Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tracy Joel had sported the same buttery-blond bob for as long as Javi had known her.
In Phoenix. In Plenty. Even back in Quantico, based on the old photos in the files Javi had gone back through trying to pinpoint when she might have met Saul.
The hospital had shaved it down.
The uneven tufts of light brown stubble where the bandages didn’t cover were somehow more distracting than the cuts and bruises. From the way Tracy kept reaching up to rub her hand over it, she thought the same.
“I don’t know why I didn’t call,” she told Kincaid.
He’d moved into the seat Javi had been in, next to the bed instead of perched on it.
“Everything after he hit me with the wrench is gone, but most of the last couple of days are patchy. I remember I heard Eric’s voice.
Then I was at someone’s house? It smelled terrible.
What happened in between is just smears.
The doctors said it might come back, but they don’t know how much or when. ”
Javi let the hospital door swing shut behind him as he came back into the room. The water bottle he’d gone to get her dangled from his fingers, drops of water dribbling down the sides.
“Here you go,” he said as he twisted the top off and set the bottle down on the hospital table in front of her. “It must have been a surprise to hear his voice.”
She blinked slowly, not quite in sync, and shook her head.
“I didn’t know,” Joel said evenly, although her voice was tired and scratchy. “I wouldn’t have let you take the fall for it if I’d known.”
Kincaid slapped his hands on his knees. “And that, Tracy, is why you didn’t know,” he said as he stood up. He tugged his sleeve back from his wrist to check the time. “I need to go and call my girls. They worry if I don’t check in. I won’t be long.”
The leather soles of his shoes clicked on the floor as he headed for the door.
Joel watched him go. For a second, she looked like she was going to say something, but she closed her eyes and tilted her head back against the pillows instead. She waited until the door closed before she tilted her face toward Javi.
“You look like shit,” she said, one hand coming up to wave around her nose.
“You’re one to talk,” Javi said.
Joel snorted out a startled laugh and then winced. The various monitors attached to her gave a gentle, alarmed series of beeps and clicks until she settled back again.
“Don’t make me laugh,” she said. “Did…what’s his name, Fowler?…do that?”
Javi reached up to poke his nose gingerly. It didn’t hurt anymore, but he could feel where it would if he pushed. “That was your husband.”
“Sorry.”
Javi shrugged and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I did imply you might be corrupt.”
She nodded. “That would do it. I’m not, by the way.”
“I worked that out.”
“Just stupid.”
The bitterness in that statement felt worn thin, as if she’d dragged it out a lot lately.
“Do you really not remember the call?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not much about it,” she said. “My gray matter was pink, Merlo. Nothing stuck. I didn’t call Kincaid because I can’t trust him anymore, but I don’t remember deciding not to that night.”
“When did that happen?” Javi asked. “I mean, no offense, but you were ride or die.”
Joel fumbled with the water bottle. She couldn’t quite make her fingers, bandaged and clipped, come to grips with it. Javi took it and got up to pour some into one of the miniature plastic glasses on the bedside table.
“It crept up on me,” Joel said. “Phoenix. I bought it, but I had to work at it. It never quite clicked. You were a smug asshole, not the sort to risk your career for love.”
Javi paused mid-pour. He was almost impressed. Joel defending his character actually made him sound worse. A quick tip of his hand topped up the glass, and he took it over to her. She took it with both hands and took a careful sip.
“But it was after SSA Lee died that things started to escalate,” she said.
“Then he posted me here and told me to scuttle your career. He knows me better than that. I don’t like you—I never did—but that’s a reason not to include you on the coffee run, not to run you out of the service.
I should have talked to you, but I didn’t know how involved you were in all of it. ”
Javi leaned on the back of the chair.
“There’s a coffee run?” he asked.
“Yes,” Joel said. “Sorry. Do you think Eric’s still alive?”
Javi thought about it. He didn’t know.
“I think so,” he said. “For now.”
She nodded and blinked slowly, her eyelids not quite in sync. “I hope so,” she said, words slurred with exhaustion. “I always felt like it was my fault. When I talked him…talked him into informing, I promised him he’d be safe. I promised…”
She trailed off as she dozed off mid-word, her head falling forward and then jerking back up again as she startled herself awake. Her hand slipped, and she spilled water over herself. That set the machines off again, and this time, a nurse came in to check on them.
“I think that’s enough excitement for Tracy,” he told Javi as he reset the machines and wiped Tracy’s hand off. “She had a major operation. She needs rest.”
Javi nodded and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. He shrugged it on.
“I’ll keep you in the loop,” he promised as he headed for the door.
“Wai…wait,” Tracy said. She pushed away the nurse’s attempt to soothe her and squinted at Javi. “Is that your jacket?”
“I’m wearing it.”
“Your phone?”
“Yeah?” Javi checked on autopilot, the familiar hard oblong against his sternum.
Joel hesitated. She looked like she was second-guessing herself, but she went with her instincts.
“Kincaid had it.”
The needle on the dial ticked up toward the red as Javi sped along the highway out of town.
The stretch of long, dark road lent itself to speed at the best of times—some pedantic part of Javi tried to interject with the actual traffic stats for the last six months—even without fear weighing down the gas.
Javi blew past the Feed Lot. It was closed up for the night, shutters down. A handful of cars and vans were still parked in the lot, dim lights just visible through taped-up windows and doors.
The sat-nav display on the dash flickered as it zoomed in to highlight the right-hand turn he needed in a quarter of a mile, 600 yards, 300 yards.
Now.
If he was honest, Javi couldn’t see the turn in the dark.
He just took it on adrenaline and blind faith in the GPS.
His tires clipped down the side of the road, spraying up gravel and dirt behind him, and he felt the car try to fishtail under him.
The bumper took out a cactus, and sage branches scraped along the side of the car.
Javi locked his elbows and bullied the car back up onto the road. The beams from his headlights bounced off the road ahead, the empty sprawl of it making his jaw tighten. This wasn’t the time for his sat-nav to get the address wrong.
Then he followed the curve of the road down into a dip. He saw the sign for the storage company first, the blue and yellow painted lettering peeling from exposure but lit up with a handful of spotlights. Then he saw the patrol car parked under it next to a black sedan.
Javi didn’t bother to try and park. He just hit the brakes and fishtailed to a stop in the middle of the road.
He left the car running as he grabbed his flashlight, drew his gun, and got out of the car.
His feet scuffed through the thin layer of sand that covered the concrete as he walked cautiously forward, gun hand braced on top of the fist that held the flashlight.
The light flicked over the patrol car first.
Empty.
The door was left open a crack.
Javi took another step forward and felt plastic crunch under his foot. A furious snarling outburst from the sedan made him flinch, the raw, furious sound hitting directly on some primal reaction to things in the dark, and he swung around.
“Bon?” he said.
It didn’t sound like her. He flicked the flashlight across the windows of the sedan, which rocked on its tires as the dog inside threw itself about. It was empty. Just smoked glass and empty seats. The dog snarled and tore at what sounded like fabric.
Javi backed up a step and saw the bloody teeth and muzzle of the dog that was trying to force its head through the hole in the bumper where the dislodged taillight had been set.
There were bloody gashes gouged across the nose and under the jaw.
The gums were raw and ripped up too, from tearing at the bodywork of the car.
Any hope Javi had that he’d been overreacting dried up.
“Bon,” Javi said. He stepped forward and then jumped back again, nearly tripping over his own feet, as the dog snapped blindly at the sound. Javi hesitated for a second as he tried to work out the next step. She knew him, but he wasn’t Cloister. “Bourneville. Aus.”
Maybe he hadn’t said it right. Bon responded by throwing herself against the inside of the sedan again, teeth gouging into the bodywork as she tried to tear her way out.
The clear-headed thing would be to leave her and come back later.
Javi couldn’t bring himself to do that. He walked up to the driver’s side door and tried it.
Unlike him, they’d locked it. He put the gun against the window, turned his head to the side, and pulled the trigger.
The kickback jolted up into his elbow as the bullet punched through the glass and tore into the nice leather seat.
Cracks spread out from the punched hole in neat geometric lines. Javi used the butt of his flashlight to knock out the loose glass until he could reach in and pull the trunk release.
The clunk of it managed to sound louder than the gunshot.
Javi ran to the back of the car and grabbed Bourneville as she lunged out.
The fingers of his free hand dug down into her thick ruff, the hair sticky with blood and grease, until he found the slip-collar.
For a second, as she strained against him, teeth bared as they snapped together, he wasn’t sure that grip would be enough.