“How, pray tell, would you know that?” Jay asks, one eyebrow raised, arms crossed. The action pulls his black button-up taut, showcasing his magnificent shoulders and arms.
Sigh.
Well, shit. Gideon hadn’t meant to letthatcat out of the proverbial bag.
“I keep tabs on him.” Gideon keeps it simple. Vague.
“You keeptabs?” Finn asks, unhelpfully. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Fuck. Fine.
“I get reports from acquaintances on occasion.” Once a day—unless Hayes is being moved—then it’s more. “Just so I knowwhat’s what. I don’t want us to be surprised.”
But they were.
They were fucking taken off guard, and now his entire family was at risk. Goddess-dammit.
Gideon remembers, with a sinking stomach, that Dill Pickle had said he couldn’t killGideon—not that he wouldn’t have killed anyone else. That he was here to take Nix with him when he was done.
Nix curls in on himself. “Why do you do that? Do you think he’s going to escape?”
“Never. I keep track, so I know he’s fucking miserable.”
Gideon loved hearing how the piece of shit took a shiv to the abdomen on the first day in the yard—just for being an asshole. Or that once he’d returned to the general population, someone had pissed on him in the yard.
While none of it had been Gideon’s idea or his doing,exactly,there may or may not have been a few cases of cigarettes delivered anonymously in thanks.
Jay coughs, rubbing a hand over his face because Jay knows him all too well. “Fuck, Gideon.”
“And is he?” Nix asks, sitting up straighter.
Gideon tilts his head, deciding how graphic he should be.
He meets Nix’s gaze and nods. “He was very happy to be moved into solitary at city lock-up.”
Hopefully, Nix can feel just how much Gideon has worked behind the scenes to make sure Hayes has had not one moment of peace—and won’t until he’s dead in the ground.
“Good.” Nix nods and turns in Grayson’s arms, finally relaxing a bit.
It hasn’t solved their problem here and now, but for whatever reason, Nix is content knowing Gideon has his back.
“Hey,” Rowan says.
Gideon hates it when his beloved baby alpha starts any conversation like that.
“Does anyone else smell that? I mean, Dill Pickle now smells like poopy-pants, but it’s something else?Like—”
Jay and Gideon walk toward Rowan, noses up.
They follow the putrid odor to the back of the car—
—and stop dead in their tracks.
“Oh, fuck,” Jay says again, and this time, it’s not his fault their leader sounds uncertain.
He grabs a damp cloth from Grayson, using the clean side to open the passenger-side door and pop the trunk release on the older car.
The scent of death is overwhelming, and both Grayson and Leo move their armful of cuddly mates away.
