He raised an eyebrow at her.“Situationship?”
Tancredi sneered good-naturedly.“Please, you just wish you’d had the chance to call Agent Merlo that before you made it official and boring.”
“Maybe,” Cloister admitted with a flash of humor that quickly faded.“And maybe whoever is jerking you around with the PAT is doing you a favor?It might not be a bad career move to be behind a desk right now.”
“What do you mean?”Tancredi asked.When Cloister didn’t elaborate, she snorted and wagged a finger at him.
“Good try,” she said with a smirk.“But don’t pretend you know something I don’t.Departmental politics have always gone right over your head, which takes some commitment from a guy who’s six one.Now, if you don’t mind, I promised my kid we could have burgers for breakfast.Say hi to SA Merlo from me!Let me know if he has any info on what’s going on.”
She headed out, flicking a wave at him over her shoulder as she left.
Cloister absently rotated his still-aching wrist as he watched her go; then he glanced toward the showers after Gardner.He heard the shower kick on and Gardner spit out a strangled curse as the first ice-cold water bomb hit him.The boiler took a while to heat up.The day shift never noticed so much, but the boiler had had time to cool by this point in the evening.
Tancredi was right that Cloister had never cared about departmental glad-handing and back-stabbing.
The thing was?If Cloister was right, the call wasn’t coming frominsidethe house.
There just wasn’t anything he could do about it.
“And I’m six-three,” he corrected the empty air as he hitched his bag up onto his shoulder and headed after Tancredi.“For the record.”
Cloistercrackedaneggon the side of the pan and spilled the contents out of the shell onto the hot metal.He gave it a quick scramble with a spatula and tossed the shell to Bon.She snatched it out of the air, crunched once, and swallowed.
Nearly a decade on night shift, on and off, and Cloister still couldn’t wrap his head around dinner at 5 AM.There was just something deviant about eating carbonara as the sun came up.Luckily, eggs were an anytime food.
While Bon waited expectantly for more cast-off snacks, Cloister picked up a chopping board and tossed the diced peppers and turkey chunks in with the eggs.Outside, kids laughed and screamed as they chased each other around the trailers while they waited for their parents to run them to school or daycare.
Cloister turned the heat down.He left the eggs to finish cooking while he got a beer out of the fridge.In theory, cracking a cold one at this hour should come under the same deviant umbrella as the carbonara, but it didn’t.Too many mornings at the kitchen table while his stepdad had still been running on the night before.He popped the tab, foam dripping up and down over his knuckles, and took a quick drink as he turned back to the pan.
The eggs had burned, edges crisp-curled and papery as smoke spiraled up from the pan.Bon put her ears back in aggrieved expectation a second before the fire alarm went off, the shrill blare of it bouncing off the walls of the trailer.
“Shit,” Cloister muttered as he pulled the pan off the heat.He set it to the side as he grabbed a dishcloth and flapped it energetically under the white module of the alarm, the bright glow of the “working light” playing over the white and blue patterned surface.
It stopped.
He stopped.
It started again.
Cloister tossed the cloth to his other hand, still flapping it, and opened the door to the trailer.He shoved it open so the catch caught and the smell of salt and high tide wafted in to do battle with smoke and burned eggs.
The fire alarm finally stopped again.This time, when Cloister tentatively gave up trying to clear the smoke, it stayed off.He flicked the towel over his shoulder and bent down to give Bon an apologetic thump.She shook herself, ears flapping, and gave him a reproachful look.
“I know, I know,” he said.“This never happens in Javi’s kitchen, but we don’t live there.”
Except they sort ofhadwhile Cloister had been recovering.It hadn’t really been necessary in the first place—it had been a broken wrist; Cloister had fended for himself with worse—and Javi had never set a firm end date on the offer, either.It had just felt like Cloister’s first day back at work was the natural place to wrap the arrangement.
There was no way to pretend it was just convenience after that.Either Cloister went back to his trailer, or he officially moved in.
Which Javi obviously wasn’t ready for, otherwise he would have said something.Not thatCloisterwanted to move in—ability to fry eggs at will aside.They had only been dating a few months.
Shouldhe want to move in?
Cloister teetered on the edge of that rabbit hole, but caught himself before he pitched headfirst down it.There wasn’t time.It was existential panic over his relationship status or sleep, and if he didn’t get his full hour and a half of restless shut-eye, he’d not be good for anything today.
“Would half my eggs make up for the noise?”he asked.
She cocked her head to the side with interest.
