He quirked a dry smile. “We’ll see what your search turns up,” he said. “Coffee is for winners.”
That earned him another snorting laugh and a toast with the coffee cup. He left her to it.
“WELL?” JAVIasked without preamble. He flicked the radio down as the Bluetooth kicked in. He was sitting on the road back into Plenty, stationary in a sea of tired commuters on the way home from San Diego. The rows of cars crawled when they moved at all. Javi was already irritated when he got in the car—Reed had begged off his interview at the station due to “unavoidable business commitments”—and the smell of gasoline and hot tarmac wasn’t improving his mood.
“They’ve agreed to make contact online,” Cloister said. There was a roughness to his voice, a rasp hiding under the easygoing drawl. It got stronger when he was turned on. When Javi’s hand had been wrapped around his cock, Cloister’s voice was hoarse and ragged. “Parents draw the line at an actual physical meeting.”
“We can work on that,” Javi said.
Even without seeing Cloister’s face, Javi could tell he wasn’t completely comfortable with that idea. It was probably good that he was on the dog squad instead of homicide. He was soft.
Not all the time, his brain took the opportunity to remind him. He flexed his fingers around the steering wheel, and the tips of his fingers prickled with the memory of hard flesh and silky skin. Javi grimaced. It would be a lot easier to stick to his rule about keeping Cloister a one-night stand if his cock and his libido would play along. Or if thinking about the naked, growling Cloister weren’t a lot more pleasant than the image of Birdie Utkin baking to death in a car.
With Galloway’s crockpot analogy back in the forefront of his mind, the distraction of Cloister’s whiskey-and-sex voice in his ear faded. A bit. Javi nudged the car forward and gained speed as the cars ahead of him started to move.
“According to Galloway, Birdie’s COD was hyperthermia,” he said. “Probably from being locked in a car. I’m having samples tested to see if Birdie was dosed with the same drugs that we found in the desert.”
There was a snort in his ear. “We?”
Javi ignored that. “I’ll get one of the computer techs to head over to the Hartleys’. They can set up everything we need to monitor any contact Billy makes. We aren’t going to put him in danger.”
“Yeah, usually people don’t mean to let the shit hit the fan,” Cloister said. “It does anyhow.”
“Well, that’s… homespun.”
The sun hit the canted window of the sports car ahead of Javi, making him squint even through his sunglasses. The driver kept veering in and out of his lane with abortive attempts to nudge between the cars.
“I just don’t want that family to lose two kids,” Cloister said. He sounded tired suddenly, like a truckload of lost sleep had just settled on his shoulders. “Two days in a car trunk, hot as it’s been….”
It didn’t matter. They both knew what he’d been going to say. There came a point when hoping for the best was more delusional than optimistic.
“Doesn’t change our job,” Javi said. “We’ll catch who did this.”
“That’s your job. Mine is to bring Drew home.”
“I hate to be the one to disillusion you,” Javi said dryly, “but you’re still a police officer. Arresting criminals is part of your job description.”
The douche in the sports car nearly clipped a battered pickup in his latest attempt to change lanes. Javi flinched back between the lines at the near miss while the driver of the pickup rolled down a window to give sports douche the finger. In the back of the car, a big white dog scrambled to its feet and swayed with the motion of the vehicle as it barked furiously. Slobber dripped from its jowls and matted the fur on its chest in wet, white strings.
At least Cloister’s dog was better behaved than that.
“Are you still at the Hartleys’?” Javi asked. There was an exit coming up five miles ahead. If he took it, he could get to the Hartleys’ address in about forty minutes by the back roads.
“Yeah,” Cloister said. “But I’m going to head back to the station. Unless you need me for something?”
“Not so far.” Javi put more bite into the dig than was entirely fair. It had just thrown him, the pinch of disappointment he felt when he realized he wasn’t going to see Cloister. It wasn’t devastating. He’d seen the man a few hours before, for God’s sake, but it stung enough to make it impossible to deny he wanted to see Cloister. “More vet bills?”
“Something like that,” Cloister said. “There’s some stuff I want to follow up.”
“What?”
“Stuff.”
He sounded obdurate, like the dumb, drawling hick Javi judged him for originally. Now that he knew him better, well, Cloister was still a drawling hick—which was apparently Javi’s type these days—but he wasn’t stupid. Inarticulate but not stupid.
“You’ve got another hunch.”
There was a pause and then a reluctantly muttered “Maybe.”
