“And hopefully it won’t need to be,” Javi said smoothly.He gave Reid a reassuring pat on the arm.“You should go and get something to eat.Try and rest.We’ll let you know if we find anything.”
Reid snorted and waved his hand angrily in Cloister’s direction.
“Him finding something is what kicked this all off,” he said.“We didn’t know the man was here.He wasn’t doing any harm until your ‘partner’ kicked the door in and arrested him.So, forgive me if I’m not full of faith in the sheriff’s department.”
He stepped back inside and slammed the door.
There was a pause.
Cloister cleared his throat.“The guywaspeeping at teenagers, too,” he said.
“He’s just angry,” Javi said.“I get that.”
Cloister nodded.He looked at Bourneville.Bourneville looked at him.It was a moment of connection profound enough that it briefly made Javi doubt his assertion that technology would make the dog obsolete.
“Such,” Cloister commanded, and Bon threw herself at the trail.
Theleashwasstrungtaut between Cloister’s hand and Bourneville.She strained against it, eager to move at her own pace as she headed down the street.
“Langsam,” Cloister told her.She huffed at the order, her nose close enough to the ground that her sigh disturbed the dirt, but slowed enough to let the lead go slack.
It was still a brisk pace.Javi could keep up, but he could feel it in his thighs.He was fit, and he had a gym membership he actually used, but maybe he needed to up his hours on the treadmill.The idea occurred to him that he could join Cloister on a run, but he put that down quickly.Cloister ran like he could outpace sleep.Javi wanted to improve his stamina, not kill himself.
“It was bad timing,” he said.“Joel was Kincaid’s appointment, but she wouldn’t have let him roll over Plenty the way he is.Her disappearance gave him the go-ahead to do pulls he wants under the aegis of protecting his agents.”
Cloister took his eyes away from Bourneville’s ears for a moment to glance at Javi.The quirk of his dirty blond eyebrow was unexpectedly direct.
“You don’t think he set it up?”
Javi lost half a step as he faltered in surprise.
The “Of course not,” came out on autopilot, muscle memory of playing the game brought back by being in an office staffed by Kincaid and his team.
It wasn’t that the question hadn’t occurred to him, he’d just not been ready to say it out loud.Not without a bit more beating around the mental bush.
When Cloister just accepted the answer with a shrug, Javi let himself think about the question a second longer.
At the same time, Bourneville took a quick left onto—Javi took a quick glance at the road sign—Spruce.A woman at the end of her garden, hand in her mail box to get her letters, smiled as she saw them coming.The “aww, cute dog” expression curdled slightly as she took in the dog’s body language and single-minded intent.Even people who didn’t know dogs tended to feel on edge around that sort of focus.Bon might be the sheriff’s department's go-to dog for public relations opportunities—liked small children, ridiculous ears, and wasn’t going to cock a leg to pee on something awkward—she still triggered the “wolf?button in people’s heads when she was like this.
The big blond guy with the “bar fight” nose on the other end of the lead didn’t tend to help put people’s minds at ease.
The woman pulled her mail, tucked the handful of flyers under her elbow, and quickly grabbed her child off the lawn, ignoring their whine of “doggy” as she headed into the house.The door didn’t slam behind her, but did close firmly.
Javi broke into a brief jog to catch up with Cloister.As he fell into step next to him, the question about Kincaid was still on his mind.After a couple of steps, he admitted, “At least, not directly, but…I think he’s involved somehow.Him or something he did.”
He didn’t know why he expected Cloister to argue, to bring up Kincaid’s career, his commendations, the respect people had for him, but he did.All he got was a “huh” and a nod.
“It would explain why he’s still muddying the waters with you, instead of focusing on her being missing,” Cloister said.“There’s something he wants to distract people from.”
Exactly.It made sense.
Kincaid had gotten his hooks into Joel early in her career.She wasn’t one of his fast-track prodigies like Javi had been, but that’s why she’d lasted.Solid enough to be useful, never ambitious enough to be a threat.The UC line she’d kept active might have predated her crossing paths with Javi, but not her being solidly in Kincaid’s camp by then.
Whatever it washadto have something to do with Kincaid.
And, somehow, Saul.
For a second, Javi felt something bump together in his head.Before the edges could click into a realization, Bourneville took a sharp turn onto someone’s drive.She loped up the dried-out concrete and sniffed at the bottom of the garage door.Then she pawed at it with one foot, scraping off flaking strips of white paint, and gave two sharp, insistent barks.
