Joey had wanted him there so bad.Something about the silence of the crossbow bolt, the awfulness of what had almost happened, and even the cemetery plot—labeled the Island of Hope, a place for unidentified murdered children, of all things—had depressed Joey in ways he didn’t think hecouldbe depressed.Not after his childhood.Not after his adulthood, for fuck’s sake.Not after all his internal bullshit about predators and prey.
It was beginning to dawn on Joey Carlyle that sometimes you were neither the wolf nor the deer.Sometimes you were just a human fucking being depressed by what other human fucking beings could do to each other.
So he was in the back of the SUV as they returned to the office—via the nearest food venue, since Garcia professed to be hungry and Joey knew Gideon often went without food in the morning—when his phone buzzed.
He glanced at it numbly, for once looking forward to the time off after a weapons discharge or a kill, and thinking it might be Gideon with his order.
Come to the compound for Christmas.
Joey gaped.No return number, but there didn’t need to be one.
Fuck off and lose this number.
Shit.He was going to have to requisition another fucking phone.
You think you’re invisible?Your little unit is making waves.It’s time to come home.
He sucked air in through his teeth.They hadn’t made any explicit plans, but Gideon had said something about forgoing his trip to Pennsylvania this year to his stepmother’s place so they could spend Christmas day… whatwuzit?Joey touched the face of his phone and remembered Gideon’s nonchalant invitation.
We can eat good food, watch stupid Christmas movies.You know—give each other dumb presents.Pretend like we’re normal.You think?
I dunno, Gid.What’s a dumb present?I need specifics.
You ever play with Legos?
Joey remembered now, how he’d snorted and rolled his eyes, and Gideon had nodded like giving a grown man a Lego set was totally reasonable.
And for some reason, Joey had looked forward to that.
They’d had Thanksgiving at Natalia’s house, and Joey and Crosby had spent the day playing with her two children to give Tal and her wife a break.They’d pretended to be choo-choo trains and bears while everybody else sat at the table and drank wine and adulted.
Joey had loved that.Loved the safety of the cubs rolling around on the carpet, loved the kindness of the adults, even loved the smell of wine on Gideon’s breath when they’d gotten back to Gideon’s apartment and fallen into bed.
But the idea of a holiday wherehegot to be the child, watching cartoons, opening “stupid presents,” that had filled him with this sense of contentment he hadn’t known he was capable of.
You don’t know where my home is,he sent to his father now.
There was no response, and for a whole forty-five minutes, Joey believed he was safe.
Then, as he was exiting the elevator into the office, the rest of the unit in front of him, all of them bearing takeout bags, his phone buzzed again.
He managed to pass the bag absentmindedly to Gideon before he wandered to his desk, sank down, and checked his phone.
And swallowed.
There was a picture of his apartment building on his phone.
Granted, the picture was from a block away, and it was grainy, so it had been taken from probably farther away than that, but he knew what the picture intimated.
It said, “I do too know where your home is, and you’re no longer safe there,” in a way that left no mistaking the threat.And no proving it either.
Joey wiped a suddenly shaking hand across his face, and instead of seeing his father, he saw the crossbow bolt as it entered into their perpetrator’s back that morning.
I’m a killer too.
He might have sat there forever, but a nonrecyclable food carton hit his desk with a thud, and Gideon stood there, staring at him with concern.
“What gives?”he asked quietly.
