“I don’t think I can muster a shake right now,” he said.“Do you know if Boyd is on duty?”
Tancredi gave him a dry look from under her eyebrows.“Not Gardner?”she said.“What’s the plan?Going to try and use a bit of masculine charm to turn her head?You know she’s a cop before she’s a woman?”
Cloister rested his elbow on the counter and rubbed his wrist absently.The ache felt like scorched grains of sand caught in the joint, hot and grating when he rotated the joint.He dug his thumb into his palm, trying to push the ache up into the smallest space he could manage.
“I know Gardner’s IA before he’s a cop,” he said.“I have also never flirted with a woman, and pretty sure I’d not be good at it.”
Tancredi snorted.
“Please.I have heard you talk to Bourneville,” she said.
That made Cloister give her a dubious look.She ignored it as she crossed her arms, fingers curled into her elbows, and looked down the hall.A couple of members of the admin staff were on their way out of the break room, wiping their hands from lunch.There was a polite trade of nods.Tancredi waited until they had gone back into the office to swing her attention back to Cloister.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she said.“The last thing I need is anything that’s going to delay me being put back on active duty, and you…it doesn’t matter if you talk to Boyd first.It will still get back to Gardner, and the last thing you need is to get back on IA’s radar.SSA Kincaid might have lost interest, but that doesn’t mean they have.The sheriff’s department has a lot riding on being the solution to corruption in Plenty.The last thing they want is doubt cast on that.”
That was true.
Cloister made himself let go of his wrist.It wasn’t helping anyhow.He pushed back off the counter.
“I can find her on my own,” he said.
Tancredi made a disgruntled noise.“She’s at Bertinelli’s,” she said.“At least she was just before you walked in.She texted to ask if I wanted anything.So…the way the lines are there, you can probably still catch her.”
“Thanks.”
Before he could walk away, Tancredi reached over the counter and grabbed his sleeve.
“I know you don’t like politics,” she said, “but you need to listen to me.You’re on thin ice, Cloister.People talk.They like you, but…people talk, and Kincaid gave them a lot to talk about.Your dad’s a criminal?”
“Yeah, he runs a biker gang,” Cloister said.He gave his arm a tug, and Tancredi reluctantly let go.“You can look him up.And apparently my mom runs a Weight Watchers group, so she’s probably online too.”
It was just something flippant to say, but it was actually true.He’d not seen his mom since he joined up— she’d never been on social media much—but now he could probably find pictures of her shilling weight loss in a church hall somewhere in their hometown.If he looked.
“Very funny,” Tancredi said, rolling her eyes.It caught Cloister off-guard for a minute, but he supposed it did sound like a lie.She let go of his arm.“I’m just saying…be careful.Worst comes to worst, I can move in with my mom and get my realtor’s license—”
“You’ve thought about that?”
“I’ve had to,” Tancredi said, self-consciously flexing her hand.“I’ve got a kid.When they didn’t know if I’d get full use of my hand back, I had to think of backups.What have you got?”
Cloister shrugged as he stepped back from the counter.He gave Tancredi a brief salute with the file.
“I’ve got a dog,” he said.“She’s more employable than you, me, and your kid put together.”
“Ijustswapoutthemeat for beets,” Boyd said.The rookie was still in her civvies, but still looked like a cop in slacks and a collared T-shirt.She rubbed the back of her neck as she glanced over the counter to watch the staff work on building the sandwiches.“Get extra sauerkraut.At some point, I figure they’ll just put it on the menu.”
Cloister pulled his wallet out to pay for his order, thumbing out a crumpled twenty to hand to the lanky teenager in the Bertinelli’s T-shirt behind the counter.
“Nothing for Bon today?”the kid asked as he keyed the order in.He leaned over the counter to give Bon, freshly washed and at Cloister’s heel, a smile.“I can get the cooks to strip a bone for her?”
Bon’s tail gave a quick one-two thump on the ground in response.
“Not today,” Cloister said.“She’s on a diet.”
It was easier than explaining that she was already riled up enough from taking down the prowler.He wanted her cortisol levels to even out back at baseline, not spike them again with another reward.Other trainers might handle it differently, but he found it kept her more leveled out.
The kid gave him the patented “you’re mean to that dog” look that half of Plenty’s servers had in their back pocket, and added something to the order with a furtive jab of a button.Cloister resigned himself to a neatly wrapped packet of scraps andBourneville’s“you’re so mean to me” look as he took his change.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just go somewhere else?”he asked as he put his wallet back in his pocket.“It’s Cali.You should be able to find a vegan cafe.”
