He took a swig of OJ and watched his father do the math.
“You wouldn’tdare—” 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 haveanyidea 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 theyknowabout you.They’veprofiledyou.They havefileson 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 todare,” 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 beverywarm 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 CAMEfrom 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 Princetonafterhis 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.
