“How do you think he’s mixed up in this?”
“I think he’s blackmailing the top brass involved is what I think,” Joey said.“But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his fingers in the pie.The old man’s a control freak.I should’ve taken pictures of his house.You and your pointy brain would have had afieldday profiling him.”
Gideon snorted.“You’ve learned a lot since you got here.What doyouthink?”
Joey was quiet for a moment.“I think the first night I slept there, he had all these toys—Legos, Lincoln Logs, shit he grew up with as a kid—and a tablet.Back then, it meant we were rich, that he’d bought his kid a tablet.Anyway, I went up to my room after dinner, and I remembered my grandfather teaching me how to camp in the wild, particularly if there were bears or mountain lions around.Lights were scary.Big noises were scary.So I was eight years old.I missed the shit out of my grandfather, and I didn’t like this white motherfucker who took me away.I made traps—rigged a jump rope to trip somebody walking into the room, and if he stepped over that, he stepped on rubber balls.And I moved the bookshelves and put jacks and Legos on them so if you tripped and put your hands down, you made a racket, and I rigged the bookshelves to fall down and clatter, and on top of all of that, I rigged the tablet so that any bit of jiggling would make it screech speed-metal music at the drop of a hat.”
“Oh my God,” Gideon said, sounding stunned “What happened?”
“I didn’t count on the fucker having put video cameras in all the stuffed animals—the one toy I wouldn’t touch.I woke up, and he had a knife to my throat, but I’d slept with my own knife, so I held it to his balls.”
“Jesus,” Gideon muttered.“What’d he say?”
“He smiled, backed out of the room, and said, ‘I’m locking the door.I hope you don’t have to take a piss in the night.’”
Gideon blew out a breath.“Did you?”
“Yeah.I found a teddy bear with the camera on it and pissed on that.It was like a signal, you know?Let the games begin.”
“Oh Jesus.”Gideon leaned back in his seat and shuddered.“Baby.I’m sorry you had to grow up like that.”
“Me too,” Joey said.“Especially because, you know, all that training, growing up with a sociopath, it’s told me the same thing you already know.”
“What’s that?”Gideon asked, but he didn’t sound like it would be a shock to him.
“You and me tonight?We’re walking into a trap.”
Gideon was good—so good he didn’t check his rearview mirror, although he must have seen their tail for the last six blocks.Joey had shaken the first one, and the second, and the third, but it became obvious they weren’t getting out of here without some sort of confrontation.
“What do you want to do about it?”Gideon asked, just as an SUV with a reinforced grill and no lights T-boned them from out of fucking nowhere.
Apparently, the trap was already sprung.
THERE WASconfusion then, rough hands on his person, the pain of being dragged and restrained.
Joey fought.He heard swearing and knew Gideon was fighting too.Loopily, he pushed to his feet, started swinging, disoriented but pissed.They’d both worn seatbelts, but his neck, his shoulders—they’d be in aworldof hurt the next morning.Hands on his shoulder, haulinghishands behind his back, and the rip of duct tape.
He lashed out with a kick that landed solidly in somebody’s groin, and behind him he heard a pop and a howl and thought,Hey, Gid dislocated a knee.How cool is that?
But there were a lot of “them,” and only two of him and Gideon, and eventually they were in the center of a panting, sweating,angrybunch of men and one unpleasant, bitter-looking woman, all of them dressed in battered jeans, denim jackets, and hoodies—the unofficial uniform of dock workers without coveralls.
“What do we do with them?”came the question.“I’d just as soon shoot ’em and shove ’em off the dock.”
“They’re feds, you moron,” said the woman.“Their bodies show up and people start asking questions.Let me check with my guys.For now, take them upstairs and dose ’em—these two fuckers’ll break free if you let ’em.”
Dose.Oh shit.Dose.Joey had never known it was a fear.Of all the ways he’d had to come to harm at his father’s hands, anoverdosehadn’t been an option.But he’d seen Crosby’s face, heard the story of how Crosby had been doing okay.He’d been stabbed and stitched, had gotten into one hell of a fight, but he’d been doing okay—and then he’d downed meth-flavored water by accident and almost died.
And deep in Joey’s gut started the worry, theterror, that all the work he’d done to be smarter, to be a more compassionate human, to love his family in the SCTF like they seemed to love him, would disappear when the drugs hit his bloodstream.
He’d seen junkies.He’dtrackedjunkies, and sometimes they were sad, and sometimes they were mean, but never, ever were they the version of themselves they’d planned to be as children.
He’d rather lose his life than lose the person that Gideon took to his bed.
The thought was shocking beyond belief, but he couldn’t dwell on it because they were being dragged into a warehouse and up a set of wooden stairs to an office.He didn’t need to study the place to spot the pallets of plastic-wrapped white powder that were stacked in plain sight right behind the bay doors.
Oh, thesemustbe the Sons of the Blood, a group so deep in the police force they’d bought themselves a higher-up in the DOJ to force Crosby to recruit them into the nearest precinct.
But bad guys came in tangles—the dogfighting ring had taught him that—and Joey was not surprised when the biggest and oldest guy of the group that had borne them up here, kicking and fighting with every breath, stopped a younger, angrier guy from going to work on Gideon.
