It was a good thought, the sort a straightforward man had, and Javi had to fight for a second to keep the annoyance off his face.
“Oh, good,” he said dryly.It looked like his voice hadn’t gotten the “be nice” memo.“That’s a weight off my mind,”
Cloister looked amused as he gave Javi’s knee a pat.“It should be,” he pointed out.“It’s not like there’s a queue.”
That was…true, Javi supposed.He pinched the bridge of his nose, the nip of his nails against the thin skin enough to focus him.
“Sorry,” he grudged out.
Cloister swung one long leg over the bench and stood up.He collected the remnants of his meal from the table, folding the greasy cardboard in on itself.
“I doubt it,” he said mildly as he took the trash and headed toward the nearest weighted-down oil drum repurposed as a trash can.
Javi cocked his head to the side to look under the table at Bourneville.The pride of Plenty’s K-9 department had her nose between his feet as she snorted aggressively at a bug in the grass.Javi reached down to politely scratch between her shoulders, the hair coarse and warm under his touch.
“I know,” he said.“He deserves better.”
Bourneville flicked an ear at him in what was probably dog for “ya think?”
Before Javi could work himself up to a genuine apology, his phone went off in the pocket of his slacks.The insistent buzz of it against his hip bone made him jump.He pulled it out of his pocket to answer it, pushing Bon’s head away from his leg.
“SssA..Merlo,” he said, with a brief, sibilant stumble over his demoted title.“What is it?”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the phone; then Sue’s voice asked, “Is SSA Joel on an off-site operation this morning?”
Cloister came back over, wiping his hands on a napkin.He raised a curious eyebrow at the interruption.Javi gestured for him to sit down and wait as he got up from the picnic table and stepped to the side.
“Not at the fair,” he said dryly, angling his body to let a small child with two handfuls of sticky candy dart past him.“Wouldn’t you know that better than me?What’s on the books?”
The question came out casually, but his brain had already started to turn over as he realized the import of the call.If Joel was actually out of contact, that was a short step to the head of a suboffice being missing, and that was…
An opportunity.
…a problem.
It was a problem.That was what Javi had meant to think, butopportunitywas loose in his brain now.It was…indiscreet…but the little thrill that prickled the hair on the back of Javi’s neck told him it wasn’t incorrect.
“Nothing,” Sue said, her voice worried.Then she corrected herself.“She had a meeting this morning with Dr.Galloway, the pathologist, but it was rescheduled.”
“By who?”
“SSA Joel,” Sue said.“At least, her credentials were used at…four twenty-one to log in remotely, but she didn’t give a reason.”
“Hold on,” Javi told her shortly.
He lowered the phone and quickly checked his call log, a swipe of his thumb flicking up and down through the numbers.Nothing.A missed call from her from two days ago, but he’d followed up on that already and been dismissed.
“And you can’t contact her?”he asked as he lifted the phone back to his ear.
“Not so far,” Sue said.She, very pointedly, didn’t sound offended at the suggestion she wouldn’t have done that already.“No answer.I’ve tried her work and her personal phone.”
“Can you call her…”
What?Last time they had worked together—back when Joel was Kincaid’s workhorse and Javi was the rising star—she’d been dating an air marshal, he thought.He’d had a…dog?Or a child?Something like that.
Had she been closed off back then too, Javi wondered with a dull nudge of guilt, or had he just not listened?
It didn’t matter, he told himself.Even if he’d made notes, that intel would be out of date by now, and Joel had no current plans to include him in her private life.
