by TA Moore
“We can’t rule it out,” Javi said reluctantly as he walked over to join Cloister. “I don’t think it fits, though. If it were a serial killer, unless it were their first kill, I don’t see why they would have left after they hit you with the car. Even if you didn’t fit whatever they wanted”—a darkly inappropriate part of Javi’s brain took the opportunity to remind him how unlikely that was, with a flicked memory slideshow of Cloister’s taut abs, the freckled curve of his ass, and the heavy rise of his cock under Javi’s hand. He ignored it—“they could have taken Janet while you were out of action.”
“So if it wasn’t a serial killer, and it wasn’t a random attack,” Cloister said, “it was someone she knew somehow?”
“It usually is.”
They both knew that, Javi supposed. Not that Cloister ever talked about his missing brother—he just didn’t remember and didn’t sleep—but then Javi hadn’t told him about the bloody ER or why he left Phoenix. And he never intended to, so he supposed he had no right to push. He didn’t even have a right to want to.
Annoyed, Javi dragged his mind back to the things he did get to push for answers about.
“What about the car—
“It was a pickup truck,” Cloister corrected him.
Javi paused to give him an exasperated look. For a man who usually seemed to exist without any ego, Cloister occasionally picked odd things to posture over. That he’d been knocked by a pickup truck instead of Prius was one of them.
“Do you remember anything about it?” Javi asked. “Color, plates, any stickers or dents?”
Cloister absently rubbed his forehead as he thought about it, careful to give the stitched stripe of purple that dipped into his eyebrow a wide berth.
“It was a pickup truck, it was darkish….” Cloister strained to remember anything else. Eventually he shook his head and shrugged his failure. “I think I took out the side mirror when I bounced off it, maybe, but nothing else stuck.”
“I can talk to the main office in LA,” Javi offered. “They have a profiler there. He could come out and do a cognitive interview with you. It might—”
Cloister shook his head. “No.”
“It can help you recall details that you don’t realize you noticed at the time. I’ve done—”
“I said no.”
Javi had heard the flat finality in Cloister’s voice before, whenever Cloister reached the line where his easygoing nature gave up. It was rare, but there were a couple of times when Cloister had been pushed far enough to dig his heels in. Sometimes it was aimed at the dog, but more often it was for Frome, or sometimes one of his coworkers who thought the station’s only openly gay deputy would take their jeers.
This was the first time Cloister had turned it on Javi. It should have pissed him off. Javi liked to be in control. He liked compliance and the obedient sprawl of Cloister’s stupidly beautiful body under him. It did irritate him on a professional level—he’d extended himself here, and Cloister could at least meet him halfway. But something about that harsh jolt of refusal, the line reached and reinforced, made the dark, hot parts of Javi’s mind stretch and growl like a cat. It was still inappropriate.
“Fine,” Javi said after a pause that was only half to calculate his options. He could broach the idea of the cognitive interview again later, once he worked out whether Cloister needed to be less or more guilty to agree. “What about another witness? Has Frome sent anyone down to canvass the area?”
Cloister gave him a suspicious look. Then he shrugged and waved a hand at the shabby row of buildings.
“There’s a laundromat on the corner. The owner was in the back office to sleep off a bottle of whiskey. Heard nothing, saw nothing, probably wouldn’t say if he had,” he said. “One of the apartments still has a family in it—no water, spotty electricity, and a family of eight—and they heard something. But they didn’t go to look until the ambulance got here. Apparently they hear a lot of noises around here at night.”
Other than the fact that they hadn’t managed to kill Janet, whoever attacked her had either had a very good plan or was very lucky.
Cloister pointed toward the underpass, which managed to look dank and unwelcoming even in the bright afternoon light. “If anyone saw anything, it would have been the homeless people who were riding out the storm in there,” he said. “They were transients, though, on their way through to a better place, and after the ambulance and cop cars turned up last night, they scattered. It won’t be easy to track them down.”
Of course not. Javi grimaced as he looked around the barren stretch of dead commerce. Across the road, in the Galleria, a naked mannequin, nipples and genitals painted on in garish pink, stared back at him with her one remaining eye. From the looks of it, she was probably his best witness, and she was muzzled with the melted plastic from the rest of her face.
“What did you think you’d find down here?” Javi asked as he turned back to Cloister. “Why bother?”
It sounded like mockery, but Javi genuinely wanted to know. Cloister might “do dogs, not detection” but on some things, he had either good instincts or just too many sad stories stored in his skull. Javi would prefer a nice, clean forensic lead, but he’d take what he could get.
After a second, Cloister shrugged and admitted, “You. I thought we could… I don’t know. I didn’t expect the peanut gallery.”
Reminded, Javi checked on the cleaners. They’d finished the cigarette and exhausted their tolerance for the delay. Hewitt and his partner stood impatiently at the line of tape as they checked their phones.
“It’s not the best time,” Javi admitted.
“I could come by yours tonight?” Cloister offered. The corner of his mouth tilted into a smile that disappeared again. “They let that fried chicken place open up again.”
“Sounds delightful,” Javi said dryly.
His lips felt salted, and his balls ached, as though the man who’d been hit by a car was going to want to do anything but talk. But he had six hours of work tonight and two scheduled video conferences with the police in Mexico City and the supervisory special agent in LA tomorrow. He’d be lucky if he left the office before midnight either day, and after talking to Kincaid, he’d be in a foul mood.
And… if they talked then, he’d talk himself out of Cloister.
“But not tonight. Maybe another time?”
“Sure,” Cloister said. “Look, I should go. I need to book time on the training field for Bon if we’re going to be sidelined for a while. Let me know if you find out anything about Janet?”
“Or the man who tried to kill you with a car?” Javi suggested.
Cloister looked amused. “Or him.”
He whistled Bourneville away from the wall and headed back toward his car. The long, lazy cowboy saunter that always caught Javi’s attention was hindered by the hint of a limp. Reminded, Javi glanced down at the curb where Cloister had stood.
There was still blood on the pavement. Most of it had washed away with the rain, but the cleaners hadn’t gotten to it yet, and the paramedics had walked it into the concrete. It had soaked into the cracks. Most of it was probably the girl’s, Javi reminded himself. She was the one who’d almost died. Cloister was already up and being difficult.
Not all of it, though. Javi stared at the stain for a second, his jaw set and his mind carefully blank. Then he made himself step back.
Cloister had already pulled away as Javi turned around. He drove off with Bourneville in the front seat next to him as Javi walked back to the car.
“It’s all yours,” Javi told Hewitt as he yanked the tape loose from its moorings instead of going under it. “Get back to work.”
Relief washed over Hewitt’s face, and he gave his younger coworker a shove toward the van.
“Thanks,” Hewitt said. He coughed out a nervous laugh. “You have no idea what the boss is like about getting jobs done quickly. Man’s got no chill.”
“Good,” Javi said. “I don’t think chill is what you
want in a man who cleans up murder scenes for you.”
Javi got into the car, but Hewitt grabbed the door before he could close it, gloved fingers tight around the frame.
“Deputy Witte, is he all right?”
“He was hit by a car,” Javi said. “But the hospital doesn’t seem worried. Why?”
Hewitt shrugged and let go of the door. “I bust his chops, but he’s a… well, a good guy. Never that good at being a cop, but a good guy. I’m glad he’s okay.”
He let go of the door, and Javi slammed it and drove away. He glanced in the rearview mirror as he reached the end of the road. Hewitt and the other man had already sluiced the pavement with bleach to get rid of the blood.
But no matter how hard you tried to keep things clean, there was always collateral damage. Javi needed to remember that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THERE WERE political advantages to having a Latinx agent stationed in Plenty. No one said it directly, but what they had pointedly not said made it clear. That was fine. Javi was a good agent, but when he came to Plenty, he needed a chance to prove that. He hadn’t been tempted to look a gift horse in the mouth.
If any of his superiors thought their counterparts in Mexico would appreciate the move, they hadn’t met Inspector Damaso Yuen of the Policía Federal Ministerial. The dark, wire-thin man resented having to answer to the FBI for his country’s criminals and didn’t care if the agent was a fifth-generation Latin American or not.
Yuen grimaced around an agreement to pass on information about Alfredo Infante—a chemist who worked both sides of the border—if he left Mexico City. Then he glanced down at his desk, flicking his eyes over unseen papers.
“And if there are any more attacks against your people,” Yuen said coldly as he looked back up, “I expect to be informed. My men and their families are already in enough danger.”
“Of course,” Javi said. He leaned back in his chair and tried to decide if the slice of office he could see behind Yuen was nicer than his own. Less glass, more solid wooden shelves—he wasn’t sure how that translated in quality. “However, as I said, I don’t believe it’s connected to our shutting down the drug labs.”
A thin smile creased Yuen’s face for a moment. It lacked warmth. “My mother believes I’ll make it home in time for dinner,” he said. “I know I have another three hours behind my desk. If the cartel is implicated in this at all, however slightly, that’s information I need to know, Agent Merlo.”
“Inspector Yuen.”
The screen flicked to black as Yuen unceremoniously ended the call. The inspector wasn’t a man who wasted time on goodbyes. Javi could appreciate that. He pushed his chair back and stood up to work the kinks out of his back on his way over to the coffee machine. The dregs of the carafe barely filled a third of the cup. Javi grimaced, swirled the tarry dregs around, and then drank it down. It was black and bitter, but at that point in the day, no one drank coffee for the taste.
He rolled his head from one side to the other, his vertebra crackling, but the tension in his shoulders just dug in deeper. If he hadn’t drunk Saul’s whiskey during the Hartley case, he’d have grabbed a shot of it. Javi finished the coffee and frowned at the stained bottom of the cup.
There was a time when he would have been nervous because he wanted to impress Kincaid, when he’d have done anything to impress him.
The computer chimed insistently as the screen filled with a request to accept the incoming call.
It was early. Of course it was. Javi set the cup down and walked back to the desk. He sat down, straightened his shirt collar, exhaled, and hit Enter.
The screen brightened into a window on the LA office, with Everett Kincaid front and center. Javi felt a flash of the old resentment as he stared at Everett’s gray-blond hair and hawkish face. It reflected back at him from Kincaid’s pale, hooded eyes.
The assignment to Phoenix had nearly flatlined Javi’s career, but Kincaid still resented that it hadn’t ended it. That was fair enough. Javi still thought it should have ended Kincaid’s.
“SA Merlo,” Kincaid said. The LA office went on behind him, agents and analysts in motion on the other side of the glass wall of the meeting room. A quick twist of a smile folded Kincaid’s mouth and was gone. Javi braced himself. “I understand you nearly got a sheriff’s deputy killed? Come on, man, that’s not interagency cooperation.”
The wry, disarming smile came back. It didn’t take the sting out of the accusation, but it made it difficult to respond in kind. Kincaid could weaponize affable. It was why he taught classes in interview techniques at the academy. It should make it easier when Javi knew all his tics and tricks, but it didn’t.
“Deputy Witte,” Javi said. “He’s already back on his feet. It was less of a near-death experience, more of an unexpected nap. It wasn’t anything to do with his help in—”
Kincaid interrupted with a “huh” and pulled a mock-confused face. He scratched his head. “In that case, Agent, why are you, ah, still involved? Lieutenant Frome says he didn’t ask for your help. On this one.” He sucked in a breath through his teeth and shook his head. “That’s bad optics for the Bureau. Not great for you either.”
There was real pleasure in his voice as he said that. Kincaid hadn’t enjoyed fucking Javi as much as he enjoyed fucking him over.
“Janet Morrow, the victim of the assault that Lieutenant Frome believes was a mishap, is a trans woman,” Javi said flatly. He knew better than to play into the theatrics of the conversation. Kincaid had the edge there. All Javi had was being good at his job. “The… optics… of the local police and the FBI dismissing a possible hate crime that left a member of a vulnerable minority in an induced coma, as a fall? They’d be worse.”
The image of Kincaid blinked and pursed his lips sourly as he absorbed that information.
“You’re sure it’s a hate crime?” he asked.
“I’m sure if we don’t investigate it, everyone will assume it was.”
Kincaid grimaced and slouched back in his chair. His knee poked up into the screen as he hooked his foot up onto his thigh, and he picked at a loose thread in the seam with nervous fingers as he absorbed that piece of news.
“Fine. I’ll clear things up with Frome,” Kincaid said eventually, probably once he’d weighed up any way it could backfire on him. “Another high-profile case. I thought that serial kidnapper you stumbled on would be the only break you’d get this decade.” He chuckled without it reaching his eyes as he reached for a file. “Of course, you won’t have to worry about that much longer,” he said. “We’ve finally found a senior agent to send down to replace SSA Lee, so all these big cases won’t be just your responsibility anymore.”
The disappointment lodged in Javi’s throat like a stone. It wasn’t a surprise. He might have recouped some of his professional reputation in the last few years, but not enough of his personal one to be promoted to SSA. Even if he hadn’t hit a speed bump in Phoenix, it would have been a long shot at his age. Still, it scratched in his throat as he swallowed it.
“Do you know who?” he asked.
He already knew he wasn’t going to like it. Kincaid wouldn’t have a smile on his face if it was someone he’d get along with.
“Actually we both do,” Kincaid said as though he needed the prompt. “You remember SSA Tracy Joel?”
Javi breathed in. The slap stung the side of his face with hot pricks of pain as he sucked in a shocked breath and tasted his own salty tears. Even with a lung full of air, he still felt like someone had knocked the breath out of him. Sharp fingers dug into his arm as the angry woman dragged him around to look at the bloody mess. Tracy’s voice was contemptuous as she spat in his ear. “This is your fault. You did it. You don’t get to cry. You just get to fix it.” He breathed out.
“I remember SSA Joel,” he said calmly. Maybe Javi couldn’t match Kincaid’s theatrics, but he could deny him the payoff he wanted. The poker face Javi had learned from his mom—whose blank disapproval could stil
l jolt him—always infuriated Kincaid. He didn’t know where to pick if you didn’t give him something to bounce off. “She was a good agent, although I thought she was still on maternity leave?”
Kincaid rolled his head to the side in a jerked shrug and tossed the file down. “For a few more weeks,” he said. “She is looking forward to working with you again, Javier.”
That twitched a reaction down Javi’s spine, and he had to fight not to show it on his face. No one but Kincaid called him Javier. His grandmother had tagged him Javi when he was in the crib, not ready for even her grandchild to have her dead husband’s name, and everyone knew it was easiest to go along with her. Kincaid had liked it, rolled it around his tongue, and Javi let him. His grandfather’s name in that asshole’s mouth.
And like everything Kincaid did, there was no purchase to call him on it.
“It will be good to see her again,” Javi said.
Something must have shown on his face or slipped into his voice, because Kincaid looked smug as he leaned back. He twisted around and scratched the back of his neck.
“I just wanted to give you the good news in person,” Kincaid said. “Is there anything else on your end? If you need my help with anything until Tracy gets there, you just have to ask.”
The no was right on the tip of Javi’s tongue, but that was what Kincaid expected.
“Actually I want to do a cognitive interview with Deputy Witte next week,” Cloister said. “I’d appreciate it if you sent one of our analysts down.”
There was a pause, and Kincaid laughed. He always admired it when someone surprised him.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll see when one’s available and let you know. Take care, Agent. You don’t have many friends down there. If you alienate the lieutenant, it won’t go well.”
After an exchange of empty platitudes, Kincaid hung up. Javi leaned back in his chair and stared at the computer. He wanted to slap it off the desk. He wanted to pick up the ugly, welded-bullet paperweight he’d inherited from Saul and throw it through the plate-glass window, but he’d just have to explain and invoice it in the morning.