“Tired,Deputy?”Kincaidasked,his voice dry.
Cloister opened his eyes to the sound of a chair being scraped over the floor.He watched the neat sandy-haired man fold himself into the chair opposite.
“Most of the time,” Cloister said.“I don’t sleep much.”
Kincaid raised a sandy brow as he set a bottle of water on the table in front of Cloister.Condensation beaded on the outside of the bottle, and Kincaid fastidiously wiped his fingers as he pulled his hand back.
“Guilty conscience?”he asked.
Cloister paused, one hand on the top of the bottle, as he thought about that.The fractured, scattershot memories of the night his brother had disappeared—a man whistling, a dog barking, a dented red truck that he’d clutched so tightly the edges had left bruises on his three-year old hand.
“Maybe,” he said.
For a second, Kincaid looked genuinely amused as he sat back.
“That’s something most people don’t admit to me,” he said.
Cloister shrugged as he finished twisting the top off the bottle.“Everyone feels guilty about something,” he said.“It doesn’t mean they broke the law.”
Kincaid looked around the small yellow-cream box of a room they were in.His gaze lingered briefly on the mirrored glass panel in one wall and then flicked back to Cloister.
“Admitting to guilt in here?”he said.“Little different to telling your Weight Watchers meeting that you ate all the pies, don’t you think?”
The way he trailed off expectantly made it clear that he expected a reaction.Cloister didn’t give it to him.It wasn’t self-control, more confusion.If Kincaid had wanted to poke at Cloister’s insecurities, then the places to aim were his education and his mental health, not his weight.
They looked at each other.
Kincaid pursed his lips and clicked his pen.“Your mother runs a Weight Watchers class, doesn’t she?”he said pointedly.
“Does she?”
Kincaid blinked sandy lashes and clicked the pen again.He tucked the corners of his mouth up in a thin grimace of not-a-smile and snapped his fingers, a sharp crack of sound.
“Of course,” he said.“You’re estranged from your family, aren’t you.Sorry to bring that up.”
“Really?”
“Hmmm,” Kincaid made the non-committal humming sound from behind his lips as he looked down at the papers he’d brought in.“It is interesting, you coming from a family with a…significant…criminal element and ending up in law enforcement, of all places.Did you want to make up for their crimes?”
Cloister took a drink from his bottle of water.“No,” he said.“I wanted to live somewhere warm and work with dogs.”
Kincaid’s mouth twitched.“You’re smarter than you look, Deputy Witte.”
“To be fair, that’s not hard.”
Kincaidcouldhave taken aim at Cloister’s looks as well.They might have been useful over the years, but Cloisterwasaware that he wasn’t pretty.Now, so was Kincaid.Fair enough, Cloister supposed, he’d handed that one over.
“This could be a lot easier,” Kincaid pointed out.He glanced down at his wrist, his eyes flickering as he read something off his watch.“Or maybe not.Your lawyer is here.”
“You mean my rep?”Cloister corrected him.
Kincaid got up from the table.“No,” he said, “I don’t.”
He left the folder he’d brought in with him on the table as he walked out of the room.Cloister craned around in the chair to watch as Kincaid let himself out the door.Then he glanced at the easily accessible stack of files.
He wouldn’t have to stretch to reach them.
Cloister took another drink of water as he weighed his options.He didn’t think that looking would do him any harm, but it was also obviously what Kincaid wanted.Cloister couldn’t see any benefit in playing along—Kincaid would tell him what he had, if anything, eventually—so he rocked onto the back legs of the chair and waited.
