THERE WERE political advantages to having a Latinx agent stationed in Plenty. No one said it directly, but what they had pointedly not said made it clear. That was fine. Javi was a good agent, but when he came to Plenty, he needed a chance to prove that. He hadn’t been tempted to look a gift horse in the mouth.
If any of his superiors thought their counterparts in Mexico would appreciate the move, they hadn’t met Inspector Damaso Yuen of the Policía Federal Ministerial. The dark, wire-thin man resented having to answer to the FBI for his country’s criminals and didn’t care if the agent was a fifth-generation Latin American or not.
Yuen grimaced around an agreement to pass on information about Alfredo Infante—a chemist who worked both sides of the border—if he left Mexico City. Then he glanced down at his desk, flicking his eyes over unseen papers.
“And if there are any more attacks against your people,” Yuen said coldly as he looked back up, “I expect to be informed. My men and their families are already in enough danger.”
“Of course,” Javi said. He leaned back in his chair and tried to decide if the slice of office he could see behind Yuen was nicer than his own. Less glass, more solid wooden shelves—he wasn’t sure how that translated in quality. “However, as I said, I don’t believe it’s connected to our shutting down the drug labs.”
A thin smile creased Yuen’s face for a moment. It lacked warmth. “My mother believes I’ll make it home in time for dinner,” he said. “I know I have another three hours behind my desk. If the cartel is implicated in this at all, however slightly, that’s information I need to know, Agent Merlo.”
“Inspector Yuen.”
The screen flicked to black as Yuen unceremoniously ended the call. The inspector wasn’t a man who wasted time on goodbyes. Javi could appreciate that. He pushed his chair back and stood up to work the kinks out of his back on his way over to the coffee machine. The dregs of the carafe barely filled a third of the cup. Javi grimaced, swirled the tarry dregs around, and then drank it down. It was black and bitter, but at that point in the day, no one drank coffee for the taste.
He rolled his head from one side to the other, his vertebra crackling, but the tension in his shoulders just dug in deeper. If he hadn’t drunk Saul’s whiskey during the Hartley case, he’d have grabbed a shot of it. Javi finished the coffee and frowned at the stained bottom of the cup.
There was a time when he would have been nervous because he wanted to impress Kincaid, when he’d have done anything to impress him.
The computer chimed insistently as the screen filled with a request to accept the incoming call.
It was early. Of course it was. Javi set the cup down and walked back to the desk. He sat down, straightened his shirt collar, exhaled, and hit Enter.
The screen brightened into a window on the LA office, with Everett Kincaid front and center. Javi felt a flash of the old resentment as he stared at Everett’s gray-blond hair and hawkish face. It reflected back at him from Kincaid’s pale, hooded eyes.
The assignment to Phoenix had nearly flatlined Javi’s career, but Kincaid still resented that it hadn’t ended it. That was fair enough. Javi still thought it should have ended Kincaid’s.
“SA Merlo,” Kincaid said. The LA office went on behind him, agents and analysts in motion on the other side of the glass wall of the meeting room. A quick twist of a smile folded Kincaid’s mouth and was gone. Javi braced himself. “I understand you nearly got a sheriff’s deputy killed? Come on, man, that’s not interagency cooperation.”
The wry, disarming smile came back. It didn’t take the sting out of the accusation, but it made it difficult to respond in kind. Kincaid could weaponize affable. It was why he taught classes in interview techniques at the academy. It should make it easier when Javi knew all his tics and tricks, but it didn’t.
“Deputy Witte,” Javi said. “He’s already back on his feet. It was less of a near-death experience, more of an unexpected nap. It wasn’t anything to do with his help in—”
Kincaid interrupted with a “huh” and pulled a mock-confused face. He scratched his head. “In that case, Agent, why are you, ah, still involved? Lieutenant Frome says he didn’t ask for your help. On this one.” He sucked in a breath through his teeth and shook his head. “That’s bad optics for the Bureau. Not great for you either.”
There was real pleasure in his voice as he said that. Kincaid hadn’t enjoyed fucking Javi as much as he enjoyed fucking him over.
“Janet Morrow, the victim of the assault that Lieutenant Frome believes was a mishap, is a trans woman,” Javi said flatly. He knew better than to play into the theatrics of the conversation. Kincaid had the edge there. All Javi had was being good at his job. “The… optics… of the local police and the FBI dismissing a possible hate crime that left a member of a vulnerable minority in an induced coma, as a fall? They’d be worse.”
The image of Kincaid blinked and pursed his lips sourly as he absorbed that information.
“You’re sure it’s a hate crime?” he asked.
“I’m sure if we don’t investigate it, everyone will assume it was.”
Kincaid grimaced and slouched back in his chair. His knee poked up into the screen as he hooked his foot up onto his thigh, and he picked at a loose thread in the seam with nervous fingers as he absorbed that piece of news.
“Fine. I’ll clear things up with Frome,” Kincaid said eventually, probably once he’d weighed up any way it could backfire on him. “Another high-profile case. I thought that serial kidnapper you stumbled on would be the only break you’d get this decade.” He chuckled without it reaching his eyes as he reached for a file. “Of course, you won’t have to worry about that much longer,” he said. “We’ve finally found a senior agent to send down to replace SSA Lee, so all these big cases won’t be just your responsibility anymore.”
The disappointment lodged in Javi’s throat like a stone. It wasn’t a surprise. He might have recouped some of his professional reputation in the last few years, but not enough of his personal one to be promoted to SSA. Even if he hadn’t hit a speed bump in Phoenix, it would have been a long shot at his age. Still, it scratched in his throat as he swallowed it.
“Do you know who?” he asked.
He already knew he wasn’t going to like it. Kincaid wouldn’t have a smile on his face if it was someone he’d get along with.
“Actually we both do,” Kincaid said as though he needed the prompt. “You remember SSA Tracy Joel?”
Javi breathed in. The slap stung the side of his face with hot pricks of pain as he sucked in a shocked breath and tasted his own salty tears. Even with a lung full of air, he still felt like someone had knocked the breath out of him. Sharp fingers dug into his arm as the angry woman dragged him around to look at the bloody mess. Tracy’s voice was contemptuous as she spat in his ear. “This is your fault. You did it. You don’t get to cry. You just get to fix it.” He breathed out.
“I remember SSA Joel,” he said calmly. Maybe Javi couldn’t match Kincaid’s theatrics, but he could deny him the payoff he wanted. The poker face Javi had learned from his mom—whose blank disapproval could still jolt him—always infuriated Kincaid. He didn’t know where to pick if you didn’t give him something to bounce off. “She was a good agent, although I thought she was still on maternity leave?”
Kincaid rolled his head to the side in a jerked shrug and tossed the file down. “For a few more weeks,” he said. “She is looking forward to working with you again, Javier.”
That twitched a reaction down Javi’s spine, and he had to fight not to show it on his face. No one but Kincaid called him Javier. His grandmother had tagged him Javi when he was in the crib, not ready for even her grandchild to have her dead husband’s name, and everyone knew it was easiest to go along with her. Kincaid had liked it, rolled it around his tongue, and Javi let him. His grandfather’s name in that asshole’s mouth.
And like everything Kincaid did, there was no purchase to call him on it.
“It will be good to see her again,” Javi said.
Something must have shown on his face or slipped into his voice, because Kincaid looked smug as he leaned back. He twisted around and scratched the back of his neck.
“I just wanted to give you the good news in person,” Kincaid said. “Is there anything else on your end? If you need my help with anything until Tracy gets there, you just have to ask.”
The no was right on the tip of Javi’s tongue, but that was what Kincaid expected.
“Actually I want to do a cognitive interview with Deputy Witte next week,” Cloister said. “I’d appreciate it if you sent one of our analysts down.”
There was a pause, and Kincaid laughed. He always admired it when someone surprised him.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll see when one’s available and let you know. Take care, Agent. You don’t have many friends down there. If you alienate the lieutenant, it won’t go well.”
After an exchange of empty platitudes, Kincaid hung up. Javi leaned back in his chair and stared at the computer. He wanted to slap it off the desk. He wanted to pick up the ugly, welded-bullet paperweight he’d inherited from Saul and throw it through the plate-glass window, but he’d just have to explain and invoice it in the morning.
He did pick up the welded paperweight, but he just weighed it in his hand. Saul had claimed—or maybe just lied—that every bullet in the brass ball had been fired at him, and one of them was from his wife’s little Smith & Wesson. All of that, and then he had to go and die of a heart attack.
“I could have used you alive, old man,” Javi said to the emptiness. “Just for another year. Even if you had retired, I could do with someone to talk to about this.”
Tracy Joel. She hated him, and he couldn’t blame her, but that was a problem for another day. Javi deposited the heavy brass ball on the desk and pushed his chair back.
There might not be any whiskey left in the office, but there was definitely a bottle at his apartment.
THE LOCAL news outlets seemed more interested in “San Diego County sheriff’s deputy injured in hit-and-run” than the “while looking for injured tourist,” but that would change. Javi flicked the window on the tablet closed and slouched down in the black leather chair positioned in front of the loft’s long plate-glass window.
He liked the view but not for the restaurant opposite. The harsh illumination from newly installed streetlights was strong enough that Javi would see the upturned chairs on the tables and bad art on the wall. Although on nights when he got home while it was still open, the Mexican/Thai fusion did look interesting. Rather, Javi liked the view for the memory of Cloister’s body leaning against the glass, the tight stretch of tanned skin over broad shoulders as he braced his arms and the dim, shadowy reflection of his face caught in the glass as Javi fucked him.
Usually that imagery pulled Javi’s hand down to his cock, but tonight his brain refused to hold on to it. It splintered into old bad memories and bad new ones. Bloody wads of gauze. Bruises stained over honey skin.
“Javier.”
Javi grimaced and took a drink of whiskey. The cold bite of it against the back of his throat jolted him out of that train of thought. Joel was a problem for another day. He needed to focus on the fact that he’d managed to sell Janet Morrow’s case as being his business just as he realized the case looked like a dead end—no witnesses and no evidence till they got the report back from the lab, just a half-dead girl in a hospital bed and a criminal who was desperate enough to assault a deputy as he tried to make her all dead.
She had to have known them, if not personally, then at least enough to identify them.
Javi took another drink of whiskey and lifted the tablet. He flicked back through his emails to the curt note Tancredi had sent with the sheriff’s report—dates and times of her flights, the booking with the Hampton, and a pending search warrant for a two-generation-old iPhone.
He propped his bare feet up on the footstool—black leather sticky-hot under his feet—and sent her a sparely worded question about Janet’s luggage. If Janet’s emergency contact was a design-school professor, it seemed unlikely that she’d have traveled across the continent with only one outfit.
The apology for his curt behavior on Friday made it to five words. His thank-you for letting him know about Cloister’s injury to eight. Javi deleted both of those before he sent it. He might owe her a sorry, but the best thank-you would be if he didn’t say it. Joel would be more likely to take to Tancredi if she wasn’t friends with Javi.
He rubbed his dry eyes as he went back to the sparse report. It didn’t seem like Janet Morrow had left much of a trace on the world, not as Janet, anyway. Once Galloway ran her through the system, they might have a better idea of where she’d been before.
The rap of knuckles against his door interrupted him halfway down the page that detailed Janet’s injuries. Galloway had already given him the rundown at the hospital, but the less-graphic clinical language of the surgical report sounded more damning. It was a relief to put it down.
Javi peeled himself out of the chair and padded over to the door. He flicked the monitor on, and the camera caught the long sprawl of Cloister’s body against the wall outside, his head tilted back and his old gray T-shirt plastered to his body with sweat. It was a good camera. Javi could see every shade of blue and yellow that spread up into Cloister’s hairline.
He still wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone, but he opened the door. Bourneville sat on the stairs between Cloister’s feet. A heavy twist of drool-wet rope dangled from her mouth, and she thumped her tail briefly when she saw Javi.
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked as he leaned against the jamb.
Cloister rolled his head to the side and opened one eye. In the dim light, the iris looked more gray than blue. “Nearly two,” he said. A wry smile twisted up one corner of his mouth as he opened his other eye to look Javi up and down. The flash of unabashed appreciation on those harsh features, as always, caught Javi somewhere uncomfortably raw. “You don’t look like you were asleep.”
“Hardly your area of expertise.”
Cloister snorted. “Fair enough.” He pushed himself off the wall with his shoulders and scratched at the scruff of gilt stubble on his jaw. He flicked his gaze over Javi’s shoulder and then back to his face. Something settled behind his eyes, and he shrugged. “Sorry. I just saw the light on and thought I’d run something by you. I should have called first.”
He took a step back onto the stair behind him, and Javi bristled with annoyance. Maybe he didn’t want company, but that was his call, not Cloister’s.
“Wait.” He grabbed Cloister’s arm. “You’re here now. You might as well come in.”
It was a begrudged invitation, so Javi didn’t know why he held his breath as he waited to see if Cloister would accept. He supposed it didn’t matter since Cloister nodded after a second’s hesitation.
“Yeah,” he said. “I suppose you’re right.”
Bourneville heaved a sigh as if to say “finally” as she scrambled to her feet and went around Javi into the apartment. It had been a couple of weeks, but it didn’t seem to have left her unsure of her welcome. She padded to the couch, jumped up, turned around in three brisk circles, and flopped down. Her nose went down on her paws, and she started to chew on her toy.
“I did give her a blanket,” Javi muttered as he closed the door behind Cloister.
“Which would you rather sleep on—the couch or a blanket on the ground?” Cloister asked wryly. He snapped his fingers, which made Bourneville’s ears prick up attentively. “Bon—”
“Leave her be,” Javi interrupted. “She’s already shed on it.”
Cloister shrugged and changed his command to “Good girl.”
The dog thumped her tail twice against the cushions in a desultory fashion and went back to gnawing on her rope.
“Drink?” Javi asked as he waved his hand toward the open bottle of whiskey.
Cloister shook his head. “Pain pills,” he reminded Javi. “Bourneville could do with one, though.”
“Help yourself,” Javi said. “You know where the tap is.”
While Cloister filled a monochrome geometric designer soup bowl with water for the dog, Javi took the opportunity to have a good look at him. The T-shirt wasn’t the only thing that was sweaty. Cloister’s short, dusty-blond hair was plastered to his skull in damp, messy curls, and sweat shone on his bare arms. The cast, already grubby and scrawled on, looked soggy at the cuff in addition to being lightly chewed.
“Did you run here?” he blurted out.
Once he said it out loud, it was such a self-evidently ridiculous question that, evidence aside, Javi waited for Cloister to scoff at him.
Instead he just shrugged. The hitch of his T-shirt flashed a slice of Cloister’s stomach—all hard muscle and a hook of ink. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“You’re an idiot,” Javi said. “How can you run with a broken wrist? Didn’t it hurt?”
Cloister lifted his hand to look at the cast as though he’d forgotten about it. “I guess. It always hurts eventually, though,” he said. “You hit the wall where your body wants to stop, and you have to run through it.”
“Why?” It was probably the most personal question Javi had ever asked Cloister. He didn’t know if he should find that sad or scary. “Why do you have to?”
Cloister hesitated as he frowned over that question as though he’d never thought about it before. Then he shrugged and laughed, and the long dimple slashed down his cheek as he said, “I guess, because otherwise you don’t get anywhere. Besides, it’s what made me think of—”
“Can we do anything tonight?” Javi asked roughly as he unbuttoned his shirt with impatient fingers. “What you thought of, will it do Janet any good right now?”
It wasn’t the right time. Javi was frustrated, angry over stuff he couldn’t change now—that he probably never could have—and he’d let Kincaid dip his fingers back into his brain. On the other hand, the first time they kissed had been a bad idea. But it hadn’t stopped Javi then, so why should it be any different now?
“I don’t know.” Cloister swallowed hard as he dragged his eyes from Javi’s bare chest. “I don’t… think so.”
“Good.”
Javi grabbed a handful of Cloister’s shirt—the worn fabric wet and cold with sweat—and dragged him down for a kiss. His lips were wet and sharp with salt, his breath hot against Javi’s whiskey-cool mouth. Cloister cupped his hand around the back of Javi’s neck, his fingers rough where he pressed them against the skin. The scrape crawled down Javi’s spine and into his balls—a twist of pleasure that tugged at his cock.
“I thought you wanted to go to sleep,” Cloister murmured against his mouth.
“I do,” Javi said. He twisted Cloister’s shirt around his fist and pulled him with him toward the bedroom. “Later. Right now I want to fuck you and forget about everything else until morning.”
Tangled around each other, they stumbled into the bedroom. Javi’s hands were under Cloister’s T-shirt—his fingers lost again in the jigsaw of old scar tissue that stretched over Cloister’s ribs—and his shirt was discarded over the doorknob. Cloister fumbled at Javi’s trousers as they veered toward the bed. He was clumsy with only one hand in the game.
Black silk sheets slid under them, cool as water, when they sprawled out on the bed. Javi dragged his mouth along Cloister’s jaw, a slow trail of kisses from the corner his mouth to the vulnerable pulse in his throat.
He smelled of sea air, lemon soap, and the clean tang of fresh sweat before it had time to dry—like sex without the dark aftertaste of musk.
Javi pulled off Cloister’s T-shirt and left it to tangle around the bulk of his cast while he kissed his way down the span of his chest. He lingered on the tight pink bud of a nipple—the scrape of his teeth over it was enough to make Cloister squirm under him—and then down to the tangle of scars, ink, and bruises that decorated Cloister’s ribs.
He’d picked out the pattern of the ink over the last few months. Without the scars, it would have been a shitty tribal straight off the wall, the lines blown and ink faded—just what a stroppy fourteen-year-old Cloister would have picked, Javi supposed. It was the spray of scar tissue through it that made it into art, the disruption that was beautiful.
“You and roads really don’t mix,” Javi said as he ran his tongue over one of the slick raised commas of scar tissue that floated on top of the bruise. He slid his hand down Cloister’s stomach and under the waistband of his sweats. Then he wrapped his fingers around the hard, interested rise of Cloister’s cock. “Have you thought about office work?”
Cloister laughed as he worked the sleeve of his T-shirt down over his cast. He tossed it to the side. “Can you imagine me in a suit?” he asked.
It was a joke. Out of uniform, Cloister’s wardrobe consisted of old jeans and old T-shirts he’d grabbed from charity shops. The only clothes he spent money on were his boots and his sneakers, and that was only so he could wear them down until they looked like he found them in a trash heap.
Still, Javi abruptly could imagine Cloister in business clothes. The image of Cloister in a well-cut suit, tight across the shoulders and cut close to his lean hips, sank through Javi’s mind to the place he kept his fantasies—big hands splayed obediently against cold glass, the crack of command in Cloister’s voice as he growled in Javi’s ear, and now Cloister in a suit Javi could peel off him.
“You like my suits,” he said.
“You look good in suits,” Cloister said raggedly. His hips lifted off the bed as Javi stroked him. “I look like a cat someone dressed up, half-strangled and all pissed.”
Javi still liked the idea.
“Call me Javier,” he said as he let go of Cloister’s cock—and wrung a low groan of protest out of Cloister’s chest as he did so—and closed his eyes.
“Why?”
“Because I told you to.”
“Fuck off.”
Javi pushed himself up. He straddled Cloister’s waist and leaned over him, his hands buried in Cloister’s cropped tangle of blond hair and his face close enough to feel Cloister’s breath against his jaw. He closed his eyes.
“Because I asked you to.”
“Javier.”
There was no poetry to it when Cloister said it, no quicksilver sensuality in the way he held the syllables in his mouth. It was just a name, drawled by a man whose Spanish had a thicker Montana accent than his English did. The only thing clever about his tongue was the way he kissed.
Even with Javi’s eyes closed, it was still Cloister under him, not anyone else. Thank his grandmother’s God for that.
“Is everything okay?” Cloister asked. He grazed his hand down Javi’s ribs to his hip and hooked it into the waistband of his trousers.
Javi opened his eyes and looked down at Cloister. It wasn’t okay. He’d thought Kincaid couldn’t hurt him anymore, and he’d been wrong… again. And this time there was no Saul to step in and, for reasons Javi would probably never get, give him an out.
But right now Javi thought maybe he was okay. He wasn’t sure why, and he was still pissed off at Kincaid’s games, but suddenly he didn’t feel as though he would drown in all his old mistakes, not when he had so many new ones to make.
He tilted Cloister’s head back and slashed a hard kiss over his mouth.
“You’re not naked,” he said. “So not yet.”