Chapter 18
GIDEON WAS pretty sure he was still alive, but he was also pretty sure that wasn’t a good thing.
His head felt like a splatter on a windshield, and his wrist… oh dear God. Why was his hand still attached? It should not feel like his hand was still attached!
How will I human without you?
Goddammit, Joey. Goddammit. It would be so easy to just close his eyes and drift into the ether, let his body quietly fail, the lights in his brain flicker out.
But Joey fuckin’ Carlyle had climbed into Gideon’s bed of his own goddamned free will, and Gideon wasn’t going to die now.
Not when he finally got that thing about being human that was so great.
He’d had some inklings before. The team had been pretty awesome, he couldn’t lie.
His father, and his painful, awkward attempts at connection—that had given him some faith.
His stepmom had really given him something to root for.
But Joey? Joey was a whole new level of human.
Joey, who had been locked in this very fuckin’ basement, had not only emerged with most of his soul intact, he’d saved the goddamned cat.
Gideon hadn’t missed that part. That scared, angry little kid had saved the goddamned cat.
By sneaking through a secret passageway.
In this very goddamned basement.
Okay, then.
Gideon closed his eyes and breathed out the pain.
Breathed it out. Concentrated on other things.
His wrist was an explosion—but it was… oh shit.
It was a free explosion. The chair had splintered when it had hit the ground, and Gideon’s arms, both the real one and the one that felt like a bucket full of nails, were mobile.
With a groan, Gideon repositioned himself, stretching his bruised legs—still zip-tied to the chair—in front of him, and he took stock. His stomach muscles were bruised, and his ribs were broken. But his legs? His legs were bruised but sound.
Rolling to his back, he levered his legs up, the chair still attached, but it was no worse than leg presses in the gym, and he could do those for days.
One, two, three! On three, he lowered his legs and worked to yank them open, trying to break either the chair or the zip ties.
The chair crunched some more, but the zip ties held.
This time.
One, two, three! Ouch! Oh fuck, his ribs. His fucking ribs. Fuck! He breathed carefully, making sure he still could. Yeah, okay. Hadn’t punctured his lungs yet, but he had maybe one more of those in him.
Had to make it count.
One, two, three!
By the time he could breathe again and the pain stars had cleared enough for him to see his feet, the chair had disintegrated, save for a jagged splintered piece of wood he clutched in his one good hand.
Okay, then. Time to stand.
First he scooched on the rancid dirt floor to the rough wooden wall. Then, pressing his back against the wall, he walked his way up, ignoring the splinters they’d probably be pulling out of his ass for a month.
Ouch, fuck, ouch, fuck, ouch, fuck—oh my God. Oh holy crapblossom. He was standing. And armed. Or, well, one armed.
Okay, then.
Carefully, oh so carefully, following the wall so he could stand at all, he made his way around the edges to the darkness untouched by the swinging lightbulb.
Somewhere there was a door. Somewhere, there was a Joey. He’d just faded into the darkest shadow when he heard two noises. One was from deeper in the basement, in the darkest part, the part Stevie Carlyle probably never explored.
The other noise was from above, from the top of the rickety staircase, to the door above that led to the kitchen.
When that door swung open, Gideon could hear chaos erupting. Gunfire, Harding’s voice through a megaphone, grunts of men getting hit, screams of men who were wounded.
Iwo-fucking-Jima in a mansion, Gideon thought with a suppressed cackle.
He wondered if his boy was up there, slitting throats and taking names.
That’s my boy, he thought. Kill a fucker for me.
As if summoned by Gideon’s thoughts alone, Stevie called from the top of the staircase, “Joey! Joey fuckin’ Carlyle! You down there? You protecting your fag cop buddy yet? Show your face, boy, or I’ll gut him like a fish and tie you up with his guts!”
Oh, nice. Gideon thought his decision to kill himself to escape was probably one of the best he’d ever made. Yay him!
Wait. Wait. What was that other sound again?
’Cause it was getting louder.
“I SWEAR to Christ, Joey, how high were you to think Crosby might have fit down here?”
“Sorry,” he grunted, feeling his way to the next boulder. They both had flack helmets with lights, but they were bulky, and you couldn’t always point the light to where you needed to wiggle your body.
“Only be sorry if we get stuck.”
“Didn’t think I’d grown that much—” With a soft gasp he slithered between a fractured brick wall and a pile of rocks. “—since I was fourteen.”
“Brag, brag, brag,” she muttered. “All I’ve grown is boob, and I’m still not making it.”
He tried not to stumble. “Your boobs aren’t that big,” he told her. “I think you were born that big.”
She let out a breathless little “Ha!” and continued to keep pace after him.
“Didn’t know you noticed boobs,” she hissed as they took another step, and another.
“Noticed ’em plenty,” he told her, wondering if all soul-baring was as awkward as his had been. That trip back from the Stone Pony was probably the most poetic conversation he’d ever had. “Ouch.” He tore his knuckles on a ledge of metal embedded in rock. “Careful there.”
“You noticed ’em plenty, but you’re shacking up with Gideon?
” She didn’t say “string bean” or “scarecrow” or “scrawny no-assed skeleton,” for which he could only be grateful.
He knew what she meant. Unless she saw him without his shirt—and why would she?
—she wouldn’t know he looked good, defined, strong, powerful.
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “If Gideon’s soul had come with boobs, I would’ve fallen in love with boobs. But Gideon’s soul came with that nose and those eyes and that tall scrawny body. Life’s a fuckin’ mystery. I don’t ask questions—I just keep showing up at his apartment.”
“Aw, man,” she said and then drew up short, as did he.
The terrifyingly narrow path of boulders, hewn granite, and broken walls had stopped abruptly, giving way to a small antechamber barely big enough for Pearson and Joey to stand abreast.
It practically felt like a ballroom after the journey there.
“Aw man, what?” he asked, panting with the exertion of making his body fit where it had no business fitting. The fucking gamekeeper hadn’t seemed this small either.
“Aw man, that was really sort of romantic. How do I give you and Crosby shit about being tough guys in love if you do it with grace and charm? It’s heinous.”
“Yeah, you’re just trying not to notice Swan’s had a thing for you since the beginning.”
She grunted like he’d hit her and then took a breath. “Yeah, well, watching you and Garcia freak out when something happens to your significant other does not make me want to dive into the deep end of the pool.”
He glanced at her, her piquant face grimy from rock dust and sweat, but as fierce as any man he’d ever met. “Too late,” he said softly, and the look she gave him was pained.
“Of course it’s too late. Have you seen Swan? I mean… dude. He’s got manboobs, and they’re glorious.”
He glared at her. “How could you?” he asked, only partially kidding. “How could you put that image in my head?”
And then, in case she had something worse to offer, he pulled out one of the daggers from the back of his belt and started working on the lock to the basement door.
One, two, three—Pop!
GIDEON HEARD the rasp of the door as it scraped across the ground, and tried to pull in enough breath to yell a warning.
All he got for his efforts was spots in front of his eyes.
The noise at the top of the stairs continued, but there was creaking as Stevie made his way down them. Oh. Huh. He left the door open. Why?
“I know you’re in here!” Stevie cried. “All I had to do was follow the bodies!”
Well, Joey couldn’t be coming through that scraping deeper in the basement if he was making bodies up top. Who was coming in, then? Bad guy? If he was, Stevie didn’t know him.
Stevie never figured it out.
No, that had to be a friendly, but whoever it was, they were coming into a trap. Gideon swallowed—there was a lot of blood in that spit—and tried to think. Big pointy brain, Joey said. It felt pretty mushy now, but there had to be some pointiness left to help his team out.
“Maybe your buddy’s dead!” Stevie called, and in the echo of his voice, Gideon heard the rasp of the door.
His heart was thundering in his ears and his breath hurt… hurt… and he couldn’t hear…. Where was he?
He forced himself to scan the floor. Stevie was coming down the stairs, which wrapped around one wall and then leveled out to land almost immediately under the yellow light.
That was the center.
The rasp of the door was against the wall in the dark; Gideon didn’t know how deep.
The shortest line between them skirted the pool of yellow light. Stevie was going to be in that center in a couple of seconds.
Gideon had to hobble faster.
“Maybe I’ll do the both of ya!” Stevie shouted.
“Maybe I’ll fuck his corpse while you watch.
Maybe I’ll shoot you in the head while he breathes his last—wanna see?
You little pisser, I bet you’ve been waiting to watch me waste him so you can throw me in jail!
Cold-blooded little shit—just like the old man!
” He wasn’t making sense, and he wasn’t looking well.
His eyes were rolling wildly, and he almost ate it on the stairs twice, his stride was so uneven.
The gunfire above was slowing down, and Gideon wondered what was happening up there.
Whatever was going on, it had unhinged Stevie Carlyle to his last fucking gasp.
The voice in the dark scared Gideon so bad he almost fell.