Chapter 1 #2
Sure, he was angular—face like a three-dimensional trapezoid, with a knife-blade nose and cheekbones that could cut steak. His mouth was a lean slash, slightly off center, as though he was trying not to let on that he saw the world sideways.
Joey, who had been silently laughing at fear, at his fellow students, at authority for his entire life, should really have seen the kindred spirit.
But right then all he’d seen had been Harding’s derpy friend.
He didn’t see much more as Harding called Chadwick over and told him they were going to run their new member to the home he hadn’t seen yet.
“You got an apartment in the Upper West Side?” Chadwick asked when he heard the address. “Fancy.”
“I have no idea,” Joey said, suddenly aware that he may have wanted to do more research about his new residence. He’d been so grateful for the job. “I was looking for a place I could afford is all.”
Chadwick didn’t say anything then, didn’t make fun of him, didn’t mention that if Joey could afford the Upper West Side that meant he could afford a hell of a lot. He simply gave a shrug.
“There’s people in Manhattan that know every back street, every restaurant, every building,” Harding said. “And every day they profess to be surprised. Or cheated out of real estate. As long as you got a place to hit the rack and hang your hat, we’re calling it good.”
“Other new guy doesn’t even have that,” Chadwick muttered. “Rooming with a DJ, for sweet fuck’s sake.”
“A good one?” Harding asked, and Chadwick shrugged.
“Making a name for himself,” he admitted. “Crosby’s big concern is the substance abuse in the apartment—not by his friend, which is funny, but by the hangers-on.”
“Not by the DJ?” Harding snorted. “That’s unlikely.”
Chadwick made an unconscious gesture then that, to his knowledge, only Joey noticed. It was a small double tap of his thumb against the base of his forefinger, and Joey wondered what it meant.
“I’ve met Toby Trotter,” Chadwick said. “He looks like he’s had some health problems—congenital most likely.
I sincerely doubt he’d be abusing substances, but I can see how he wouldn’t want to make a big deal about it if somebody else was.
I just think we need to keep a weather eye out for Crosby is all. ”
Harding nodded. “He may do better than you think.”
“I’ve read his docket,” Chadwick said mildly. Then he gave Joey a sideways glance from slightly crossed hazel eyes. “I’ll get to yours.”
Joey knew guys in the service with eyes set like that—they were often the best shots, because they’d had to work hard to focus their entire lives.
Suddenly he was a little uncomfortable. “Do I get dockets?” he asked, trying to be alert, and to his absolute horror, he let out a yawn.
Oh God. Both sides of his family would be mortified.
“I emailed one to you,” Harding said dryly, “but apparently your phone was damaged. Chadwick, go get your shop. I’ll check him out a phone. You’re certified in every weapon we have—we’ll let you choose your service revolver tomorrow.”
So Joey found himself trotting—yes, trotting, because Chadwick was as tall as he was angular, and Joey had always been smaller and more slightly built.
To his profound relief, Chadwick didn’t adjust his stride.
That would have been humiliating, and it would have meant the man wouldn’t trust him when shit got real.
Joey liked being invisible, but he wasn’t too keen about being underestimated.
“So what do you need to settle in?” Chadwick asked, with all the paternal warmth of an analyst asking how to boost internet output.
“Basic rations,” Joey replied, thinking protein bars, potable water, fruit.
“Blankets.” He thought for a moment about clothes—because when he was stateside, he did love to dress well sometimes.
“A leather jacket,” he said, because his trunk of possessions was currently in storage somewhere upstate, and after his father’s text, he was reluctant to go claim it. “And cleaning supplies.”
Chadwick blinked slowly, and for a moment, Joey wondered if he was flummoxed by something.
“Where are your clothes?” he asked, eyeing the duffel Joey had slung over his shoulder.
“I—”
“See, it would be one thing if you just wanted a jacket,” Chadwick said, as though musing to himself.
“A jacket is warmth. Most of us are fans, particularly in the spring. You’re wearing a hoodie, so you apparently noticed it’s not warm yet.
But leather is a choice. Most people who want a leather jacket have a style in mind.
So you don’t have blankets for your bed yet, but you want a leather jacket.
This implies you’ve had a leather jacket and it isn’t here. Where is it?”
Oh God. Joey was too tired for this. “A storage facility I can’t get to,” he said. “I miss it.”
Chadwick nodded as they hit the elevators, presumably for an underground garage. “Anything else there you miss?”
“Stuff,” Joey said noncommittally.
“Huh. Do you know it’s all still there?”
“No.”
“Can you check to see?”
“No.” Joey wasn’t sure whether to be irritated at the intrusion into his life or impressed.
“So it’s Schrodinger’s stuff,” Chadwick said, and laughed quietly to himself.
Joey stared at him, trying to process. He knew who Schrodinger was—he thought he knew who Schrodinger was—but while he could probably run ten miles this tired and then swim twenty laps for fun, his brain, usually adept with recall and wordplay, had shorted out.
Predators don’t need to know who Schrodinger was, he told himself grumpily.
But Chadwick—whoever he was—wasn’t stupid. “Sorry,” he said as the elevator doors opened and he led the way to a guard kiosk to check out a vehicle and grab the keys. “Most of my jokes are really best in my own head.”
Joey had no idea.
All he knew was that, while the bus ride had been impossible to sleep through with every moment spent assessing the traffic, the stops, the way his father could possibly track him from Washington, DC, to NYC via Greyhound bus, as Chadwick talked and told him to hop in the back so he could chill while Chadwick negotiated traffic, Joey’s eyelids started to droop.
He didn’t worry about it. He’d gone without sleep for three days before. In fact it was part of covert ops training. Forty-eight hours was no big deal; he’d sleep when he got safe.
Then Harding got into the SUV, ordering Chadwick into the passenger’s seat because in his words, “My heart isn’t as young as it used to be.” The minute he turned the key, Joey’s head hit the seat rest and he was out.
HE AWOKE twelve hours later, on the fully made plain wood bed he’d seen pictured in the pamphlet when he’d leased his apartment.
He was in the T-shirt and briefs he’d put on two days ago, but his jeans and hoodie were neatly folded and hanging on the chair at the foot of the bed. His duffel sat on the chair too.
He had to pee fiercely, and he wasn’t sure where the bathroom was.
He sat up and peered around, wincing at the sterility of the room. The comforter was nice—tan and green—although he couldn’t remember purchasing one. Oh Jesus, he hoped there was toilet paper.
He spotted the en suite bathroom and toddled in to sit on the throne with a blessed, blessed sigh.
Toilet paper, he noticed with relief, and a freshly opened package in the corner. Towels—two new towels in navy that matched the navy-and-tan patterned rug on the floor—hung from the rack.
And there was a new bar of soap with only one or two rinses in the soap holder, and a basic men’s shampoo/conditioner bottle in the shower.
Oh God, he felt ripe and rotten. When he’d finished his business, he grabbed the clean, dry, matching face cloth that was hanging with the towels and hopped into the shower, wondering who his fairy godmother was.
He’d been told the place would be barren and ready for him to move in, but someone—the Realtor?
—had apparently thought to welcome him here.
How did he get here again?
He was still wondering that after his shower. He put on his last clean clothes and hung up the towels before emerging into the living space in his bare feet.
He saw takeout bags in the new trash receptacle by the sink and, following his nose, opened the small refrigerator to find orange juice, Chinese food boxes (half-full), eggs, milk, cheese, jelly, and lunch meat. On the marble counter he saw bread, apples, onions, and peanut butter.
After he pulled out the takeout cartons, he found a table service for four in the cupboards, the same in silverware in the drawer near the sink, and a brand-new pan, stickers still on it, on the stove next to a new chef’s knife and a spatula.
He was still pondering his good fortune when the microwave binged and he heard a snore, choked off midway, and he found himself in a crouch, looking over the kitchen counter to the front room.
Chadwick—all six-foot-something of him—lay curled up on Joey’s couch, a spare pillow under his head, a tan throw—as new as the bedding in Joey’s room—thrown over his lean and angular body.
He was scowling toward the kitchen. “Oh,” he said groggily. “You found the food.”
“You….” Joey was at a loss. “You bought me food.” Lightbulb! “And bedding. And towels. And dishes. Holy crap.” He no longer had exhaustion as an excuse for being an asshole. “Thank you,” he said humbly, still trying to digest it all.
“Harding and I went halfsies,” Chadwick mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “What time is it?”
Joey swallowed and checked his new phone, which was plugged in and charged on the counter. “Five o’clock,” he said. “Is that a.m. or p.m.?”
Chadwick laughed. “A.m.” He yawned. “Harding brought me my laptop, I worked here. You were so out of it, we didn’t feel right about just leaving you in a strange place.
I mean, it was bad enough leaving Crosby with his roommate.
Felt like leaving a puppy in a wolf den. We couldn’t do that shit again.”
“This Crosby must be the second coming,” Joey muttered. “You haven’t shut up about him.”
Another dry analytical laugh. “Just not our usual,” he said on another yawn. “God, five?”
“Early?” Joey asked.
“I usually get up at six thirty. I got department-issue sweats in the bag and a department issue in your parking spot. Let me get another hour in, cop a shower, and we can go in together. Any questions?”
Joey hated to ask, he really did, but… “Washer/dryer?”
“Behind the screen in the hall. I guess you had them installed when you got the place, like the fridge.”
Joey grunted. “Sleep,” he said. “I may take a walk, but I’ll be back in time to wake you.”
“’Preciate it,” Chadwick said, another yawn seeming to pull him sideways on the couch, dragging the throw with him.
Joey spent a moment watching him, thinking about the kindness—for that had been what had driven Chadwick and Harding—he’d been shown.
Part of him was trying to retroactively panic.
He’d shown his throat! He’d let strangers see him vulnerable!
He’d barely let guys from the unit see him sleep.
His room in his father’s house had been a landmine—soda cans on strings, squeaky toys, coffee tables placed at shin height—all of it designed to not let his father sneak up on him at any time.
The first night he’d spent in his father’s house, he’d woken up with his father’s knife at his throat, because his father had gotten around all the booby traps Joey had set up before going to bed.
Their relationship had only deteriorated from there.
He’d been eight.
And he’d never trusted his father.
But apparently he trusted these two men on his new team enough to not only sleep in front of them, but to continue sleeping while they put him to bed like the child he never had been and set up his apartment.
It was a welcoming. A homecoming that he hadn’t seen since his weekend visits with his grandfather.
Joey finished the Chinese food in the dark and the quiet—he never had turned on the lights. He could see fine in the ambient light from the windows. He was thinking that without realizing it, he had found a pack. Harding and Chadwick, at the very least, he could trust.
Without conscious thought, Chadwick’s little quip about Joey having “Schrodinger’s stuff,” popped into his mind, and it hit him then.
Schrodinger’s cat. Joey wouldn’t know if the stuff was there until he checked. Until then it was both there and not there, but since Joey had no access to it, they might as well believe it was not there.
Hence all of the “Schrodinger’s stuff” in Joey’s apartment.
The smile was there before he could stop it, but since nobody was awake in his new den to see it, he allowed it to be. Deer. He could be comfortable with Chadwick, with Harding, because they were deer.