“Well, taking you away from your maternal grandfather made you his enemy for life,” Harding said.“I’m sure he’s figured that out by now.”
Joey remembered his last visit and narrowed his eyes in what evenheknew was an unpleasant expression.“I think he knows.”
“And kidnapping Gideon—or any member of the unit—made the SCTF not only his enemy, but it gave us anexcuseto be his enemy.I’m sure he’s got dirt or threats or something on somebody at the DOJ, which is why we’re getting radio silence from the FBI.But we have authorization to cross state lines and to use lethal force.All those hearings Crosby and I were called in for weren’t only to justify our unit’s use of force in the Sons of the Blood mishigas.They were to justify our unit to the people who provide our funding and authorize my use of it.Sure, it’s just us.”And now Clint Harding gave the sort of smile that reminded everybody in the room that the large dark eyes with the unexpected kindness hid the heart of a true soldier, a warrior, and a dyed-in-the-wool motherfucker.
“We gonna say it, Boss?”Pearson asked, that wicked smile lighting up her features.
“Oh yeah,” Harding said, and then the whole unit joined him in what had become their battle cry during the Sons of the Blood finale.
“How many of them can we take out!”
THEIR BLOODwas up, and their minds focused, which was good, because as the echoes of their battle cry were still lingering in the sound tiles of the office, Harding’s tablet pinged.
“Okay, then,” he muttered, holding his hand up for silence.“First things first.Joey, I’ve got three pictures here with dates that the drones picked up since your visit over Christmas.I need you to take a look and tell me what you think they mean.”
Joey turned to do that, and Harding held up a finger.“But first—and hear me out completely—an SUV was found on fire near the Teterboro airstrip, with a body inside.The body was identified, and it isnot,repeatnot, our agent.Do you hear me, Joey?Not Gideon.”
Joey nodded sharply, although his vision was going black.
“Breathe,” Natalia murmured in his ear.“C’mon, Carlyle, stay with us.”
“Not Gideon,” he repeated through numb lips.“I heard ya.”
“Good,” Harding told him.“Because the male, Caucasian, late forties, was identified as Horst Krentz, a German national who was apparently recruited to America to be mob muscle.His most recent employer?Anyone?Anyone?”
“Stevie fuckin’ Carlyle,” Crosby supplied.
“Give Crosby something to eat,” Harding said.“And Garcia too—you all know the drill.Don’t let them go into the field hungry.Anyway, yes.His cause of death was—”
“A gunshot to the back of the head,” Joey supplied.“He probably fucked up somehow when they grabbed Gid.Stevie doesn’t like his goons to fuck up in front of him.”He had a feeling that the guy he stabbed in the hand wasn’t breathing too well these days either.
“You’re no fun,” Harding said.“But the upshot is that yes, your old man is recorded as having boarded a plane with two other passengers bound for Boston—so probably the driver—and yes, that SUV is probably his, and so’s the dead guy.So there’s our probable cause.Now look at those pictures and tell me if you think your buddy the mountain lion is still alive.”
Joey scanned the pictures, frowning.“Oh no,” he said sadly, pulling up one from shortly after his visit.
Sure enough, lying bloody in the snow was the body of a friend.
“They didn’t need to do that,” he said, and in spite of his fear for Gideon, his fury at having his friends put in danger, he could still feel something for the magnificent animal, body destroyed bymanybullets, lying dead in the snow.
“Oh, Joey,” Gail said, her hand—which he’d seen coated in blood on more than one occasion—tender on his shoulder.“I’m so sorry.”
“Same,” Harding said.“But that’s not the last picture in the sequence.”
Joey kept studying, and his next intake of breath was less anguished.“The family,” he murmured.“The female.She was in another cave, at least the one I’ve seen, but she and her cubs survived.Check out the cubs—they’re mostly grown.I wonder if one….”
He continued to pore over the aerial shots, and what he saw, a picture dated a week or two ago at the most, made him smile.“Look at this one.One of the cubs set up shop in the old man’s cave.”
He paused.“Clint, this wasn’t that long ago.If the female’s still alive, and the male set up shop in the old man’s cave, that means the cameras are back down again.Either that or Stevie’s been distracted and hasn’t taken him out yet.”
“Well, Joey,” Harding said slowly, “what on earth do you think could have been distracting him?”
Joey grunted.“Maybe a pesky little agency that took out some higher-ups that he’d been blackmailing?He told me not to go after them, and we did.Maybe he promised more than he could deliver.”
Harding nodded.“So now his clients are pissed, and he needs to get SCTF in line.How better to do that than get his son in line.If he can prove that he’s got Joey Carlyle, SCTF agent, under his thumb, then he’s back in black, right?”
Crosby grunted.“But Boss, that’s crazy talk.That’s… he wasn’t even fuckin’ subtle.He did it in front of all of us.He left a DB in his wake.He’s—oh!”
And like that, Joey remembered his first encounter with somebody like Stevie Carlyle who didn’t act like Stevie Carlyle.
