If he were—Javi closed the file and tossed it back onto the deck for another day—the “friend or fuck” question would probably be easier to settle.
Enough. It was too late to call anyone, even night owls like Cloister, and Javi had actually cleared his backlog of paperwork. He should go home before that changed.
Javi signed out of the computer and got up from his desk. Someone rapped on his door as he pulled his jacket from the back of his chair. When he turned toward the door, he saw an indistinct figure on the other side of the glass, where admin had left the reception lights dimmed. It was unlikely that anyone who wasn’t meant to be there had gotten through the security downstairs.
“Come in,” he said.
The door opened, and Deputy Tancredi hesitated on the threshold. “Agent Merlo,” she said. Then she grimaced and tried again. “Agent.”
“Deputy,” Javi said. He shrugged his jacket on and tugged it straight over his holster. “What brings you up here? Did you hear from the academy?”
She looked startled, as though he’d gone off script, although her ambition to join the Bureau was all they talked about.
“No. Not yet.” She ran her hand over damp frizzy hair to flatten it down. “I, um… don’t want to step out of line, Agent. It’s just… um… I thought you’d want to know.”
Javi’s stomach curdled with expectant tension as he filled in the rest of the conversation for himself. It was one he’d had before. He wasn’t in the closet, but he preferred discretion to PDAs in the hallway, and that encouraged the gossips who thought they had something on him. At least with Tancredi, he supposed she might actually think he wanted to know, not just be curious to see his face when he heard the slurs.
“If someone has a problem with my sexu—”
“No,” Tancredi blurted. Color bright enough to camouflage her dark spray of freckles spread up her face from her throat. “It’s not that. Or it is, but not— Deputy Witte was injured on duty. He’s alive. He’s not in danger, but I knew you and he…. I thought you’d want to know.”
Javi stared at her. He’d been so ready to get angry, his temper already revved up and prechilled, that it took him a second to shake it off. When it was gone, he was left with a bitter metallic taste in his mouth and a frustrated knot of emotions he had no desire to untangle.
“Thank you for the heads-up,” he said coldly. “Is there anything else?”
Tancredi stared at him for a second and then thinned her mouth in disapproval and shook her head.
“No, sir,” she said. “I just thought you’d care.”
She slammed the door behind her as she left.
THE LAST—and first—time Javi visited Plenty Community Hospital, he’d been dehydrated, bruised, and pumped full of hallucinogens by a serial kidnapper. The wards were less of a hellscape when you were sober.
“So what exactly happened?” he asked Lieutenant Frome as they walked briskly along the white-and-blue hospital corridor. There was a sick weight in his chest, but he kept his voice tight and appropriately concerned. “Was Deputy Witte targeted?”
Frome fastidiously rubbed alcohol sanitizer between his knuckles. “It’s obviously too soon to say for sure,” he said stiffly. “However, the working theory is that it was a hit-and-run. Not the only one tonight either. The roads were wet, visibility was bad, and Deputy Witte was just unlucky. We don’t need the Bureau’s support on this one, Agent Merlo.”
The ranking officer in Plenty might appreciate the resources the FBI could bring to bear against the escalating drug problem in town, but that didn’t mean he wanted them to interfere in other cases. Javi’s old partner had said that Frome had his eye on the sheriff’s badge, and you didn’t get that sort of promotion if the Feds got credit for all your successes.
“I hope not,” Javi said. “However, since Witte has worked with my office on a number of raids on local drug labs, I’d like to make sure that this isn’t retaliation. You’ll keep me in the loop on the investigation, Lieutenant?”
The request made Frome pucker his mouth with resentment, but he had to give ground. The FBI had an agent there because drug cartels used Plenty as a funnel for trafficking into the US. If Javi pushed that angle, Frome had no grounds to cry jurisdiction on the crime.
“Of course,” he capitulated. “I doubt there was any premeditation involved here. Witte’s good at what he does, but if the cartels were going to attack anyone, there are more high-profile targets. Tancredi’s been front and center more than once, and she’s a rising star. If they were going to go after anyone, it’d be her.”
Javi nodded. “Still,” he said. “I’d like to stay on top of the case.”
“Like I said, of course.”
Frome paused outside a private ward and frowned at the deputy stationed outside the door. The man was slouched back in one of the hospital’s aggressively uncomfortable plastic chairs, his eyes closed and his head tilted back against the wall.
“Collins!”
The deputy grunted himself awake, blinked at Frome, and then bolted awkwardly to his feet. He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth.
“Sorry, sir,” he muttered as he blinked hard. “Long shift.”
Frome shook his head. “Go home,” he said. “Witte’s fine. Get some sleep and tell Tancredi to do the same.”
