Cloister wiped his nose on the back of his hand.“She’s OK.She’s gonna be OK,” he said as Bon weakly licked his hand.Javi noted that his wrist was swollen to the point the flesh was digging into the metal of the cuff.Before he could ask, Cloister looked over at Javi, and his brain visibly tried to click from K-9 handler to boyfriend.“Shit.Are you—”
“Not taking it personally,” Javi said as he leaned back against the container.He should have picked up his phone, he thought grimly.“She’ll be OK, baby.”
EveryonewasOK.
Javi paused internally as his gaze flicked to Cloister’s back as he carried Bourneville, her legs dangling and her head tucked into the bend of his arm, out of the maze of storage lockers.Despite her injuries, she’d still tried to take the hand off the EMT who’d tried to put her onto a gurney.Cloister was the only one she wanted near her right now.As Javi watched, he saw Cloister dip his head, fingers buried in thick fur, to murmur soothingly to his dog.
So, maybe not OK.It was still easy enough to achieve if the bar was set low.
Alive.
Everyone was alive.
Including Eric.Miles.
Eric?
Javi looked away from Cloister and back to their missing informant.He leaned on the edge of the stretcher and hobbled along as the paramedics wove their way back out of the maze.They’d found Eric in container 14.Apparently, it had some sort of specific meaning in the Sovereign Citizen ideology.Kincaid had come up with that.
He walked briskly ahead of the stretcher, sandy hair unruly and in bloody shirtsleeves, ready for a photo-op.If Javi thought too hard about Kincaid, he was going to shoot him.That was a bad idea for a lot of reasons—some of which Javi could even think of right now—but a particularly bad move in front of this many witnesses.
To distract himself, Javi looked back at the man whose death had become such a huge part of Javi’s life that he was going to need a whole new character flaw to replace it.
He looked different.More than just a few years and a move to a place where tans were common, although that too.The dehydration and blood loss from a dozen minor cuts had probably contributed to it as well.
The queasy realization dawned on Javi that when he thought of Eric, he thought of the mock-up crime scene photo that Kincaid had shown him.That was the face that had haunted him.When Eric had been alive, Javi had never thought about him that much at all.
He supposed that Joel was just a better judge of character than he’d thought.His, anyhow.It had taken her a while to work Kincaid out.
“Miles, I—” Javi stopped and tried again.“Eric?”
It took a second.“I…I don’t know.Miles.For now, Miles.Until I can explain to Reid, at least.”
Javi nodded.“I just wanted to say that… I’m sorry.”
“For what?”Miles asked.He looked genuinely confused, and then he gave a strained huff of reaction as he waved his hand at himself.“This?My own fault.When Saul died…don’t get me wrong, I appreciated everything he did.I did.But when he died, it felt like I was off a leash for the first time.I could reallybeMiles, not just pretend.It was stupid.”
“Were you happy?”
The smile was tired, and Miles’s lips were cracked, but it was answer enough.Javi clumsily reached over and squeezed Miles’s hand.“How stupid can that be?”
They reached the end of the corridor.
The ambulance was waiting.Javi pushed himself off the stretcher and hopped backwards until he could brace himself against the corner of a metal box.He watched as Miles was loaded up and the doors slammed.Blue and red lights flashed luridly over the desert landscape as the ambulance peeled out.
“Next one’s for you,” Kincaid remarked.
Javi hadn’t heard him come back over.He clenched his jaw.Eventhatmade his leg throb more.He considered what he wanted to say, but it wasn’t the time or place for most of it.
“Did you tell Joel we found Miles?”he asked.
Kincaid sucked his teeth and then shrugged.“Not yet,” he said.“I want to do that in person.She’s been a bit off with me since she found out he wasn’t dead the first time.This time will put me in a better light.Miles.Miles Sandoval.Goddamn Saul.The amount of time I wasted looking for this guy, when I could’ve just remembered Saul was a sentimental fool.”
Javi glanced at him.
“You knew about his son?”he asked.
“Of course, we were friends,” Kincaid said.
