A Few Good Fish

by Amy Lane

  IT TOOK an hour and a half—and a couple of turns onto roads Ellery wouldn’t have been able to spot if he hadn’t been on them. The military base was small and featured some of the usual things—an airstrip with a small hangar, a handful of buildings that were obviously barracks, and an administration building. Unlike other bases Ellery had been to, this one was missing activity.

  The airstrip was untended, the barracks in disrepair. The small strips of lawn in the quad had been allowed to die and then overgrow with stickers that made up most of the mange green. There were no units doing PT, no jeeps taking recruits to the shooting range, no messages being run from the barracks to the CO offices.

  There were a few men by the barracks sitting in a grim huddle. They watched the SUV with narrow-eyed interest, and Ellery suppressed a shiver.

  They came to a halt in the spare parking by the admin building, and Ellery saw something else that made him shiver.

  “Where’s the flag?” Ace asked in shock.

  “Getting laundered,” Forehead cracked.

  “And ironed and folded,” Chinless added, snickering.

  Least funny joke ever.

  No flag. No Stars and Stripes, no flag of Nevada or California, no flag representing the branch of the armed service that occupied the base—the base was… without standard.

  Just a solid blood-colored banner made of something thick and textured.

  “Oh no,” Ace breathed as they were escorted across the parking lot. “Oh… this is not—” He finished off on a grunt as Chinless thrust a rifle stock against his kidneys.

  “The flag is not your business,” he said, voice twanging with the Deep South. “You two need to go talk to the commander, and then we’ll let you know what’s your business.”

  Oh great—something else Ellery didn’t know.

  He wasn’t afraid necessarily—but, unbidden as they made turns through glossy corridors of broken tile, he saw Jackson as he had been the night before, unguarded, willing, just once, to hope.

  If Ellery couldn’t talk himself out of this with his skin intact, Jackson would never forgive him.

  Like most government buildings, spare and unlovely, the CO’s offices were not set apart by beauty or ceremony, and it was spooky to stride through the buildings, the boots of their captors making dull purposeful thuds in the empty space. The relief when they finally entered one of the larger rooms toward the back was acute—even Ellery was getting creeped out.

  The room looked like it had been stripped—no photos on the walls, no commendations—although a minifridge in the corner and a trash can full of takeout boxes and paper plates attested to an awful lot of activity in there. A thick laptop, black and bulky, sat on the desk, and Ellery wondered if it was as outdated as the bugs that had been planted in his office and home. The desk in the middle didn’t lessen the air of dated technology—made of OD green metal, it had enough peeled-back corners and bent edges to effectively skin a man if he got close enough.

  And so did the man currently behind it.

  When Ellery first met Commander Karl Lacey, he’d been struck by the man’s ice. Well over six feet tall, Lacey had the white hair Janie had described as “like a helmet” and the square shoulders and lantern jaw that were the shiny star hallmarks of the military fetishist’s favorite wet dream.

  Three seconds in his presence and Ellery had sworn off military movies forever. He could hear Jackson’s voice in his head saying that much ice would shrivel any boner.

  Some of that ice seemed to be cracking today.

  Lacey’s hair—impeccable when they’d first met—was standing on end, the hair of a man who’d been tunneling his fingers through it in agitation for a long day. His steel-blue eyes were red-rimmed with dark circles, and his dress blues were missing a jacket and a good steam and iron to boot.

  Apparently, for all the evils he’d perpetrated in the world, mowing down a woman in cold blood by accident was the thing that haunted him the most.

  Lacey was on the phone as they entered, his voice pitching wildly as he barked orders that were apparently not being obeyed.

  “I said take care of the situation—No! No wetwork! She’s a stupid college kid. Can’t we fake a blood test—?”

  “No,” Ellery said behind him, his chest swelling with anger. “Because Janie Isaacson is a good and decent human being, and my boss is in charge of her. I’m a thorn in your paw. He’s a spear up your ass. You can hang up now.”

  “Fix it!” Lacey snarled, slamming down the phone. He whirled on Ellery and pulled up short. “Cramer? Who the fuck is this?” His eyes darted to Ace, and Ace smirked. “Gleeson? Adkins? I said bring Cramer—who is this?”

  “Rivers, sir,” Forehead replied sharply. “The two men were in close proximity, and we thought it prudent to bring them both.” He lowered his voice. “We didn’t want Rivers out there by himself—you’ve said he’s somewhat unpredictable, and we understand they’re attached.”

  An unmistakable look of disgust crossed Lacey’s stone features. “Our surveillance team says they went after each other like rabbits.” He stared at Ellery in revulsion. “How two men like you have managed to be such a thorough inconvenience, I’ll never know.”

  “You know us rabbits, sir,” Ace deadpanned. “It’s not like we’re trained to be deadly or anything, but by God we can fuck around the best-laid plans, can’t we.”

  Ellery stared at him. Fucking Jesus—if another man had to be mistaken for Jackson, what were the odds he’d have the same inclination to talk someone else into beating him to death just like the man himself?

  “You don’t like livin’, do you, son?” Lacey sneered. “But you’re not the brains of the operation from all accounts, so you can fuck around on your own time. I wanted you, Cramer, because you’re a man who can be reasoned with.”

  Ellery arched an eyebrow at him. “Reasonable men do not take hostages. What is it you think you’re going to accomplish?”

  “You’re not a hostage, son.” A tic jumped above Lacey’s eye. “You can leave at any time—it’s just a short walk across the desert. Pleasant in January—won’t cook your brain like an egg like it will in a couple of months. Feel free—”

  “To blow ourselves up on the land mines surrounding all but the main road?” Ace asked bluntly, folding his arms. “No thank you, sir, that would interfere with my fucking-around activities.” He gave Ellery a bawdy wink. “That’d be a shame.”

  Ellery gave himself permission to roll his eyes—it’s what he’d do if Jackson said the exact same thing—but his stomach had officially turned to ice.

  Land mines. What in the actual fuck were land mines doing around a stateside base? He’d ask Ace later how he’d spotted them, but right now he was just terrified that they were out there, and Jackson was out there looking for them.

  Lacey gave a predator’s smile. “Good of you to spot those,” he said mildly. “How’d you know?”

  “Been around,” Ace lied. “Teach you more’n you think in the academy.”

  “You do have an education,” Lacey said smoothly. “I’d forgotten that was in your jacket. Weren’t you wounded early on in your career?”

  Ace’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “You want to see my scars? For all your bitching about us homosexuals, you want to get awfully close to my body.”

  “I’ve seen pictures of Rivers from far off,” Lacey confessed, eyes narrowed. “There is something off—”

  Ace lifted his sweatshirt up and over his head in one quick motion, and his chest—well, Ellery wasn’t that surprised. Unlike Lacey, he and Jackson had done homework on Ace, and they knew he’d taken shrapnel and had been involved in at least one major car accident. His chest looked as bad as Jackson’s did, minus the big scar right below Jackson’s left nipple where the bullet had missed his heart. But Lacey wouldn’t have seen that scar—he wouldn’t know the difference here, and Ellery appreciated the hell out of Ace standing shirtless in the confines of the office, meeting Lacey’s eyes wit
hout blinking.

  Lacey blinked first, and Ace pulled up a corner of his mouth and put his shirt back on.

  And Ellery knew, right then, that whether Lacey knew it or not, he was a dead man.

  “So it’s Rivers!” Gleeson said abruptly. “We knew that! What do you want—”

  “What will it take?” Lacey asked, voice flinty. “Son, you are interfering with a US Navy operation here, and I need to know what it will take for you to back off and stop trying to finger me for Janie Isaacson’s mistake.”

  Ellery’s body grew very still, and his mind flew about a thousand miles an hour.

  So many things wrong here—things Ellery was not supposed to know.

  He wasn’t supposed to know that the base was not operating under the auspices of the military—but Crystal had been right. There was no money coming in here. Whatever funding Lacey was getting had been siphoned off from other sources.

  He wasn’t supposed to know what the lack of flag—or the presence of that heavy piece of corduroy on the flagpole—might mean, but he had grown up with a military fetish, and he had watched Top Gun about a thousand times. Enough times to know what the pieces of bling on Tom Cruise’s shirt had meant, and enough times to know that a base never operated without its flag. Whatever the unofficial square of fabric meant, Lacey was not serving the US government, and Ellery was afraid of the master in its place.

  And Ellery was supposed to think Janie Isaacson was guilty—or at least that there was no way to prove her innocent.

  Which meant that somebody was feeding Lacey bad information.

  Lacey didn’t know what Jackson looked like, for one. Didn’t realize the extent of their connection—knew that they had sex, and lots of it, but didn’t know they had a relationship.

  Knew that Ellery and Jackson were down here but didn’t know the extent of their knowledge.

  Oh, this was going to be a very tight game, and Ellery had to win or he and Ace—and probably Jackson and Sonny—were not going to live very long at all.

  He was going to start with the truth.

  “Janie Isaacson’s case is out of my hands,” he said guilelessly. “Rivers and I came down here because Jackson is still recovering from events this last fall, and he wasn’t ready to be thrown back in the game. I insisted. My boss, Carlyle Langdon, is responsible for keeping Ms. Isaacson out of jail. You’re going to have to talk to him.”

  Lacey scowled. “Don’t try to bullshit me—”

  “You need to talk to my firm,” Ellery said, his snake-oil-salesman smile firmly in place. “I’d call them myself, but your men know I’d just turned in my phone as they approached me.” He’d tucked his new phone into his pocket as they’d been hustled out, hoping if nothing else that security would stop them, but no such luck. As it was, he was pretty sure Jackson would find a way to track it—which, given the land mine thing, scared the holy crap out of him.

  “I’ll do that,” Lacey said, giving him the same smile in return—minus the oil-salesman part.

  “You might want to talk to my mother while you’re at it,” Ellery said, not sure what prompted this bit of recklessness, except he was worried and angry and tired of being worried and angry. “I understand you have a great deal of interest in her military contracts. You’ve really been useful—she’s given her protégés a lot of your work.”

  A muscle clenched in Lacey’s jaw. “Not my work,” he growled.

  “Well, no. But the work that you pressured to use other firms. She’s mentored half the Fortune 500 contract lawyers in the country—she’s pretty good at turning a downfall into a windfall, you know? And she knows everybody in Washington.” An exaggeration. A very slight exaggeration.

  “So, consider you a contact,” Lacey said, a bland smile on his face.

  “Consider me plutonium,” Ellery returned flatly, pleased to see him taken off-balance. “I’m a pebble in your shoe? My mother is a missile up your ass. You need to find something to offer her—something good—that would make her overlook this little… meeting. Think about it. Think hard. A… nd Jackson and I can wait.”

  Oops—almost slipped up there. Ellery kept his eyes level and his breathing even, though, as he smiled into a killer’s eyes. He’d played a game like this before—logic, threats, and leverage—to get a man to turn himself in and not to turn Ellery over to his henchman. That guy, a congressman’s aide, had been a cakewalk compared to Lacey, but Ellery’s goal was much simpler here.

  Keep himself and Ace alive long enough for the cavalry to come—and hope the cavalry didn’t blow itself up in the rescue.

  Lacey’s face flushed practically purple. “Waiting is a good idea,” he ground out. “Adkins, take these two someplace secure, and send Leavins in. I need some recon.”

  Recon. Like this was a military op, not a base. Oh, this was bad. Bad bad bad bad…. Ellery did not know the many flavors of bad here, but each one made his gut churn worse than the last.

  “Sir!” The two henchmen—no uniform, rank unknown—saluted, and Ellery smiled blandly.

  “A place with a restroom if you can manage it,” Ace said cheerfully. “So much coffee—you have no idea.”

  Gleeson grabbed Ace’s arm and slammed him into the adjoining wall. “You’ll piss in your buddy’s mouth and like it—”

  “The brig is fine,” Lacey barked. “And they need to be intact. Not the jail itself,” Lacey said, holding up his hands to stave off Ellery’s protest. “Just the supervision room. The whole section locks from the outside, just in case you’re tempted to wander—there are land mines, you know.”

  “I do now,” Ellery said sweetly. His heart pounded in his ears from the sudden violence to Ace, but unless he saw blood, he knew enough not to let his expression crack.

  Trial Lawyering 101: Never let ’em see you sweat.

  Going After Bad Guys Section A: Make sure they sweat first.

  THE BRIG was about as cheery as the rest of the building—and even though they weren’t sitting in one of the two ten-by-twelve cells that made up half the space, the sound of the door slamming shut behind them was oppressive as fuck. Ellery met Ace’s eyes tensely until they both heard the bolt slide home, and then Ellery found a desk chair and slumped into it in relief.

  Ace caught his eye again and touched his ear cautiously. Were they bugged?

  Ellery shrugged and tilted his hand. Maybe? Lacey hadn’t had much time to prepare for them, even if he’d tracked Ellery’s phone from his fuck up that morning—and their tech seemed truly spotty. But then, who wanted to find out the hard way?

  “I guess I love your mother,” Ace said, and Ellery half laughed.

  “She probably still terrifies you,” he said. “You call her Lucy Satan.”

  Ace laughed tensely, and together they looked around. The office was pretty bare—even the desks were empty—not a pencil or paper clip to be seen. Dust had accumulated in the corners of the tile, and the last drawer Ellery checked might possibly have had a dead cockroach in the bottom. Ellery slammed it shut too fast to be sure.

  Ace shut his own drawer on the other side of the room, and they convened in the center of the room again, sinking into the squeaky office chairs that remained. Ellery pulled his phone from the front pocket of his sweats and was unsurprised to see one of his apps flashing. He pointed to it and nodded, and Ace nodded back. He understood.

  For a moment he considered just calling Jackson—or at least texting him—but (a) if they were miked, that would mean Jackson could be walking into a trap, and (b) if there was any sort of monitoring whatsoever, it would give away the advantage of the phone entirely.

  “How’d you know about the land mines?” Ellery asked, figuring it was a neutral question.

  “There were piles of disturbed dirt—grass growing on top but still red. Probably a few months old.” He sighed. “Hard to get grass to grow out here. Need to import potting soil and sod and shit. Fucking desert.”

  This seemed to be a cause dear to his heart, and Ellery’s
own heart ached a little. Jackson had called Ace and Sonny rattlesnakes—deadly to outside forces but actually fairly sweet to each other. Trying to grow a lawn was such a domestic thing to do.

  “I’m sorry you got hauled into this,” he said softly. “That was not… not the plan.”

  Ace’s mouth twisted. “Bad guys. They will frequently fuck up your plans.”

  And Ellery was forgiven—like that. Jackson had been right, really. Yeah, Ace had probably killed his fellow officer, but if the guy had been anything like Tim Owens, and had been after Sonny, Ellery couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done the same. He used to think he had a moral edge over the people he defended, but that fall he’d been forced to prioritize Jackson’s life, his mental health, over the life of a police officer, and he’d suddenly realized what kinds of compromises people had to make to just live in this fucked-up world.

  Ellery didn’t know Ace and Sonny’s story, but he knew Jackson’s. He knew enough about people being born into the fucked-up and trying to claw their way out to think that maybe killing Master Sergeant Galway had been one of the most moral murders he’d ever investigated. He almost wanted to defend it in court.

  The thought was interrupted by a rattle of the door handle, and both of them shot up, determined not to be caught unawares.

  The handle continued to rattle, like the lock was being picked. Ace pressed himself flat against the wall where the door would crack, and Ellery pressed himself on the opposite wall, far enough from the door that it wouldn’t rebound in his face, close enough to the corner of the room to hide behind it if he had to.

  Slowly it creaked open, and they both held their breath. There was a pause, and Ellery saw the flash of a phone being used like a periscope, and then, in a rush, a man strode in and shut the door behind him.

  About Ace’s height, with a shaved head and skin tone an earthy bronze umber, the man had a broad face with a square jaw and a turned-up, almost precious nose. He was undeniably appealing to look at, and that was before Ellery noticed the biceps straining his khaki T-shirt that would bust a tape measure. His OD green cargo pants were tight around his thighs and loose around his hips, and good God, the guy was built.