Limehouse shook his head.“No,” he said.“You think if she had, I’d have put my PI onto you?”
“Did she talk about work much—”
“No,” Limehouse said harshly.“We’d agreed that.Early doors.No work talk.When there was so much she couldn’t say, I’d rather she didn’t say anything.You get that, right?All the secrets you guys have to keep?”
Javi hesitated on an answer.The lie he’d told to Cloister earlier sat heavy in the back of his mind.Before he had to settle on how to reply, the door opened and a doctor stepped through.“Mr.Limehouse?”the woman asked as she glanced at her clipboard and then at Javi.
“That’s me,” Limehouse said as he stood up.
The doctor’s gaze shifted to him.She tucked a corkscrew curl behind her ear with a pencil and nodded.“Of course,” she tipped her head toward the door.“Now you’re here, we need to talk.There’s a room we use—”
Limehouse mumbled his agreement, and they left.Javi stayed where he was.He pulled a chair over, legs scraping across the floor, and sat down next to Joel.It felt like he should be in motion, that he needed to act, but he didn’t know what way to go.
Javi rested his elbows on his knees and stared at Joel’s bruised face.
“Did you know?And when?”he asked.His voice was low, but it felt loud.He could see the image of the photo that he’d taken from Reid Lassiter in his mind.The familiar smile, the notch of an old scar at the edge of an eyebrow, and the way he stood in the photo to make his shoulders look broader.That had always been his insecurity.Javi kept trying to doubt himself, but he rememberedthatface better than most people in his life.Guilt did that.Itsetthings.Javi leaned forward to look closer at Joel’s face, for any flicker of an eye or twitch of a mouth that would mean she couldsomehowhear him.“Was it when you came to Plenty, or before that?When you assigned me to scut work, was it because you blamed me for getting Eric killed, or because you were scared I’d find out he wasliving ten milesfrom me?When did you know Miles Lassiter and Eric Granov were the same man?”
His voice cracked as he tried to throttle the anger of that question back down into his throat.He leaned back in the chair and pressed his steepled fingers to his lips.Joel had no answers for him.She’d given him all she could with, “They took him.”
The only other person who could answer those questions was the one who’d lied about them in the first place.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true.Therehadbeen one other person who had to have been in the know.But he’d died instead of facing the music.
Javituckedthephonebetween his shoulder and his ear as he strode across the yellow-boxed lines of the parking lot.He remembered the last time he’d been here.It had been a hostage situation, with a dirty cop and a girl who’d already gone through enough.Javi hadn’t felt in control then either.The bad association he had with hospitals got more ammo with every visit.
“I need to talk to Kincaid,” he said.
“Nice to hear from you, too,” Sue said tartly.“How’s SSA Joel?”
“Alive,” Javi said.“Not the current problem.Kincaid?”
Sue huffed a sigh and told him to wait.He pulled his keys out of his pocket and hit the fob as he approached the car, the mirrors unfolding as the doors unlocked.The muffled sound of keys clicking and Sue turning down an offer of a coffee carried down the line as he got into the car.
“He’s not updated his location,” Sue said.“And he’s not answering either phone.He could still be in transit with the prisoner.”
Javi had ridden to the hospital with Joel in the ambulance.Whatever agent—probably Benson—who’d been sent to fetch his car had shorter legs than he did.He reached under the seat to adjust it.
“Well, when he checks in, tell him he needs to call me,” Javi said shortly.“It’s important.”
He didn’t need to see Sue to imagine the lift of her eyebrow.“I’m not sure he’ll care,” she remarked.“I can pass the message along, though.Did you get the phone records I sent you?”
Javi stopped in the middle of starting the car engine and screwed his face up.He’d forgotten about those.
“Yeah,” he said.“Thanks.I need to…actually, tell me something.Did Saul ever mention a Miles to you?”
“Miles?”Sue said.“Probably.You’ll need to narrow it down to be sure.Is it a name, a measure of distance… ”
“Miles Sandoval?”
She took a second to answer.Because she needed to lie, Javi wondered, or just to be thorough.“I don’t think so.Not to me,” Sue said.“Does it matter?”
“I don’t know,” Javi said.“I’m just following a hunch.Tell me something, do you still talk to Lara?”
“Yes,” Sue said.“I’m not comfortable with that.I know things between you both are strained, and it’s not fair, but it’s also understandable.So…”
“Her son moved up to middle school this year, didn’t he?”Javi asked as he turned the engine on and checked the time that flashed up on the dashboard.He missed a bit of Sue’s reply as she transferred over to the Bluetooth, but the “mm-hmm” he caught sounded like agreement.“I’m guessing she went with North County Charter, not Dolores Hartley Middle School.”
They were both good schools, based on demographics, but since Larahaddivorced Dolores’s grandson acrimoniously, Javi doubted she’d have signed up to see the name daily.
