Chapter 21 #2
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.”
The concrete of the porch held the heat. Cloister could feel it through his heavy sheriff's department issue uniform as he sat next to Javi on the steps. His brain focused on that basic physical fact as if it thought they should pretend not to hear what Javi had just said.
So the ex you thought was dead is alive—maybe, at this point—and your other ex and your mentor were running a decade-long covert op. But have you considered that this step is almost uncomfortable? Maybe ten degrees hotter and I’d move.
“Fuck,” Cloister settled on saying instead.
Javi gave a dry bark of laughter and scrubbed his hand through his hair, dark, usually tidily styled hair sticking messily between his knuckles.
“Concise,” he said. “I like it.”
Cloister rubbed his nose. He didn’t often.
It felt odd under the skin, the cartilage that should have run straight separated and lumpy and tender in odd spots.
Right now, it just felt like the only gesture that expressed how he felt as he tried to shuffle all the new information in with the cards he’d already held.
“Why tell me now?” he asked.
Javi glanced at him. “Not going to ask why I didn’t tell you?”
“Because Kincaid got in your head?”
Javi started to say something, but then just grimaced and nodded. “Again, concise,” he said. “And not wrong. My version made me sound better, though.”
“Why tell me now?” Cloister repeated.
Javi leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He laced his fingers together and rubbed at his palm with one thumb, a slow, self-soothing gesture.
“I was reminded that I like being a ‘we,’” he said. “And that the only thing worse than being screwed over by Kincaid is knowing he’s going to do it to someone else. He’s given up on getting Eric—Miles—back alive. Now he’s just trying to work out how he can turn a corpse to his advantage.”
Cloister mimicked Javi’s position. He watched as Bourneville sniffed around the garden, pawing briefly at a patch of dead grass before she trotted away.
“And all of this because someone killed a woman he didn’t care about?”
Javi swung his head up and down in a slow, exaggerated nod. “I think he’s offended they thought that would hurt him.”
Cloister thought about that. It made his head hurt.
“It must be exhausting to be him,” he said.
Javi gave a soft “huh” in reaction. “That’s honestly the best description of Kincaid I’ve ever heard,” he said. He looked sidelong at Cloister and nudged him with a knee. “So, are we…OK?”
No.
Yes.
Fuck.
Cloister rubbed the back of his neck. There was a missing man.
A criminal conspiracy. And Kincaid on the move behind the scenes.
It didn’t feel like they had the time for him to come up with an answer that meant anything.
He resented Javi a little bit for putting that on him in the middle of Javi’s mess.
And the step was still too hot.