“D’you hear that?”Gideon asked.“Encore!”
“Oh God,” Crosby said, because God-for-fucking-bid Crosby be on an op without bleeding all over the fuckin’ place.He was gonna be okay, he’d assured them, but he wasn’t sure he knew enough ofHamiltonto sing along.
“Your loss,” Joey said.
Now, as Crosby and Harding conferred, Blodgett went out to talk to the nurse, and Harding said—loud enough for them to hear—”Jesus, don’t you guys know some Led Zeppelin or something?”
So they got to change to “Immigrant Song,” and that was good too.Air guitar with that one!
But back to what Harding had insisted at the beginning of that conversation in the hospital.Joey Carlyle hadnotbeen singing when he’d been completely unconscious and stoned.
He had way too much dignity for that.
BY THEend of the day, he’d consigned dignity to the four winds.Had they gotten the fuckers who’d fucked them?Oh yes, they had—in an explosion of bullets and blood in a conference room of police plaza, they’d killed all but two of the bad guys.
One of those bad guys would have averybad time in jail, and the other one, the one Crosby had wounded but not killed, on purpose because apparently their puppy had a mean streak, was probably going to die there.
Crosby liked that idea, and Joey thought better of him for the little bit of sadism that now laced his sweetness.It was that kind of move that could keep a puppy alive.
But finally, it was over.The upper-level Sons of the Blood were being subpoenaed by the other part of their team, and the part who had gone to One Police Plaza had surrendered their weapons and were slated for depositions in the next week.
And then there was lunch.Which on the one hand felt weird after the fuckin’ last week they’d all had, but on the other, sitting in a greasy spoon and eating steak and eggs with his colleagues—his family—felt like the thing that had been missing from his life.
Which must have been why he chose that moment to spill about his father.
It was either that or the heroin, but Joey hoped it wasn’t the heroin, because he and Gideon hadswornthey’d come down off their high before accepting their weapons.
But there they were—him, Harding, Gideon, Crosby, and Garcia—plowingthrough some first-rate chow, battered, bloody, exhausted, andravenous, when Gideon elbowed him.
“What’s up?”
Joey realized he’d been sitting in the same position, a juicy bite of steak dripping with egg poised halfway to his mouth, for a good ten seconds.
He glanced over at Crosby, who had spent some painful moments revealing his past to the entire squad so they would understand what they’d been up against in this last clusterfuck, and then at Harding, who had known about Joey’s past from the very beginning and still recruited him, had faith in him.
Welcomed him into his family.
And then he looked at Gideon, who had pretty much learned to read his mind in the last two years.
Gideon’s nose was swollen and taped, and he’d needed stitches on his temple and his cheek, would need dentistry—hell, would need to have his wrist set in the next two days because he had a hairline fracture that had been too swollen to do more than splint.
Gideon nodded soberly.“Tell them, kid,” he said.“That way they’ll be on the lookout.”
“I… I don’t think he’ll do anything right away,” Joey mumbled, and then glanced up to meet the eyes of everybody at the table.“But they… the reason Gideon and I didn’t die from an overdose—well, there were a couple.One of them was that they were aware that too many bodies had gone over at the pier, and as you know, it’s easier to move a live body than it is a dead one.The other two are more complicated.Yesterday, I sort of….”He felt his face heat.
“When the Sons of the Blood attacked, he spared our youngest attacker,” Gideon said softly.“Let him go.I would have too.Kid was maybe seventeen, and God—so scared.”
Joey nodded.“I couldn’t.”He finally took that bite and spoke through a heavenly burst of protein and grease.“I mean, Icouldhave, but, you know.I thought it was unnecessary.”
Under the table, he felt Gideon’s splint bump gently against his knee.Gideon knew the truth; that was all he needed.
“Anyway, that kid’s father was the one in charge of the needles.And he was going to let me live for it, but, you know, I had to have Gid’s back.”
“What’d you tell him?”Harding asked like he understood.
“Well, first I said if he killed my partner I’d burn his shit to the ground, and then, when he just stared at me, I….”He sighed and took another bite.After he swallowed he said, “I invoked my father.You all know who my father is?”
He glanced up and saw everyone exchange glances, and Crosby nodded, looking embarrassed, before Calix Garcia said irritably, “No.No I donotknow who your father is.Why does everybody else?”
