“… need a bus to Ash Street in Delacourt.” He glanced around quickly for an easy landmark, and his eyes fell on the parking lot opposite. He squinted to make out the grimy sign in front of the empty shops. “In front of the Conroy Galleria. We’ve got a head trauma, signs of assault, and she’s nonresponsive. I’m—”
Bourneville barked again. It wasn’t communication this time. It was an angry, low-pitched volley that sounded like it came from somewhere deep in her chest. When Cloister looked around, he saw the pickup, its headlights off, racing down the street toward him.
“Hey.” Cloister stood up and waved his arms. The beam of the flashlight flashed over the windshield of the car and picked up the hooded silhouette of the driver. He yelled. “Sheriff’s Department. Stop. Back up.”
Instead the driver flicked the main beams on—like a ground-level flash of lightning that blinded Cloister—and hit the gas. The engine revved harshly under the hood, and the car picked up speed as it barreled down the road. Off to the side, Bourneville barked furiously, pinned in place by Cloister’s command.
The driver had seen him. If there was any doubt about that, it was banished when the vehicle course-corrected on the road so it would hit them straight on.
Fuck.
Cloister threw his torch at the windshield. It hit butt-first against the glass, right in front of the driver’s face, and cracks spider-webbed out from the point of impact to the corners of the screen. The driver flinched, and the car slowed down for a second as they took their foot off the gas. It wasn’t much, but it would have to be enough.
Before the driver could recover, Cloister crouched down and grabbed Janet by the arms. She was floppy as he hauled her up off the tarmac, and her head lolled back on her bruised neck. He wasn’t even sure if she was still alive, but it would have to be enough that she might be. He manhandled her up and tossed her limp body out of the road and onto the pavement. She flopped gracelessly as she landed, arms and legs bent awkwardly under her like a discarded doll.
Cloister threw himself after her and almost made it. Most of him made it. It could have been worse.
The edge of the grill clipped his hip and bounced him up onto the hood. His shoulder hit the window, and the side mirror caught his elbow and then broke against his thigh as Cloister rolled off onto the pavement. His head bounced off the curb with a hard, hollow crack, and his head filled with gray static and nausea.
He heard the car engine shift into idle as it pulled up to the curb. Then a door opened, and Bourneville gave a guttural growl that rattled around her chest and threw herself at the door. The weight of her against the metal slammed it shut, and she growled again and tore at the metal until the driver gave up and drove away.
Shewouldchase it. Cloister clawed through the blur of pain and rattled brain to come up with the right command. “Komm,” he rasped out. His voice cracked on the word, and he tried again. “Bourneville! Komm!”
Bourneville’s nose was cold, and her breath hot as she snorted concern and confusion into his ear.
He didn’t hurt. Cloister had been there before, in the dull, stupid moment of shock, and he knew that wasn’t actually a good sign.
“Do me a favor, Janet,” he muttered. “Don’t be dead. Okay? Otherwise this was stupid.”
Nearly as stupid as the fight with Javi. Cloister didn’t know why his brain decided to rub that salt into his wounds right then, but he didn’t have the energy to fight it. It hadn’t been the fight, really, just the silence after it that dragged.
Oh, there it was. Cloister tilted his head back against the pavement and grimaced his eyes shut. It had started to hurt.
CHAPTER THREE
JAVI MERLOdecided he wanted to be an FBI agent when he was nineteen—old enough not to harbor romantic illusions that the job would be anything like it was on TV. He did his research, withstood pressure from his family, who would rather their son aimed to be the youngest Mexican-American DA in Washington County, changed his major, and plotted his career path with the understanding that there would be more bureaucracy than gun battles.
Somehow he still managed to underestimate the amount of paperwork the Bureau required on a daily basis just for working there. It didn’t matter if you wanted to get married, get divorced, investigate a multinational drug cartel, or spend a week in France. There was an appropriate form you had to fill out first.
That it was mostly online these days only meant it was a pain in a different part of the neck.
Javi finished the transcript of his interview with a small-time drug dealer’s girlfriend—the black eyes hadn’t dented her loyalty, but the baggie of coke in her baby’s diaper bag was the last straw—and then stamped his digital signature on three wiretap requests. They went into the queue for approval, and Javi leaned back in his chair. He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced over at the narrow stack of paper and cardboard files on the corner of his desk. They’d been there for a week while he whittled down his actual workload to the point where he could justify time wasted on a favor.
He snorted at himself and reached for the first file. After the sheaf of digital documents he’d just worked through, it felt pathetically slim to be someone’s tragedy—just a manila folder and the bare minimum photocopied reports. It looked like Plenty PD had done their usual piss-poor job on the investigation.
Sometimes Javi was tempted to go back through the archives. He knew the San Diego Sheriff’s Department had cleaned house in town five years earlier, but he wanted to know when the rot had set in. Because even—he checked the date on the file—ten years ago, Plenty’s police department hadn’t even bothered to look like they tried unless there was something in it for them.
Javi chose to ignore the irony that he’d taken an interest in the case because it would give him a reason to call Cloister after their fight—or, preferably, for Cloister to call him. That would make it a lot easier for Javi to continue to play fast and loose with his “one-night stands only” rule. And it wasn’t as though Cloister had said he wanted more, just that Javi didn’t get to ditch him for a better offer.
It would probably have gone better if Javi had explained that Sean had a client who claimed to have witnessed a murder. Instead he got his back up and reminded Cloister that Javi’s life wasn’t his business. The “fine” Cloister spat at him as he left was the last thing they’d said to each other.
If he had to make the call…. Javi opened the folder and frowned at the badly printed photo stapled inside. When they first met, he thought Deputy Witte had a hero complex, that he needed to play cowboy and save the day. But Mrs. Kreusik had been eighty-four and terminally ill when she went missing, and her neighbors had filed the missing person report, not her stepkids. No one would care if she was found or not, but Cloister still wanted to bring her home.
It wasn’t healthy, but it was… kind.
Javi grimaced at himself. His sex life was a lot simpler when he thought Cloister was just a hot ass attached to an uncomplicated redneck.
Now he had to decide what was more important—friendship or fucking. If Javi made the first move, that would be the end of any more hookups with Cloister. You didn’t try to patch things up with a fuck buddy. That was for friends and boyfriends. Javi was no one’s idea of boyfriend material.
