Let the Wolf (Covert #2)

Prologue

Look What Wandered In

GIDEON CHADWICK said goodbye to his last guest and closed the door to his midtown Manhattan apartment with a soft sigh of relief.

His days of academia were as far behind him as his days in the military, and sometimes he wasn’t sure which group of people made him the most uncomfortable.

While it was true the doctors and lawyers and forensics specialists—who were often both—liked to talk about books and theories and the root of all political problems and had read Pynchon and Goethe, there was almost always a moment in the middle of the flowing conversation when Gideon found it absolutely, positively necessary to leave the room.

He’d excuse himself to the bathroom, check his watch, the security feeds on his phone, look to see if his alphabet division of the justice department, the Special Crimes Task Force, had caught any cases, and stare longingly out his third-floor window and down the fire escape as he remembered his covert ops days under Jason Constance when he would have thought nothing about spider-climbing out the window and ghosting into the misty September night.

Then he’d remember that he liked these people and had kept in touch with them on purpose after school, and his breathing would grow normal again, and he’d be able to return to the erudite, purposeless discussion of people who had achieved importance—but not enough.

Certainly not enough importance to change the world in such a way as to lessen the uphill battle they all fought every day to fix the horrors they saw.

Tonight he’d grabbed an extra bottle of wine as he passed through the open-area kitchen and topped everybody’s glass off before he settled himself around the coffee table.

No dining table—unlike some of his friends, his apartment was small, with two rooms and a counter that separated the kitchen from the living room and just a big enough living room to put a couch, a love seat, and a stuffed chair.

His dinner parties always ended up with somebody, usually himself, on the floor, sitting cross-legged, trying hard not to fall asleep.

Of course that was because most of the people from his special ops unit were someplace in the desert in California, hunting serial killers. Dammit, he’d left that unit too soon.

Except he liked where he was. Loved the SCTF. He worked with an incredible group of people. He couldn’t make them his life, though, could he?

The question was tickling his forebrain as he surveyed his apartment after the guests had left—the comfortable leather couches, the Persian rug he’d had shipped from Fallujah, the hardwood floors he’d buffed up after he’d bought the lease.

He’d always been an odd duck—too smart for his peers, too active for academics, too dry for people to get his jokes, secretly laughing at the dark, the macabre, with nobody to smirk with.

Suddenly the hackles on his neck lifted like a porcupine’s spines, and he found himself breathing very softly through his nose, scenting the air.

Silently, he glided by the table, picking up a cheese knife from the charcuterie board as he passed.

Useless fucking thing, he pondered grimly, flipping it from hand to hand.

Good thing he’d taken special classes in useless objects and how to make them kill.

He paused for a moment, to the side of his bedroom door, still tasting the currents that swept in through the now open window near the fire escape.

Worn, well-oiled leather. The hint of an organic bourbon-scented soap, the faint hint of wine from a glass Gideon himself had set on the end table near his bed when he’d excused himself from the room.

The wine had been disturbed—and consumed.

Gideon’s heart rate, which had never climbed above sixty when he’d thought there was an assailant in his bedroom, suddenly skyrocketed.

“God, they were boring,” Joey Carlyle said from his cross-legged perch on Gideon’s bed. “I thought they’d never leave.”

Gideon tucked the charcuterie knife up his sleeve. “Well, if you’d knocked on the door and started talking about ripping out deer hearts, you could have sped them up.”

Joey grinned, the expression feral, like a wolf’s, in his strong-boned, insanely beautiful face. His skin—a pale gold—showed traces of his Native ancestry, but Joey Carlyle’s granite cheekbones and oval eyes really gave away the whole package.

Or at least the physically attractive package.

“That Elaine girl,” Joey said as Gideon sat down. “You nailed her yet?”

“Dr. Aiello?” Gideon asked. “Chief Forensic Pathologist to New York State? No. I’m a peon, Joey. She only dates stallions. The fuck are you doing here?”

He thought he might know, but that could only be wishful thinking.

He and Carlyle had worked together for a while.

Gideon’s contact with Constance had gotten him put on special assignment with Clint Harding for a year when he’d been in the service.

Harding had been impressed enough to make him one of the first recruits for Harding’s task force.

Natalia Denison had been the actual first—she’d been Harding’s partner in the FBI, then Kylie the texpert (as Carlyle called her) and wily, deadly Gail Pearson.

A year and a half ago, Harding—operating on intel Chadwick couldn’t fathom—had recruited big, beefy Judson Crosby, who was an astoundingly good operative for all he’d started his life as a flatfoot.

Carlyle, fresh out of the service and still twitchy, had come along about the same time.

For some reason Gideon had never understood—maybe it was his stillness in the wake of Carlyle’s constant motion—Joey Carlyle had gravitated to Gideon like a feral cat gravitated to a favorite yard.

He sought out Gideon’s company for assignments. Asked for his opinion. Hopped in his department issue SUV without being asked or ordered.

Opened his mouth and showed the edges of his pointy teeth when Gideon told a joke, which was a thing Gideon would love about him forever.

Gideon had always thought wistfully that would be brotherly love, right up until he’d smelled Joey Carlyle and the petrichor of September rain in the city.

“You’re a peon?” Carlyle asked, eyes darkening in the shadows. “You’re a… what?”

Gideon blew out a breath, not wanting to dwell on the melancholy of his own insecurities tonight. “It’s not important,” he said. And then, because he knew Joey after all this time—knew he’d never tell Gideon when asked straight out—he asked a sideways question. “What’d you think about the new guy?”

Carlyle’s eyes flickered, from the dim lamp to the open window and back. “Garcia?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“He’s great,” Carlyle said. “He’s half in love with Crosby already, and Crosby’s still in the hospital.”

Gideon couldn’t help the low moan that issued from his throat.

“God. Yeah.” Crosby and Garcia had followed a hunch, and Crosby had ended up getting shot in close quarters.

Even with Kevlar, the force of the bullets broke his ribs and punctured his lungs.

He was going to be out for a while, and Gideon couldn’t help it.

He’d felt protective over the kid—God, they all had.

The rest of the squad, they’d nursed at the breast of the DOJ, all of them training for this job in one way or another through special forces, covert ops, or plain old book learning.

Gideon had hit the Princeton for four years, Marines next and then finished the book learning with his PhD, but he’d been good at his job.

Particularly the wet work. Something about his dry dispassion had made him clean, methodical, and not particularly remorseful, but that could be because he was called upon to kill very, very bad men.

Crosby had thought the world was fair until being a flatfoot in a shitty Chicago precinct had taught him different.

He’d caught a serial killer single-handedly and headed off a gang war and then had stood up against the entire force when his partner had gone rogue.

If Harding hadn’t picked the kid up by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to New York, Crosby would be dead already.

Such a sweet baby boy, and he had thrown his heart and soul into his new job.

“He wasn’t supposed to last,” Gideon said fretfully, perhaps to mask his concern. “I took one look and told Harding, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to end up in the river if we don’t turf him somewhere else.’”

“I thought he’d done that himself with the fucking dogs,” Carlyle said, and while a stranger might have heard the disgust, Chadwick had been there the day Crosby had turned his back on the dogfight dog in favor of the drug dealer who’d trained it.

Chadwick had dispatched one drug dealer, Crosby had dispatched the other, and Carlyle had ripped up his T-shirt to use as a bandage to keep Crosby from bleeding out—after killing the dog.

“He popped back up and learned,” Chadwick said, shaking his head. “But yeah. The ‘Oh God, they killed Crosby!’ game is old already. I would like to not see that boy in the hospital.”

“Do you want him?” Carlyle asked, his eyes on Chadwick’s face.

“I thought we were partners,” Chadwick said mildly.

“But you seem in love with Crosby.”

It was time for Gideon to interrupt. “No,” he said gently. “I’m not in love with Crosby. He’s a friend, like he is to you. We, you know, love the guy, but we don’t love the guy.”

“Garcia will,” Carlyle said. Why was it that only Gideon could follow him? It always seemed to him like Joey Carlyle left a clear and distinct trail.

“You think so?” Chadwick murmured. He closed his eyes in the dark, knowing he could because Joey would watch out for him. He scented the jacket again, the soap. The dark animal smell that was Joey Carlyle, that seemed to feed Gideon’s soul.

“I can see it,” Joey said. “They’re… they’re two halves, one coconut. Like you and me.”

“But Crosby and Gail are pretty tight,” Gideon said curiously. “I would have thought it would be them.”

“She’s like his sister,” Joey said. “Same pheromones, practically. They smell the same. Can’t you smell it?”

Chadwick grimaced. The “what do you smell” game was one of the other things they had that nobody else did. “Milk and blood,” he muttered, almost embarrassed.

“Yes,” Joey said, following him with ease. “They’re both wholesome and dangerous.” His smile went wolfish again. “Garcia isn’t wholesome—but he’ll wash off pretty with Crosby. They’ll be good once Crosby gets better.”

Chadwick let out a long sigh of relief. “That’s good to know,” he said, smiling.

He didn’t doubt Joey’s faint clairvoyance.

It was something they’d never talked about, but when Joey said, “Our subjects are in that building, overdosing,” Chadwick knew to bring his gun and put rescue workers on notice because Joey Carlyle wasn’t wrong about those things.

And sometimes he was right about good things too.

He’d known Kylie, their texpert, wasn’t coming back from her honeymoon.

He’d known Kylie had been pregnant probably before Kylie had.

That was good. He’d known Gail Pearson, who looked like the Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate girl, was in truth a knife maiden with superlative skills who didn’t shy away from blood work.

And now apparently he knew that Garcia and Crosby would be a thing.

Good for them.

“Is that why you came?” Chadwick asked, his throat suddenly dry. “To tell me that Garcia and Crosby are going to be a thing.”

Joey shook his head, his eyes—a dark, dark ochre color—fastened upon Chadwick’s face like Chadwick was a magnet.

Chadwick knew for a fact he wasn’t handsome.

Every line or angle, from his nose to his chin to his cheekbones, was sharp and beveled like a hatchet, and he wondered uneasily what Joey Carlyle saw in him.

“Then what?” Gideon rasped, suddenly conscious of the moment. The soft patter of the rain on the deserted street below, the darkened, empty apartment, their proximity on the bed, the quiet harshness of their breaths.

The deliciousness of Joey Carlyle’s skin.

“Because Crosby is taken now,” Carlyle whispered. “Which means there’s only me.”

And Chadwick followed him there too. He swallowed—twice—because longing rushed up so thickly to block his breathing.

“Joey Carlyle,” he rasped slowly, “what makes you think that Judson Crosby—or anybody else for that matter—would ever be competition for you?”

Carlyle’s grin went full wolf right before he captured Chadwick’s mouth, and Chadwick was fallen upon and devoured by his desire.