Bone to Pick by TA Moore

Author:TA Moore [Moore, TA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 9781635338393
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2017-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

REED WAS feeling cooperative for the first and probably only time in Cloister’s acquaintance with the grasping ex-hippie. When they asked he was only too glad to let them use his office. He would probably have preferred to stay and watch the interview, but Javi coldly but politely closed the door in his face.

Like the linen clothes, the office reflected Reed’s public persona of aging hippy. The sofa was worn, the fabric threadbare on the arms and along the front of the cushions, and the desk was a repurposed kitchen table with graffiti scarred into the wooden surface. The top-of-the-line safe and the glossy curve of the MacBook Pro charging on the filing cabinet were the only things out of place.

Those and the people.

Billy sat in the corner of the battered couch and picked nervously at the stuffing with his fingernail while his parents hovered and Diggs talked with quiet intensity to all three.

“How did you convince Billy to talk to us?” Javi asked Cloister as he grabbed his elbow and pulled him into the corner.

“I asked him to.”

Javi hissed out a sigh between his teeth. “Did you threaten or intimidate him in any way?” he asked. “He’s not a suspect anymore, but with J.J. involved, we need to stick to—”

Two hours before or two hours later, and Cloister would have let the comment roll off his back. He knew what he looked like. Back home there were plenty of men who looked like him. Between fifteen and seventy-five, the Witte men looked like bad news, and Cloister hadn’t fallen far from the family bad-apple tree. Javi had just picked the wrong time for that particular criticism while Cloister’s skin was still raw from those old truths.

“You’re the one who wanted me to talk to the kid,” he growled, and he could feel the rasp of it in his throat. “Don’t complain about it now that I have.”

Javi narrowed his eyes but let it go. He turned his back on Cloister and looked at Diggs.

“Well?” he said. “Do you have any objections to us speaking to your client?”

“Plenty,” Diggs said. He smirked acknowledgment of the pun as he made it. The flicker of shared, dry amusement between him and Javi made Cloister clench his jaw. Diggs didn’t even acknowledge his presence as he went on. “But on the understanding he isn’t a suspect, and since both he and his family insist, I suppose I have to allow it. However, if I don’t like the direction this conversation is going… that could change.”

Javi grabbed Reed’s office chair, pulled it from behind the desk, sat down in it, and leaned forward. His shirt pulled tight over his shoulders as he rested his elbows on his knees and linked his hands together in front of him. Hunched against the arm of the couch, Billy tensed visibly. Lara reached for his arm, hesitated, and then completed the gesture.

“So talk,” Javi said.

The calm direction made Billy, braced for interrogation, blink in confusion. He licked his dry lips and glanced at Cloister, clearly seeking some sort of support.

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