“Right, Bozo, you’re under arrest,” Cloister said as he fixed the plastic zip-tie cuffs snugly around scrawny, scabby wrists. “You have the right to—”
His radio crackled.
“Deputy Witte,” Mel said. “What’s your situation?”
There was something tight in Mel’s voice that made Cloister’s stomach tighten nervously. Thin, tin-sharp Mel had been at the job longer than any of them, grandfathered in from when Plenty had its own Police Department instead of a sheriff’s station, and she knew the town. When she sounded unhappy, it was time to pay attention.
“I was in pursuit on a 390,” he said. “Just reading him his rights now.”
“We’ve got a request from the Feds for a K-9,” Mel said.
Cloister grimaced. “Is there no one else available?” he asked. “Last time I was seconded to them, I ended up on a disciplinary after I nearly decked the Special Agent in Charge.”
“Sorry,” Mel said without sounding it. “All the other teams are fully committed or not in the area.” Then she dropped the shoe he knew was coming since he heard the wind that morning. “It’s a 920C out at the Retreat.”
Shit.
Cloister “copy’d” her and got the location. He shoved Bozo back down onto the bike, and the cheap pink leather seat cut into his bony ass.
“Your lucky night, Bozo,” he said. “I’ve got somewhere to be.”
Bozo grinned sloppily. “That’s me,” he said. One eye wandered, briefly detached from whatever fired in Bozo’s skull. “Lucky boy.”
He held up his hands. The plastic tag stuck up between his thumbs like a handle. He looked expectant.
“Not that lucky,” Cloister told him. He stepped back and radioed in to the other deputy on the raid. “Witte here. Got a 390 in custody, but I’ve been called to a 920. You send someone out to pick him up? Round the back.”
Confirmation came quickly and without the usual complaints. Cloister closed the line and glanced at Bozo. “Stay where you are. If you make them look for you, they’ll get the bears out again.”
He snapped his fingers to call Bourneville to heel and left Bozo on his little pink bike. If he did manage to get loose or pedal away before someone picked him up, he’d just get picked up again the next week. Cloister’s boots hit the ground as he pushed himself into a hard, distance-eating jog. Bourneville stuck to his heels like a shadow, panting happily because it was just a run and not a chase. He passed Jim on the way to collect the wayward dealer.
920C. Missing childandthe Feds. Just once he’d like to be wrong about a shift going to hell.
Chapter Two
THE RETREATwas what happened when gentrification bumped up against hippies. It used to be a dried-up commune in the mountains. It produced badly carved tchotchkes to sell at markets and a hybridized strain of Oaxacan cannabis they sold in bulk and in baggies. Then, ten years back, Plenty became an overflow community for San Diego. The struggling rural community sprouted suburbs like it used to sprout lettuce, and the Retreat’s last hippy heard opportunity knocking. He bought up the neighboring plots of land, stripped the grow lights out of the barn, and repackaged the counterculture, off-grid lifestyle as glamping.
That was all before Cloister’s time. In the years since he’d been there, the Retreat always had five-star yurts, moon baths, and the occasional sexual assault complaint.
Lights flashing, Cloister sped past the old feed store on the outskirts of town with its sale banners flapping viciously in the wind and took the next left. In the back of the car, Bourneville lay like a Sphinx, her paws crossed and her head up and interested. She knew the lights meant they were going to work. All she had to do was wait until they stopped.
The road narrowed as he headed into the foothills. The windblown pines cast spindly, moonlit shadows over the tarmac, but the surface was like a ribbon. There were roads in the bad part of town that had potholes older than Bourneville, but the Retreat’s road was repaved every spring. No one wanted to risk some wealthy townie breaking an axle on their BMW on the way up.
It was forty minutes from Plenty to the Retreat. Cloister made it to the cut-out, fancy-worked copper sign in twenty. He flicked the lights off as he took the last turn and blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden shift to monotone. He lifted his foot off the gas. It was an attempt at discretion that was wasted on the Retreat.
Every tent and cabin was lit up, lights blazed from the main office, and people milled about in nervous clusters. Lots of hands clutched children’s shoulders. Pajamas and nighties flapped in the wind.
Cloister pulled in behind the black SUV parked in front of the rocking-chair-decked porch. It looked like the Feds were still there.
He flicked the engine off, got out, and opened the back door so he could unclip Bourneville. She scrambled out, shook herself, and then stood impatiently and waited for him to check her harness. A girl came out of the office while he was doing that. She was slim and tanned and wore the jeans and teal T-shirt uniform of the Retreat.
“Umm, they asked me to show you to Morocco when you got here,” she said. The “what” blink Cloister gave her made her flush into her hairline. “It’s the cabin. They all have names. The Hartleys always stay in Morocco.”
Apparently he must have looked like he was ready because she bolted off through the camp. There were a couple of other deputies taking statements from fretful families. Somewhere in the camp, a dog barked with a small-dog yap.
“Morocco” was a low cabin built of silky amber wood and raw tree branches. The door was open and leaked fan-cooled air into the hot night. Cloister stopped the girl before she walked in.
People under stress were like dogs under stress. It made them more likely to snap at small offences. If a kid really was missing—not just sulking at a friend’s house to scare his parents or off with her dad as part of a custody dispute—then Cloister didn’t need to ruffle feelings right off the bat.
