“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 still 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. “Sheislooking 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.
