The smile spread into something that reached all the way to Sean’s eyes. He set down the menu, glanced at Bourneville, and shrugged. “That decides it,” he said. “I’ll have one of the BrewDog ales. Surprise me. What about you, Witte? Are you on duty, or would you like a drink?”
Cloister pulled out a chair and sat down. He glanced at the menu on the way down. It wasn’t priced, just a list of beers, a subsection for whiskey, and bar foods that included a haggis pakora.
“If you’ve got any, I’ll have a Bud,” he said. The waiter caught back the rueful sigh at having to take that order to the bar as he scribbled it down.
“My treat,” Sean said. “I’m flush at the moment, until my ex’s lawyers get wind of it.”
“In that case,” Cloister said, “two Buds.”
The waiter hesitated for a second and then promised to be right back and ducked out. Bourneville sat down next to Cloister and yawned, all white teeth and wide, wide jaws.
“So, Witte,” Sean said as he hooked his arm over the back of his chair and raised his heavy, bar-straight eyebrows expectantly. “Is all this because you think I fucked your boyfriend? Because I haven’t. Yet.”
He winked, smirked, and looked almost aggressively punchable. Cloister just laughed at him. It wasn’t the reaction Sean expected, and he narrowed his eyes as he stared at Cloister. It took a second before he decided whether to be pissed off at a joke at his expense or be amused in turn. He settled for amused.
“Don’t tell me the farm boy turned dog cop is more sexually advanced than he lets on. What was it, Witte?” Sean leaned forward, still anchored by one arm, and dropped his voice to a suggestive drawl. “A dirty weekend in Sin City? A threesome with an accommodating couple? Some dirty little secret?”
The table was covered in polished copper and a thin layer of perspex etched with stylized cards. It was a bad hand, from what Cloister could see, much like the one he’d just been dealt. There were more ways to get the conversation wrong than there were to get it right.
“You just caught me off guard, Stokes,” Cloister said after a moment. “I can assure you, there’s nothing personal in us wanting to talk to you right now. And I don’t have any secrets, not even grubby ones.”
The smug was back on Sean’s face. “I think I’ll be the judge of that.”
Cloister didn’t realize he’d reacted at all until he felt Bourneville tense against his leg. He reached down automatically to scruff her, dug his fingers into the thick fur, and felt the tightness in his shoulders and jaw. On the other side of the table, Sean had retreated back into his own space. It was one advantage of resting thug face.
“I know that Javi didn’t fuck you,” Cloister said quietly as he petted Bourneville calm. He sounded like his dad—pleasant and soft-spoken and clearly willing to hurt someone. That wasn’t something he was proud of. “If he did, that’s his business, not mine. Just like my past isn’t yours.”
There were no secrets to mine out of Cloister’s life, just pain and the shadowy monsters of the night he couldn’t remember. He didn’t want Sean to poke at that, to pull up the old newspaper clippings of Cloister’s sad little trauma. He didn’t want his mom to get a call from a smooth-talking stranger about the things that broke her life.
Sean glanced down at Bourneville and licked his lips.
“A bit hypocritical,” he said. His voice was more careful than it had been before, but not cowed. Cloister guessed he didn’t sound exactly like his stepdad after all. “Since we’re here so you can pry into my life.”
He had a point.
“I can live with that,” Cloister said.
Sean raised his eyebrows again and, for the first time, looked mildly intrigued. A thoughtful smile played over his mouth.
“You’re just a bit interesting, aren’t you,” he said. “I’d missed that last time.”
“Not really.”
“And a liar too,” Sean mocked lightly. “Is that Plenty’s influence, or all you?”
Javi arrived, tailed by the waiter with a tray of beer, and saved Cloister from an attempt to answer that question. The bartender had apparently decided on a beer with a suave ferret on it for Sean and an anonymous frosted glass for Cloister’s Bud.
“Agent,” Sean said as he gestured to the chair beside Cloister. “Just in time. We’ve been talking about you.”
“We weren’t,” Cloister corrected him as Javi sat down.
“True.” Sean took the beer from the waiter and took a drink. He smiled around the lip of the bottle, dark brown eyes sharp and hot as he looked at Cloister. “We were talking about you.”
“Sounds fascinating,” Javi said. He glanced at the hovering waiter. “That’s all. Thank you.”
Disappointment crawled over the young man’s face as he quite slowly mumbled his apologies and let himself out of the room. Javi waited until the door latch clicked, sighed in exasperation, and turned back to Sean.
“Do you know a Janet Morrow?” he asked.
