Harding and Chadwick had gone their separate ways then.Harding retired from the Marines and joined the FBI for five years, while Chadwick had finished his stint and gone on to earn the post-graduate degrees he’d contemplated before he’d signed up, and that done to join the BAU.When Harding secured the funding to start the first branch of the Special Crimes Task Force, designed to piggyback off the FBI’s infrastructure but answerable to and run by Harding himself, Chadwick had been the second person he tagged after his own partner in the FBI, Natalia Denison.
Between the three of them and their previous experience, they’d brought in computer genius Kylie Grant and—fresh out of FLETC—former NCIS officer Gail Pearson.And with the acknowledgment it was only until they could recruit two or three more officers, a slight, gentle-looking man named Harman Blodgett, who had worked for the FBI as a consultant—Gideon had used his services on occasion—and whose day job of all things was as an ER doctor.
And who, Chadwick had quietly deduced, had been Harding’s romantic partner for at least three closeted years.
Nobody said anything about it, although Natalia wasveryopen about her wife and two children, one of whom had been born right before she’d accepted Harding’s invitation to this very new experiment.
The five of them had spent some time scouring reports of various stars of the ATF, FBI, and NCIS corps, searching for an indefinable something that would make somebody want to put their career on almost permanent hold to come work for a unit that was designed to protect the victims more than it was designed to make spectacular busts.
In the meantime, Harman Blodgett and Clint Harding had been called in to help a Chicago flatfoot who thought he had a serial killer on his hands and who couldn’t get a single goddamned person in his department willing to help him hunt the guy down.
After Crosby had brought the guy in single-handedly, his department had turned on him and had set him up to either be as corrupt as they were or to die, along with his bleed-blue parents.
Crosby had rejected that scenario too, but he’d needed a hand out of the windy city if he was going to survive.
And Chadwick had gotten word from a colonel who’d taken some of his criminology classes about a Green Beret who had defied orders to protect a village and like Crosby had practically earned a death sentence from his former colleagues for doing the right thing.
Harman Blodgett’s last day had been the day Joey Carlyle had enrolled in FLETC.Crosby arrived from his own training the day after.
Harding said the unit still needed three to five more people, but they had enough, and enough of them were highly trained and super intuitive enough to make do until then.
But Chadwick had taken a personal interest in making sure their new recruits landed.It was like those goddamned coffee mugs in the desert; sometimes simple kindness, simple smiles, simple acknowledgments of human beings under the uniforms and the orders, could make the difference between somebody coming back from an op or never coming home.
And knowing that if you didn’t come home, your brothers would remember you.
Harding hadn’t commented on the assortment of mugs that Chadwick brought in.He’d just taken his “Don’t make me talk about my feelings” mug and given Chadwick a nod.Natalia had spotted her “Goddess who smites” mug—complete with a lightning strike and pentagram—immediately.Kylie—who had recently become engaged at the time—smirked at the “Here comes the bride” cup with a sardonic twist of her full lips, and Gail had cackled at the cartoon cat holding the knife.Gail’sdocket contained very classified details about Gail’s work in covert ops.She was disturbingly good with knives.
Harman had taken his mug with the teddy bear in scrubs with a stethoscope with a raised eyebrow at Chadwick, who had winked.
One of Chadwick’s clues to Harm’s and Harding’s relationship was that he’d heard Harding use the wordBarchento refer to Harm under his breath.
It meant “bear” and had obviously been an endearment.
Gideon had wanted Harm to know that the secret was safe with him.
So now he had two recruits to buy coffee cups for.It was actually not a bad task; it forced him to connect with people, to study them, not just as a subject as he had in the BAU, but as a friend.
He and Harding had doubts that Crosby would be there that long.The kid was good.He’d tracked down a serial offender on his own using personal intuition, street smarts, and a sort of dogged integrity that had also gotten him kicked off the Chicago force and almost killed for reporting averyunrighteous shoot by his racist partner.But he was also… well, sweet.
Gideon hadn’t wanted to say anything, but he’d seen the open admission in Crosby’s face that he wouldn’t have evendreamedabout a unit like the SCTF, much less thought about applying.This kid had been born and almost died thinking Chicago flatfoot was the be-all and end-all of his existence, and frankly, Harding’s little experiment needed people to dream bigger than that.
But Gideon still needed to buy him a coffee mug, because just getting here was an accomplishment for Judson Crosby, and that needed to be acknowledged.
And as for Joey Carlyle….
“Thoughts?”Harding asked him after he’d shown Carlyle where to get outfitted for weapons and tactical gear and handle other administrative tasks.
“Feral,” Gideon said bluntly.“And I get he lived on pine nuts and universe juice for two months, keeping his own unit away from that village, but I think it goes deeper than that.”Carlyle was two months out of the Green Berets, and Gideon had been able to see his ribs still.Part of that was that FLETC was no joke, but Gideon had seen his appreciation for the food on the counter.He wondered if Carlyle would have survived on more pine nuts and universe juice if they’d left him to his own devices.
“Same,” Harding said.“You know who his father is.”
Gideon grunted.“Stevie Carlyle, of your higher-end mobsters.Yeah, I know.You think he’s getting away from that sitch?”
“I’d place money on it,” Harding told him.
“Or our lives.”Gideon didn’t flinch.
Harding grimaced.“Yeah.Or our lives.But he didn’t have to protect that village.Those people could have been displaced or killed and we never would have known about it.But he kept his own people off their backs while they found a way to get the whole village out of the way of Uncle Goddamned Sam.I think if he was a dyed-in-the-wool mobster’s boy, that sitch wouldn’t have bothered him one bit.His CO was adamant that Carlyle was absolutely on the side of using his considerable skills to protect people.And he’s obviously a survivor.”
