Skin and Bone Read online

  “Thank you for the heads-up,” he said coldly. “Is there anything else?”

  Tancredi stared at him for a second and then thinned her mouth in disapproval and shook her head.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I just thought you’d care.”

  She slammed the door behind her as she left.

  THE LAST—and first—time Javi visited Plenty Community Hospital, he’d been dehydrated, bruised, and pumped full of hallucinogens by a serial kidnapper. The wards were less of a hellscape when you were sober.

  “So what exactly happened?” he asked Lieutenant Frome as they walked briskly along the white-and-blue hospital corridor. There was a sick weight in his chest, but he kept his voice tight and appropriately concerned. “Was Deputy Witte targeted?”

  Frome fastidiously rubbed alcohol sanitizer between his knuckles. “It’s obviously too soon to say for sure,” he said stiffly. “However, the working theory is that it was a hit-and-run. Not the only one tonight either. The roads were wet, visibility was bad, and Deputy Witte was just unlucky. We don’t need the Bureau’s support on this one, Agent Merlo.”

  The ranking officer in Plenty might appreciate the resources the FBI could bring to bear against the escalating drug problem in town, but that didn’t mean he wanted them to interfere in other cases. Javi’s old partner had said that Frome had his eye on the sheriff’s badge, and you didn’t get that sort of promotion if the Feds got credit for all your successes.

  “I hope not,” Javi said. “However, since Witte has worked with my office on a number of raids on local drug labs, I’d like to make sure that this isn’t retaliation. You’ll keep me in the loop on the investigation, Lieutenant?”

  The request made Frome pucker his mouth with resentment, but he had to give ground. The FBI had an agent there because drug cartels used Plenty as a funnel for trafficking into the US. If Javi pushed that angle, Frome had no grounds to cry jurisdiction on the crime.

  “Of course,” he capitulated. “I doubt there was any premeditation involved here. Witte’s good at what he does, but if the cartels were going to attack anyone, there are more high-profile targets. Tancredi’s been front and center more than once, and she’s a rising star. If they were going to go after anyone, it’d be her.”

  Javi nodded. “Still,” he said. “I’d like to stay on top of the case.”

  “Like I said, of course.”

  Frome paused outside a private ward and frowned at the deputy stationed outside the door. The man was slouched back in one of the hospital’s aggressively uncomfortable plastic chairs, his eyes closed and his head tilted back against the wall.

  “Collins!”

  The deputy grunted himself awake, blinked at Frome, and then bolted awkwardly to his feet. He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth.

  “Sorry, sir,” he muttered as he blinked hard. “Long shift.”

  Frome shook his head. “Go home,” he said. “Witte’s fine. Get some sleep and tell Tancredi to do the same.”

  “Yes, sir,” Collins said. He gave Javi an embarrassed look and muttered another “Sorry, sir” as he hurried off down the corridor.

  Frome pushed the chair out of the way and rapped his knuckles on the doorframe, although he didn’t wait to push the door open.

  “Witte, the special agent here wanted a—” He stopped when he took in the room. “What the hell are you doing, Deputy?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CLOISTER SAT on the edge of the bed in a pair of well-worn, unbuttoned jeans and a rucked-up hospital gown. He’d managed to get one boot on, but the left was giving him trouble, mostly because of the heavy pristine-white cast on his left hand. He didn’t look up as he grunted to answer Frome.

  The hard knot of tension that had been in Javi’s stomach since Tancredi closed the door to his office finally relaxed. He’d imagined a lot worse than a clean hospital room that was probably nicer than Cloister’s trailer—at least it had a TV—and a single cast.

  Blood on the floor and the sheets and the machines that someone had finally turned off. Handfuls of bloody gauze and stained lengths of tubing shoved into the corners. The smell of it—blood and meat. Bits.

  Javi swallowed the old bile in his throat and impatiently swept the thoughts away. It obviously wasn’t that bad, he decided with a prickly mixture of relief and anger. The idiot had probably tripped over his dog and fallen into the road in front of someone’s car.

  “I’m going to get dressed, get Bourneville, and go home,” Cloister said as he finally wrenched the boot up over his heel. “I’m fine.”

  Frome scoffed. “The doctors say differently, Witte,” he said. “Since they’ve got a medical license, and you have a GED, I’m going to take their side. Get back in the bed.”

  Cloister straightened up. “I’m fine.”

  Once Javi caught sight of Cloister’s face, it was obvious that was a lie. A stitched gash ran from the corner of his eyebrow up into his hair, outlined in puffy blue-and-red bruising, and a raw graze skimmed over his cheekbone. He was going to have a black eye soon too. The puffiness had already settled under his eye. It just needed to color in.

  The roughly broken nose predated tonight. It had been a feature as long as Javi had known Cloister, but it still contributed to the overall “just lost a fight” look.

  For some reason, that just put Javi’s back up more.

  “You don’t look it. You look like shit,” Javi said dryly. He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. “What happened? You forget that this isn’t Sheep’s Head, Iowa, and didn’t look both ways before you crossed the road?”

  Frome winced at the question and shot Javi a hard look. “That’s enou—”

  “Sheep’s Horn, Montana,” Cloister interrupted with an amused correction. “And trust me, I’d rather get hit by a city truck. At least it’s not covered in cow crap. Nothing better to do tonight, Special Agent Merlo?”

  “They can wait,” Javi said. “I wanted to check that this wasn’t anything to do with the cartels.”

  Cloister braced his long legs against the floor and gave Frome a hard look. He had the sort of harsh and raw-boned face that lent itself to grim even without the bruises.

  “I’ve already told the lieutenant my theory,” he said. There was a hint of challenge in his voice.

  Frome shook his head. “You’re not on the case, Witte,” he said. “You are the case. We’ll investigate. If there’s any evidence, we’ll find it. Now stay here and talk to Agent Merlo while I go and find your doctor.”

  He gave Javi a slight nod as he turned and ducked back out the door. The go-ahead to ask Cloister some questions, Javi assumed. Frome gave himself too much credit if he thought Javi needed his permission.

  “So what was your theory?” Javi asked.

  Cloister shrugged and clumsily dragged off the thin paper robe. Under it his torso was mottled with bruises from his shoulder down to where they disappeared under the loose waistband of his jeans. They cut through the old tangle of scars and ink on his ribs, lost under the old damage.

  “You’re not on the case either,” Cloister pointed out as he got up off the bed. The way his muscles moved under bare skin, faded from his usual whiskey-dark tan down to amber gold, made Javi distractingly aware of how long it had been since he’d touched that skin and tasted the sweat and salt of him.

  Cloister grabbed the department-issue T-shirt—or it was once, before years of salt air and laundromat wash cycles bleached it down too far to pass muster—off the base of the bed and shook it one-handed. He dragged it clumsily over his head, and his voice was muffled under the faded cotton as he fought with the sleeves. “It’s not a federal matter, and Frome isn’t going to ask for your help on this one.”

  “And I thought you weren’t good with authority.”

  Cloister snorted. He finally got his cast through the sleeve and dragged the T-shirt down over his head. His dark-blond hair stuck up in unruly clumps, as though he’d just gotten out of bed, and he combed his fingers t
hrough it absently as he looked around the room.

  “Yeah, well, it’s like you said,” he drawled. Javi waited. He already knew that whatever Cloister said was going to piss him off. It was never nice to get your own words thrown back in your face, especially when it reminded you what an asshole you’d been. Cloister hitched his jeans up with one hand and grabbed his wallet and keys out of the bedside table. “My life’s not your business.”

  Javi was right. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. The fact that Cloister was right only made it worse. Those were the terms of engagement, but Cloister was supposed to be the one kept at arm’s length.

  It wasn’t exactly fair. Javi knew that. It wasn’t fair to get angry at Cloister for getting hurt either, but it was a lot easier than having to actually feel any of the other options, the ones that meant he’d have to pick at old, angry scars to let the poison out.

  Anger felt a lot better than that, and it would get the same job done.

  Javi closed the door behind him and stalked over to the bed.

  Right up until the point he grabbed a handful of T-shirt and got into Cloister’s face, he’d intended to snap at him. The harsh, impatient words were all lined up on the back of his tongue, but once he dragged Cloister in that close, it seemed like a waste of time not to kiss him.

  After all, an hour ago Javi’d thought he might never get to kiss Cloister again.

  So he did. It was a rough, frustrated slash of his lips, prickled with temper and a day’s worth of stubble. Cloister’s mouth was stern under his for a second, and then it softened into the kiss. He tasted faintly of blood and orange juice, a sharp sweet-salt tang on his tongue.

  It would have been easy enough to push him back onto the bed, onto the stiff mattress and flat pillows with his jeans shoved down over his lean hips and the old T-shirt shoved up so Javi could explore the bruises with his mouth. It was too late to have the “just be friends” talk anyhow, so why not.

  Even the thought that Frome would walk in on them had a sort of perverse appeal that twisted possessive heat in Javi’s stomach. Public sex wasn’t his kink, but it had rubbed him the wrong way to have to appeal to Frome to get in to see Cloister. Frome might be the ranking officer in Plenty, but that didn’t mean Cloister needed his protection—not from Javi.

  Luckily Javi’s common sense was stronger, and he quashed the urge before it could get away from him. After the mess in Philadelphia, the last thing his career needed was another scandal.

  “Your life is your own business,” Javi growled as he broke the kiss. He reached around and shoved his hand down the back of Cloister’s jeans to cup the firm curve of his ass. He gave it a rough squeeze, hard enough to make Cloister’s breath hiss between his teeth. “But your ass is mine. So tell me why you threw it in front of a car.”

  Cloister leaned back against the bed and studied Javi for a long, pensive second. Then he curled the corner of his mouth in a halfhearted stab at his usual wide, open smile. He scratched absently at the knot of stitchwork over his eye.

  “It was actually a pickup truck.”

  “Does that matter?”

  Cloister shrugged crookedly, careful of his broken arm, and let the grin widen. “I wouldn’t want you to think I was taken out by a Prius.” He glanced past Javi’s shoulder at the door and pushed himself off the bed again. “Tell you what. You give me a lift home, and I’ll tell you what happened.”

  His jeans slouched dangerously low as he moved, just about caught on the sharp flare of his hip bones. He grabbed them and absently hitched them up as he limped toward the door. Javi frowned at the breadth of his shoulders.

  “You could have a concussion,” he pointed out.

  “I’ve had a concussion before. All they do is monitor you.” Cloister shrugged. “I can do that for myself. It didn’t kill me when I was fifteen, and it won’t now.”

  He had to let go of his jeans to reach for the door, and they sagged back down again. Despite himself, Javi watched the denim slide down. He was as dry mouthed as he had been the first time he saw the taut upper curve of Cloister’s ass. He dragged his attention away and tried to brush his scattered thoughts back into a straight line.

  “You have a broken wrist and a head injury,” Javi argued. “You can’t just go back to your trailer.”

  Cloister got the door open and yanked his jeans back up before they slipped low enough to constitute a crime. “Watch me,” he said as he looked back at Javi. “I don’t care how I get out of here—you can give me a lift, or I can get a taxi—but I’m not going to be here when Frome gets back. It’s up to you.”

  He leaned back against the doorframe as he waited. Javi always appreciated the long lines of Cloister’s body, the elegant bones under a bruiser’s muscle, but right then it looked as though the door were holding him up. If that exhaustion didn’t convince Cloister to stay, Javi doubted he’d succeed.

  And… it had been a long time since Javi thought about that night in the ER. He’d rubbed it down like old wood until the details blurred—all except the blood—and sunk it as deep as he could. Hospitals didn’t give him pause, but having someone he liked in the hospital—even if they were a stubborn idiot—obviously did.

  “Fine,” he surrendered. “My car’s outside. Do you think you can make it that far?”

  Cloister made a dismissive noise and pushed himself off the door. “It’s a broken wrist and a few bruises,” he said. “You should see the other guy.”

  THE SIGN in the café window said No Dogs Allowed and, in additional Sharpie underneath, No Exceptions, but the bleary-eyed waitress at the counter took one look at them, at Cloister still branded with the Sheriff’s logo across his chest, and visibly decided not to bother. She just showed them to a booth with a Formica table worn in wide, rough circles where graffiti had been scoured off. It was aggressively kitsch. The café had opened only two weeks earlier, moved into the shell of a bookshop that had dried up and blown away.

  But it was supposed to serve good coffee, and that was all the authenticity Javi cared about.

  “Still raining out there, huh?” the waitress commented as Javi dried his hands on a napkin. “If this keeps up, I’ll be swimming home.”

  Javi stifled the urge to make a withering comment in response to that banality. It was a canned comment that Mabel, from her name tag, had likely repeated to every table since the storm broke that evening. She probably wanted actual engagement even less than Javi did.

  It wasn’t her fault that Cloister had nearly gotten himself killed. All she wanted to do was get them coffee and go back to reading her phone behind the till.

  “Coffee,” Javi said as he stripped off his jacket. The cuffs of his sleeves were soaked from the dash through the rain, and he folded them back from his wrists to dry. “Black, no sugar.”

  She huh’d and scribbled that in her pad. Then she looked at Cloister. “What about you, hon?”

  Cloister sat back against the cheap vinyl booth, slung one arm over his dog as though she were his date, and squinted at the menu mounted on the back wall of the café. He absently scratched under Bourneville’s chin as he thoughtfully cocked his head to the side.

  “The cinnamon hot chocolate,” he said. “Is the cheesecake special any good?”

  Mabel twisted around as though she had to see the item written down before she could remember. “We’re sold out of that, I’m afraid. How about a slice of red velvet cake instead? Everyone loves that.”

  “Just wrap that up, and I’ll get that to go,” Cloister said with an easy smile. “Thanks, Mabel.”

  She chuckled and put her hand over the badge. “The owners gave these out with the uniforms,” she said. “My name’s Kimberly. I’ll go get you your drinks and something for your cute friend.”

  With a last warm glance at Cloister, she turned and headed back to the counter. The rubber soles of her sneakers squeaked on the damp floor. Evidently the sodden mop propped by the door wasn’t enough to keep up with the rain outside.

&nbs
p; Bourneville whined—a pathetic ow-wow-ow noise—and shoved her nose into Cloister’s neck. She thumped the underside of the table with her tail as she huffed mournfully and pawed at his arm until he showed her his cast. She sniffed it and then tried to apply her teeth to the edge of it.

  “See,” Javi said. “Now you’ve upset the dog.”

  Cloister rolled his eyes at him and saved his cast from Bourneville. “They wouldn’t let her into the hospital,” he said as he twisted his hand into her thick black ruff. “She was just worried.”

  “She wasn’t the only one,” Javi said. The words came out harder than he expected and sharp with the sullen dregs of anger he couldn’t shake.

  It made Cloister look at him askance over the table, but Javi couldn’t explain it away. He didn’t even know what he was angry at—that Cloister was hurt, that he cared Cloister was hurt, or that Cloister didn’t seem angry about any of it. Whatever it was, the sentence hung, prickly and awkward, between them until Javi pushed the subject back to Cloister’s story. “So you think the car hit you deliberately?”

  He didn’t think Cloister was going to let him get away with it, but then Kimberly came back with their drinks and a plastic-wrap-covered slab of cake that could double as a doorstop balanced on her arms. By the time she doled them out, along with a handful of dog treats for Bourneville, the moment had passed.

  “I think they tried to hit the girl,” Cloister corrected him as he pocketed the treats. “I was just in the way. No one hates me enough to try this hard to kill me.”

  “You’re a cop. You’ve got to have made some enemies.”

  Cloister shrugged and stretched awkwardly over the table to steal Javi’s coffee. “I find lost old ladies and chase down the occasional dealer,” he said. “Nobody likes the guy who set the dog on them, but the meth head who punched his wife’s front teeth out isn’t going to lure me into an elaborate trap. He’s going to piss in my gas tank. Ask me how I know?”

  He pushed the cup of hot chocolate, its pile of cinnamon-sugar-dusted cream at a precarious angle, over to Javi’s side of the table. Bourneville diverted her attention briefly from the waiting treats to eye the cream. When it didn’t spill, she put her pointed nose on the table and stared at the treats as though she could will them closer to her tongue.