“Why us?”Crosby asked.“Not that I’m not grateful, Carlyle.Just sucks how being special never did me no favors.”
“’Cause with one fuckin’ exception, Crosby, you fuckers can defend yourselves,” Gideon told him dryly, and Crosby grinned at him while Calix elbowed him—gently—in the bruised ribs, avoiding the gunshot graze from that morning.
“Exactly,” Harding told them, shaking his head at his wayward children.“But it’s still hard to have things—people—you value when you’re growing up with a sociopath.”There was a gasp at the table, because this group of people knew what that word meant in theirbones.“Sociopaths will destroy what you lo—value, to control you.Joey, your father knows what you value, and it’s your partner.So both of you, keep those eyes in the back of your head wide open, okay?”
Joey nodded soberly and was relieved when Gideon did the same.
Harding gave them both kind smiles.“And in the meantime, who’s got room for a milkshake?”
Surprisingly enough, everybody.Every-fucking-body at the table had wreaked violence and mayhem in the last twenty-four hours.
They could fuckupa milkshake.
HARDING DROPPEDthem off at Gideon’s place, bringing them in through the alley and the back entrance to the stairs.He walked them up, double-checked the apartment for security, and then paused as Gideon and Joey wandered in, lost and exhausted and strung out, behind him.Joey stared at him, at a loss.
“Whatcha thinkin’, Boss?”Gideon asked after a quiet moment.
Harding met his eyes with the levelness of an old friend.
“Remember when we moved Crosby into Garcia’s, and you guys were like, ‘The guest room, who in the hell do they think they’re fooling?’”
Joey’s eyes widened, and he glanced around the apartment again.His shirts, folded neatly on the back of each tweed couch cushion and the recliner, used as doilies.The banners they’d bought—fromWickedto the Stone Pony—strung together and used as curtains in the bedroom.The weapons safe next to the couch, with books about the natural world stacked on them, books Gideon had bought for Joey, since his obsession with the natural order of the animal world was still going strong.
He must have made a noise then, because Gideon gave him a reassuring smile.
“Your shit’s all over the apartment, Joey,” Harding said gently.“I know we’ve had other things on our mind, but if we’re going to keep you two safe, you’ve got to be honest about how much Gideon means to you.You can think about what happened in two ways.You saved Gideon’s life last night—I’m not going to argue.You two, all your adrenaline kept you alive to some extent, but there was a lot left over in those syringes in the waste bin.I checked.So you can either think that threat you made saved his life, and that if you two stick together as a team, as a couple, you made him too valuable to kill, or you can think you put a target on his back.”
Joey swallowed.He’d been thinking exactly that.
“I… I don’t want a target on his back,” he said, the only thing he could think.
Harding nodded.“Then don’t leave him hanging,” he said gently.“We should keep up the old apartment.I wish I could let you move in here completely.But don’t pull away from him to keep him safe.You see it happening all the time in law enforcement, although not”—he smiled slightly—“always with such a dramatic reason.I’m just saying, you two know how to have each other’s backs.Don’t stop now.”
Joey nodded dumbly, and Harding gave them each a quick, hard,carefulhug, before he strode out of the apartment and back down the steps.
Joey found himself staring at the closed door, even as Gideon came to hang a reassuring arm around his shoulders.
“I wasn’t gonna,” Joey said, sounding sulky even to his own ears.
“Sure you were,” Gideon murmured, kissing his cheek.“Now you’re not.”
“I didn’t know bosses could do that,” Joey muttered, leaning into him.
“Fix your life?”Gideon’s chest rose and fell in a soundless chuckle.“Only the good ones.C’mon—shower first or pass out?”
For a moment, Joey wobbled on his feet, but then he caught a faint whiff of… of the docks, of that awful office where they’d been tied up, of the ozone from the car wreck, and oh dear God, his own BO.
And every muscle in his body suddenly seized up, as though reminding him that he and Gid had been beat up alotin the last two days.
“Shower,” he mumbled.His stomach gurgled.“And an antacid.”
“Same,” Gideon told him.“You hop in.I’m gonna find a plastic bag for my splint.”He sighed.“Joey?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really glad you’re here.That we made it.That you’re in my place.I want to say more, but I know you’re skittish—”
Joey turned in his arms and kissed him gingerly on the mouth.Wasn’t a great kiss.They’d had a rough night, and both of them needed a toothbrush and some toothpaste and at least a moment to rinse out the blood and the eggs.
