Fish Out of Water (30 page)

“If that’s your mother,” Ellery muttered, “tell her she can’t have you.”

“Not Celia.” The five quick raps repeated, and Jackson started out of the room. “It’s Jade. I’ve got shorts in the drawer—maybe grab those since your knapsack never made it into the bedroom.”

“
Fuck
…,” Ellery mumbled, and Jackson hustled to the door.

Jade was on the other side, wearing a bathrobe and looking irritated.

“Again?” she demanded, sweeping inside with a ziplock baggie in her hand. “He’s here
again
? I mean, I know you were curious, but you never sleep with them twice!”

“We were checking each other out for a while,” Jackson defended, turning to watch as Jade pulled out the coffee and started scooping it into the baggie. “What makes you think it’s going to go away after a couple of days?”

“We?” Jade turned to him with narrowed eyes. “I knew
you
, but I had no idea
he
crushed on anybody. I didn’t know snakes crushed.”

“Be nice,” Jackson snapped, voice flinty.

“Okay, okay!” Jade held out her hands. “Fine. You’re a thing now. It’ll be painful when you break it off, but—”

“We’re completely ignoring the fact that you’re sleeping with Mike now?” Jackson asked, because… dude. This was her second night too, and apparently now Jackson’s coffee was fair game.

Jade turned away and mumbled, “You, uh, just woke up. Here. I’ll make you guys some coffee of your own.”

“Human of you,” Jackson said dryly. “And appreciated. You hated Mike. You said he was a—”

“Sh!” She flailed coffee grounds everywhere and turned toward him in earnest desperation. “Don’t
say it
. He might hear, and he’ll get his feelings hurt! You
know
he means well!”

Jackson sauntered into the kitchen, turned a chair around, and straddled it. “
I
do—in fact, I’ve been trying to get
you
to see it for years. I just don’t know when it became so obvious to
you
.”

Jade harrumphed and made his coffee, then bagged her own grounds and cleaned off the counter. She turned to Jackson and leaned back, playing with the tattered tie of her violet chenille robe.

“He’s sweet,” she said unexpectedly. “And yeah, some of the shit that comes out of his mouth is just… fucking crazy. But he came to help my brother out, no questions asked. And I went in to check on Denny and the station and… we just started talking. And it hit me. My family, you—we mean a lot to him. And, you know, he’s not
that
old.” She nodded like this was something everybody should be aware of.

“Forty-five,” Jackson said dryly. “Yeah. I get it. He’s young at heart.”

“He is!” Jade defended with sudden passion. “He’s young at heart. And….” She bit her lip. “He’s kind, Jackson. Which is why you two get along, I guess. But he’s… he’s just… he
worships
me. And you and me, we grew up together, and you weren’t ever going to do that.”

Jackson bit his lip and remembered… everything, from the night before.
Worship
. Was that how Jackson felt about Ellery? Was it the other way around?

“No,” he said, the word punctuated by Ellery’s voice down the hall.

“Do I smell coffee?” he called.

“Yes, yes, you do!” Jade called back. “And you need to get your skinny uptight butt in here, because I didn’t just come in to steal your coffee!”

Jackson looked at her in surprise. “Why—what’s doin’?”

Ellery padded down the hall and stopped in the doorway, hair rumpled, wearing Jackson’s sleep shorts and nothing else. Jackson just looked his fill enjoying the pale skin and the clean lines of someone fit but not muscular and good-looking without being pretty.

“Yeah, both of you,” Jade said. She turned back to gather three cups and set them on the counter. “Leonard Pfeist called me up—I guess he’s been trying to get hold of you too, Cramer, but you maybe forgot to—”

Ellery grimaced, leaning against the doorframe. “I kind of turned my phone to vibrate and then—”

“Was it in your pants pocket?” Jackson asked. “Because I think I shoved them—”

“In the hamper. Yeah.” They smiled shyly at each other. “We were otherwise engaged.”

“I’m going to hurl.” Jade went to the fridge and pulled out milk, and Billy Bob padded through the kitchen to wend about her ankles. She poured a dollop in his food bowl, because any more would make him sick, and then stood up and glared at the coffee machine for not dripping faster. “Anyway, Ellery’s office got broken into. I mean, the
whole
office got broken into, but Ellery’s in particular. It was completely destroyed. They were looking for something in particular, and Pfeist wanted to make sure you had copies on the company server—”

“I do!” Ellery said, sounding alarmed.

“Good, because—”

“Well, of everything except—” Ellery’s gaze sought Jackson out. “Your file, Jackson.”

“The one you made a zillion hard copies of?” Jackson asked, because damn, that had been good thinking.

“Exactly. Damn!”

“So you’re covered?” Jade looked from one to the other.

“Yeah,” Ellery said, dragging his hand through his hair. “But that’s worrisome. I mean, we must be getting
really
close if—” A car backfire from outside startled him, and he glared at the door like it had done it on purpose.

Jackson’s heart stalled even as he leapt out of his chair. “Jade! Get down!”

Jade had grown up in the hood in the nineties, and he knew she fucking
would
, but Ellery—oh
fuck
!

Jackson hit the doorway just as shots started to sweep the duplex and Mike’s dog went apeshit.

“
Ellery
!”

He stared at Jackson in surprise and horror as Jackson threw himself through the doorway in a full-body tackle meant to get them both down.

Jackson was in midair when the bullet caught him, the velocity hurling him against the doorframe, and that was when he blacked out.

THE SHOOTING
stopped but the dog kept barking, and Ellery tried to jumpstart his brain.

Jackson.

He’d managed to bring Ellery down as he’d fallen, throwing him back against the far wall of the hallway before his trajectory changed.

Ellery was spattered in blood.

“Jackson?” he asked, suddenly afraid. He’d
seen
Luanne Chisholm. For real. Touching distance away. He didn’t want to touch Jackson’s body if it had been destroyed by violence. He didn’t want to think about the human
who had lain next to him the night before, spilling secrets, laughing with surprising shyness, becoming more important to Ellery with every breath.

So certain Ellery would leave.

“Jackson?” he said again, pulling himself up and leaning over the still form. Jackson’s shoulder and the meat of his arm were a mess—blood and flesh and bone and Ellery couldn’t look at it.

But then the owner of that mess moaned, and Ellery raised a shaky hand to the hair that covered Jackson’s eyes.

“I’ve been
shot
,” Jackson slurred. “Mother
fucker.
”

“
Jackson
!” Jade shrilled from across the kitchen. “Oh my God—”

“Make her stop.” Jackson moaned. “God, Ellery, make her stop.”

“Jackson—dammit, you can’t—” She was hitting those pitches that only terrified women could hit, and Ellery needed quiet, just some motherfucking
quiet
so he could think! God, just think!

“Jade!” Ellery barked, his courtroom voice coming from a place that he hadn’t known existed. “Call an ambulance. Check on Mike. And for
fuck’s
sake, shut that dog up!”

“Oh my God!” Jade pulled herself up and looked despairingly at the kitchen floor. Bullets had spattered the refrigerator and the cupboards, leaving food and cereal and broken glass strewn like child’s toys. She looked at her bare feet and moaned, and then screamed.

“Billy!”

Ellery’s heart fell to his feet. “I’ll call the ambulance,” he said, holding his face by Jackson’s. “I’ll get help.”

“Fine.” Jackson took a deep, painful breath but didn’t try to move. “Could you find my fucking cat?” His voice broke. “God, Ellery, I really love that fuckin’ cat.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll find the fucking cat.”

But Jade was sobbing in the mess on the floor, and Ellery wasn’t going to throw hope that way. He was going to save all his hope for the ambulance and some help, and Jackson maybe not bleeding out on the floor of his own home.

APPARENTLY WHEN
your house got shot up in a normally peaceful neighborhood, you didn’t have to call an ambulance or the cops. Mike came storming over first, and then the police came in, and then the ambulance.

Mike was sweeping the floor so Jade could walk through the kitchen while the police came and talked to her—and Ellery tried to doctor Jackson’s goddamned cat.

Billy Bob hadn’t been shot; he’d been
crushed
under what used to be the toaster oven on top of the refrigerator. While the EMTs worked on stabilizing Jackson so they could roll him onto the gurney, Ellery grabbed an old tablecloth from the upended drawer of linens and wrapped the wailing, spitting animal tightly in a bundle.

The cat was the best part of the clusterfuck in the kitchen.

The cops and Jade were shouting at each other. The mostly male, all-white group of policemen were telling her to stop being hysterical and asking if she was on drugs and if maybe one of her friends had done this because she was sleeping with a white guy—pretty much all at the same time.

Jade was shouting at the cops that
they
should know who fucking did this because they were all dirty fucking assholes and they’d been trying to kill her family for years. When Ellery saw eyes narrow and faces harden, he thought he needed to pull a Jackson.

“Enough!” he barked, surprised when both sides calmed the fuck down. He approached Jade slowly with a whining, panting Billy Bob. “Look, you and Mike need to take him to the vet’s. His back leg is a fucking disaster, but he might live. When Jackson comes to—”

Jackson screamed. Ellery looked over his shoulder and saw that the EMTs had just shifted him to the backboard and were moving it to the gurney, and the sounds he was making…
oh God
.

Jade burst into tears. Ellery couldn’t blame her—but he couldn’t join her either. Instead he locked his jaw and shut his eyes, fucking
willing
himself not to lose it. “When Jackson comes to,” he tried again, his voice ripping a hole in his chest, “he’s going to want his ugly motherfucking ass-buggering tomcat to be okay, do you hear me?”

Jade stared him, her mouth liquid and chin shaking, and Mike wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He was wearing his boxer shorts and a tank tee, and iron-gray hair peeped out at his neck and along the sides of his chest. In a way he looked pathetic, skinny legged, knobby kneed, scared, and sad, but in another way, Ellery could see it now. He’d cleared a path so Jade could walk, he’d stopped her crying, and now he put his other arm out and nodded for the cat.

Fucking capable. Sometimes capable just trumped young and pretty because it fucking did.

“I’ll take him,” Mike said calmly. He looked up at the police. “You all took my statement, right? If it’s okay, I’ll get the lady out of your hair and you can talk to the nice lawyer fella. He’ll know what’s doing.”

The cops exchanged glances, and Ellery could see them thinking it: Was it more worth it to get Jade out of their hair or pay her back for being a flaming hysterical bitch to their faces?

But Mike’s good-natured practicality won out, and Ellery thought that he’d welcome this man at a gay pride parade any day.

Billy Bob howled as Ellery turned him over, and he took a deep breath and stroked the spot between the cat’s ears for a moment. “I’ll make sure he knows you’re okay,” he whispered.

Then he looked at the policemen around him. “I’m an attorney for Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson & Cooper,” he said clearly. “I think this attack is directly related to a case Rivers and I are investigating. Once the ambulance clears out, I can get you the make and model of the SUV that the shots came from, and I can give you a name. You’re not going to like it, but I can give you a
fucking
name.” Behind him he heard the lock of gurney wheels and the EMTs starting out the door. “But first—give me a minute.”

The cops parted like the goddamned Red Sea, and thanks to Mike and the broom and dustpan, Ellery could walk through the fine layer of debris on the floor and follow the gurney out.

“Wait!” he called before they shoved Jackson in. His voice cracked and he hated it, but he couldn’t change it.

Jackson was hooked up to an IV, hopefully of pain meds, and he was still awake. Loopy, but awake.

“Jackson!” Ellery said, coming up to the side that
wasn’t
a mess of pressure bandages and gauze. “Jackson, can you hear me?”

“Lawyer,” Jackson said, a loose smirk twisting his mouth. “Hot, but has a stick. You know. In his ass.”

“That wasn’t a stick,” Ellery said, trying not to weep with relief.

Jackson laughed, low and filthy. “Nope. Not a stick.” He took a breath and tried to focus. “How’s Jade? And Mike? And my….” His voice hitched.

“They’re fine.” Ellery petted his good hand, not caring about EMTs or policemen or anything else. “We’re taking the cat to the vet, Jade and Mike are fine, and I think the German shepherd has laryngitis.”

Jackson smiled and then gasped, his face white and taut. “I’ll be in the fucking hospital,” he muttered. “God. God. Don’t tell Kaden I ended up back in the hospital. He’s still pissed from last time.”

Ellery nodded and forced words past his swollen throat. “Yeah, well, I’m pissed now. You just piss
everyone
off, don’t you?”

Jackson’s face relaxed, and he looked mildly stoned again. “Yup. I’ll be pissing you off until you lose that stick.” He laughed then, and Ellery backed up and let the EMTs do their job.