Reid snorted.He glanced down at Bon.“Maybe I should get a dog instead,” he said.“For protection.”
“Problem is, people get attached,” Cloister said.“They have a dog trained to protect them, but they’re more worried about the dog.”
Reid gave a wry nod.“That would be Miles,” he said.Then he tilted his head to look past Cloister.“What’s Jessie doing?”
Cloister turned and watched the receptionist dart down the little stretch of sidewalk toward them.She stopped in front of them, looked over her shoulder, and then pulled a file from under her hoodie to hand to Cloister.
“You didn’t get it from me,” she said and then gave Reid an apologetic look.“That’s everything we had on record for Brian.I hope it helps.”
Cloister flicked it open and looked it over.His eye caught on the address at the top.
“Cuyamaca Road,” he read out.
Reid looked up from his coffee.Confusion pinched his face.
“That’s just around the corner from our house,” he said.“I go past it on my way to get takeout.He’s my neighbor?”
Thenewdevelopmentsbuilton the outskirts of Plenty came fully mapped out and resourced, the houses all Irish Twins with only a few years and minor aesthetic tweaks to distinguish them.Come further into the city and the gentrification had to work with what was already there.
The houses being flipped and foreclosed on now had been new builds a couple of decades ago.They’d been built on split plots and old pastures bought up by developers.
Not Cuyamaca Road.It had been here first.
The street was set back from the rest of the neighborhood.The houses were bigger, with oversized porches and deep, well-founded driveways.They were set on plots big enough that instead of a plastic DIY playset, they had apple trees old enough and sturdy enough to string a tire swing from.
Although, as Cloister parked between a dusty old wood-sided Volvo and an accessible minivan, the tires looked broken down from exposure, and the ropes were frayed.These houses had been bought and built to be family homes.Except it was hard for familiesfromPlenty to buyinPlenty these days.Kids grew up, and jobs on the farms were thin on the ground and didn’t pay enough to support a family anymore.Never mind a house.
There was a For Sale sign up on one house, newly tamped into the dirt and with the realtor’s face untouched by the weather.Further down, another house had a sign that already boasted SOLD and heavy metal shutters over the windows.
Cloister imagined that if you lived on the street, it would be tempting to go and peer through windows.Maybe that was how Fowler had gotten his start.
He got out and let Bon hop out after him.It might be Fowler’s address on his employment contract, but Number 22 didn’t look any more lived in than the For Sale houses.The drive Cloister walked up was gravel, raked thin enough to expose potholes and bare dirt underneath.There was a car parked at the top of it, but it had been there a while.The blue paintwork was bleached down to white in places from the sun, and the tires were all flat.
As she padded past it, Bon stopped to sniff at the bumper.Cloister stopped to let her, his attention split between her and the house.Fowler might be in custody—and he didn’t seem like the sort of man who worked well with others—but assumptions could get people shot.
When Bon’s interest began and ended with that sniff, Cloister clicked his tongue to call her back to heel.He went up the steps, wood creaking under his weight, onto the porch, and knocked briskly on the door.
The echo inside had that bounce that came from bare walls and missing furniture.He stepped back and craned his neck to the side to peer in the front window.The window was obscured with reflective film, but he could see where it had started to peel up in the corners.
He stepped off the porch and cut across the lawn.The dry sticks of what had been a rosebush at one time cracked underfoot as he crouched down to peer in through the gap.There wasn’t much inside.Bare floors and a single desk with a computer on it.The screen was on, cycling through a slideshow of old photos.
Bon suddenly barked, and her tail thumped against Cloister’s back.
Cloister rolled his weight back onto the balls of his feet and stood up, the muscles in his thighs tense as they took the strain.He turned around to see Javi walking up the drive toward him.He’d shed his jacket and rolled back the sleeves of his shirt, forearms and holster both exposed to view.The memory of what they’d done to Javi’s shirt the night before flicked through Cloister’s mind.He felt the back of his neck sting with heat.
“Hey,” Cloister said as he lifted his hand to squint into the sun.
Javi raised a dark eyebrow at him as he stopped on the path.“Expecting me?”he asked.
Cloister shrugged and gestured at Bon.“It was either you or her cat,” he pointed out.“And Scraps can’t drive.”
“I suppose that passes for logic,” Javi conceded.He looked down at Bourneville.The expression on his face was thoughtful for a moment.Then he shifted back to Cloister and narrowed his eyes.“I asked you to take the win and stay out of this.”
Despite the fact he’d expected this conversation sooner or later, Cloister still felt his shoulders tense like he’d been caught doing something wrong.
“You did,” Cloister asked.“Did you really think I would?”
“I did,” Javi said flatly.He looked away, gaze tracking over the side of the house, and sighed.“But I’m glad you didn’t.We need to talk.”
