Skin and Bone by TA Moore

Author:TA Moore [Moore, TA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-64080-940-6
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2019-02-26T06:00:00+00:00

AFTER TWO days and far too many emojis Cloister still hadn’t found the link.

He sat on the beach, a mile away from the trailer park, and ignored another beautiful California sunset in favor of his phone. He swiped the screen—the sand was gritty under his thumb, and any new scratches were lost in the ones he’d gotten used to—and watched the last seven months of her life play out, one disembodied part at a time.

Janet Morrow’s Instagram was a carefully curated collage of bits—feet in patent leather Mary Janes, a hologram-nailed thumb hooked into a braided belt, a tattooed collarbone, and rolls of textile fabric. The only photo that didn’t match the theme was a blurry selfie taken with a mildly perplexed-looking silver-haired man in a natty suit, where Janet leaned in from the side in a flash of red hair and a long arm. It was an awful picture, but she looked happy.

But it didn’t seem likely that Tim Gunn had been involved in an attempted murder that happened in Plenty.

By comparison, the Lopez stepsons had a dozen social media accounts between them, full of the sort of messy group shots and ill-advised videos their teachers probably warned them against. The Lopez boys liked baseball, the beach, and, surprisingly enough, their stepmom. Girls too, for one of them, but no there was no mention of New York, redheads, or any comments about anger or getting even. He’d pulled their juvie records as well and talked to the school’s principal. The older boy had been caught with an open container in his vehicle, and the younger one had been reprimanded after a fight in school—nothing beyond the pale.

According to Principal Vasser, for two boys whose father had killed himself—a year ago, at his office in San Diego. Cloister had sent for the files just in case—and whose mother showed no interest in reclaiming custody from their stepmother, they were doing as well as could be expected.

That could mean either there wasn’t a link or there was one and Cloister just hadn’t found it. It was possible. He didn’t use social media—no Facebook, no Twitter. His only presence on Instagram was the occasional photo shoot for the sheriff’s department’s official account. Those were mostly of his legs and his dog.

Digital ties were still ties. Besides, what would he put on there? The adventures of a beachside insomniac?

He wasn’t familiar with the online network, so he might have missed something. He wanted to believe he had. If the Lopez car really had been picked at random, their only lead was a dirty, decades-old business card and that bloody scarf Hewitt handed in. It wasn’t much. Janet’s clothes had been all over the street. The homeless man Hewitt focused on might just have picked it up.

Bon barked at him.

“Sorry,” Cloister said absently as he locked the phone. He set it down on the chunk of driftwood he leaned against and bent to grab a long, salt-dried root of seaweed from the sand. It was sandy, slobber-sticky, and too light to throw, but Bon didn’t seem to care.

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