A Few Good Fish

by Amy Lane

  “Finish getting dressed,” he ordered, ignoring Jackson’s rolled eyes. “If you throw up again, we’re staying here.”

  “Swear to fuckin’ Christ,” Jackson muttered, but he didn’t look queasy, so that was a relief.

  “You do know he’s in the hospital with a concussion, right?” he asked, stalking away from Jackson’s bed, where Jackson was struggling with his clothes.

  “No, because neither of you assholes told me!” she snapped. “I got the message about the new phone numbers and the kid from my brother, but a concussion? What in the hell did he do?”

  “Nothing,” Ellery muttered, because every account confirmed this version. “He tackled someone to keep him from getting shot, and a planter fell on his head. Everybody swears it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Hunh.”

  Unlike with Jackson, where Ellery really hated that sound, Ellery got it with Jade. With Jade, that sound meant “I think you’re speaking utter and complete bullshit, but you’re not worth the trouble it would take to get a better answer from you.”

  “And I’m sorry about Billy Bob.” He meant that—Jade and Mike were both really attached to the drooling, shedding nuisance, and Ellery wouldn’t hurt their feelings over him for the world. “We sent him with someone who, quite frankly, isn’t so attached to Jackson and I.” He’d taken the phone from Jackson in the room, but now he looked through the glass at Jackson—who was getting dressed—and nodded down the hall. He started toward the main entrance, in a corridor with people and no expectation of privacy—and no place to put bugs.

  “Why would you do that?” she asked. “And why are you picking him up and taking him on vacation? That’s what you told Langdon, and he passed it on to the office.”

  “Okay, what part of ‘Someone tried to bug our car’ did you not get?” he asked sharply. “And that same person bugged our home. And if you look at the file on the Janie Isaacson case, you’ll see that her entire family got threatened, and Jackson was hurt during an attempt to make good on that threat. Remember what started in November, Jade? It’s back. And since there were no bugs at your station, and we’re on a clean phone in a public place now, I’m going to tell you that we think it started and ended down south, and we left the cat somewhere it can’t be traced to anybody Jackson cares about.”

  “What about you?” she asked, voice subdued.

  “He’s the person I care about on this coast—and my mother and father have a file with everything and contacts they’ve already shared it with. No, Jackson’s the one they’ve got the most leverage on, so we tried to protect his people.”

  “And the cat.”

  Ellery tried not to think about what they’d do to the damned cat. “Crystal is paranoid as hell,” he told her, because it was true and Crystal had assured him as he’d been loading Billy Bob into her car. “She’s got a zillion different alarms and bug trackers in her own home—and old hacker friends who will avenge her death if anything goes down. If these people aren’t legitimately afraid of Crystal’s network, they’ve got computer resources I don’t want to know about. But Jackson’s people—”

  “I hear you,” Jade said humbly. “You’re protecting us. Just don’t protect us out of the loop, understood?”

  “I gotcha. I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I seriously didn’t want you showing up at the hospital so they could get a look at you guys and maybe bug your car. Did Kaden tell you the deal with the kid?”

  “Yeah. That’s messed up about the guy in the liquor store—what do the cops say?”

  Ellery drew a blank. “Uh….” That was usually Jackson’s job.

  “I would check with your people before you go haring off into the wild blue,” she said judiciously. “I mean, maybe it was just a simple case of bad timing.”

  Ellery snapped out of his blank. “Jackson seemed to feel the guy had been tortured. I don’t know how smart the cops are—”

  “What about the ones who looked at Janie Isaacson’s car?”

  God, she was smart and relentless. “Those cops got switched out,” he said. “I need to look at my notes, but the guy who was supposed to do Janie’s investigation was not the guy Evander talked to—”

  “Evander is…?”

  “Janie’s boss. He’s the guy Jackson was tackling when the planter got shot on top of his head.”

  “Ugh.” Jade’s sound had the rolling of eyes in it. “Of course he was. So we’ve got crooked cops again?”

  It was Ellery’s turn to say, “Hunh.”

  “You’re waffling because…?”

  Ellery found a relatively quiet hallway and leaned against the wall. “Because I’m not sure if it’s crooked cops or just manipulated cops. If a bigwig from the military calls his buddy and says, ‘Hey, a friend of mine is in a pickle, can I have someone in there who knows what he’s doing?’ then we end up with the guy with the most military-friendly eye.”

  “So good ol’ boy,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s promising.”

  “Well, a little,” Ellery had to admit. “Because that means they’re not really corrupt, just being… twisted.”

  “So we can twist them back.” She sounded relieved, and Ellery didn’t blame her. They’d had to fight the police force before, and Jackson had spent the last ten years engaged in that battle. It would be swell if that was someone they didn’t have to count as an enemy this time around.

  “My thought.” Ellery sighed then and rubbed the back of his neck. The cots in the hospital were not comfortable, and more than anything, he longed to be able to take Jackson home.

  Home was not an option right now, and that thought was like a kick to the gut. He and Jackson had to resolve this issue now if they were to have any expectation of privacy or safety for the rest of their lives.

  Ellery shivered, thinking about a hotel room and living on the road, and suddenly wondered if this was how Jackson had felt, his first fifteen years of life, before he’d moved in with Jade and Kaden Cameron and their mother, Toni.

  Except Jackson had possessed no options then, no resources—and Ellery did.

  And Ellery had Jackson.

  Ellery shook off the feeling of helplessness and counted his blessings.

  Jade was one.

  “So we’re going in search of the bad guys,” Ellery said, avoiding specifics. “But I need you here. I’m going to text you the name of the officer who was assigned and the name of the one who ended up handling the case—”

  “I’ll send you their records ASAP,” she said confidently. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Get me a computer appointment with the ADA—”

  “Arizona?”

  Arizona Brooks was Ellery’s contact at the ADA, and while she hadn’t been exactly receptive in the past, the last time her office had ignored Ellery and Jackson they’d ended up with a house full of ODs and a cop tortured in captivity. He was pretty sure he’d have her ear this time.

  “Yeah—but not until tomorrow afternoon, late.”

  “You planning to sleep in?” Jade drawled, and Ellery let out a sigh.

  “Hospital cots suck,” he told her, feeling stupid and helpless. To his surprise, his honesty earned her compassion.

  “Yeah, and you got a long drive ahead of you. Do me a favor, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “My brother’s been sending me some pictures that might make you and Jackson feel better—show him, okay?”

  For a moment Ellery drew a blank. Then it hit him. “Oh! How they doing?”

  “They’re doing good,” she said warmly. “Mike and I went up this weekend. It was… it was a good thing, what Jackson did for that boy. Both those boys. I mean, AJ tries so hard here, but he’s floundering. I think Kaden’s going to try to get a job up there for him.”

  Ellery breathed out steadily, reminded once again of why they all worked so hard to keep Jackson alive.

  Because without even trying, he could do things like this.

  “We’d both like that,” Ellery said qu
ietly. “Thank you. Now I need to get going—Jackson and I are taking off from here.”

  “Text me when you get wherever you’re going,” she said dryly. She’d been with Ellery when he’d spoken to Karl Lacey—she knew which plane he’d been on and where it had taken off from. But she also apparently knew Ellery was right. The less people knew she was connected to Jackson, the safer she would be.

  “Keep us briefed of any suspicious activity,” he told her, and she grunted affirmative.

  And then he signed off.

  That quickly, he and Jackson were detached from their home, from anyone who would expect to see them in Sacramento, and they were on their own.

  So now, with Jackson next to him in the new Infiniti, Ellery wasn’t in any mood to take any shit about not giving Jackson his way.

  “What in the hell would we do with a Chevy Tahoe?” Ellery asked, shaking his head. “We certainly couldn’t drive it, it costs a zillion dollars! We couldn’t camp in it, because I hate forests, I hate trees, and I hate water that’s not chlorinated. About the only thing we could do in a Chevy Tahoe is get shot at, and you know what?”

  “Been there done that?” Jackson asked dryly. He was playing with the seat while they talked.

  “Wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds,” Ellery retorted. “What are you doing?”

  “Lying down flat and covering my head with a sweater. Do you know there’s a big yellow ball of light in the fucking sky? It’s obscene.”

  Ellery’s eyes widened behind his sunshades. “You said your head was fine.” He’d heard Jackson with the doctor that morning.

  “I lied. You do it all the time.”

  “I don’t lie—I just give orders.”

  “You lie. Remember the cough syrup in the tea?”

  Ellery grunted. “It’s not lying when you just assume the tea tastes vile. In fact, it’s negligence on your part for not drinking tea when I’ve offered to brew it for you because it’s better.”

  Jackson chuckled sleepily. “How you managed to make that my fault is a thing of beauty.”

  “You lied about your head.”

  “I did.”

  “But now you’re—”

  “Lying in a car with a sweatshirt over my head hoping you’ll shut up and listen to music so my painkillers can work.”

  “But why?” Ellery demanded. “We were safe in the hospital—”

  “The quicker we get this done, the better,” Jackson muttered harshly. “Your house, Ellery. Not to sound like a big maudlin baby, but I’ve never felt as safe in my life as I did in your house. I want that safety back. I’d also like to have sex without it being monitored. For all I know, they’ve got someone at a computer screen going, ‘Oh, hey, this guy’s doing it all wrong. How does the lawyer guy not know he can’t fuck?’”

  Ellery snickered. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  “It is not—”

  “No, it totally is. I’d know if you couldn’t fuck. You do fine. You do outstanding, in fact. But I’d like to know it’s… private again too. So I get your need for hurry. Just….”

  Jackson hauled a gray hooded sweatshirt out of the back and wrapped it around his head—part was a pillow and part was a blindfold—and then he yawned.

  “Just what?”

  “Just take it easy until your head doesn’t ache, okay? We’ve got two weeks. You don’t need to bounce your skull around for another ten days. I’m serious.”

  “I want to be back with my cat before then,” Jackson mumbled. “Let’s make it five.”

  “Let’s wait until you can face the daystar without whining about bursting into flame,” Ellery told him. “Any choice of music?”

  “I’ve got a mix in my phone.” Jackson yawned again. “Wake me if you need me to drive.”

  “Us into a ditch,” Ellery muttered, grabbing his phone from the island and pulling up his mixes.

  Great. Nirvana, Offspring, Green Day, Linkin Park, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, and the Killers.

  “You know this is going to give me a headache,” Ellery muttered, getting ready to push the button.

  “There’s a cello mix of the same shit for you,” Jackson murmured. “Quityerbitchin, Ellery, I got your back.”

  Ellery spotted it and hit the link, and 2Cellos came up with “Thunderstruck.” Ellery’s neck, which had been killing him since he woke up on the cot that morning, melted, and the pain drizzled out of his body.

  Of course Jackson had an Ellery mix there.

  Because Jackson looked out for him too.

  Weird how that worked.

  Fish on the Run

  JACKSON WOKE up with a gasp and a shiver and struggled out of the material swathed around his head so he could orient himself.

  His head felt very much better, but “Oh my God, I’m blind?”

  “No,” Ellery said quietly at the wheel by his side. “You’re not blind. It’s nighttime. You just slept for a solid seven hours in the front seat of the car.”

  Jackson grunted and raised the seat, smooth as butter. Wow, Ellery didn’t seem to give a crap what kind of car they ended up in, but Jackson was both impressed and intimidated by silver-gray leather upholstery and a ride so quiet it was like you were gliding.

  “Seven hours? Is that why I’m starving?” His stomach literally cramped.

  “You’re hungry?” The surprise in Ellery’s voice was like an arrow of guilt. “There’s a sandwich in the cooler. Go for it.” Ellery nodded toward the island, which had a little cooler built into it. “And I tried to wake you up when I stopped for those, but you said ‘Fuck off and let me die,’ so I gave it up.”

  “Sorry about that.” Jackson lifted the lid to the console and breathed in the scent of captured roast beef and avo. “Oh wow. Cold soda too. It’s like you know me.”

  He seized the sandwich and set the soda in the cup holder, noting groceries on the floor behind him as he did. “Did you have those when you picked me up, or did I just miss an entire whack of time?”

  “No—I had those already. You were asleep, but you weren’t dead.”

  Jackson chuckled and bit into the sandwich, moaning a little because it was real food and the roast beef was sublime. “You’re amazing—I was basically converting oxygen, and you got a car and packed and remembered snacks—”

  “Groceries.”

  “Anyway, you did real good, Counselor. I’m sorry I was out of commission.”

  Ellery sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Not your fault,” he conceded. “In fact, it actually gave us a place they couldn’t bug so we could plan—that was nice.”

  “Sure,” Jackson said, nodding. “I’ll try being noncritically injured more often.”

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You don’t sleep in hospitals,” Ellery said quietly. “I mean, you haven’t slept much in months, but….”

  Jackson grunted, embarrassed. It was bad enough that Ellery got to see him waking up in a cold sweat, struggling not to scream. The nurses in the hospital—and not just Dave and Alex, Jackson’s personal friends—had taken to touching his shoulder softly and whispering their names and what they were doing in the room, every time they came to check his vitals.

  “Hospitals are the suck for sleeping. What’s your point?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Ellery said again, but this time it came out resignedly, like a sigh.

  “Where the hell are we going?” Jackson asked, ignoring the asshole thing because he didn’t have a choice.

  “Well, I’m thinking a random hotel in San Diego,” Ellery mused, and Jackson felt himself light up.

  “Can we get one of those nice ones on the waterfront?” he asked wistfully. He and Ellery had stayed in the Marriott on the Marina the last time they’d flown down, and while Jackson tried really hard not to get attached to all of Ellery’s creature comforts, something about the way the balcony overlooked the waterfront and most of downtown had made Jackson f
eel like a smarter, stronger, more blessed human being.

  “Sure,” Ellery said, and Jackson looked at him to see if he’d be wearing the shy half smile he got when something romantic he’d tried actually worked.

  He was.

  Score.

  “Don’t think they’ll be anticipating that?”

  Ellery shrugged. “Hard to say. They weren’t watching us until November. There’s a lot of different hotels down there—we’ll go to a different one. I think what you said to Janie is pretty true. We assume the bad guys know all the things, but I don’t think Karl Lacey can use the full threat of the US military on us. For one thing, it would draw attention. If he starts commandeering computers and throwing trackers on us, the people he has to ask for help are going to hear our investigation. He can only ask a few people. I’m pretty sure we didn’t leave much of a trace. I told Langdon we’d be going off the grid. I told Crystal we’d be investigating the bugs. They may know we’re coming down south. If they’ve got a credit card trace on us, they’re going to be shit out of luck, because I went old-school and withdrew cash and bought a shit-ton of prepaid Visas—there’s a card in every pair of jeans, now you know. And Crystal and I swapped emergency credit cards, so she’s using mine up in Sacramento so I can hold down a hotel deposit down here.”

  Jackson blinked. “God.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen drug addicts less paranoid than we are.”

  Ellery grunted. “I’ve seen guilty mobsters worse at covering their tracks. We’ve got two weeks, maybe three, to get this shit resolved. We’re starting at a nice hotel in San Diego and hoping for the best.”

  Jackson took a deep breath and talked about the people they’d been avoiding talking about for the last four days.

  “I’m going to need to call Ace and Sonny—you know that.”

  Ellery grunted again. “Yeah. Yeah, I know that. Do you want to call them now?”

  Jackson looked out into the winter nightscape of the Tehachapi Mountains. Back in September they’d been vacationing—and part of their vacation was fleshing out an alibi for one of Ellery’s clients.