For a second he thought the apology wasn’t going to be enough. Then Witte shrugged and disappeared into another room. Still didn’t close the door behind him.
“I do dogs, not detection,” Witte said. “I’m not sure what you want.”
To fuck.The answer popped into Javi’s head with such clarity that for a second he wasn’t sure if he’d said it out loud. It was only the lack of reaction from Witte that convinced him he hadn’t. The thought still lurked in his head, though less of a word and more a cluster of sensations—heat, hands, the clench of an ass around his cock.
Witte still wasn’t his type, but apparently that didn’t matter. He wanted to fuck him anyhow, and he was never going to. Even if Witte didn’t look like the poster child for straight jocks, Javi didn’t fuck where he lived. It made his life messier. So he gathered up the whole tangle of lust and shoved it into the back of his brain, out of sight and out of the way.
He cleared his throat and focused on more appropriate answers. “Was there anything about the family that struck you as off? That didn’t seem… genuine?”
Witte came back into the main area of the trailer, tugging an old Disney T-shirt down over his chest. His jeans were worn white along the seams and pulled tight across his thighs.
“I thought you said they were good people,” he said.
“I did,” Javi said. “I think they are. What if I’m wrong?”
The tic of Witte’s mouth betrayed that he’d been there himself. He glanced down, absently buried his fingers in the dog’s thick ruff, and finally shrugged one shoulder.
“I’m off today, anyhow,” he said. “Do you want to go up to the Retreat, and we can walk through it?”
It was a generous offer. Javi was grateful, but at the same time, the easy grace of the gesture rubbed him the wrong way. He wasn’t sure why. It could just be the unflattering fact that it made it harder to feel superior to Witte.
Sometimes Javi was such a prick it was hard to share his head with himself.
“I’d appreciate it,” he said.
He might be a prick, but he did have manners.
Chapter Five
CLOISTER PULLEDoff the road at the feedlot. It had just opened, and workers in khaki T-shirts were loading up pallets and wrestling wire buckets of produce to flank the doors. He stopped at the back of the lot, next to a Buick with a spray-can paint job. Bourneville barked enthusiastically at birds. She clearly enjoyed the novelty of being in the car when she wasn’t working.
“I figure this is where Drew was going, or thought he was going,” he said as he nodded at the vending machines lined up against the wall. Bright plastic curves advertised M&Ms and Arizona Iced Teas, although they didn’t glow as seductively as they did at night. “A lot of the kids sneak down here to get snacks or soda… or pay someone to go and get them booze, but ten’s probably a bit young for that.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Probably not,” Cloister admitted. “Either way it’s a popular spot. Deputies get called out all the time to ferry the kids back up the road, but they cut across.”
He pointed toward the Retreat. Javi looked that way, visibly spinning a compass in his head. “The same way that Drew went when he left the cabin.”
“Morocco,” Cloister corrected him and quirked his mouth around the mockery. “But yeah, I think so.”
“Think?”
“Not my beat,” Cloister said. “I get called out for missing people and raids, not kids loitering at the vending machines. There was a path, though, and it went around the obstacles and bushes, not over. Adults go over, Special Agent Merlo.”
That got him a withering look. “Javier. Or Javi. You make the ‘Special’ sound like it has air quotes.”
“That’s what I was going for,” Cloister said. He swung the car around and headed back to the road.
“So I’m just to keep calling you deputy?”
Fair enough. “Cloister.”
“Really?” Javi asked. “I thought that was a nickname because you were religious. I didn’t know your mother hated you.”
Cloister did a rolling stop at the exit. There weren’t enough people on the road to merit a full stop. Sometimes being a cop made you worryingly blasé about traffic laws.
“It was her maiden name,” he said. “She didn’t hate me till later.”
