Chapter Seven
It wasn’t a thought that Javi planned to share with Cloister, but there were times when he could see the upside of insomnia.
Javi thumbed a mint out of the paper tube and tossed the chalky disc into his mouth.
The sharp toothpaste-adjacent taste of wintergreen flooded his mouth with the tingling fake promise that it was doing more than briefly masking the sourness in the back of his throat.
He crunched it between his teeth as he rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
“Flagging already, Merlo?” Kincaid asked as he glanced up from his assessment of Joel’s open cases. A sandy brow twitched up toward a floppy fringe that belonged on a boat somewhere. “You used to have more stamina.”
Taken on the surface, the comment was unobjectionable. It was a mistake to take anything Kincaid said or did at a surface level.
“I’m fine,” Javi said. “Just getting my second wind.”
Kincaid leaned back in Joel’s chair and reached up to rub his neck.
“You sure?” he asked. “I know you got an early start today. You were…”
He trailed off as he glanced at Joel’s computer, his eyes flicking from side to side as they tracked down the screen.
“…setting up the stall at the fair?” he finished. “Community outreach. Hmm. Not enough of our agents understand how important that is. All they care about are the big-ticket cases: trafficking, murder, drug lords. It’s good to see that isn’t how this office is run.”
One of the techs who’d come down with Kincaid from LA snorted to herself from the corner of the room. Javi ignored that.
“Oh, Plenty has had its share of that too,” he said with a thin smile that he could feel against his teeth. “In fact, that might be one avenue to chase up. We cracked the Corpse Brothers MC drug ring last year. There’s been a few different organizations that have tried to fill the gap—”
Kincaid held up his hand to stop Javi. “We’re already on top of that,” he said.
“The Morelia Cartel already has enough on their plate back home, and I’ve got the sheriff’s department looking for the Saints.
I appreciate your concern about SSA Joel—the last thing you need is to step into another dead agent’s shoes—but we know what we’re doing. ”
Before Javi could try and navigate his way through that load of bullshit, the tech at the other desk looked up.
“Sir?” she said. “I’ve got access to SSA Joel’s bank accounts. Do you want…?”
Kincaid gestured “just a second” in her direction as he kept his attention on Javi.
“If you’re sure you don’t need to take a break,” he said, “the husband should have just landed at San Diego airport. Liaise with the agents I have stationed there to pick him up, make sure they get on the road. See if there’s anything they need.”
If there was a step below transport, it was the agent who had to hold transport’s hand. Javi kept his face neutral as he absorbed the jab and stepped back.
“I’ll do that now,” he said. “Don’t want anyone else going missing.”
He turned to go as Kincaid swiveled his chair around and hopped up to cross the room. His hand had just closed around the handle of the door when Kincaid cleared his throat to get Javi’s attention back.
“Oh, Javier,” he said. Despite everything, Javi couldn’t help the itch of awareness that rolled down his spine at the perfectly pronounced version of his name.
It made his throat catch with a sour mix of old memories and guilt.
He braced his shoulders against the sentiment as he half-turned to look at Kincaid.
The head of the LA office was leaning on the back of the tech’s chair—his complete disregard for personal space available for everyone—and he smiled at Javi.
“Did you remember to get someone to break down the stall at the fair? That is all FBI property, and we don’t want our branded merch being misappropriated. ”
They stared at each other for a moment. Javi tried to work out from Kincaid’s face how much of Kincaid’s attitude was just sour grapes—when Kincaid discarded someone, he expected them to stay discarded, not pick themselves up—and how much was to some sort of end.
He couldn’t tell. To be honest, he wasn’t sure if Kincaid could either.
“Don’t worry,” he said sardonically as he opened the door. “I’m on it.”
“That’s not a problem.” Javi fielded the driver’s concerns smoothly.
He stood in the back stairwell of the federal building that the suboffice used and looked out over the unusually packed parking lot.
The vague ghost of his reflection, caught in the dark glass, looked more like itself in a fitted suit and a crisp white shirt.
“Obviously, we can understand his feelings. His daughter is being held in protective custody at SAY—it’s the Youth Assessment Center on Wilshire and Estrella, big pink building—until he can pick her up.
Take him there. Let me know when you hit the town limits.
I’ll make sure there’s someone at the center to meet you. ”
He nodded through the younger agent’s relieved thanks for making his life easier and then hung up.
For a second, the fact he knew he was about to cross Kincaid tightened the muscles over his shoulders.
Habit, despite everything, he supposed. At this point, though, if he didn’t know that Kincaid didn’t have his best career interests at heart, he deserved whatever he got.
Kincaid had told him to be helpful; Javi had been helpful.
Just because being the one to meet the husband benefited him didn’t mean he wasn’t doing exactly what he was told.
Javi swiped away from the call screen. He hesitated as he stared at his notifications. There was nothing from Cloister. That wasn’t actually unusual.
They hadn’t been defined as something long enough to even have a usual. Cloister wasn’t exactly the poster child for good communication, either.
Pot, a dry, self-deprecating mental voice noted between Javi’s ears, meet kettle.
Still, the lack of anything made Javi feel obscurely…abandoned. He could feel it in his chest, a hollow, self-pitying ache that he quickly wadded up and shoved out of the way. It was just tiredness making him sentimental; next he’d be sniffling over a balled-up sock the dog had left in his car.
Javi snorted at the thought and slipped the phone back into his jacket. He turned to head back into the office, his brain already turning over what moves to make next in the investigation to ensure he came out ahead no matter the final result.
Self-serving, maybe, but Javi preferred to call it pragmatic. It wasn’t as if pretending that Kincaid wasn’t trying to kneecap him would get Joel home any quicker.
And maybe, the unwelcome thought slid in on the heels of the one before despite his effort to cut it off, he wasn’t disappointed in Cloister at all. Maybe he just wanted a reason to not feel guilty for letting Kincaid get under his skin.
Javi didn’t care for that idea, but it felt…accurate. It definitely fitted Javi’s character better than an outbreak of sentiment would.
He hesitated for a second as that occurred to him, but before he had to think about it too hard, Sue’s crisp, unemotional use of his name gave him something else to focus on.
“SA Merlo.” She got up from behind her desk and walked over to him, swiping a stack of files from the edge in one smooth motion. They were tucked neatly into the crook of her arm as she murmured a quick, “Just hold for a moment, please,” into her headset before she put them on hold.
She fell in next to Javi, the sound of her heels muffled but still audible on the thin carpet tiles.
“Kincaid asked me to pull any case files SSA Joel reviewed in the last month,” she said, tapping her thumb against the stack in her arm. “I need to log them for his team.”
Javi might not like Kincaid, but the man was an effective investigator. That would have been Javi’s next call as well. Since his approval wasn’t required, though, he wasn’t sure why Sue was telling him. He waited.
She glanced over at the closed door to Kincaid’s office as they passed it and then went on.
“But the Plenty First National just responded to our request for expedited access to SSA Joel’s account there,” she explained. “Is there any way you could take over logging that data so I can get on with Joel’s pull history from the case management system?”
She raised an expectant eyebrow at him.
The “yes” seemed like a gimme. Javi still hesitated as he assessed the offer. Up until right now, Sue had made it clear that the amicable working relationship she had with Javi didn’t supersede her institutional loyalty to the Bureau.
He hadn’t been happy about that, but he’d not been surprised either. Javi was aware of his own strengths; he was a talented, efficient agent, not an inspirational one.
Apparently, something had changed. Sue’s eyebrow did not suggest she’d be willing to go into details on what.
“If you can’t,” she said briskly, tucking the files closer to her ribs with her elbow, “no hard feelings. I can fit it in.”
“No,” Javi said quickly. Whatever had inspired Sue’s change of heart wasn’t immediately relevant.
He might not have expected her to put her neck out for him, but they’d gotten on well enough that he didn’t think she’d play along with any of Kincaid’s sabotage.
Besides, again, if it came down to it, Javi could just argue he was doing his job. “I can take that off your plate.”
Sue looked unsurprised as she nodded.
“I appreciate that,” she said. It sounded genuine, maybe with a hint of dry humor around the edges.
She dropped back out of step with him as she reached up to her earpiece with one hand.
“I’ll send the files through. And sorry about that, Mel.
Yes, we need any CCTV you can pull off the corridor from Joel’s house… ”
She walked away.