Red Fish, Dead Fish E-Book

Amy Lane

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Fish Out of Water
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 558

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Fish Out of Water: Book Two They must work together to stop a psychopath—and save each other.  Two months ago Jackson Rivers got shot while trying to save Ellery Cramer's life. Not only is Jackson still suffering from his wounds, the triggerman remains at large—and the body count is mounting. Jackson and Ellery have been trying to track down Tim Owens since Jackson got out of the hospital, but Owens's time as a member of the department makes the DA reluctant to turn over any stones. When Owens starts going after people Jackson knows, Ellery's instincts hit red alert. Hurt in a scuffle with drug-dealing squatters and trying damned hard not to grieve for a childhood spent in hell, Jackson is weak and vulnerable when Owens strikes. Jackson gets away, but the fallout from the encounter might kill him. It's not doing Ellery any favors either. When a police detective is abducted—and Jackson and Ellery hold the key to finding her—Ellery finds out exactly what he's made of. He's not the corporate shark who believes in winning at all costs; he's the frightened lover trying to keep the man he cares for from self-destructing in his own valor.

Leseprobe

Red Fish, Dead Fish

By Amy Lane

Fish Out of Water: Book Two

They must work together to stop a psychopath—and save each other.

Two months ago Jackson Rivers got shot while trying to save Ellery Cramer’s life. Not only is Jackson still suffering from his wounds, the triggerman remains at large—and the body count is mounting.

Jackson and Ellery have been trying to track down Tim Owens since Jackson got out of the hospital, but Owens’s time as a member of the department makes the DA reluctant to turn over any stones. When Owens starts going after people Jackson knows, Ellery’s instincts hit red alert. Hurt in a scuffle with drug-dealing squatters and trying damned hard not to grieve for a childhood spent in hell, Jackson is weak and vulnerable when Owens strikes.

Jackson gets away, but the fallout from the encounter might kill him. It’s not doing Ellery any favors either. When a police detective is abducted—and Jackson and Ellery hold the key to finding her—Ellery finds out exactly what he’s made of. He’s not the corporate shark who believes in winning at all costs; he’s the frightened lover trying to keep the man he cares for from self-destructing in his own valor.

Table of Contents

Blurb

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Prologue: Belly Up

Fish on the Run

Cold Fish

Tastes of Fish

Radio Silence

Fish Gone Walkabout

In the Wrong Bowl

Fish Caught

Other Things with Scales

Fish Takes a Breath

Fish in a Waterfall

Still Twitching

Ninja Fish

Fish Under the Bridge

Red Fish

Quiet Pond

Old and Fishy Business

Fish Flop

New Currents to Explore

Accompanying Stories

Amy’s Dark Contemporary Romance

Readers love Fish Out of Water by Amy Lane

About the Author

By Amy Lane

Visit Dreamspinner Press

Copyright

Mate, Mary, kids, Kim, Amelia, and Karen—how is it you all are there when I need you?

Acknowledgments

KIM FIELDING and Karen Rose—thank you both so much for your knowledge and your willingness to help me refine my skills in this subgenre that I’ve long admired and have finally dared to write.

Prologue: Belly Up

“ELLERY, HAND me my phone,” Jackson mumbled. “It’s ringing.”

“You’re not back at work yet,” Ellery slurred. “You have two more weeks.”

Jackson rolled over on top of him and then yelped as he reached unwisely for the phone Ellery had strategically put on his own end table. For a moment, Ellery was covered with tense, warm man, and then he shoved Jackson off.

“I’ll get it!” he snapped, officially awake. “Jesus, what in the—”

“It’s Mack’s ringtone,” Jackson defended. “I told him what we were looking for.”

Ellery tried not to roll his eyes. Mack. This was the same Mack who had helped Jackson out when Jackson had wrecked the car unofficially helping Ellery with an investigation.

At the time, Ellery had been so happy to get Jackson back in one bruised piece—and on a plane to somewhere he could rest without incident—that he hadn’t questioned this Mack’s existence. Once he found out that Mack Flanders had been Jackson’s bedmate a few years ago, he’d been irritated but unsurprised.

Now that Mack was calling them in the whore of dawn’s sweaty crack, Ellery wanted to kick him in the balls.

Except….

“Cottage Park, near the outbuilding. Yeah, I got it. There’s a way to get in there, right? I’m not climbing the fucking fence. Of course there’s cops and crime scene tape. That’s not what I’m asking.” The voice on the other end spoke patiently, and some of Jackson’s defensiveness seeped away. “Okay. Thanks, Mack. Owe you another one. No, sorry—told you. Not paying favors that way anymore, but it’s nice of you to ask.”

“God in heaven,” Ellery muttered.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“We’ll be there.” Ellery rolled out of bed and headed for the shower. Thirty seconds to run some soap under his pits and pack a suit for court later that day. He could do it.

“Crap,” he could hear Jackson say as he closed the shower door. “We’ll be there. Thanks.”

Five seconds later, Jackson stepped into the shower with him and grabbed his own shower gel from the corner of the tub. They’d had some nice times in there together—particularly when Jackson was still healing from his gunshot wound and his shattered scapula and needed Ellery’s help.

They’d had a few after that too, but not today.

“Body?” Ellery asked, not really needing confirmation.

“Yeah.” Jackson scrubbed his pits with care but not vigor—moving was still painful and probably would be for a little while. He’d gotten out of the hospital less than six weeks earlier. By all rights he should still be chilling in the fall sunshine, maybe swimming in the pool at the gym—but not Jackson.

Ellery had needed to haul him to San Diego to give himself time to recover.

It was even more infuriating that he was right today. There really was no time to rest.

“Our kind?”

Jackson shook the water from his dark blond hair and squinted at Ellery through eyes as green as bottle glass. “We have a kind of dead body? Most couples just go with favorite song.”

Ellery soaped his hair efficiently. “You know what I mean.”

Jackson grabbed the shampoo. “Yeah.”

Jackson, the private investigator at Ellery’s defense firm, had gotten shot helping Ellery bring down a ring of corrupt cops. They’d put the ringleaders in prison—but one of the underlings had gotten away.

Turned out he was the one the police should have been chasing all along.

“Young,” Jackson said, ticking off items on the list. “This one’s Hispanic. Male, but slender. Recent involvement with drugs. Maybe a week of turning tricks.”

“Dirty pretty,” Ellery confirmed grimly. They had been Scott Bridger’s words, actually, one of the men they’d brought down, to describe the kind of person who had disappeared on his partner’s watch. Gender hadn’t mattered, nor race. Just a little bit of street dirt and some physical beauty.

Tim Owens liked to take the “dirty pretty” ones and make them not so pretty anymore.

“Mack says there’s something new about this one,” Jackson said, stepping in front of him to rinse his hair.

Ellery wasn’t sure why he did it, except it was not yet four in the morning and he and Jackson were naked together, and that wasn’t something he’d learned to take for granted yet.

He wrapped his arms around Jackson’s shoulders and kissed his neck, softly, gently, with just enough tongue and teeth to make Jackson regret they weren’t making love this morning but going to work instead.

Jackson tensed for a moment, probably caught off guard, but then he relaxed into Ellery’s arms and leaned his head back.

“What?” he asked suspiciously.

Well, Ellery had been known to be an autocratic bastard—that was probably warranted.

“Just….” Ellery couldn’t find words. Or he could find words, but neither of them had said the words yet, and you just didn’t spring those words on a guy whose entire life had been an act of insufficient self-protection.

With a sinuous movement, Jackson turned his head and caught Ellery’s mouth, something he couldn’t have done a month ago, something that felt huge and necessary now.

“Don’t worry about me, Counselor,” Jackson said cheekily, pulling away. “But the cuddle was downright friendly.”

Well, sure. Friendly. Just two friendly lovers getting out of bed extra early to go catch a serial killer. Nothing strange about that at all.

“Just be careful,” Ellery said, trying not to sound bitchy or officious and failing. “He’s got your cell phone. You know that, right?”

“Well, he had it for a couple of hours before it got deactivated,” Jackson said. “And yeah—fuck me for owning an Android with the shitty security. Thank you so much for the iPhone, Ellery. Now I am safe from serial killers everywhere.”

The snark in his voice was the only thing that kept Ellery from conking him over the head and tying him to the bed in a completely nonkinky way.

MACK WAS still at the scene when they got there—but not for long. Ellery had just enough time to register that the state trooper was older than he’d thought—maybe in his forties—and not particularly handsome. He stood around five six, with a small face that showed signs of childhood malnourishment and acne. He sat comfortably in his skin now, his thinning blond hair cut close to his head and his smile warm and friendly as he shook hands with Jackson.

Ellery abruptly forgave him for sleeping with Jackson in the past—he wasn’t a cover model, he was a human being, and that seemed to be the kind of person Jackson was the most attracted to.

Which gave Ellery hope for himself, because it meant Jackson saw something in him besides the shark he’d honed for so long.

Mack greeted Ellery pleasantly, ushered them both into the crime scene, and left unobtrusively. Jackson gave him a salute as he got into his vehicle—he’d put himself out for them. This wasn’t even his beat. Jackson would—Ellery had no doubt he would—find a way to return the favor.

Twenty minutes later, they stood in the corner of Cottage Park under the emerging sunshine. Jackson wore faded jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, because by October, mornings were getting a little chilly.

Ellery wore slacks and a polo shirt and was grateful.

This little corner of the park had a stream that usually passed through. But the body had been thrown into a bottleneck of the stream, and the entire corner was a swampy, bloody, rotting mess.

Walking into court with that ick on his pant cuffs wasn’t going to win any cases.

Which is what Ellery kept thinking to avoid the thought of the body in the water.

“The knife work is new,” Jackson said, voice cool. Ellery knew he wasn’t unaffected—in a moment of candor, he’d once confessed to bringing Tic Tacs to the morgue for a reason. But he managed to sound composed and ordinary in the face of….

Oh my God.

Ellery fisted his hands in his pockets and tried not to throw up.

“He knew what he was doing,” Jackson said softly, standing well back from the frantic CSIs who were working the case. “He wanted to play with him.”

Ellery actually felt Jackson’s shudder through their touching shoulders.

“Was he raped?” Jackson asked the tech. The CSI officer wearing a white hazmat bunny suit was a familiar face these days—she’d caught a few other cases Jackson and Ellery had investigated. Now she crouched in a bloody puddle, taking samples from the clothes, from the water, from the surrounding area. She was African American, with a bold nose and a strong jaw—strikingly beautiful with just a trace of girlish flirt in her eyes when she smiled at Jackson.

Awesome. Another conquest.

But there was no flirting at all now when she looked up and nodded soberly.

“He’s got DNA all over him,” she said, a soft Southern accent in her voice. “We’ve seen this pattern before, but not the knife work.”

No, all of Owens’s other victims had been beaten and assaulted. This one had been beaten as well, his face almost unrecognizable. His pants had been cut cleanly down the back, and the blood leaking from that quarter of the body was unmistakable. So were the scores along the back, like someone had been bored and doodling with a knifepoint in flesh, probably while, oh my God, in the act.

“Somebody got bored during sex,” Jackson said grimly. “What a douche.”

Ellery nodded. Douchebag. It was a funny word. And so less frightening than monster.

“I know we have other bodies like this,” Jackson said lowly to the tech—Roberta, if Ellery remembered aright. “Have you matched the DNA?”

“We’ve matched it to itself,” she confirmed. “Since you first asked me to keep track of these, this is our third body. They’ve all got the same DNA on them—we just don’t have anyone to match it with in the computers.”

Jackson frowned. “Did you take samples when you searched Owens’s place?”

She gave him a classic What kind of miracle worker do you think I am? look. “We didn’t take samples from Owens’s apartment—we didn’t even know he was a suspect here.”

Jackson let out a little growl. “He’s still not,” he admitted. “But goddammit, he should be.”

Roberta nodded, and Ellery’s respect for her grew when her hand hovered for a moment over the back of the neck. The gesture was human and curiously tender. She saw a person here, not a piece of meat. She would do her job—but her job was, ultimately, to get justice for the human being who’d been discarded like so much garbage.

Whether the police recognized it or not, that was Jackson and Ellery’s job as well.

“Rivers? Jesus—can’t Ellery keep you in a crate or something?”

Jackson growled, and Ellery rolled his eyes. “Down, boy,” he muttered. “He’s just baiting you.”

Golden-haired, blue-eyed, with a cheerleader nose and a superhero jaw, Sean Kryzynski was aiming to be a very young detective, and—at one point—had been aiming to be in Ellery’s bed. Given that Ellery hadn’t had that many offers, he’d been flattered.

Given that Kryzynski had propositioned Ellery when Jackson was being hauled away on a gurney, he was pretty much over Kryzynski before he even opened his mouth. But Kryzynski didn’t see it that way, and judging by Jackson’s growls, reformed tomcats didn’t like to share.

Kryzynski popped his gum and winked. “Don’t worry, Rivers. I can’t take what’s not on the table—whoa!”

Ellery had to stand in front of him and shove him backward.

“There is a boy here at our feet!” Jackson snarled. “And yeah, he was a little bit dirty—but our perp takes the ones on the cusp, see? The ones who could be saved. So this was a kid, and he needs us now when we weren’t there for him when he was alive.” The fight went out of him, and he glowered over Ellery’s shoulder. “Try being an actual cop, a good guy! Not the guy looking to get out of his blues.”

Ellery caught his breath. A vulnerable expression crossed Jackson’s face. He’d said more than he meant to, shown more than he’d planned.

“We need to do something,” Jackson said, looking at Ellery with pleading in his eyes. “Why is nobody listening to us?”

After Jackson had been shot—and Bridger and Chisolm, the guys behind the shooting, had been arrested—law enforcement had declared their jobs done. They conveniently overlooked the fact that Tim Owens had probably been the triggerman behind Jackson’s shooting and clapped themselves on the back.

“Because every case he had, every person he arrested—ever—will be tainted,” Ellery said patiently. They knew this. Neither of them was naïve.

Jackson shook his head. “I think it’s time to tell the boss,” he said after a moment.

Ellery regarded him with surprise. “Contact an authority figure? Jackson, are you well?”

“Ha-ha.” With an irritated one-armed shrug, Jackson broke away from him and prowled around the cops, looking for things forensics had possibly missed while staying out of their way.

Kryzynski walked up to Ellery looking surprisingly contrite. “Look, Ellery… I hope you know we take murder seriously here. It’s just….” He shrugged in apology. “Street people. They die a lot, you know?”

Ellery turned a flat-eyed gaze toward him. “Really fucking sensitive. Do they always die covered in the same guy’s ejaculate?”

Kryzynski recoiled. “They do what?”

“Maybe you should talk to your forensics crew. Roberta there has some shit to teach you.” Ellery took a step toward where Jackson wandered, wanting to do something—touch his hand, reassure him, something. But Jackson’s past was… complicated.

Ellery tried his best to keep things simple. Ellery, friend. The rest of the world? Could fuck off.

That didn’t work when Jackson felt pressured or closed in. Dogs did well in crates, but cats, not so much. If Jackson didn’t have space, Ellery firmly believed he’d scratch at the walls that confined him until he bled to death.

Kryzynski put a hand on his arm. “I’ll talk to my lieutenant,” he said softly. “If the same person did all this, we should be investigating. He’s right—this is awful.”

Ellery nodded. “It is. And it’s escalating. If we’re right, Owens did this once in a while under Bridger—maybe every three, every four months. Since Bridger went away, this is the third body in two months.”

“Were they all found in Arden-Arcade?” Kryzynski asked. “Because that’s sort of hard to hide.”

The Arden-Arcade area was actually pretty nice—lots of parks with dark corners to hide bodies, but it wasn’t exactly a hotspot for street people. A little farther north, to Watt Avenue, and the hunting grounds were richer. Follow Watt down past the freeway and it was beating up stoned fish in a broken concrete barrel.

Reluctantly Ellery shared some information. “Ask Roberta, but we’re pretty sure this is the secondary crime scene—a body dump. He and Bridger used to work District Three—midtown. We’ve been looking over old cases. Six of them are looking like our guy, and they’ve been found on both sides of the freeway, mostly in places like this.” Weekends, after work, they’d looked through morgue records and police reports practically since Jackson had gotten out of the hospital.

Today had been a breakthrough, because today they’d hit a forensics officer who knew Jackson and would share. And also because today, with Kryzynski, they’d managed to catch somebody’s attention.

“Got your own murder board?” Kryzynski cracked.

Ellery gazed at him, the same level look his mother used to employ to get him to admit he hadn’t done his homework.

“Uh, yeah.” Golden Boy looked away uncomfortably. “Why should you have a murder board when we should be doing our job? Hear you.”

“I am so very glad,” Ellery said, smiling. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jackson walking to the playground that stood at the highest point in the park. The playground itself used recycled tires as a thick safety mat under the toys, but it was surrounded by lush grass and soft earth. Jackson was heading for the swings. “Now if you will excuse me—”

“Wait!” Kryzynski looked embarrassed when Ellery turned back around. “How… uh, I mean, how is he? You know when that sort of hospital time happens on the job you have to talk to six shrinks and a shaman to get back on duty. How’s he doing?”

How was he? “He’s fine.” Sure he was. “Wiseass is still a wiseass. He’s like a cat—nine lives.”

Kryzynski grunted. “That bad?”

Ellery closed his eyes, thinking about the car Jackson had wrecked overdoing it too soon and the way he worked, daily, to prove that he could too pull his own weight in the firm, in Ellery’s house.

Ellery’s life.

He kept talking about moving to the duplex when it was finished in two months.

Ellery figured he had until mid-December to convince Jackson that there were no shadows in the corners of Ellery’s house, no scary monsters, no hidden emotional traps.

“If I liked easy, I would have done corporate law,” Ellery said, hoping his mother never heard him.

His mother the corporate lawyer could skin a fish as it swam and eat it raw as she smiled at you. People who thought cast-iron balls were tough had never met Taylor Cramer when she had her hair coifed and her no-nonsense low-heeled pumps ready to roll.

But Kryzynski bled true-blue. As far as he was concerned, criminal law was the only kind that counted.

“Well, you know, if shit gets too hard….” He smiled prettily.

“I’d like a copy of your report on my desk.” Personal time over. “And with your permission, we’ll ask Roberta for her report as well.”

Kryzynski backpedaled, looking confused. “Who in the hell is Roberta?”

“Your forensics officer,” Ellery said smugly. “You really should work on your people skills.”

And with that he turned to get Jackson, who had gone from rocking moodily on the swing to working up quite a head of steam.

Jackson saw him coming and hollered, “Stay there!”

And then, when the swing was at its highest arc, he jumped.

Ellery’s heart caught in his throat as he watched Jackson arch his body impossibly, like one of those kids at the skateboard parks who did stupid shit for kicks. He flew high, then, oh my God, tucked his knees to his chest and flipped.

He extended his arms and would probably have done a creditable roll in the thick grass and spongy ground of the field, but his shoulder gave, collapsed, and he went tumbling down the hill.

Ellery had to dodge out of his way or end up in the free-for-all sprawl Jackson was heading for—and unlike Jackson, if Ellery did that sort of thing, he’d end up with broken bones or worse.

Jackson ended his roll, coming to a stop on his back, arms flung out on either side. He had his eyes closed, like he was trying to figure out if he was in pain or not, and if so, how bad.

Ellery could have answered him.

Jackson Rivers had been in pain since the day he was born.

But he’d go to his grave saying he didn’t feel a thing.

“You going to live?” Ellery asked, keeping the panic out of his voice.

“Did you see that, ma? I went high!”

“How’s your shoulder, asshole? Do we need the brace again?”

Jackson took a deep breath and winced. “Goddammit.”

“Yeah. Here—let me give you a hand up. I’ve got the spare in the back.”

“Fine.”

Jackson took his offered hand but stopped short as Ellery pulled him up. They stood facing each other for a moment, Jackson’s expression hauntingly naked.

“Talk to who you have to,” he said soberly. “The DA, our bosses. This isn’t a pride thing. These kids….” He looked away, probably remembering he’d been two good friends and their mom away from ending up just like these street kids, these young, troubled, beautiful kids who would never live to see if they could turn themselves around.

“Yeah,” Ellery said softly. “Yeah.” He leaned forward then, just barely grazing Jackson’s temple with his lips.

Jackson didn’t flinch, didn’t recoil or pull away. He just gave Ellery a flirty wink and a grin, like that was his payment for affection.

Ellery let him get away with that, and together they trudged to the car.

TWO HOURS later, Ellery briefed Carlyle Langdon, second chair of Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson & Cooper, about the work he and Jackson had been doing.

“I thought Rivers was on medical leave?” Langdon said, looking sleek and regal, a silver fox in an amazing gray pinstripe.

“We’ve been working the case together, sir. To keep him from going stir-crazy.”

Would Langdon care about Ellery and Jackson? Probably not. Did Ellery want the whole world knowing his personal life? Definitely, absolutely not.

Langdon smiled sunnily. “You’re a good friend, and I’ll sound out the DA’s office to see if I can get a nibble. But you know how this goes, Ellery….”

Ellery gave a sigh. “Leave the investigation to the pros,” he muttered. Except the pros were usually drowning in legit bad guys, or bureaucracy, or sometimes their own incompetence and/or corruption.

And sometimes people just needed an outside eye to show them where the monsters were.

Ellery and Jackson had done their bit to get rid of the corruption, and neither of them suffered incompetence well. It was the other stuff they were having problems with, and the horrible, godawful fact of the matter was…

More people were going to have to die before somebody besides Kryzynski looked up and saw the monster.

An hour later, after Ellery’s own frustrating call with Arizona Brooks, his contact with the ADA’s office, he wanted to throw the whole of law enforcement in the hole to get eaten.

“Arizona, we’ve got an MO, we’ve got a profile—if you’ll give us a profiler—and we’ve got DNA—”

“But we don’t have it matching a suspect,” Arizona said patiently. Arizona—buzz-cut, gruff Arizona, who was the only woman Ellery had ever seen wear a white power suit to court and make it work—was never this patient.

“Are you getting pressure to ignore this?” he asked point-blank.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she said grimly. “Everybody here thinks the Bridger/Chisolm thing is all gone bye-bye now, and the triggerman on your boy’s house just doesn’t matter.”

Ellery growled. “I will inundate your office,” he threatened. “I will send you every scrap of evidence we have, twice, in triplicate, until somebody has to claw their way up from the bottom of the paperwork graveyard just to call the cops and authorize the investigation.”

She sighed. “That was a beautiful threat, Ellery. But until you have the name of the perp, we’re just going to buy some flippers and a snorkel and keep swimming.”

“We have the name of the perp!” Ellery snarled. Oh dear Lord, he was becoming feral, like Jackson. Awesome. “Tim Owens!”

“Well, prove it,” she said patiently.

Patiently.

“I will keep you apprized,” he told her spitefully. “And someday, someday soon, when he kills again, or maybe twice, we’ll find a break in the case. And then we won’t go to the fucking DA or the police department or the sheriff. We’ll go to the press, and you can have the whole almighty world asking you why you didn’t do a damned thing.”

“And we’ll deal with that when it happens.”

She sounded smug, smug and superior, like ignoring dead kids put her on the moral high ground.

Ellery hung up on her.

Jackson, tapping desultorily at the small table in the corner of Ellery’s plain beige-carpeted office, jerked upright.

He’d probably been that close to dozing.

“How’d that go?” He yawned and stretched carefully.

“Like ass. How’s the shoulder?”

Jackson gave a one-armed shrug. “You know—the wound that wouldn’t go away.”

“Well, it needs to. You’re still not okayed for work, and it’s time for you to go home.”

Jackson held up his hands in front of him, puppy-dog style. “Oh, come on, Ellery. Please let me stay!”

Ellery shook his head, feeling like his mother. “Home. Nap. Run. You heard the doctor.”

“Three miles,” Jackson said, his voice assuming a terrifying determination. “And a full range of motion.”

“Amen,” Ellery said brusquely. But Jackson looked so dispirited. “We’ll keep looking,” he said. “Don’t worry, Jackson. You know, this summer, having that all fall out in two days, that was an anomaly—”

“Like us?” Jackson asked, so seriously Ellery’s chest ached.

“We would have happened,” he promised. He had to believe it. “The circumstances—they helped. But we would have happened. This other thing? This is just going to have to rely on the resources we have. They’re not great. But we’re not giving up.”

Jackson managed a bleak smile. Then he straightened his back and raised his eyebrows. “So, Counselor, since you don’t have to be back until court at two, how about a quickie when you take me home?”

Pure bravado, propositioned because Jackson didn’t want to be left alone with his own thoughts.

Well, Ellery would take what he could get.

Fish on the Run

Six weeks later

NOW THAT Jackson was back at work, Ellery finally set up Jackson’s new phone to charge on the expensive mahogany end table next to the bed.

He was mostly healed—hadn’t worn the brace in four weeks after his foolhardy attempt at gymnastics in the playground. Getting the phone was a simple matter of rolling just enough to grab it off the table, which he tried not to take for granted. The bed was pretty big, but he clung to the edges even in sleep, in spite of Ellery’s frequent attempts to pull him to the middle bodily, so it wasn’t even a big roll. More like a yawn and a stretch and a reach.

“Mike?” Jackson’s neighbor, the guy who rented the other half of Jackson’s duplex, was also his friend. As such, calling at four in the morning was not something he did often.

“Jackson, man, I didn’t want to bother you, but those assholes are here again.”

Jackson sat up in bed abruptly, not even bothering to cringe at the pain in his shoulder. “You’re sure?”

“I think they’re asleep right now, but the dog’s been barking, and the outside trash can is full of chemicals and shit. Industrial drain cleaner, cold medicine—someone’s going to start baking any second, and it’s not cookies.”

Oh hell. “Call the cops,” Jackson muttered, keeping his voice low enough that he didn’t disturb Ellery. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“You should tell him about this,” Mike cautioned, because dammit, the guy knew what Jackson was doing, and Ellery wouldn’t like it.

“My place, my problem.”

The place had gotten shot up when Jackson did. It still was not up to code—and shouldn’t have been livable, even a little. But for the last week these yo-yos had been trying to move in and use the place as a little nest of illegal chemical entrepreneurship, through a combination of squatters’ rights and avoiding Mike like the plague.

Mike didn’t have a problem waving his .45 around or walking his German shepherd, Albert, back and forth across the driveway for an hour every night, so he did have some fear factors keeping them at bay.

It didn’t hurt that his girlfriend, Jade—Jackson’s ex and his forever friend—was afraid of no man and only one woman. The first time she’d seen these guys trying to take over the vacant half of the duplex, she’d chased them off with a baseball bat.

The last time, she’d clotheslined one of them as he’d ridden past the house on his bicycle, taunting her about catching up. According to Mike, the guy had stayed down for a good ten minutes, gagging and twitching, before he’d pulled in enough air to get back up and wobble away.

The fact that they were back indicated two things—one was a high degree of stupidity.

The other was an active agenda they refused to give up.

“Jackson,” Mike growled. “The police alone are going to try to kill you.”

Jackson hung up.

“Who wazzat?” Ellery mumbled, reaching behind him for Jackson’s hip. Ellery spent most of the night snuggled up against Jackson’s back, waiting, it seemed, for the nightmares to jerk him out of a sound sleep.

Just having him there, breath echoing in the foreign darkness of his vast and stately hardwood-appointed room, was enough, sometimes, to keep Jackson grounded. He would wake up with a gasp and feel it, the warmth at his back, the random touch of an ankle or a hairy shin, sometimes even that absent hand on his hip, and the dream would tatter like a cobweb and float into the night.

Sometimes Jackson bolted upright, screaming, and Ellery would have to tackle him bodily, shoving him against the mattress and holding him while he came apart. The dreams were a grim reminder that you didn’t live the life Jackson had without some scars.

The scars on Jackson’s body, his torso, his back, his chest, his shoulder, stood like twisted markers to the real horror show in Jackson’s head, and the monsters did so love to come out and play at night.

Jackson didn’t trust anyone who promised to help keep the monsters back.

“My alarm,” Jackson whispered roughly. “I’m going running.”

He found his running shorts and sweats in the clean pile of his clothes on top of Ellery’s elegant mahogany dresser and pulled them on, hoping Ellery wasn’t, right then, squinting at his clock.

“It’s four in the morning?” Ellery sat up in bed, and Jackson had a chance to sneak a wistful little peek at the only person to actually keep him for longer than three months since he’d gone steady with Jade back in high school.

Ellery was worth looking at, his brown eyes squinting blearily in the chilly dark, his hair—usually gelled back—falling softly across his forehead. He had a surprisingly wide chest with enough dark, silky hair in the middle for Jackson to feel like he was groping a man and not a Ken doll when they were (shudder) making love. There was something… something about him. Something strong and compelling. He had a long bony jaw and a sharp nose. There must have been some magic to those features, because as far as Jackson could remember, he was the only lover ever to use the specific term “making love,” as opposed to basic, human animal sex.

Jackson resented him for it most days, right up until Ellery touched him as they were sleeping or kissed his cheek when he got home or even petted Jackson’s beatass tomcat, Billy Bob. That quickly the resentment faded, melted away, became vapor—often steam.

But Jackson couldn’t lose his edge—not this morning. “I’m going the extra mile,” he said dryly. Then, with reluctant steps, he neared the edge of the bed and gave Ellery an awkward kiss on the temple. “Go to sleep,” he ordered. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. We can go in to work together.”

“Sure,” Ellery mumbled. “I’ll drop you at home during lunch.”

He turned on his side and cuddled deep into the generous comforter, while Billy Bob—the tattered, three-legged, snaggletoothed, blue-eyed Siamese traitor—curled up in the hollow behind his neck. Ellery didn’t hear Jackson’s huff of exasperation, but then he didn’t need to.

Jackson was ready for full-time duty—he was. The running wasn’t bullshit. He was up to three miles a day and would be back to five to ten miles in the next month or so. But no, Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson & Cooper was taking the doctor’s suggestion that Jackson be kept on part-time duty for another four weeks.

If Jackson hadn’t taken it upon himself to protect his damned shot-to-shit house, he might have killed the best domestic living situation he’d ever had out of sheer frustration.

He put on his running shoes and an old SCPD sweatshirt, grabbed his phone and his keys, and was—

“Whaddya need yer keys for?” Ellery slurred.

“Driving to the river to run the trail,” Jackson lied and slid out of the bedroom. He’d gotten as far as the front door when his phone rang again.

By the time he’d finished piloting his brand-new—and comfortably crumpled—Honda SUV through the darkened streets of the American River Drive suburb and hung a left on J Street, his breathing had returned to normal.

By the time he’d turned right on Elvas and followed the curve of the river around its gentle dogleg, his mind was focused exclusively on the thing he was planning to do when he got to his duplex and started kicking ass.

He passed the house, swung a uie, and parked the car, going the wrong way, in front. It was easy to spot the pink-and-black premium bicycle parked on the front porch—a sign for an open druggie mart if he’d ever seen one. Sure enough, trudging up the sidewalk of the shabby but not dangerous neighborhood was an individual out of a profiler’s textbook.

Sand-brown hair matted around his filthy face, his clothes were tattered, and his tennis shoes were brand-new and cheap. He turned up Jackson’s driveway and looked furtively left and right, letting out a little start when he saw Jackson stalking up the clean concrete.

“Not here,” Jackson growled. “Cops are on their way.”

The addict slunk toward the road, looking at the bicycle wistfully, but Jackson glared, scaring him away for the moment.

Jackson’s fury flooded back, and if it hadn’t been his own damned house—and a new damned door—he would have kicked that fucker in. His house. His house. He’d bought this place, claimed it as his own. It hadn’t been a palace, not like Ellery’s place, but it had been homey. He’d had pictures on the walls and furniture that didn’t break you, and his goddamned cat. The salvageable stuff was at Ellery’s now, but there wasn’t much of it.

All Jackson had was the living space, currently being refurbished and spackled and painted, presumably so Jackson could go back and live there with the newly laid hardwood floors and the bright white-painted walls. Wasn’t much—the thought of being alone there ran razor wire from his groin to his throat—but it was his, dammit.

He wasn’t letting anyone crap it up, especially when it wasn’t even finished yet.

He got to the top of the porch and squatted by the bicycle, then used the screwdriver on his key chain to pop the chain off the gear and render their one getaway vehicle useless.

Then he put his hand on the doorknob, an ugly, angry satisfaction welling up in his gut as he turned it.

“Heya, fellas—gonna try to sell me some smack?”

He’d have to classify their response as a no.

Cold Fish

FOUR THIRTY in the morning was a positively filthy hour to get up. Ellery’s drive, shivery in the November cold, didn’t improve his opinion of mornings any. He managed to hit every light between American River Drive and Elvas, and by the time he pulled up to Jackson’s duplex, his fury was enough to keep him warm.

Running.

Jackson said he was going fucking running.

Oh yeah, up at fuck-you a.m., Ellery, going running, back soon.

Ass. Hole.

Ellery welcomed the anger, using it to shore up his bones and his spine for the shitfest the next few weeks were going to be. He wondered if he could place bets on how many times Jackson was going to try to break up with him before they were done.

He’d put down money on the breakup not happening, but that didn’t mean the game wasn’t going to be an absolute joy.

He pulled past Jackson’s CR-V, whipped his Lexus around in a circle, parked nose to nose with the damned wrong-way Honda, and leaped out of the car in time to see a kid—bronze skin tinged gray, glossy hair pulled back in a blue-black ponytail down to his waist—run out Jackson’s front door and pick up the bike on the porch. He hopped on the bike at the bottom, stood on the pedal, and flipped over.

Ellery heard the crack of his head on the concrete like an overripe watermelon, and recoiled, nauseated. At that moment, a midsized, white-haired redneck with the spryness of a lemur jumped out from behind the black pickup truck in the driveway and held a gun in ponytail-kid’s face.

“Freeze, asshole. Don’t fucking move.”

The kid groaned and rolled to his side, vomiting on the concrete in spite of Mike’s warning, and Ellery tried not to hold his hand to his chest like an old-time movie heroine.

“Jesus, Mike, what in the—”

Mike didn’t move his eyes from the kid/bicycle combo on the ground. “This little asshole’s been trying to cook drugs for the past week. Whenever they can sneak in past me and Jade, they set up shop. Gotcha now, punk. Fuckin’ cops are on the way, aren’t they. Uh-huh, you can go bleed your brain in prison, asshole!”

The kid retched again and twitched, and Mike gave a positively evil laugh.

“Little fucker—did you see him, Ellery? Flipping the bike like that? Fucking beautiful. I wish I had it on camera.”

A giant crash echoed through the doorway of the house, followed by a roar of outrage that could have only come from Jackson. Sirens began to wail in the background. Oh Jesus, this poor delinquent barfing on the driveway was the one that got away.

Another crash, another roar, and what sounded like a yelp of genuine pain.

Mike and Ellery exchanged glances. “You’d better get in—”

“I need to get in there.”

He saw the spin of the cherry lights in his peripheral vision as he opened the door, but by the time those guys got out of their cars, it could be too late.

He stood in the doorway, squinting in the sparse light. A body flew by him from his left—the kitchen—bounced off the wall, and then stumbled backward into the guest room. Ellery pressed himself against the wall as Jackson charged past, hitting his bad shoulder on the doorframe and emitting an enraged bellow as he threw himself bodily into the guest room in pursuit.

Ellery stepped into the house and left the door open, then peered into the guest room in time to see Jackson slam his opponent into the built-in shelf along the back wall. The victim, er, housebreaker scrambled to stand, and Jackson caught him by the shirt and slammed him into the shelf again, heedless of the crack of shattered wood.

“Please!” the guy begged, and Jackson wound his good arm back and clocked him in the face. His head slammed against the wall, his eyes fluttered shut, and he crumpled to the ground.

“Please?” Jackson kicked him in the ribs, and he curled instinctively onto his side. “You’re gonna beg me, motherfucker?” Kick. “You wanna beg a guy, maybe next time drop the goddamned knife!”

And as he was pulling his leg back to kick again, he twisted his torso, and Ellery saw the four-inch switchblade embedded in his recently healed shoulder.

“Goddammit, Jackson!”

Jackson checked the swing and hopped on one foot. “Ellery?” He blinked his thick-lashed brilliant green eyes once, slowly, and then—in an expression Ellery was beginning to associate with Jackson being in extreme pain—several times in succession, his full mouth parted slightly.

“Yes?” Ellery crossed his arms, holding on to his rage and his fear in equal measures.

“What are you doing here?”

“Toe-Tag called me. He wanted me to remind you to bring some form of identification when you go in to the morgue today.”

Jackson’s jaw went slack, as if he was trying to place this information in the world as he knew it. “The morgue?” he asked carefully, his concentration fully on the groaning man on the ground. The guy’s blond hair hung in his face, lank and greasy. Like his friend in the driveway, he wore an oversized black jersey with big white numbers. This kid’s said fourteen, and Ellery would bet the other kid’s did too. Nothing like a uniform—and co-opting a gang from LA.

“Yeah, Jackson. I know about the morgue. And when I found out about the morgue, I called and you didn’t answer. And then you want to know who called me?”

Jackson staggered back like it had just occurred to him that the knife stuck in his shoulder hurt like hell. “Mike?”

“You wish. Sean Kryzynski. The cop who’s about to come storming in. He said that he’d gotten a call that there were squatters trying to come live at your address and wanted to know if it was true before he brought people over.”

“He didn’t take Mike’s word for it?” Jackson scowled—and Ellery didn’t blame him.

“He didn’t take Jade’s. Apparently she called while Mike camped out there with his gun and waited for them to come out again.”

Jackson shoved himself back against the adjacent wall, his knees buckling.

“What assholes,” he muttered. “Jade’s a reliable witness.”

“And some of the cops are still racists with long memories.” Jade had screamed bloody murder at a bunch of cops in this very house—while Jackson had been triaged in the hallway. The cops had deserved it; Jade hadn’t. “It’s a good thing Kryzynski’s one of the good guys—”

“Who wants in your pants.”

Oh God—he was going to sit down. “Here,” Ellery said, coming to support him. “You don’t want to do that, Jackson. Look.”

Jackson squinted in the barely graying light and noticed the small plastic objects with the potentially lethal metal ends. They had apparently all been thrown in one corner of the guest room and scattered by the recent violence.

“Needles,” he said dully. Then he stood up, shook Ellery off and stalked to the guy moaning on the carpet, then leveled another kick to his ribs. “You got needles all over my house, motherfucker?”

The guy sobbed. “Stop… stop… please. We won’t make it through jail. We’ll get shanked. Just let me piss blood and die.”

“Augh!” Jackson screamed from the pit of his stomach. “You sniveling assfuckers! Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take to clean this shithole up again? Jesus fuck!”

“Stand down, sir!”

Ellery couldn’t help the icy sheet of fear that coated him at the sound of drawn weapons. Jackson simply glared over his good shoulder and raised a slow hand to the shoulder leaking blood down his elbow. “So nice of you douchebags to show up.”

The young uniform standing in the door grunted and adjusted the aim of his service pistol to the guy lying on the ground.

“You couldn’t leave this to the professionals, could you, Rivers?”

“The professionals got nothin’ on a talented amateur.” Jackson smirked, but Ellery heard it—the slur of pain and the loopiness of adrenaline and blood loss in his voice.

Young Officer Kryzynski moved into the room, holstering his weapon before sinking gingerly onto one knee on a needle-free patch of carpet so he could cuff the kid on the ground, the muscles in his shoulders and back flexing as he did so.

“You guys can go make your statement while I read him his rights.” Kryzynski dismissed them, keeping his attention rightly on the suspect.

“You be sure to do that.” Jackson pushed off the wall he’d let bear his weight as Kryzynski moved. “And when you’re processing him, make sure the courts know Ellery’s representing him. He’s a pro bono case at Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson & Cooper.”

Ellery grunted. “Because why?”

Jackson turned away from the mess on the floor, and Kryzynski’s partner moved in past them, holstering his weapon as he went.

“Because these wahoos are working for somebody else, and while Captain America is trying to find this dick in a hole in the ground, I’d like to find out who the big fish is so his minnows can stop breaking into my house.”

Ellery saw Kryzynski’s outraged look at the both of them and ignored it, following Jackson into the hallway, where he paused to survey the damage.

“There’s needles in the sink,” he muttered under his breath. “And a big old pan of not-meth that will kill you on the floor. Baggies of heroin all over the counter, some of them burst open. I can’t… I don’t even want to see the rest of it.” He looked up and met Ellery’s eyes. “It’s going to take another month to even be livable again. I can move into a hotel if you don’t want me to stay.”

Ellery mentally counted “one.” The first time Jackson would try to break up with him.

“I want you to stay,” he said, not even taking a deep breath. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”

Jackson nodded and looked despairingly around the recently remodeled house. “The good news is, none of the appliances had been replaced, and the air-conditioning unit is still on order. Mostly we just need a hazmat crew.” He went to scrub his face with his hands and let out a whine like a kicked puppy.

“There’s probably an ambulance outside, Jackson. Would you like them to take the knife out of your shoulder?” Ellery showed all his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile.

Jackson eyed him warily. “That would be peachy,” he admitted and then grimaced and—oh God!—yanked it out himself, staring at the blade intently, looking for something. The blood ran fresh and red, and Ellery needed a deep breath this time. “The wound is burning,” he said frankly. “I think there was some sort of drug on it.”

Ellery took another fortifying breath and wondered if it wasn’t psychosomatic. Jackson had a justifiable fear of street drugs. “Well, we’ll just have to get that all taken care of,” he said brightly. He wrapped his arm around Jackson’s waist and willed the stubborn jackass to actually give him a little bit of weight.

“You have a stick up your ass,” Jackson pronounced as they cleared the doorway. The first ambulance—there were three by now—was scraping the kid up off the concrete and divorcing him from the bike wreckage. Jackson took it all in and chuckled. “You see that?”

“Yes, I see that.” The memory of the kid’s head hitting the concrete wasn’t going to leave him soon.

“I did that.”

“You weren’t anywhere near him!”

“I popped the chain off the gears,” Jackson bragged. “Did he go over good? Did he endo?”

“It was spectacular. You would have loved it.” At this point, any news for Jackson was good news, he figured.

“Jackson!” They both looked up and saw Jade, comfortable and rumpled in a tattered chenille bathrobe, hustling over the cold driveway in bare feet. “Jackson, are you okay?”

“Fine, not a problem, don’t touch. It’s icky.” Jackson angled his shoulder away from Jade and toward Ellery, and Ellery grimaced at the amount of blood. Jackson never seemed to notice bleeding—but Ellery did.

“Hey, over here!” Ellery signaled one of the ambulance drivers conferring with some of the policemen waiting for Kryzynski and his partner to come out, and unfortunately got the attention of both the paramedic and the police officer.

“Oh God,” Jackson muttered—but he stumbled. “Why?”

“Give the nice officer the knife,” Ellery ordered. “He’s got a stab wound in his shoulder,” he said to the paramedic. “There were drugs all over the house. You may need to test the blade or the wound for some of them before you do more than give him antibiotics.”

Jackson groaned. “Oh God—not even a Vicodin!”

“We’ll get one of the CSIs over here with a kit,” the paramedic told him, leading him toward the ambulance. The officer, Campbell by his name tag, stood in their way.

“Just a minute, Rivers—you’re not getting away without questioning—”

“You want to question someone, question me,” Jade snapped. Campbell turned toward her, and Jackson got led toward the ambulance. Ellery stayed to make sure nobody gave Jade crap. Three months ago, not his problem. Now she was the closest thing to family Jackson would ever have, and he wasn’t leaving her at the mercy of this asshole.

“What relation are you to—”

“I live on the other side of the duplex. Those guys have been breaking in and using the place for a week. If Mike and I catch ’em, we drive ’em off, but Jackson owns the duplex, and he was not going to deal with that bullshit today.”

Campbell—a perfectly average fortyish man with an unfortunate chin, unremarkable cheekbones, and graying brown hair—narrowed his eyes at her and scowled.

“So what was he going to do about it?”

“He ejected intruders from his property.” Ellery crossed his arms and eyed the guy with distaste. “Which sounds absolutely fine in court. Trust me.”

Campbell eyed him back. “And you are….”

“Ellery Cramer, an attorney for Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson, and Cooper,” he said, not offering a card. For one thing, he was still wearing his pajama bottoms under his sweatshirt. His wallet was in the car. He’d driven over in leather moccasins, for Christ’s sake. For another, the guy pissed him off, and he felt like any professional courtesy was a betrayal of Jackson.

“And you’re here because….”

“I feel like it. Mr. Rivers was alerted by his friend and tenant, Mike Chambers, and he arrived here with the intention of evicting intruders on his property—”

“Why was the house standing empty?”

“It’s being renovated after a drive-by shooting. Where have you been?”

Ellery was glad Jade said it. Personally, he’d be happy not to mention that day ever again for as long as he lived. He’d be even happier if Jackson only ever returned here to visit Mike and Jade and the other tenant he rented the duplex out to as soon as he agreed to make his move in with Ellery permanent.

An event that remained a pipe dream, but Ellery refused to give it up.

“So, does this house get a lot of action?” the officer sneered, and Jade was surprisingly ready for him.

“A vacant house is an open invite to drug dealers and meth labs, and you know it,” Jade told him squarely. “It’s a national epidemic. Most of the time, it starts with mattresses and people moving in claiming squatters’ rights. That didn’t happen here. They tried, but the minute the mattresses hit the ground, Mike towed them off.”

“Did you report it?” Campbell asked, typing something into his tablet.

“Do I look stupid? Wait, scratch that. You’re too stupid to know smart when you see it. Yes, we reported it, because we didn’t do anything wrong.”

Campbell scowled and kept typing—probably looking up Jade and Mike’s reports.

“I didn’t know about that,” Ellery said softly to Jade while the policeman was busy.

“Jackson didn’t want to bother you with his bullshit,” Jade told him quietly. “We….” She looked over to where he was being tended to by a hapless paramedic. “We didn’t agree with it,” she said after a moment, meeting his eyes. “But, you know….”

“You knew him first.” Ellery got it. He’d gotten it three months ago when Jade’s brother had been falsely accused and Jackson had asked him in on the case. Jackson Rivers had a short and finite list of people he trusted in a pinch—Jade, her brother Kaden, Kaden’s wife, Rhonda, and Mike, his neighbor—that was pretty much it. Ellery was getting there, but Jackson wouldn’t burden him with this. Not when he felt like he could take care of it himself.

Fucker.

“Yeah,” Jade said, shoulders slumping as she wiped sleep out of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Ellery. You’ve been there for him. He owed you better.”

Ellery looked over to Jackson again—and caught Jackson looking at him, face crumpled with unhappiness and guilt.

“He did,” Ellery said softly. “But this is small potatoes.”

“To what?” She sounded upset, and he didn’t blame her, but at that moment Campbell finished whatever business he had on the tablet and addressed them both.

“Okay—your story checks out. You, ma’am, and your boyfriend have made multiple calls to the police. Can you tell me why this is the first time we’ve shown up here?”

“Because Jackson Rivers’s name is on the mortgage,” Jade snapped. “And you fuckers have been trying to kill him for years.”

Campbell recoiled. “That’s hardly fair—”

“Who do you think shot the place up?” she demanded. “The guy’s partner’s in jail—it was a big ol’ thing in the press. Don’t tell me you didn’t know!”

Campbell’s mouth opened slightly, and he stuttered. “I just transferred in from the Bay Area, Ms. Cameron,” he said. “There is stuff here I didn’t know.”

“Then ask me.” Sean Kryzynski sauntered up to them. Ellery had seen him and his partner putting Jackson’s victim, er, assailant, in the back of their unit.

“Or me,” Ellery muttered, not looking at the young police officer.

“Is there anything else I need to know?”

“My firm—Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson, and Cooper—is representing one of the perpetrators,” Ellery said, rolling his eyes. No, he didn’t want to help the vicious little scumbag. Yes, if this was a crime ring, he wanted to get the head guy so Jackson didn’t feel compelled to come here and do this again.

“Only one?” Campbell and Kryzynski asked, surprised.

“These guys apparently work for a bigger operation,” Ellery said. “He’s hoping a decent lawyer will make a decent deal, and we can get whoever it is out of this neighborhood.”

Kryzynski and Campbell looked at each other—one of those mind-reading sort of glances that good colleagues had. “So, a sting operation? Like, something you’d need help with?”

Ellery felt his mouth purse up sardonically and couldn’t make it stop. “Did we get a nice promotion after the Chisholm case?” he asked sweetly.

Kryzynski nodded. “You betcha—as soon as Abrams retires next month, I’m out of blues and wearing a cheap suit. I sure would like in on whatever you’ve got.”

“Ditto,” Campbell chimed in. Then he shrugged sheepishly. “I’m a little long in the tooth, but I sure would like to move up too.”

Ellery grimaced. “Not that I don’t applaud ambition”—because Lord knows he had his share—“but your promotions are not my priority right now.”

“We get it,” Kryzynski said quietly, and Ellery met his eyes for the first time.

“Really?” He didn’t actually believe they did.

“You just care that we have his back.”

Oh. “Bingo. Now, do you need anything else? I need to talk to Ms. Cameron for a moment.”

“I said I was sorry,” she muttered, but both of them were watching Jackson, leaning his head against the side of the ambulance while the paramedic cleaned him up.

“And I said I wasn’t mad.” He wasn’t. Jackson’s family had looked after him for a long time before Ellery showed up. Being Jackson’s primary support person was going to take time.

“Then what?”

“Is there any way you could take his car to work? I’ll take you back home. I really need to talk to him on the drive.”

Jade’s expressive brown eyes widened. “Do I need to know what about?”

And Ellery told her about the morgue.

“Oh….” She sucked air in through her teeth and shoved her hair back, pulling it away from her face in a cloth band. When Ellery had first met her, she’d worn it in microbraids, dyed bright magenta. The contrast against her rich burnt-sugar skin had been striking. She’d since had the braids taken out, and it was now in soft waves around her shoulders with magenta streaks from her temples. Ellery had never given thought to how women wore their hair, but having known Jade for the last three months, he wished he could find the words to tell her that the magenta was perfect in either incarnation.

He’d never met a more vibrant woman.

And now, even when she was pissed off and rumpled, he was grateful to her. She was, if nothing else, practical, and her desire to see Jackson in a good place was only slightly less imperative than Ellery’s own.

“When?” she asked after she’d thought for a moment.

“Toe-Tag said the body came in at 1:00 a.m. He called Jackson when he was on his way over here.” Ellery assumed. He remembered Jackson’s kiss on the temple—an unlikely gesture but welcome—and then Jackson had left. Toby “Toe-Tag” Tagliare had called Ellery about five minutes later.

“How’s he going to do the ID?” she asked, still gnawing on her lush lower lip.

“Toby offered pictures, but Jackson said in person.”

Jade growled. “Jesus. Talk about a person who can do more harm dead than alive.”

Ellery let out a frustrated breath, and they watched Jackson slump dispiritedly against the ambulance while the paramedic finished taping up his shoulder and cutting off his sleeve. He used his good hand to shove his dark blond hair out of his eyes, and he leveled a quiet, reassuring smile their way, winking when he caught Ellery’s eye.

And that quickly, Ellery was up for the fight.

“I’ll go get his keys.”

When Ellery walked up, the paramedic—a squat man with a broad ruddy face and thinning brown hair—was giving Jackson instructions as though Jackson was listening.

“Now, I gave you tape and gauze there, but given how much damage I can see was done recently, you’re going to want to go in for X-rays and an ultrasound to make sure all that good work didn’t just get ripped to shreds.”

“Groovy,” Jackson said, tugging at his blue SCPD sweatshirt sadly. Worn and faded, Ellery imagined you could only get one of those attending the academy—one of the few good reminders of Jackson’s short time on the force.

“I’ll make sure he goes,” Ellery said, and the paramedic looked at him gratefully.