by TA Moore
“Don’t be useless,” Lara told him. It wasn’t an insult. She didn’t sound angry. It was just a flat directive. Then she gave Javi a hard look. “I will meet you at the station. If you talk to my son before I get there, I will ruin you. And fuck you for doing this.”
She stalked out of the cabin.
Ken swallowed, wiped his hand over his face, and rubbed his puffy lids with his thumb and forefinger.
“This is just protocol, right?” he asked. Ken was an orthopedic surgeon. This wasn’t the sort of tension he could deal with. “You know Billy didn’t do this? He wouldn’t do this?”
He probably didn’t mean to sound that doubtful. Javi gripped his shoulder for a second.
“You should go with Lara,” he said. There should have been a rider, a “she needs you.” It was disingenuous enough to catch in his throat. The only person Ken would help by being there was Javi. Ken had a good middle-class boy’s respect for the authorities.
Ken hesitated for a second, as though he were expecting something, and then he nodded and went after Lara. Neither of them bothered locking the doors. Javi supposed there wasn’t anything else they were worried about losing.
On the way out, he saw Matthew, the groundskeeper, loitering around a withered patch of grass as he watched Billy getting escorted to the patrol car. He was the first rubbernecker, but he wouldn’t be the last. By the next day, Billy would be famous in his own right.
JAVI RODE the bronze-and-glass elevator up from the garage and frowned over his phone as he checked his emails. Authorization to fund the sheriff’s task force against the new meth dealers in town, requests for “clarifications” on three of his reports, five letters from Saul’s old friends in the bureau asking him for updates on the case.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he shoved them into a Deal With Later folder.
At this rate, next time he needed a favor, he’d have to take Cloister Witte to dinner. He side-eyed that thought as the elevator jolted to a halt at his floor, but he decided it was harmless enough. So he wouldn’t mind taking Cloister to dinner—and all the things they could do afterward in a nice rented hotel bed. That didn’t mean he had any intention of breaking his “never fuck where you live” rule.
Even if it would probably be a cheap date. Cloister looked like the type who’d prefer McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish to Truluck’s sesame-seared ahi.
He let the brief notion fade away as the doors slid open to let him step out. At the end of the short hall, the office admin glanced up from her computer and nodded briefly as she recognized him. She pulled her desk together and filled her hands with information in order of importance for when he actually entered the office. He walked briskly over and pushed the door open to let her get started.
“Agent Merlo.” She stood up from behind the desk and tucked her stack of paperwork into the crook of her arm. Under her neat bob of fashionably graying hair, there was a disapproving cant to her jaw. “The sheriff called. The Hartleys are at the station. He’s waiting for you to arrive before he interrogates their son.”
Ah. Javi stopped, let the doors swing shut behind him, and tucked his phone in his pocket. “Is that a problem, Sue?” he asked.
She blinked and nudged her glasses up her nose. “Personally or professionally?”
“Professionally,” he said.
“Then no,” she said. “My job is to keep this office running, Agent Merlo. My personal feelings aren’t relevant to that.”
Saul would have asked her what her personal feelings were anyhow. That was probably why she liked Saul better. Lara had almost definitely invited Ms. Daly to one of her barbeques.
“Good,” Javi said. “I won’t keep them waiting, then. Is there anything I need to deal with now? Or can it wait until this evening?”
She shuffled her folders. “I need your signature for these acquisitions.” She dealt the red folder to him. He flipped it open and leaned over her desk as he scanned, ticked, and signed the forms.
“The lab still doesn’t have anything on the residue in the bottle,” she said. Javi paused midsignature and glanced up, irritation pinching at his forehead. She shrugged. “It got bumped by a case in Los Angeles. I called in one of Saul’s favors to expedite it, but that still takes time.”
He nodded. There were advantages to working in a resident agency—he wouldn’t be there otherwise—but there were also advantages to being near enough to the lab to pitch your case to the techs in person. He signed the last form, tapped them together neatly, and handed them back. “What about the files I requested?”
She returned the folder to her stack and shifted it closer to her body.
“I’ve uploaded Saul’s—Agent Lee’s—case files to your server. Anything where there was no custodial jail time or where the suspects have been released. Also all the old death threats that he used to get. Most of them are… performative, but that doesn’t mean there’s no feeling there. It’s quite a substantial package. Do you still think it’s relevant?”
“The investigation is ongoing,” he said. “I’m not shutting down any avenues of investigation yet.”
Her eyebrows ticked up one precisely measured space. “Not my area of expertise.” She turned, set the folders neatly back on her desk, and checked her wristwatch. “I’m going to take an early lunch today, and since this is my own personal time? That boy didn’t do this, Agent. You should keep that in mind.”
Piece said, she left. The heavy glass doors swung shut behind her. Irritation bubbled in the back of Javi’s throat. He could taste it as he stalked into his office, logged in to his computer, and accessed the server. He jerked his fingers over the keys as he input his password and sent the files to his tablet to read later. Why did everyone act like he wanted William Hartley to have done something horrible to his brother? He wanted to believe Billy was innocent. His gut said there had to be another explanation.
The evidence said otherwise, and following the evidence was his job. Saul was the one who taught him that.
Flying stop at the office done, he logged off and headed back downstairs. He texted the Sheriff that he’d be there in fifteen minutes, but he made it in twenty. When he got to the station, the press was already there, squinting against the wind with the sheriff’s department shield as their backdrop.
“Special Agent Merlo, do you have any comment on why the Hartleys were brought in?”
“FBI Agent Javier Merlo has arrived at the police station just minutes after the missing boy’s family were escorted inside.”
“Drew Hartley has been missing now for three days. Should the police have been looking closer to home?”
Javi “no commented” his way past them. A camera flashed as he went through the door, and a distracted part of his brain wondered how the image would be framed the next day. Hero or dupe?
There was a different person behind the desk than there had been that morning. Javi had to check his watch to be sure enough time had passed that there had been a shift change.
“Agent,” the young man said as he stuck a pen behind his ear, “the Hartleys are in the interrogation room, and the sheriff is waiting for you.”
“Thanks,” Javi said. “Could you check in with them, get them water and coffee if they want it?”
The man—if Javi cared to squint, he could have read his name tag—looked briefly surprised but nodded his agreement.
There was no point trying to discomfit Billy by leaving him thirsty. It would just alienate the family more, and one way or another, they were still victims. With the press outside, it was important to remember that.
Javi headed down to Frome’s office and let himself in, announcing himself with a perfunctory rap of his knuckles against the door. He registered the growl of voices through the glass and wood, but it was only as he stepped inside that he realized that it was Frome disciplining Cloister.
His brain tripped over that word, all dark heat and slap-pink skin, but it wasn’t in the sexy way.
Frome was so angry the ve
ins stood out in his temples and bubbled as his blood pressure went up, and Cloister was… flat… slouched down in the office chair, arms crossed, and his lean, still not-pretty face completely expressionless.
“…you get a lot of leeway because you’re one of the sheriff’s department’s best dog handlers, so don’t start failing at that, Witte. Not if you want to keep your job and your dog.”
Cloister blinked and waited.
It was the face of someone who’d had a lot of practice at taking abuse and not reacting to it. Javi didn’t know what it said about him that he filed that away for later. Good or bad, he did it anyhow.
“Anything to say?” Frome asked.
Cloister shifted for the first time and lifted his chin slightly. It was his first reaction to escape the controlled reserve that kept his face still and his hands relaxed on his bicep.
“No,” he said. “Sir.”
Irritation dragged Frome’s cheeks into flat planes. “Insolence doesn’t cover up your mistakes, Witte. Thanks to you we’ve wasted time looking for that boy in the wrong place.”
That jab caught something raw, although Javi wasn’t clear if Frome noticed. Cloister narrowed his eyes for a second and then relaxed again.
“Sir.” It was inflectionless.
“On the other hand,” Javi interrupted, “it’s thanks to him that now we know we were looking in the wrong place.”
He didn’t know why he suddenly felt the urge to defend Cloister. It couldn’t be the slow simmer of lust. It hadn’t stopped him from writing Cloister up that time he told Javi to go fuck himself. And the effort didn’t get him any thanks either, just a grunt from Frome and a brief, closed-off glance from Cloister.
“Should I send the phone you found on to the lab?” Frome sat down behind his desk. He wiped his forehead and blotted the sweat into his hairline.
“Not yet,” Javi said. “I think it will be more use here for now. Do you want to sit in on the interview, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Frome said. “They already have a relationship with you. Introducing me will only muddy the waters.”
What he meant was that the fallout might come back on him, and he’d rather aim it at the FBI. Javi didn’t mind—he preferred to remain in control of the investigation—but he wasn’t fooled either.
“Can I borrow Deputy Witte?” he asked.
“You can keep him,” Frome said. He pointed across the table at Cloister. “Be what Agent Merlo wants. Say what he wants. Do what he wants. If you go off script, I’ll put you on administrative leave for the rest of the case and assign the dog to Kent.”
Javi had to clear his throat and try not to be distracted by a variety of enjoyable scenarios he could set up with those orders. There were more pressing issues, but it wasn’t every day a professional acquaintance hit your personal kinks quite that sharply on the head.
“He just needs to present the evidence,” Javi said. “They know him. Lara knows that he’s been out looking for her son and, right now, she’s going to have a more positive reaction to him than she will to me. So I want to take advantage of that.”
Cloister frowned and shifted in his chair for the first time. The cheap plastic creaked under him and caught on the seams of his jeans. “I don’t do interrogations,” he said.
“What did I just tell you?” Frome asked him sharply. “You want to clear your ticket, find this boy? Do what the agent tells you.”
It would be counterproductive to smirk, but it was hard not to. Javi nodded to Frome. “I’ll go and speak to them now. Until we know more, though, I still want to bring Reed in for a formal interview. Any luck with that?”
There was something in Frome’s scowl. Javi supposed it could have been frustration at not being able to produce the Retreat’s owner, but he thought it was more disappointment that Javi still wanted to pursue that line of the investigation. The parents or brother taking the fall was a lot more politically convenient.
“Not yet,” Frome said. “I’ll let you know when we do.”
Javi left him to follow up with that and stepped out to the hall with Cloister on his heels. He glanced down. The leg of Cloister’s uniform was fuzzed with dog hair but missing the dog.
“Put your better half in her kennel?”
“She’s in her run,” Cloister confirmed. Or corrected. He frowned and screwed bar-straight brows together over his crooked nose. “I’m not comfortable doing this interview.”
“Good,” Javi said. “It’ll make you more sympathetic. Just remember what your boss told you and do what you’re told.”
He probably enjoyed saying that more than he really should have, but the feeling faded quickly as he turned his attention to the unpleasant task at hand. It was never easy to interrogate a minor in front of their parent—even less so when you knew them.
“Just stay quiet until I ask you to say something,” he told Cloister. Giving him a dubious up and down, Javi twisted his mouth wryly. “Just try and look less like you want to punch someone.”
Cloister sighed. “You ain’t playing to my strengths here.”
The dust-dry flash of humor was brief, but it caught Javi off guard the same way the scar-splattered tattoo on Cloister’s ribs did. It was the hint that there was more to him than the aggressively simple presentation. Javi resented having to know that.
“Are we on the same page, Deputy Witte?” he asked, using the formality to put a bit of distance between them. “If you undercut me in there, Lieutenant Frome will be the least of your worries.”
“Don’t fret yourself, Special Agent Merlo,” Cloister said as he hitched a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I don’t worry about either of you.”
Javi smiled to stretch the tension out of his jaw, felt the hinge click, and said, “Then I guess it’s time to tell Lara that her son probably killed his brother.”
Chapter Seven
THE INTERROGATION room was a relic of the past. The walls were institutional green plaster, paint slowly leeching down into old cracks and a suspiciously head-sized dent roughly spackled in. Fifty years of nicotine stained the plastic cover of the florescent light on the ceiling. A metal ring was sunk into the center of the battered old table, scraped and dented from years of cuffs being snapped to it.
Billy couldn’t take his eyes off the grim semicircle of metal. He sat hunched over in his chair and picked at his nails with nervous fingers with his lawyer on one side of him and his mother on the other. Lara looked like there was a steel rod in place of her spine—so straight you could feel the tension of it in your own muscles—and her arm was tucked around Billy’s shoulder.
J. J. Diggs was the sort of lawyer who made sharks object to the comparison—rich, fastidiously dressed, and completely amoral. Saul had hated him, but Javi supposed it made sense for Lara to call him. If you were keeping count, Diggs had fucked the FBI over on four major cases, lost hard twice, and on a personal note, been thoroughly fucked by Javi once.
That didn’t count as breaking Javi’s “not where he lived” rule, although it did bend it a bit. Diggs was based in LA.
“Just happened to be in the area when Lara called?” Javi asked, raising his eyebrows.
Diggs smiled back at him, all perfect teeth and practice. “Isn’t that lucky?” He adjusted his tie and settled the blue silk knot over his Adam’s apple. “I assume this isn’t going to take long. My clients are obviously eager to get back to the Retreat and look for their son.”
“We all want to find Drew,” Cloister said. The rough drawl of his voice made Diggs glance his way with a quick, measuring look that took in the rough edges and wide shoulders. “If we didn’t think Billy could help, we wouldn’t be in here. We’d still be out looking.”
The simple sincerity in Cloister’s voice caught Lara and drained some of the steel out of her spine. Cloister looked like a terrible liar. It was written all over that not-exactly handsome face of his, but honesty could get you what you wanted as well. If you knew how to apply it.<
br />
Javi could hate himself for that later.
“Which is exactly what you should be doing,” Diggs cut in. “Not harassing the family on some trumped-up suspicions so Special Agent Merlo can improve his close rates.”
Billy shifted and unfolded himself from his slouch to sit as straight as a teenager could manage. He twisted his hands together on the table and squeezed his knuckles until they folded.
“I wanna help,” he said. “If you have any questions, I’ll answer them.”
“Billy,” Diggs held up his hand. “Let me—”
“No.” Billy shook his head. “I want to help find my brother. I didn’t hurt him. He’s my brother.”
Javi leaned forward. “That’s not what we’re saying, Billy,” he said. Not yet, anyhow. “You’ve been telling us the truth, but not all the truth.”
“That’s not true,” Lara said. She tightened her fingers on Billy’s arm and wrinkled the fabric between her knuckles. “Billy already told you everything. He left Drew alone in the cabin, and something terrible happened. If he was going to lie, it would have been about that.”
Billy swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, knobby against razor-rash flushed skin, and he blinked twice.
“Because Drew didn’t stay in the cabin, did he, Billy?” Javi asked.
“I don’t—”
Javi ignored him and pushed. “We have a witness who saw you arguing with Drew that night,” he said. “He wanted to go with you, didn’t he? Hang out with his big brother?”
“No.”
“Had to get on your nerves,” Javi said. “When I was a teenager, I wouldn’t have wanted a ten-year-old hanging out with me. Not when I was trying to impress girls.”
Across the table, Diggs looked up long enough to give him an amused glance at that claim. His pen scratched across the pad.
“You aren’t my client,” he said. “Billy was a devoted brother.”
“Is,” Lara said.
