“Punctured lung,” she said, and her voice was shaking but in control.He knew that, he thought, but he couldn’t say it.Oh God.“His ribs must be broken.Gid?Gid, can you hear us?”
“Joey…,” Gideon gurgled.“Couldn’t let him—”
“I’m fine, Gid,” Joey said, and his own voice was not in control,nothingwas in control.
“Carlyle!”The voice at the top of the stairway had Pearson aiming her weapon, but Joey was on his knees, Gideon’s head pulled gently into his lap.
“Boss!”she called.“We’re here.We need a bus for Gid, Clint.He’s in a bad way.”
“Can he be moved?”Harding asked.
“No,” she said.“No.Punctured lung, broken ribs—”
“We got a bus waiting for the place to be cleared,” Harding said.“But I’ll have—”
“Move, Clint, I’m coming down.”
“Blodgett,” Clint muttered, stepping aside.“Who wassupposed to stay outside with the bus.”
“I love you, Clint, fuck off.”
Later, Joey would tell Gideon that, he thought.Later, he and Gid would laugh about the big scary Clint Harding’s husband telling him “I love you, Clint, fuck off.”
But there was no laughing, not now, not when Gideon was struggling for breath.He couldn’t.He couldn’t.He couldn’t—
“Joey,” Harman Blodgett murmured, “lay him down again.We need a cervical collar to check for spinal injuries.There’s medics coming down.You should go up with Harding so we can tend to him.”
“Gideon?”Joey said, and it seemed to be the only word he had as he stroked Gideon’s battered face.“Gid?”
“Baby,” Harman said softly, “I need you to step aside.We’ll stand for him, Joey.You need to trust us with him, okay?”
My mate.My mate.My mate.
You have a pack, Joey.Have some faith.
He still didn’t have words, but he allowed himself to be pulled away, led up the stairs by Pearson, until Harding took his hand at the landing and pulled him out of the path of two very determined EMTs, jogging past with a stretcher that might just make it down the stairs.
When he got up to the kitchen, he glanced around, then blinked, then glanced around again.
“Jesus,” he graveled.“There’s a lotta fuckin’ dead people in this kitchen.”The white-tiled walls were spattered with blood—it was something out of a horror movie—and no fewer than four guys lay sprawled on the kitchen island, on a counter, on the prep table, on the floor, all of them with holes in their chests or their throats.One guy—a fifth—lay on his front with a knife hilt protruding from directly between his C3 and C4 vertebrae.
“Nice throw,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” Harding muttered.“It’s a beauty.Crosby, you got anything to say about that?”
Joey turned to Crosby in a daze and saw he was being tended to by another EMT for what looked to be a solid knife wound in his shoulder.“All the other guys were in the front yard getting shot by you people,” he muttered.“Joey said I needed to clear a path through the kitchen, so I cleared a path through the kitchen.Do you not have a path through the kitchen, Boss?”
“I appreciate not getting unalived by that asshole there,” Harding said, with a jerk of his chin to the guy with the knife in his back.“Who got you?”
“That asshole,” Crosby muttered, pointing his toe at a very surprised-looking dead man without a throat.“Sorry, Carlyle, I was doing that when Stevie got through.”He glanced at Joey and swallowed.“Gideon?”
“Getting worked on,” Joey said, feeling dizzy.“He’s….”His voice broke.God, he remembered how Pearson and Garcia had fallen apart when Crosby had almost died, and now he knew what that was like.He’d always assumed Crosby would live—but he couldn’t assume… couldn’t assume….
“He’s tougher than you think,” Harding said, and before Joey could retort thatof courseGideon was tougher thananybodyexpected, he added, “but there’s something I need you all to see.Tal found it once we’d cleared the hostiles from the house.”
“Any arrests?”Pearson asked.What she was really asking was “Any survivors?”
“Not.Yet.”Harding’s expression was so grim, it took Joey a minute to realize what he might possibly mean.“Follow me.”
