Fish Out of Water (35 page)

“I
knew it
!” Ellery hit the red button again, and this time Jackson felt it: the soothing colors of morphine-dendrite interaction bubbling through his blood like a psychotropic rainbow of pain relief.

“But I want to know what happened!” Jackson whined. “You can’t make me sleep again, Ellery, the story’s not done!”

Ellery laughed and stayed standing over his bed. Then he sobered, because the news was obviously bad. “They lost him. I’ve seen his picture—average height, brown hair, slightly large nose, lantern jaw. He was the cop who took your phone after you’d been shot.” Ellery’s jaw clenched. “They found the Durango about two blocks down after the shooting, but he was long gone.” Ellery’s face closed down—he was hiding something—but before Jackson could ask, Ellery spoke up again. “He knows where you live, and your contacts. I had Jade go through your provider and try to cancel service and erase your chip, but I don’t know. He might have a real weapon there.”

Jackson grunted. “Do we even know who he was?”

“Owens? We know he was a cop. Apparently he was Bridger’s shadow since his own academy days—I don’t know why. Bridger hasn’t gotten that far in the confession, but it’s coming. We took the death penalty off the table in exchange for full cooperation.”

“I don’t understand,” Jackson said, trying to get this really complex idea out when his brain was wrapped in tissue paper and gauze. “Why do bad guys risk their life with every bad thing they do and then weenie out with the death penalty. Do they think it can’t happen unless their hands are cuffed?”

“I wish I knew,” Ellery said, sighing. Even in Jackson’s rainbow-tinted euphoria, he could see the exhaustion tightening the corners of Ellery’s eyes. “I just know he’s out and he’s dangerous, and I’m not going to rest easy until he’s caught.”

“Fuck.” God, every now and then the universe threw in a little kick in the nads to remind you that life was fucking random. “Who killed Luanne?” he asked.

“That was entirely Bridger, may God damn him to hell.” Ellery’s voice throbbed with passion. “And by the way, we have a case for murder for hire for the guy who shot you eight years ag—”

“Drop it,” Jackson said flatly. He had to fight to stay awake, but he wanted to be absolutely clear on this. “If it was murder for hire, it wasn’t personal. Let’s keep it that way.”

“It was personal to me,” Ellery said softly, stroking his cheek with one finger.

Jackson leaned into the touch shamelessly, hoping that when he could stop pumping morphine, he’d have his control over his emotions back. “I can’t believe you just strolled in there like… like some sort of superhero and got him to break.”

Ellery grimaced. “Chisholm was easy. He didn’t think he was a bad guy. The guys who know they’re bad guys, they’re hard to break because they have no fucks to give. But Chisholm, he just… kept sliding down that slope, telling himself it was for his children.”

And like that, Jackson could feel for the guy who’d fucked him over. He’d seen what was in the morgue, and it had hurt his heart. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like if it was someone he knew—

Ellery.

He closed his eyes against the sudden surge of pain, of imagination, of retroactive fear. “Next time,” he said, hating his wobbly voice and the drugs and the throbbing of his entire body underneath, “next time, you don’t go there without me.”

Ellery cupped his cheek. “That’s a promise.”

“Fuck promises,” Jackson muttered. “That’s me telling you how it’s going to be.”

“Sure,” Ellery agreed. “You do that.” Then he bent down and whispered, “Right up until it’s my turn to top again.”

Oh God. “Hatechu,” he mumbled, and then he was out.

HE HAD
one more surgery to remove bone fragments and add pins, and he was transferred out of ICU a couple of days later.

Ellery visited during the evenings after that, and he would report on the progress of the case. The day they finally finished taking Bridger’s deposition, he came in white-faced and cold with fury and simply sat losing a game of chess for an hour before he spoke.

When he did speak, what he said was startling. “You’re good.”

“Good with what?” Jackson asked. He’d lost interest in the game forty-five minutes ago—he was just recovering, for Christ’s sakes, and wasn’t ready to “people.”

“A good person.” Broodily, Ellery shoved a pawn aside, then put it back and moved his bishop. Jackson thought he should do something with that opening, but fuck him if he could figure out what.

“You too,” Jackson said. He meant it—so many times Ellery could have bailed, and he hadn’t. So many times he could have left Jackson’s family—or Jackson—in the wind, and he’d been faithful to the end.

“Don’t give me credit here for anything but self-interest.” Ellery pushed his queen over with a controlled movement.

“I don’t know what you got out of this whole thing but a freeloading roommate and a cat that is probably pissing in your house!” Jackson grumbled. Ellery hadn’t said anything, but Jackson couldn’t imagine ol’ Billy Bob in such a nice place without exacting a little damage. Jackson could only think of those perfect carpets, the lovely hardwood, and weep.

“The freeloading roommate and perfectly well-behaved cat are my blank check,” Ellery snapped. “Don’t you get it? I did all this to impress
you
!”

Jackson blinked slowly. It was true, they’d cut back on his meds a bit since those first two days, but he still spent a good portion of his conscious hours stoned. He wasn’t sure he was processing things the way he should.

“Mission. Accomplished.” He blinked again and squinted at Ellery, feeling owlish. “This was a bad thing?”

Ellery shook his head. “He’s a bad man, Jackson. I should have been in it to get the bad man.”

Jackson grunted. “I wasn’t in it to get the bad man,” he reminded, voice soft. “I was in it to save my brother. To protect my family. Sorry. Self-interest abounds here. We’re both fuckers.”

Ellery’s laugh sounded a wee bit hysterical—but unforced. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. We’re not Captain America. I get it.”

“Even Captain America wanted something,” Jackson told him. Yup, hospital cable had gotten way the hell better in the last eight years. “He wanted to not be powerless. He wanted to be able to change things himself. Still a decent guy. Motivated by self-interest.”

“Ayn Rand was a prick,” Ellery said viciously, standing up and doing that wandering thing. Jackson had to have help to go to the john—and hell, that had been a cause for celebration. He yearned to wander around his kitchen again.

“I thought he was a she?”

“I read
The Fountainhead—
that philosophy was all about having a giant penis and fucking the world and then saying, ‘Hey, look, world, you are forced to bear my brainchild, so boom! Suck it!’ I stand by my epithet.” Moodily he stretched his arms over his head, and Jackson tried to figure out what Ellery needed right here, right now.

“If we were at my house, I could blow you,” he said pragmatically. That seemed to be what people needed when they were in this sort of mood.

“If we were at your house, there would be people coming in and trying to fix your air-conditioning unit.”

“
Fuuuuck.
” Jackson couldn’t help it. Irritability and cabin fever had officially set in. “Look, Ellery, I can’t fix it. Bridger was a fucker, and no, I didn’t know about it. I didn’t know about Chisholm or realize Bess Carillo was sending more young men off to die—is anything happening to her, by the way?”

“No,” Ellery said, disgusted. “The DA is ignoring that because they would have to get her disbarred and maybe press charges, so, you know. A warning. It’s revolting.”

“Fucking yes it is. But you’re missing the point. We have a tiny bit of the world. Even Chisholm working for Hallenbeck—he had
finite power
to change the world. You either spend your time grabbing all the shit you can just for you, or you spend your time hoping you leave the world better than you found it. That doesn’t mean you don’t get good shit. It doesn’t mean you don’t deserve the good shit that you get. It just means that sometimes you walk away from the good shit to wade around in the muck and try to clean it up a little. And that’s it. That’s all I got. Some people got God—I’ve heard good things about the guy, but I don’t know him personally. Some people got alcohol—they’re fine as long as nobody gives them any goddamned guns. Some people got family, and those people I can get behind. But none of us—not you, or me, or hell, Kaden, who’s the best man I know—can go out and change the fucking world without a lot of pain and suffering. So it’s okay that’s not how this started. What matters is that you ended it.”

Great! One of the best speeches of his life! Two thumbs up! To punctuate it, he yawned.

And Ellery laughed. He stopped his wander and came to Jackson’s bed. “
You
,” he said, “get more interesting every time I talk to you.”

“
You
get better-looking. I like your superpower best.”

Because Ellery
did
look good. His hair had been pulled back from his face every day, perfect without fail, and his suits—all olive and navy, Jackson noticed—had been impeccable.

Someone, probably his mother, had given him a series of ties with Siamese cats on them. None of the cats had the same flair as Billy Bob, but every time Jackson saw a new tie, he smiled.

Ellery looked away, a faint crescent appearing at his cheek. “Mother is leaving tomorrow. She would like to speak with you again, without me, probably in the morning.”

“If she tries to pay me to leave your scrawny ass alone, how much should I take?”

“My trust fund is pretty hefty. Start at the stars and see if she blinks.”

Jackson laughed, partly because Ellery hadn’t even rolled his eyes. “You sound pretty sure I wouldn’t take the money,” he teased.

“Oh, I know you’d take it. But your deal had nothing to do with me pursuing you, so you could take the money in good conscience and I could bugger you senseless once she left. It would be win-win, the scam of the century. Go for it.”

Jackson winked. “I just might,” he said with another yawn. He moved his body automatically to stretch, and once again the move left him breathless with pain. It was getting late anyway. Ellery had work at home, Jackson was sure. His eyes closed slowly and he blinked them open.

“Ellery?”

“Yeah?”

“How soon before Kaden gets out of protective custody?”

“I see the judge in two days.” Ellery’s voice dropped as though he were about to deliver bad news. “The department has been ugly about it, Jackson. They might end up guarded by marshals for another two weeks.”

“Shouldn’t that end after the arraignment?” Jackson asked. “That’s only a few days.”

Ellery nodded grimly. “We need to wait until it sinks in, Jackson. That Kaden
didn’t
do it. That policemen
did
do it. Because right now there’s an ugly street vibe, and until the reality hits, Kaden and his family aren’t going to be safe in this city.”

Jackson sighed. “I miss my family,” he said nakedly. Jade and Mike had been by too, but Kaden, Rhonda, the kids—they were the core. The center. “But I’m glad you keep coming by.” He was going to have nightmares this night, even with the morphine. Oh, God,
especially
with the morphine. And the pain under it. And knowing, seeing firsthand, what evil could do when it was riled. “Stay with me a little,” he begged, hating himself. “After I go to sleep?”

Ellery nodded and swallowed. “I brought my briefcase,” he said, and Jackson realized that was where he’d gotten the chess set. Well, detecting wasn’t happening at the moment. “I’ll work until it’s time to go.”

Jackson shut his eyes tight. “Thanks. Just… thanks.”

Ellery brushed his lips against Jackson’s cheek, and Jackson clung to that as he went under.

HE SLEPT
badly. Alex and Dave came in twice during the early hours of the morning to make sure he wasn’t pulling anything in his shoulder as he thrashed about. Alex ended up taking his break in Jackson’s room, munching on a crappy sandwich and telling Jackson about the time he and Dave tried to have sex stoned and ended up needing a new DVD player. Jackson laughed at the story and tried really hard not to imagine the thing happening.

It didn’t work.

He dreamed about the DVR growing a penis and having a really intense BDSM scene with his two favorite nurses, and woke up feeling a weird combination of disgust, embarrassment, and arousal.

Which didn’t go away when he realized Ellery’s mother was in the room.

“You’re up?” she asked archly.

“Lucy Satan!” he said, because he liked the name.

“Certainly—but it might make family dinners difficult when you come to visit. You should probably stick to Taylor then.”

Jackson blinked and hated everybody. “Your son has a crush on me,” he explained patiently. “I have no idea how long this will last.” He remembered his speech about self-interest the night before and felt perfectly vindicated in this next statement. “I will take full advantage of his delusion while I can, but don’t worry. I’m an alley cat, Mrs. Satan. I’m not a keeper.”

The woman had the nerve to laugh. “You’re a
tom
cat, Mr. Rivers. Once a tomcat is fixed, he loses his urge to wander. Eventually he even stops pissing in all the corners. Believe me—you may be a fixer-upper, but once you are fixed, you
will
stop wandering.”

Jackson swallowed, a little bit of fear in his stomach. “I don’t want to be fixed,” he said, trying not to panic about his balls in the middle of a purely theoretical discussion.

“Of course you do.” She had been sitting on the couch while he slept, but now she stood and snapped her briefcase shut, then approached the bed. “I just came to thank you, Jackson.”

“For almost getting Ellery killed?” Oh God. He was tired already.

“For giving him a chance to be great,” she corrected, smiling slightly.

Oh fuck this. Fuck being fixed, and fuck being in a relationship, and
especially
fuck dealing with this scary woman.