“Because that simple bitch Vesna Horvat thought she could hurt me,” Kincaid said.“The fact that it didn’t work wasn’t a deterrent from someone trying again.Maybe someone with better judgment about who I do care for.”
He nodded quietly at the photo of his kids.Javi didn’t know if that was true, notreally,but he knew Kincaid believed it.
“And Saul?”
Kincaid put his hands in the pockets of his slacks.He raised an eyebrow.“Do you care?”he asked.His shoulders twitched in a shrug.“I can give you the blow-by-blow of how far he went outside the lines for that girl, how deep in the bottle it sent him, and how his wife dragged him out.Or…I can just tell you why he helped you.That’s what you care about, right?Moral indignation aside, you want to know if another mentor was just using you?”
For a second, Javi felt the emotional crash he’d fended off with procedural details and the investigative process wash over him.He could feel the cracks in his self-control start to give as an almost physical ache in the bones of his skull.
He sat down on the corner of the bed and reached out to put his hand on the stack of printouts.
“It was guilt,” he said flatly.The words were dry and felted in his mouth.“Because he knew that I’d not been responsible for Eric’s death, but he let me take the fall anyhow.”
Kincaid tilted his head as he thought about that.“If it makes you feel any better,” he offered with the clear assumption he was being magnanimous, “Saul did object to that.It was just too late to stop me by then.Your guilt helped sell our lie.”
“It doesn’t,” Javi said.He took a deep breath of motel-sour air and tried to get his brain back on track.Whatever he felt could wait.The investigation had a timer on it.“Where is he?”
“Eric?”Kincaid said.He gestured at his chest.“Oh, I don’t know.I’ve not known since Saul died.The only one who does know is waiting for me at a black site outside of town.You can come along if you like, but Vegas rules.No telling the boyfriend what the two of us get up to when he’s not around.”
ThetextwasfromCloister.
Javi hovered his thumb over the notification for a moment, but he ended up leaving it unread.He turned the phone off instead and tucked it into his inside pocket.The car hit another pothole, and he shifted in the seat, reaching up for the grab handle to steady himself.
“You couldn’t have just commandeered an interrogation room at the station?”he asked.
Kincaid slung his arm out of the open driver’s side window.The sun pinked his pale skin as he tapped his fingers idly against the side of the car.
“I’ve not exactly gotten off to a ‘turn a blind eye’ start with Plenty’s LEOs,” he said.“People like your boyfriend.”
“He’d be surprised to hear that,” Javi said.
Kincaid chuckled.“He would too,” he said.“What I could get away with if I was that likeable, and it doesn’t even register for Deputy Witte.That’s childhood neglect for you.But you did the same psych classes as me at Quantico.You’ve probably put that together yourself.”
When they’d been…whatever that had been…Javi had enjoyed this.He’d thought that keeping up with Kincaid’s manipulation-forward observations about colleagues and suspects alike proved something.It probably had, just not what Javi had thought it did.
Now it was just exhausting.
“I don’t want to talk about him with you.”
Kincaid glanced at him.“What?I like him too,” he protested.“None of this was personal.His reputation was just in my way.”
He took the bend in the road too wide.The tires skipped off the finished concrete and caught the soft shoulder, kicking up a spray of dirt and gravel.Pebbles clattered against the undercarriage as Kincaid course-corrected.
Ahead of them, there was a glimpse of blue along the horizon.It looked like the ocean, but it was in the wrong direction.Javi watched the strip of the All-American Canal for a deliberate count of five, letting Kincaid blow past the speed limit sign before he said, “You missed the turn.”
Kincaid eased up on the gas.He glanced at Javi and then squinted into the mirror.As he picked out the dust-covered track up into the hills, the sun-bleached concrete the same color as the desert around it, he made an annoyed sound.
“This is why I like cities,” he grumbled as he hit the brakes.“People put a premium on finding where you’re going in cities.”
He threw the car into reverse, bumped onto the soft shoulder for a second time, and then back into drive as he manhandled the car into a U-turn.
“You’ve been here before?”he said and made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat.“And Benson told me it was disused.I know how far a handsome face and a mother with pull can get a man, but if he can’t charm someone into doing his job for him, he needs to do it himself.”
The contrary urge to defend Benson caught in Javi’s throat.He overcame it and stuck to the question Kincaid had actually asked.
“I’ve used Dry Rock as a base a few times,” he said.“From an operational standpoint, it’s convenient—no back-and-forth traffic to Plenty to draw attention, no surplus personnel to run their mouths, and the terrain gives good natural standoff distance—even if it’s short on the comforts of home.”
Kincaid took the turn onto Service Road 9.A second later, he had to ease up on the speed with a grunt of annoyance.He pulled his arm, already red with kicked-up dirt, back in through the window to roll it up.
