Chapter 13 #2
Joey had locked up his grandfather’s property using his trust money and used it to house and fund a school—it was untouchable.
He could kill the old man with a twitch of a knife, but chose not to so he could continue to live his life the way he wanted to.
And until now, until his eighteen months with the SCTF, he had avoided having any friends who could be harmed by the human cancer huffing behind him as he headed down the hall, ignoring the baroque gold-and-black decorations, the heavy blood-red carpeting and gold-tinted blue furniture, the oak trim that matched nothing, because his father, like Chester Schumer, had no sense of humanity in his décor.
He thought longingly of Gideon’s little apartment, of eating dinner on the floor by the coffee table, of the way Gideon had picked out each piece—often mismatched—lovingly, because he liked it, and was comfortable that his taste might not be anybody else’s.
He burst into the kitchen, badly startling this year’s cook. A new kitchen staff tended to rotate in, because Stephen Carlyle was an ass who thought everybody was trying to poison him and didn’t know the difference between homemade gravy and sauce from a jar.
“Uhm, Mr. Carlyle…?”
“I’m sorry,” Joey said bluntly. “I just arrived. Is there any way I can get a sandwich? I’ll make it myself so I don’t wreck your timetable.”
Gideon had taught him how to cook just a bit, and in watching him try to plan a meal in his tiny kitchen, Joey had learned the importance of not getting in a cook’s way.
“Not a problem,” the cook replied. He was a young man who might not have looked as frightened before he took this job, but who had definitely developed some prey responses since. “I… we have sourdough rolls, the usual condiments, meat, cheese—”
“Anything I can’t touch?” Joey asked kindly.
“The prosciutto and the hard cheeses?” the cook said on a gust of relief. “I had plans for dinner.”
“Of course,” Joey told him. “Any juice?”
“Orange and cranberry.”
“I’ll try not to leave you high and dry.”
With that, Joey turned to an unused counter space and spent five minutes assembling a sandwich with some chips he found in a cupboard, and a glass of OJ.
His father, unmindful of the cook and a couple of assistants moving around trying to prep vegetables, stood in the center of the kitchen, arms crossed, until Joey took his lunch and moved out of the kitchen to the breakfast nook, just to get himself, his father, and his father’s fucking bodyguard out of the poor chef’s hair.
He sat down to his sandwich with a sigh of contentment.
He needed food for fuel, and while his father might not know the difference between quality meats and Oscar Meyer, Joey did now after eighteen months as Gideon’s partner, and he was super excited not to be eating reconstituted ramen or processed bologna.
“Joseph, are we going to talk?”
Joey swallowed a bite of a first-rate dagwood. “Thanks for the sandwich, Stevie. Merry Christmas. I’m not coming back to join the criming. I’m a Federal Agent now, and they won’t let me.”
Joey had his sandwich in his hands so he could finish it when his father ripped the plate out from under it and pitched it at the wall behind Joey’s head.
Joey ducked and took another bite of sandwich—after inspecting it for pottery shards, of course. He leaned his head back and shook out his hair, listening to a faint sandy tinkle, and he felt a trickle of blood down the back of his ear. But the sandwich was fine.
He swallowed. “That doesn’t make the job more attractive,” he said.
“I’m your father, Joseph. The job doesn’t have to be attractive. You took my money, you owe me your skill set for my business—”
“You took my real family away,” Joey said, and this bite had no joy in it as he thought longingly of his grandfather.
“You isolated me in this hellhole and then sent me to military school. I lost years with somebody who actually cared for me because you thought I was a pretty trinket. I didn’t give a shit about your money, but given that I inherited it legally, you better believe I used it.
I also make my own.” He shrugged. “And my skill set? You’ve taught me nothing.
But would you like to know what I’ve learned in my new job?
” He sucked bread off his teeth so he could give a pointy smile.
“I’ve learned all the ways you broke the law to make that money. Think about that for a sec.”
He took a swig of OJ and watched his father do the math.
“You wouldn’t dare—” Oh yes. Now Stevie got it.
Joey looked his father in the eye. “Where in the hell do you think I’ve been for almost ten years, Steve? You sent me to military school, and then I went into Special Forces. What do you think I dared to do there?”
“You were kicked out,” his father said, almost triumphantly.
“But not for refusing to dare,” Joey told him. “And you got me here by threatening the people I work with. Do you have any idea who they are?”
His father’s face went blank, which was a tell.
“That information is heavily classified,” his father said primly.
“Well, you won’t learn from me,” Joey replied, equally prim.
“But imagine an entire unit of assholes just like me, but better. Smarter. Quicker on their feet. And they know about you. They’ve profiled you.
They have files on you.” Oh yeah. Gideon had been right—telling Clint Harding and giving him permission to tell Tal and the mysterious Blodgett person had been right on the money.
The others might not know about his father, but if they had to, his team would have his back.
And telling his father that they had Joey’s back had made his father’s pale brow grow even paler.
“Give us a reason to dare,” Joey said, finishing off his sandwich. “Or maybe? Just leave us alone. If you don’t cross our path, we’ve got no beef with you. But man, give us a reason. And before you ask? Abducting me, forcing me to stay here against my will? That would be a reason.”
His words were aimed at his father’s bodyguard, who had been stealthily reaching for his weapon as Joey spoke.
They locked eyes for a moment, and the bodyguard made a show of relaxing his hand, which didn’t fool Joey at all. He was making his own show of doing the same. When the guard struck to draw his weapon, quick as a snake, Joey was ready with one of the three blades he’d tucked behind his belt.
His aim was true, and the guard gave a strangled cry as the blade pinned his jacket to his hand, where presumably he’d been reaching for his weapon.
Joey stood up and threw the cloth napkin he’d used to wipe his mouth at the bodyguard, who caught it with a grunt and used it to pull the blade out.
“Set it on the table,” Joey said with all the inflection he’d use to say “Pass the milk.”
The guard dropped it, and it clattered, not even spattering blood since the jacket had cleaned it on its way out.
Joey picked it up but didn’t return it to his specialized little holster.
“Thanks for the sandwich, Dad,” he said. “I’ll be going now.”
“You think you can hide out on my own property?” his father sputtered, and Joey smiled thinly, thinking of the broken cameras he’d left in his wake and of the motorcycle hidden far from his father’s clutches.
It was growing dark now—he might not make it back to the bike and the bedroll before he was forced to take shelter and hide—but his father hired city thugs, and Joey had been raised on this land.
“It’ll be a fun game of hide and seek,” he said pleasantly, twirling the fixed blade between his fingers. “Just remember what’s hiding in the bushes. The wilderness isn’t always a great place to be lost in the dark.”
And with that he strode past the bodyguard, past his father, and toward the living room.
There had been a throw on the back of one of the couches—it had looked like genuine mink, which was tacky and stupid and wasteful.
But it would be very warm as the temperature dropped below freezing, and it would be black as night as his father’s men searched.
He grabbed it on his way toward the foyer, glad he’d never taken off his jacket, had never relinquished his hat, his gloves, his scarf.
“I’d say you’ll be seeing me,” he told his outraged father, “but not if I see you first.”
He used the knife to fix the mink around his shoulders like a cloak before he slid to the side of the driveway and started his sprint.
GIDEON CAME from money—not, say, Joey Carlyle’s father’s kind of money, with the extensive grounds and the small army of security and the files of blackmail bait that Gideon had begun to suspect Carlyle knew about, but comfortable enough. Mountain Lakes wasn’t Essex Fells—but it was close.
Gideon had gone to Princeton after high school and had been slated to get his doctorate there immediately, but he’d served with the Marines and done Officer Candidate School instead.
He’d gone back to Princeton after his ten-year stint, and graduated in four years, with honors, with a masters in criminology and his PhD in psychology.
Which had made him a perfect candidate for the FBI Behavioral Analysis department—until his old CO’s friend, Clint Harding, had approached him about creating a new kind of alphabet unit, one as intent on addressing the needs of the victims as it was on stopping the perpetrators.
Gideon had been in on the SCTF from the ground floor, and he knew things—uncomfortable things—about every one of his coworkers, because he’d been one of the three people in on who the unit hired since the very beginning.
He wished he could say he’d seen this thing between him and Carlyle coming, but he hadn’t, and the solace of his stepmother’s big-assed two-story second home off Lake Erie in Pennsylvania was a particular balm after he and Joey had parted at the train station.