Chapter 6 #4
THREE HOURS later, Joey and Gail were seated shoulder to shoulder in the same bed, next to Crosby’s.
Both of them had been cleaned, checked for bites, and debriefed by the head of the gambling commission (like that asshole had the balls to understand what had gone down), and they were waiting for Crosby to come out of the anesthetic from the emergency surgery to close off his artery so he could answer the same stupid questions.
And, Joey understood now, they were there to see how their friend was doing.
“A dog,” Gail said for what was probably the tenth time. “I mean, who would have fucking thunk it.”
“How could he not see?” Joey asked for the first time.
Gail glanced at him. “See what?”
“That the dog was… was a predator. Not even a reasonable one. It was… it was created to kill. You can’t take your eye off a predator.
You just can’t!” His voice rose an octave, and he was remembering the sound his phone had made when he’d thrown it on the pavement from the bus those months ago.
He’d been waiting for his father to text him since, and he kept wondering what he was risking by not watching his back twenty-four seven.
He couldn’t, though. He had to watch his team’s back.
That threatened loss as Crosby had been bleeding out on the dirty pavement resurfaced, and he realized with a faint shock he would have been just as frightened if it had been Gail or Harding or Natalia or Kylie.
For a moment his thoughts strayed to Gideon, bleeding out like Crosby had been, and first came that moment in the bathroom, realizing Gideon’s ordinary hazel eyes were really muted gold, and then came a terrible moment of vertigo, followed by queasiness so bad he’d almost popped his head over the side of the bed to toss his cookies.
Pain. Pain like you haven’t felt since Grandfather… oh God. Can’t think. Pain.
And for the first time, Joey realized that there were big holes in his life where his heart had been as a child, and these people here were offering to fill them.
For a moment, on the bed next to Gail, he wanted to walk away.
He thought about quitting. Going underground.
He could spend his entire life living off the grid, doing odd jobs, drifting from place to place.
His father would never find him, and he would never find anybody he cared about like the people who’d had his back for the last six months.
Crosby moaned from the bed like he was coming out of it, and Joey realized he had one foot on the ground in what even he had to admit was flight.
“The fuck are you going?” Gideon asked irritably, striding into the room. “You get one grilling from the gambling commission and you’re out of here?”
Carlyle stared at him. “Soda,” he said weakly, not sure how transparent he’d been.
Gideon snorted. “The hell,” he said.
Crosby moaned again, and both their attention turned toward him on the bed.
Gail hopped off and now stood at the side of the bed, murmuring, “Heya, Olaf—how you doing?”
“Ow,” he said, eyes still closed.
“Yeah, so we heard. You up to a debrief?”
“From who?” He could barely talk.
“Some asshole from the gambling commission who wants to know if there was any way we could have avoided shooting the dog,” she said, her voice laced with disgust.
“Send him in,” Crosby breathed. “I’ll bleed on him.”
And then he passed out.
“Really?” Gideon asked, his eyebrows raised. “Really?”
“Shh!” Gail shushed him, and Gideon gestured them outside the room.
“Really what?” Joey asked as they settled in front of the door. Then, “Are we sure he’s okay?”
“His vitals were fine,” Gideon reassured him, but not absently.
“I checked in with the nurses. He’s not supposed to come to for an hour.
Which is how long we waited on-site while animal control came and bailed out all the fucking dogs, taking most of them to shelters.
” His voice grew thick. “Most of them will have to be destroyed, and it’s a goddamned shame. ”
“Our civilian?” Gail asked, and Joey could have kicked himself. He’d almost forgotten.
“Is fine. So’s his little dog, who was in the cage next to the giant dog crate where they were keeping the civilian.” Gideon’s face fell. “They were practically hugging each other as the paramedics escorted them out.”
And again that curious sense of vertigo. In the military, Joey would have regarded the civilian and his dog with a grim duty. The man, anyway, was whom Joey was assigned to protect. But no affection, and certainly no pity.
But here, after the horrific death and desecration of the dog that almost killed his friend, the thought of that perfectly nice man with the unruly Chihuahua walking away from that entire nightmare situation made Joey feel…
Better.
Not awesome. Certainly not like good triumphed over evil, because if that were true, somebody would have struck those motherfuckers dead before they’d had a chance to weaponize Fido. But better.
They’d been there for a reason. There were innocent people involved. The innocent people (yes, he was counting the dog) walked away.
Didn’t always happen.
And suddenly Joey could see what his team was pushing for.
He hadn’t seen it during that first bust, the serial killer. He’d seen he almost let his partner die—that had been bad. He’d seen there were things to learn about human behavior that he’d never even fathomed. That had been fascinating.
But he hadn’t seen that what his team had been pushing for that day, all of them coming in on what was supposed to be a day off to chase down Gideon’s hunch, had been this.
There had been people on Chester Schumer’s hit list who would never know their lives had been in danger.
Thanks to Gideon and Joey, their lives weren’t in danger anymore.
And a New Jersey suburbanite got to walk away from a nightmare with his Chihuahua.
“Carlyle?” Gideon said sharply, and like that, Joey was back in the hospital hallway, his dual realities merging, where suddenly he was that guy who would be glad there was a happy ending for somebody, and who would share worry with a teammate and friend about another teammate and friend.
“Yeah, Gid,” Joey replied blandly. “We’re glad they’re okay. Anything else?”
Gideon’s eyes hardened. “Yeah, how long did the gambling commissioner talk to you guys? You’re giving me the jeebies.”
“An hour,” Gail said flatly. “He debriefed us both for an hour, and then tried to push into the room to yell at Crosby while he slept, I guess. The nurse kicked him out, but that’s one of the reasons we stayed.”
Oh yeah. Joey was mad all over again. Now that his own emotions had labels and boxes, he was suddenly pissed at the guy who’d tried to bully Crosby in his sleep.
Gideon’s thin face grew a curling Disney-villain smile. “Where is he now?”
“Right there….” Gail was spared from pointing at the guy by Gideon giving them both an angry head nod back into Crosby’s room.
“If he tries to get in there again,” Gideon said, no ounce of play in him, “take him out. Cuff him. You both still have weapons. Be prepared to use them. Go.”
And then they were on the other side of the door, with their ears pressed firmly against it.
“I need to get in there.”
Joey and Gail exchanged scowls. Jay Arnold, the gambling commissioner of NYC, was young—early thirties—with slicked-back hair and a sharp brown suit that he probably thought looked good but simply made him look small and pasty because the lapels were too wide.
He spoke with a natural pomposity that made any reasonable person want to smack him with a sap.
“I am SA Chadwick from the SCTF,” Gideon said, his voice flat.
“That’s my man in there. He was injured in the course of doing your dirty work, because whether you want to admit it or not, this was your case we were executing.
You don’t deserve to speak to him, and if I have my way, he won’t ever know you exist.”
Joey sucked in air through his teeth in surprise. He’d heard Gideon speak to his coworkers, to Harding, to perpetrators, and while he could be dry and funny, or no-nonsense and analytical, hard-assed and frightening, Joey had never, ever heard him be so… disdainful of another human being.
“I need to know how he managed to shoot a dog in the course of a routine investigation—”
“Shoot the dog?” Gideon asked, and something about his tone—baffled and outraged—made the air freeze in Joey’s lungs. That moment in the locker room… Gideon’s face so close….
“People are going to be outraged—”
“My man almost died,” Gideon snarled, and Gail and Joey both gasped. They’d heard the thump of Jay Arnold’s body as he’d backed up against the wall next to the door.
Or had been shoved there.
“Due to his own—”
“Bullshit,” Gideon snapped. “Who do you think we are? Your basic flatfoot with a six-month sponsorship from our left cousin’s buttcrack?
Those two agents you just grilled? They are U.S.
Special Forces—a Green Beret and a covert operative.
The guy on his back? Tracked down a serial killer single-handedly, brought him in, and made the case stick.
I’ve got more letters behind my name than you can probably use to spell, and our SAC?
Has more medals on his chest in the military and out of it than you could carry.
Do you understand? Our specially trained, carefully nurtured operative was attacked by a dog trained to kill on your turf.
You are responsible for him almost bleeding out on a filthy concrete floor.
You are responsible for us having to shoot a dog who had been tortured into savagery.
You knew this was happening. You were too afraid to tackle it.
Too afraid a couple of methed-out fight promotors were going to make your boys look like chumps.
So you called our guys in on it. Good move, because if your boys were as incompetent and lazy as you are, you probably would have shot the hostage and his Chihuahua, and then fed them to the monster that almost killed Crosby! ”
Gideon’s voice grew louder, more filled with righteous fury, with each word, and Joey, ear pressed hungrily to the door so he could catch every syllable, had to swallow against a sudden ache in an unexpected place.
His groin.
Dear God.
He had an aching, unassuageable erection from hearing Gideon take this motherfucker down.
“Oh my God,” Gail whispered. “Who knew Chadwick could be that sexy?”
“I’m sayin’,” Joey muttered back, glad she’d put it in that zone before he had.
“Agent Chadwick?”
Joey and Gail were going to hyperventilate. That deceptively mild voice had been Harding’s, and in six months, Joey had never heard that tone.
“Sir?” Chadwick replied respectfully.
“Your work here is appreciated, but it’s my turn. Go check on Crosby, would you?”
“Yes, sir,” Chadwick said, and Gail and Joey had to skitter back as he opened the door.
“And Gid?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t let anybody but our unit and medical professionals into his room.” Clint Harding’s voice developed a blinding edge. “You’re authorized to use deadly force if they try.”
“Sir.” And Gideon stepped into the room and shut the door in time for Joey and Gail to lean on it again.
They had to. They’d held their breath so long on big gasps of air, they were both, Joey surmised, a little dizzy.
“You heard?” Gideon asked the two of them dryly.
They rolled their eyes at him.
“Just remember that,” Gideon said. “We have each other’s backs.”
They both nodded solemnly before Gail scooted back and motioned Gideon to the spot between them so they could all listen through the door.
Gideon took it, and for a full ten minutes, through a truly epic ass-chewing by Clint Harding, one that would go down in agency lore forever, Joey was face-to-face, sharing breath with Gideon Chadwick of the hooded falcon eyes.
His aching, insistent erection didn’t ease until Harding stepped back from the wall Jay Arnold had sweated against, and they had to let him into the room, along with a couple of patient, wise nurses.
When they finally left the room so Crosby could sleep, Joey noticed two things.
One was that Gideon’s presence, his heat, his smell, seemed to have imprinted itself on Joey Carlyle’s consciousness like a mountain lion’s scent mark on its mate.
The other was an unfortunate body-sized wet mark on the hospital wall, where the NYC Gambling Commissioner had sweated through his ugly, overpriced suit.