smoothed her skirt down over her thighs. “Javi does.” She reached out and touched her fingertip to the top of the bottle. “It’s his favorite vintage.”
That caught Cloister off guard. He spluttered for a second while Lara watched with amusement.
“We were friends,” she said. Her mouth twisted around the unsaid fact that they weren’t anymore. Maybe she could have forgiven her son, but Javi didn’t get the same familial pass. “Take the bottle, Deputy Witte, and I hope that one day you find your—”
“Thank you, Doctor Hartley,” he said. “You should get home, enjoy your family.”
Something complicated crossed her face, but she nodded. “I should,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Deputy, but I hope I don’t see you again.”
“Same, Doctor,” Cloister said.
They shook again, and Lara squeezed his hand tightly enough to remind him of her recent desperation. And then she left. Cloister sank back down and stared uncertainly at the gift in its fancy bag until Tancredi stopped on her way through and asked, “Penny for them?”
“I’d need to give you change,” he shot back.
Cloister still didn’t know what to do about the wine, but he had a shift to get through before he could do anything. He picked it up and shoved it into a drawer. Maybe once he’d finished for the day, he’d have a clearer mind… or be too tired to worry about it.
Besides, just because they’d found Drew didn’t mean there weren’t other missing kids out there waiting to come home.
Epilogue
JAVI LAY on the couch in his apartment with his arm slung over the back and watched the news. Drew Hartley’s disappearance and rescue were already old stories. A college football player accused of misconduct ahead of a big match had taken its place.
“This is a transparent attempt by the opposing team to blacken his name,” the red-faced coach, Barney Jenks, insisted. “Patterson will still be playing, and I have every confidence his name will be clear—”
Javi turned it off.
The hospital had signed him off for the rest of the week, against his wishes. He had to wait for his eye—currently puffy and bruised, with the white full of blood—to mend, and a meeting with the LA office’s psychiatrist to go back to active duty.
It was too much time, and when he had too much time on his hands, he made bad decisions—like almost calling Cloister too many times in the last two days, with the number on the phone and Javi’s thumb hovering over Call. It was a terrible idea, and he didn’t want to hurt Cloister. He would, but he didn’t want to.
The rap of knuckles on the door jarred him out of his introspection. He wasn’t expecting anyone. His bruises hurt as he got up, a cracked rib ached with each breath, but he had whiskey and painkillers for that later.
“Hold on.”
He padded over to the door in his bare feet and checked the security camera. Cloister leaned against the door with a brown paper bag in the crook of his arm. He was all in black, from his boots to the old leather jacket that made his shoulders look even broader. Apparently you could look at some bad ideas and just know they would be worth it.
Javi opened the door. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
Cloister held up the bag. “I owed you dinner,” he said. “And this is the best fried chicken in town.”
“I don’t date,” Javi said.
“If it were a date, I’d have brought wine,” Cloister said. “You get fried chicken… if you want it.”
Javi did. He wanted Cloister too, and it wasn’t as though Javi had promised him anything to get him there. So his conscience was clear.
He grabbed the collar of Cloister’s jacket—the leather butter soft under his fingers—and pulled him in for a kiss. The dog came in too, but Javi supposed he had to get used to that. Besides, Bourneville had saved his life.
“Chicken will get cold,” Cloister said as he squirmed out of his jacket.
“Shut up,” Javi told him. “And take your clothes off.”
Later that night Javi had to admit that, even cold, it was good fried chicken.
More from TA Moore
The world ends not with a bang, but with a downpour. Tornadoes spin through the heart of London, New York cooks in a heat wave that melts tarmac, and Russia freezes under an ever-thickening layer of permafrost. People rally at first—organizing aid drops and evacuating populations—but the weather is only getting worse.
In Durham, mild-mannered academic Danny Fennick has battened down to sit out the storm. He grew up in the Scottish Highlands, so he’s seen harsh winters before. Besides, he has an advantage. He’s a werewolf. Or, to be precise, a weredog. Less impressive, but still useful.
Except the other werewolves don’t believe this is any ordinary winter, and they’re coming down over the Wall to mark their new territory. Including Danny’s ex, Jack—the Crown Prince Pup of the Numitor’s pack—and the prince’s brother, who wants to kill him.
A wolf winter isn’t white. It’s red as blood.
Just another day at the office.
For some people that means spreadsheets, and for others it’s stitching endless hems. For Jacob Archer a day at the office
is stealing proprietary information from a bioengineering firm for a paranoid software billionaire. He’s a liar and a thief, parlaying a glib tongue and a facile conscience into a lucrative career. He just has one rule—never get involved with a mark.
Well, had one rule. To be fair, though, Simon Ramsey is dark, dangerous, and has shoulders like a Greek statue. Besides, it’s not as though Jacob’s even really stealing from Simon… just his boss and his brother-in-law. Simon didn’t buy that excuse either after he caught Jacob breaking into the company’s computer network.
That would have been that—one messy breakup, one ticket to Bali booked—but it turns out that the stolen information is worth more than Jacob thought. With his life—and his ribs—threatened, Jacob needs Simon to help him out. Or maybe he just needs Simon.
Readers love TA Moore
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—Joyfully Jay
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—The Novel Approach
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—Rainbow Book Reviews
“…I highly recommend this to all the shifter lovers out there.”