“Neither does Bon.”
“Drone pilots don’t get hit by cars.”
Cloister gave him that one with a laugh that he cut short with a grimace as he tilted his head back against the booth. There was a pallid cast to his face, a hint of gray under the tan at his temples and under his cheekbones, and a tightness at the corners of his mouth. It was enough to drag Bourneville’s attention away from the treats, as she pawed at his elbow and whined.
“Sure you don’t want to go back to the hospital?” Javi asked.
“No. I’m fine.” Cloister scrubbed the strain from his face with a rough pass of his hand. “Last time I was in the hospital, the nurse dosed me with sleeping pills without telling me.”
“I can’t say I haven’t considered it,” Javi joked dryly. He preferred to sleep alone, preferred cool sheets and his own space, but when someone was there when you closed your eyes, it was disconcerting to wake up to their absence. “Did it work?”
Something haunted scraped through Cloister’s eyes, and he smiled thinly as he rubbed the back of his neck with his good hand.
“I still have nightmares,” he said. “I just can’t wake up.”
Javi had his own nightmares. Some of them were fun-house horrors dragged up out of his memories, and others were nonsense—angry clowns and naked exams. None of them dogged him like Cloister’s did, but the thought of being stuck in them still gave him a chill.
“Okay,” he said. “No pills in your beer, and no hospital. Just don’t make me regret it, Witte. Don’t die.”
Cloister laughed and then winced and sucked his breath in through his teeth as he hugged his ribs. He nudged Bourneville until she scrambled down out of the booth, and then he carefully slid out after her.
“I thought you didn’t like promises.”
He leaned over stiffly to leave a couple of bills under the plate, grabbed his cake, and limped toward the door with Bourneville at his heels. Javi glared after him. He needed to stop giving people the opportunity to use his words against him. It never felt any better.
“Have a good evening,” Kimberly singsonged as she looked up from her phone to watch them leave. She pitched her voice to follow them out the door and into the rain. “Hope you feel better soon, sweetheart.” Javi swung his jacket up over his head against the rain and glared at Cloister’s back as they headed for the car.
“I’m not going to die,” Cloister said after a second.
“I know,” Javi said as he got close enough to the car for the doors to unlock. “I’m going to stay with you and make sure you don’t.”
Cloister opened the back door of the car for Bourneville to clamber in. The heavy black bulk of her was surprisingly compact as she curled up on the old towel he’d tossed down.
“You don’t need to,” he said tiredly as he half fell into the passenger seat.
“What I don’t need is Lieutenant Frome thinking I got you killed,” Javi said harshly. It didn’t fool him—he didn’t even think it fooled the dog—but it made him feel less exposed. “So just up and appreciate the sacrifices I’m making on your behalf.”
“You’re a good friend,” Cloister mocked as he closed the door.
Javi wished that were true. Life would be a lot easier. Right then the closest he could get was being the one person in Cloister’s life who was angry that he’d been hit by a car.
CURTAINS TWITCHEDin a trailer park too. Suspicious faces peered through grubby, salt-glazed windows as Javi helped Cloister limp along the rutted, uneven path. A skinny man in a sweat-stained T-shirt, his work-tanned face and arms five shades darker than his chest and shoulders, sat on the steps of his trailer and drank beer as he watched them stagger by.
“Friendly people, your neighbors,” Javi said.
Cloister snorted. “Do you even have neighbors?”
Technically. The owner of the restaurant across the road had a unit in the building for when he came to town. That was once a month, though.
“That isn’t the point,” Javi said.
Bourneville cut around his legs as they reached the battered silver bullet of Cloister’s trailer. She scrambled up the steps and pawed the door open to let herself in.
“You really do come from a very small town, don’t you,” Javi said. “One day you’re going to get robbed.”
Cloister shrugged. “Not happened yet,” he said. “And to be honest, it would cost more to fix the door if someone had to break in than it would to replace anything I own.”
It was hard for Javi to argue with that as he followed Cloister into the trailer.
