Chapter 14
Borrowed Time
JOEY STARED at the text again and sighed before getting up from his desk to tap Gideon on the shoulder.
“I’ll tell him,” he said, and Gideon nodded, starting to get up.
“It’s fine,” Joey said. “You keep working on what you’re working on. Harding doesn’t bite.”
Gideon gave him a warm smile, and Joey twitched his lips in return. He may talk big, but he was very aware this was a shitty time to tell Harding that his father had tracked his new phone.
Crosby was in trouble again (goddammit, Crosby!) and this time, all they could do about it was cover for him and pray he didn’t get outed in the undercover assignment he never should have been given.
The good news was that, if Joey had ever doubted that the team would stand up behind him and Gideon when they came out, those doubts were dispelled when Crosby had moved in with Garcia in March, claiming to be using his spare room.
Spare room the unit’s collective ass. Anybody who saw them move together, heard them talk, heard them argue over what color sheets were going on the bed in the spare room, knew what was happening—what had happened—between the two of them, and the fact was, everybody was so relieved Crosby wasn’t alone in the world like a lost puppy they didn’t even bat an eyelash that the partners were just like Joey and Gid. Partners in every sense of the word.
But that wasn’t the only secret that had been revealed when they’d moved in together.
Crosby’s past, much like Joey’s, had come to bite him in the ass.
He’d needed to leave Chicago not just because he refused to go along with the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager by his partner, but because his entire department had been rotten to the core, saturated in the stink of a white supremacy organization known as the Sons of the Blood.
And Crosby’s old partner had shown up in a federal capacity to force Crosby to do his bidding.
So Crosby was working in a Brooklyn precinct under another name, pretending to recruit for the Sons of the Blood, while his unit spent every spare moment they had trying to figure out the power structure of the organization so they could bring it down and get their Crosby back.
The whole unit was being tracked by Sons’ members. They’d already lived through a very bloody night, saving Crosby’s former roommate, and a month spent looking over their shoulders and trying to keep Garcia off the ceiling from worry was wearing on everybody’s fucking nerves.
Harding did not need the added aggravation, but given that he’d already sat through Gideon’s rather dry revelation of their relationship and the upshot of Joey’s visit to his father with only raised eyebrows and, “The two of you? Really? Go figure,” Joey hoped their boss’s legendary stoicism wouldn’t let him down today.
“Boss?” Joey said, sticking his head into Harding’s office. Gideon had pithily described it as a plain space with very comfortable furniture, including a couch that everybody had slept on at one point or another when a case got hairy.
Harding glanced up and then sighed and stood up, stretching his arms over his head.
“What time is it?” he asked fuzzily, and Joey grimaced, because that usually meant that Harding had been so busy at his desk doing one thing after another that he’d forgotten to eat, drink, stretch, or sometimes pee.
“Time to hit the head and get something at the vending machines,” Joey said. “I’ll tell you while we walk.”
Harding blinked at him and then gave a sheepish smile. “Caught,” he said. “I’ve been doing all the paperwork while Tal does super extra detective work on Crosby. We’ve got some people in the upper levels of the DOJ who might get subpoenaed if we can run this whole thing to ground, but first….”
First Crosby had to get somebody, anybody, who could implicate the guy he’d once testified against and who now held a knife to his balls.
“I would love to not have to take a different route home every night,” Joey said, referring to the fact that, on any given day, one or all of them could pick up a tail.
Joey and Gideon had both started hanging back, allowing themselves to be followed, and then taking radical turns into dark alleys or known body-dumping sites, their bodies wired for action.
It wasn’t ethical—or even moral—but God, they were both itching for a kill.
The bad night—the bloody night—Crosby’s fragile former roommate, Toby, had been falsely arrested and imprisoned in a hostile precinct.
Garcia and Gideon had gotten the poor guy out—although he was still having surgeries and physical therapy to repair the damage done to his body that night—while the rest of the squad… prowled.
Joey couldn’t lie, not even to not horrify Gideon.
He’d loved the prowl. Those fuckers. Those bloody fuckers.
Taking an innocent guy like Toby and trying to beat him to death?
Shoving Crosby in a proverbial meat grinder and forcing him to do their dirty work?
He’d taken three out with his crossbow that night, because silence and stealth had been mandatory, and he’d seen the looks on the others’ faces.
Tal, Gail, Manny, Harding—they’d been snarling and fierce, a wolfpack still raring for the hunt, even with blood on their fangs.
But Gideon, who had kept him and Garcia alive, as well as rescuing Toby and a couple of guys who were working out well as new recruits for having the balls to stand up to their precinct that night by sheer stinking strategy—hadn’t been horrified.
Joey knew this because in the locker room that morning, after the others had showered and gone out to wait so they could exit together, he’d lingered, cupping Joey’s cheek and giving a feral smile.
“Did you have fun?” he asked, showing all his teeth.
And Joey knew he was seen. “Not enough,” he’d growled.
“Don’t worry, Little Brother,” Gideon said, quoting an old movie that Joey had never seen. “There’s more.”
Joey had gone in for a quick, fierce kiss, and then they’d separated and gone out to meet the others.
After taking an hour and two different buses to get to Gideon’s apartment that morning, they’d barely made it through the door before they fell upon each other and fed and fed and fed.
But that kind of high alert took its toll on a body, on a mind, and they were a unit under siege now.
Walking through their own level of the federal law enforcement building—a rather forgotten nook on the fifth floor—they held their heads high, unafraid.
It was easy because Gideon and Joey had installed their own private cameras, starting at the elevator that fed directly into everybody’s computer units, so all visitors were screened and identified before they even got to the first turn of a very long corridor.
For the moment, in this specific place, they were safe.
But Gideon and Joey had gotten very good at installing surveillance equipment.
They’d done it to Natalia’s house, to her father’s (he was a high-powered judge), to Pearson’s apartment, and to Swan’s.
They’d even done it for Henderson and Doba, who had started out the only two honest flatfoots in their precinct but had graduated to protected members of the unit, complete with a new apartment that they shared (with the fresh-faced Henderson’s cat and more seasoned Doba’s apparently endless supply of houseplants) and were both doing a good job of assimilating into the unit.
Doba had even applied for FLETC training, and Henderson was working on getting clearances as a researcher.
Like Crosby, they’d taken a bad situation and made the best of it, and the unit had taken them in.
And protected them, although they appeared to have been forgotten by the Sons of the Blood. While the core members of the unit? They saw action once a week, dodging the people tailing them and sometimes, putting them in a world of hurt.
But this floor, their offices? Those were theirs. Harding wasn’t the only one working late these days.
First the vending machines, each of them getting a candy bar, then the conference room, where the coffee was.
Gideon, who had originally supplied the fancy coffees and the coffee bar, something Joey would always adore him for, had bought a new “destresso” machine, as Joey called it, because for the first week Crosby had been under cover, shopping for that fucking espresso contraption had been the only thing keeping Gideon from losing his shit.
A giant vanilla latte sure could take the edge off a guy’s day.
Harding also visited the staff minifridge and was surprised to see a reusable plastic container with his name on it.
“Gideon?” he asked, pulling out his and Joey’s—and Gideon’s. There was one for each of them; Joey had helped.
“Both of us,” he said, taking the two containers from Harding. “Natalia did it one day last week. Garcia keeps bringing us fruit. Swan and Pearson order takeout. We’re dealing, Chief.”
Harding nodded and then, spotting Gideon at his desk through the window, waved the sandwich container at him and nodded.
Gideon—who was on the phone—saluted back, and Joey gestured him over. Gideon nodded, and Joey knew he’d come in and they could eat together when he was done with his task, and then it was time for Joey to quit stalling.
Harding sank into one of the comfortable chairs around the conference table and sighed, breaking out his sandwich. “Roast beef and pickles,” he said. “Gideon doesn’t miss a trick.”
Joey’s was almost the same thing, but with bacon added on top. Still, he’d wait for Gideon to be done.
Harding was halfway through his sandwich when he realized Joey was eating chips and drinking coffee to keep him company, but he hadn’t spoken yet.
“Go on,” he urged through a full mouth.
Joey sighed and held out his phone.
If you touch the Sons, I can’t protect you.
Harding grunted. “Darling Papa?” he asked sardonically.
“I’m afraid so. I’m going to need—”