Bone to Pick Read online

  He stalked back to the desk and sat down in the heavy leather chair. Whoever had downed the shots of whiskey, it wasn’t him. He looked tired, not drunk. His collar was undone, the tie pulled loose, and the crisp sleeves of his fancy shirt were rolled back over his lean, hard forearms. An expensive watch—gears and crystal face expensive, not chips and scratch-resistant expensive—hung heavily around one wrist. Faint white scars ran up the insides of his forearms in neat, parallel lines, but if he wasn’t going to bring that up, neither was Cloister.

  It really didn’t seem fair that assholes were allowed to be that hot.

  “The clerk downstairs said you were still working,” Cloister said. “Have you got anything?”

  Javi leaned back in his chair. The leather sighed under his weight, and he waved his hand irritably at the desk. “I’ve got fire alerts for the hills tomorrow, excuses from the lab techs, and a very carefully worded memo from San Diego regarding the thin ice my career is on. And now I’ve got the smell of dog in my office.”

  “She had a bath,” Cloister said. He glanced down at Bourneville, who’d made herself at home on the floor. “The smell lingers for a bit. Look, remember I said something was off?”

  “And I said you should leave investigations to people who knew what they were doing,” Javi said. He pointed to the room’s other chair at the same time, though. “Sit. What is it?”

  Cloister took a seat and immediately regretted it. Sitting on the other side of the desk from Javi made him feel as though it were a job interview or as though he were asking his boss for a raise. He could feel his hackles trying to rise, all raw edges and resentment over the expectation that someone would say something. Because they always did.

  He dropped his hand over the arm of the chair and brushed his fingers over the coarse ruff on Bourneville’s shoulders.

  “Ten years ago a girl went missing,” Cloister said. “Her name was Birdie Utkin. She was fifteen years old.”

  Javi rolled his sleeves down over his arms and buttoned the cuffs without looking. “Different gender, different age group, large time gap,” he said. “I’m not seeing the connection.”

  The “fuck it” felt like a lump in Cloister’s throat. He had to clench his jaw to keep it in, and he shifted uncomfortably. Across the desk Javi waited with his head tilted back against the headrest of the chair.

  He wanted to get up, storm out, and slam the door so hard he could imagine glass shattering. The muscles in his thighs were tight with it, ready to move. It would be a stupid, childish thing to do it, but satisfying.

  “What you’re supposed to do now,” Javi said, “is explain your theory. Did she disappear from the Retreat?”

  Cloister stood up. He talked better on his feet. Bourneville lifted her head from the floor, her ears pricked as she watched him. He gave her the hand signal to stay, and she dropped her chin back to her paws.

  “No. The Retreat was still a group of hippies then.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “It wasn’t even Reed in charge. There was someone before him. Real old anarchist type, by all accounts. Birdie Utkin was a good girl—rich family, good grades, boyfriend that her dad liked.”

  A frown line creased the skin between Javi’s eyebrows. “Still in the dark,” he said. “And how do you know so much about the case? It would have been before your time.”

  “I looked into some old case files when I was assigned here,” Cloister said. There was a stack of them at his trailer, next to his bed, to fill the hours when he couldn’t sleep and Bourneville was too tired to run. Missing kids, lost mothers, dads who never came home—it really didn’t take a shrink to work out his issues. “This one stuck with me. Thing is, there was a Hartley mentioned in the original investigation. The boyfriend.”

  Javi looked skeptical. “Ken Hartley is thirty-four. Unless the Utkins were very open-minded, they wouldn’t have approved of him dating their daughter ten years ago.”

  “Not him. The boyfriend was John Hartley. Still, the name turning up in two missing-child cases?”

  Javi looked dubious. “It’s not that uncommon a name, Cloister.”

  The lack of enthusiasm was deflating. When Cloister retrieved the memory that had been itching at him, he was sure it meant something. Maybe he’d been wrong. Except in his gut, he didn’t believe that. It had been years since he read Birdie Utkin’s file, but there was a reason the Hartley case reminded him of it.

  “They never found Birdie,” he said.

  “That’s sad,” Javi said. “It doesn’t mean it’s anything to do with this case.”

  He paused expectantly, as though he were waiting for Cloister to say something else. There was probably an argument to be made that would at least get Javi to look at the cold case. Cloister couldn’t put it into words, though. He just knew there was something linking Birdie Utkin and Drew Hartley beyond the fact that they were both gone.

  “Fine,” he rasped. A snap of his fingers brought Bourneville to her feet. She yawned to show off sharp white teeth and left a smudge of black fluff on the coarse carpet. “I shouldn’t have wasted your time, Agent Merlo.”

  He took a step toward the door.

  “Wait,” Javi said. He sounded irritated… or frustrated. “You’re jumping to conclusions, Deputy Witte. I’m not saying there’s no connection between the cases, but you’re the one with the hunch. Convince me.”

  Cloister didn’t want to. His hunches were usually to do with whether to take upstream or down during a manhunt, and he never had to justify them. Then he heard the distinctive sound of a metal cap being screwed off a glass bottle.

  “Have a drink,” Javi offered as Cloister turned around. He pulled two cloudy glass tumblers from a drawer, tilted the bottle over them, and filled each two-thirds up. “Convince me.”

  It wasn’t the whiskey that convinced him to stay. For once it wasn’t even the thought of that poor lost kid. Cloister stayed for the dark look in Javi’s eyes and the smug smile on his mouth when Cloister took the glass. He stayed because he was a glutton for punishment.

  “To Saul,” Javi said as he tapped the base of his glass against Cloister’s. Whiskey sloshed against the curved sides of the tumblers, and they gave the flat clink of cheap glass. When Cloister looked askance at the toast, Javi shrugged and lifted the drink to his lips. “His bottle.”

  They both tossed the whiskey back.

  It burned like straight white spirits and had an aftertaste that mixed pine car freshener and sour honey. Cloister held it in his mouth for a second, desperately not wanting to give offense, but then he spat it back into the glass. The taste of it lingered in his mouth and throat like a film of grease.

  “That’s—”

  “Rank.” Javi grimaced around the taste. He scrubbed his hand over his mouth. “New plan. Go somewhere with good whiskey, and you can convince me.”

  IT TURNED out that “somewhere with good whiskey” was the red-brick and plate-glass loft Javi was renting nearby. One wall had been completely replaced with glass, giving a ridiculously good view over the derelict factories and freshly renovated boutiques that filled the neighborhood.

  Cloister sat in one of the elegant leather chairs, his long legs sprawled out in front of him, and sipped his glass of whiskey. It was smooth, with a hard, smoky bite, and definitely better than the paint stripper Agent Saul Lee kept hidden in his desk drawer.

  Under the blurry comfort of whiskey, guilt gnawed persistently at the pit of Cloister’s stomach. A little boy was lost, and what was he doing? Drinking whiskey and, he kinda suspected, being seduced. His conscience would make him pay later, but for the moment, he dulled it with another drink of whiskey. Sometimes you just had to find a way to live with living.

  “So you’re drinking the whiskey,” Javi said as he walked out of the bedroom. He glanced to where Bourneville was snoozing on a tossed-down towel, curled up in a fuzzy black comma. “And your dog has made itself at home. Are you ever going to get around to trying to convince me, or not?”

&n
bsp; The suit was gone. Javi had changed into loose black sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. His feet were bare, and his hair was damp and starting to curl around his ears. It should have looked like he’d loosened up, but he still managed to look intimidatingly severe.

  And fucking hot.

  Cloister shifted in the chair, and his balls tightened with the reminder that it had been a while since he’d… anything. An insomniac with issues could burn a lot of bridges in a short space of time. The slow-building interest of thought sharpened to hoped he was getting seduced.

  It would probably help if he answered the question instead of sitting there like an idiot. He shifted in the chair to ease the tug of denim across his cock.

  “I’ve got a name and a gut feeling,” Cloister said. “Not sure how to sell that to you.”

  Javi walked over and leaned against the window, long, lean, and silhouetted against the night sky. He lifted the tumbler to his mouth and took a slow sip.

  “You make it relevant to my interests,” he said. “You explain how doing what you want gets me something I need.”

  “Like what.”

  Javi considered him over the rim of the glass for a second. His gaze lingered on Cloister’s thighs and then the width of his shoulders. Then he shrugged and tilted his head back against the glass and drained the last of his whiskey. “That’s what you have to work out.”

  Javi pushed himself off the window to get a refill. He lifted the bottle and tilted it toward Cloister in mute question. There was only tinted water left in Cloister’s glass, but he shook his head and nursed the dregs.

  “It’s enough to merit a look,” he said. “Just pull the case file from storage and have a look. What do you have to lose?”

  “Time,” Javi reminded him succinctly as he splashed a generous measure of whiskey into his glass.

  The reminder that time was running out for Drew Hartley threw a pall over them both. They were entering the fourth day. There was still hope, but it was against all the evidence and statistics. Cloister propped the glass on his thigh and felt the damp chill through the denim. He reached for a reason that sounded like something Javi would say.

  His stepdad had taught him the key to convincing people. They didn’t want to hear you being clever. They wanted to hear themselves.

  “If I’m right, you won’t waste any more time on the wrong suspect,” he said. “If I’m wrong, nobody can say you didn’t consider all the angles. Either way I’ll owe you.”

  Javi pursed his lips thoughtfully and then nodded. “Better.” He walked across the floor toward Cloister. “But debts are only good if you can depend on them.”

  Ten years since he’d been home, and the answer still growled out of Cloister’s chest like he’d never left. “Wittes keep their word.”

  “Really?” Javi braced his hand on the back of the chair, leaned over, and got into his face with the dark interest that had flickered in and out since the office. “What if it’s something you don’t want to do?”

  “Like what?” Cloister asked. He could taste Javi as he inhaled—soap, lemon, and a clean, fit male smell. He absently swiped his tongue over his lower lip, and Javi dropped his gaze to watch the gesture with unabashed attention.

  “I bet you can guess.” Javi braced his other arm on the back of the chair and effectively pinned Cloister in place. “Towns this size, people talk.”

  “You’d be surprised what they leave out,” Cloister said. Tension throbbed in his voice, dragging it down to a rough, throaty growl. He supposed it could be misconstrued, though.

  Javi kissed him with a hard, impatient slash of mouth and tongue. He twisted a hand in Cloister’s hair. His knuckles pressed against his skull, and he tasted of mint under the whiskey. So it was a seduction, Cloister thought smugly.

  “Like that,” Javi said as he pulled back. He sounded so controlled that it was cold, but his hand was still roughly twisted in Cloister’s hair, and his breathing had gone ragged around the edges. “What if I asked you to do that? You still going to keep your—”

  Cloister grabbed a handful of T-shirt and dragged Javi back down into the kiss. His teeth found the lush curve of Javi’s lower lip, and he tugged. He felt the tickle of Javi’s sharp intake of breath and surprise run through his lean, tense body.

  For a quick count of three, Cloister was in control of the kiss. Then Javi tightened his grip on Cloister’s hair and took it back, crushing Cloister down into the chair with a bruising, claiming kiss that left him breathless and hard.

  Chapter Ten

  THAT WAS the problem with a bad decision. Once you knew it was there, eventually you were going to make it. Javi couldn’t even blame the liquor for it. He’d known what he wanted before he poured that first glass of gasoline Saul had been keeping in a whiskey bottle in his desk.

  He shoved Cloister against the huge window, making it tremble, and bit hot, impatient kisses along Cloister’s jaw and back to his mouth. Tomorrow it would be a disaster, so Javi had to make the most of tonight. And more than once, he’d entertained the fantasy of fucking Cloister against the wall of glass.

  Cloister made a rough, approving noise into the kiss, grabbed at the hem of Javi’s shirt, and tugged it up and over his shoulders. Javi dragged his mouth away from Cloister’s long enough to pull the shirt over his head. He tossed it to the side and got yanked back into another kiss as Cloister cupped the back of his neck with a hard hand.

  The scrape of callused fingertips against his sensitive skin and the scrape of stubble against his jaw bled heat down Javi’s spine. It wasn’t what he’d planned, though. He liked things to go as planned.

  He grabbed Cloister’s wrists, dug his fingers into the thick bands of muscle, and pinned him to the glass. Cloister flexed his long fingers and then clenched them. Javi could feel the play of tendons against his palms. They were nice hands, he noticed—long fingers, wide palms. His mother would have called them pianist’s hands and bemoaned the scars and nicks. Javi imagined them on his cock and had to bite the inside of his cheek. Want grabbed a fistful of nerve endings and twisted.

  “You want to fuck?” he said. “We do it my way.”

  They didn’t exactly get on, so Javi supposed it wasn’t so strange he’d never seen Cloister smile before. It was wide and boyish and carved a distracting slice of dimple down his cheek. It didn’t repair the nose or heavy bones—Cloister would never be a handsome man—but with that smile, he didn’t need to be.

  “How’s that?” he drawled as he curled his fingers in and wriggled his little fingers. “With our pinkies out?”

  Javi shifted his weight and leaned into the hard line of Cloister’s body. He could feel the hard bulge of Cloister’s cock pressed against his thigh. The contact made Cloister clench his jaw and suck in a breath through his teeth. “You seem to be enjoying it so far,” he said.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” Cloister rasped, the shift of his shoulders and shift of his feet somehow turning his pinned stance into something insolent, “I have issues with authority.”

  He wasn’t smiling anymore. Javi felt a passing urge to change that, but it couldn’t compete with the urge to focus on fucking Cloister senseless instead. The pulse under Cloister’s jaw jumped, the skin pulled taut by the tilt of his head. Leaning in, Javi bit him hard enough to make him jerk, hard enough to leave a mark. Stubble rasped his lips. It was faintly dusty, the way everything was when the wind picked up, and Cloister pushed against his restraining grip. Not too hard.

  “You were in the army, and you’re a cop,” Javi pointed out. “Odd choices for a free spirit.”

  “I got other issues too,” Cloister said. The muscles Javi was exploring with his mouth moved in a way that suggested he was smirking again. “I’m a complicated man.”

  He said it as though it were a joke. It wasn’t. Javi wasn’t a profiler, but he wasn’t blind either, and he’d been watching Cloister. If you wanted to have dark, detailed fantasies about someone, you needed to pay attention.
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br />   It was a shame. If he’d been easy, Javi might have been able to justify fucking him more than once.

  “Well, it’s simple,” Javi said. His voice was low and sharp around the edges, control pulled tight from his jaw to his cock. “Do as you’re told, and I’ll fuck you against this window for anyone walking past to see.”

  Cloister swallowed hard. The sharp lines of his Adam’s apple bobbed its betrayal. It wasn’t exactly a surrender, but he stopped arguing. Good enough. Javi let go of his wrists, stepped back, and ran his tongue over his lower lip.

  “Strip,” he said.

  Cloister dropped his arms from behind his head and hooked his thumb in the waistband of his jeans. As he unbuttoned them, he gave a slow once-over, his eyes following the flow of muscle down to the flat, taut plane of Javi’s stomach.

  “I like your body,” Cloister said. He left the gaping jeans hanging on his hipbones and grabbed his T-shirt to pull it off. “I was worried those shoulders might just have been good tailoring.”

  “I’m glad I could clear that up for you,” Javi said. “I’m sure it’s been keeping you up at night.”

  “Among other things,” Cloister admitted as he tossed the T-shirt. The worn cotton hadn’t really hidden much, as the soft fabric clung to every dip and rise of muscle, and Javi had already seen it all the other day. It didn’t matter. Seeing it still sucked the moisture out of his mouth.

  It was the way Cloister moved. The rangy sprawl of muscle and scarred skin was elegant in motion—loose-limbed and sleek. He was like a big cat at the zoo, but he was one Javi would get to touch. The thought tugged lust down the shaft of Javi’s cock, and a dull ache twisted in his balls.

  Cloister shoved his jeans down and stepped out of the puddle of the denim.

  Now that bit Javi hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t disappointed, although he’d have to adjust his fantasies for scale in future. Cloister’s cock was bigger than he’d pictured it in his mind’s eye—a heavy, fleshy shaft a few shades darker than his skin. The foreskin was trimmed back neatly, showcasing the tight, shiny head as it curved up toward Cloister’s flat stomach.