“Because you fell for Crosby so hard when you walked in the door, the rest of us assholes ceased to exist,” Gideon said dryly, and Garcia’s cheeks went dark pink under his bronze skin.
“Fair,” he mumbled, before taking his own bite of steak and eggs.“So whoisyour father, for those of us not in the know?”
Joey opened his mouth to answer, but Harding did instead.
“Stevie Carlyle,” he said, crossing his utensils over his cleaned plate.“One of the biggest mobsters-slash businessmen-slash blackmailers on the East Coast.”
“Oh shit!”Garcia was staring at him with round eyes.“No kidding?”
“No kidding,” Joey said, his mouth twitching.He’d thought this moment would be hard.“Anyway, he’s been trying to recruit me pretty much since I left the FLETC.I told Harding.It’s why I keep switching out phones and SIM cards—sorry everybody.I visited his place over Christmas, sort of, uhm, made an impression that I was never fucking coming back, and he needed to leave us alone before we investigatedhim.”
“Could we?”Crosby asked Harding astutely.He’d eaten about half the food on his plate, but that, apparently, was what happened when you graduated from two months undercover with a shit-ton of damage and a peptic ulcer.
Harding grimaced.“Yes and no.Yes,thiscrew—you guys and the folks who went to Washington to make their own busts today—mysquad?We could take ’em down.Won’t say easy, but Harm and Gideon know you don’t find this much talent just anywhere.”
“But no,” Crosby said, “because you don’t just go after somebody like that without a reason.It’s… mobsters know.Whatever their racket, they know how to stay under the radar.They’realwaysunder investigation, so they keep their activity levels at a place where that shit doesn’t go up.If it does, they escalate violence, and everybody loses.It’s an ecosystem.If you have enough wolves, the ecosystem thrives.You have too many wolves, and they’re fighting for food, or they feel threatened, there’s a lot of fuckin’ carnage.Not enough?All the deer overgraze, and the ecosystem gets fucked.We need to be the wolves, they need to be the deer.We can’t wipe out all the fuckin’ deer or there’s a bloodbath and a lot of dead civilians.Right, Chief?”
Harding smiled at him.“Those classes on organized crime paid off,” he said mildly.“Yeah, kid—you learned some stuff.”
“And I watched some of Carlyle’s fuckin’ nature documentaries when I was stuck in my flat under cover,” Crosby said.“It’s weird the shit you miss from pizza nights.”
Carlyle grinned at him.“Yeah, well, I missed your fuckin’ stupid shoot-em-ups.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Gideon muttered.“We watchedplentyof fuckin’ stupid shoot-em-ups when you were gone.”
There was some general laughter, and then Harding made a subtle sound, and Joey knew it was time to finish the story.
“Anyway, I said that if they killed me, my father would burn their families to the fucking ground.I know he would because he’s a sadistic bastard like that, and I also know he’s been tailing me.Harding knows they’ve got my apartment under surveillance.”He shuddered.“I wouldloveto fucking move, but when we go there now, we know their camera angles, and we know how to get in and out without them seeing.And I’ve spotted my tails a few times in the last few months.”He grimaced.“Between my father andyourproblems, Crosby, I wouldloveto take a fuckin’ dump in peace, if you know what I mean.”
Crosby sucked air through his teeth.“Yeah, I feel that.”He shuddered the deep tremor of a man who’d been living in a crappy studio that had been watched over by his mortal enemy for nearly two months.“Fuckin’ deeply.So why tell us now?”
Carlyle sighed and took his last bite before placing his own utensils over his plate and pushing back to sigh.“’Cause of what you said about the deer thing.You were right.Predators, prey, they form their own ecosystem.And now that we took out a bunch of wolves, my father’s the mountain lion that’s gonna move in.One of the things he texted me was not to go after the Sons of the Blood.”
“Fuck that!”Garcia snorted, and Joey nodded.
“Harding said the same thing.But we… you know.”He turned pleading eyes to all of them.“Guys, it was like one big fucking asshole at a time, you know?”
They nodded.
“So what now?”Crosby asked.
“Well, I figure we give ol’ pops a chance to deal with the fallout, and in the meantime?You know those eyes we grew in the back of our heads these last two months?”
“We don’t shut them anytime soon,” Gideon finished for him, and he gave Gideon a grateful look.
“Yeah.And we tell the others.Like, unless we have something pressing, we should have a meeting about it special while we’re wrapping this last shit up.How long you think that’ll take, anyway?”
Harding grimaced.“Two weeks for Crosby to be back in the field, and then he’s going back to the 43rd Precinct to help them clean up the mess those assholes made in their ranks.Between that and debriefs and testifying for everybody, I’d say six weeks to two months before we’re fully operational again.”
Joey nodded.“Don’t count on Stevie Carlyle to wait that long,” he said on a sigh.“But I’m pretty sure he’ll only be after me.”
“And Gideon,” Harding said softly.
Joey sent him a stricken look before meeting Gideon’s eyes.
“Why Gid?”But he knew.
“’Cause you told that guy Gideon meant something to you, Joey.It’s why you haven’t let yourself get attached until now, with us.”
