Fish Out of Water (37 page)

For a moment Jackson heard the words in his head.
I can’t be fixed. I’ll wander until I die.

But Ellery’s arm felt so warm around his shoulders.

Jade was falling in love with his neighbor.

Kaden and Rhonda were moving away.

Jackson’s past had been put to bed—mostly—but a cold-eyed killer had his phone, and his contacts, and Jackson had to learn how to do his job all over again.

And a man he liked to kiss was offering him a place to sleep, and someone to bicker with, and a friend to eat meals with, and companionship—and sex. Definitely sex.

If only Jackson could hang around and not wander.

“If he’s fixed, he won’t wander?” Jackson asked cautiously.

“Not if he has a good home,” Ellery said. “That’s the way it should work.”

Jackson nodded and rested his head against Ellery’s chest a little. “He’s got a lot of scars, you know.”

“He’s missing a leg, Jackson.”

“I wasn’t talking about the cat.”

Ellery’s sigh dusted his hair, but neither of them moved. “I was. But now I’m talking about you. I’ve seen your scars. I’ll see your new ones. You don’t wander away from home, and I won’t change where it is.”

“Kaden’s moving.”

Another sigh. “Yeah. Jade told me. She cried through lunch yesterday.”

“Are you sure I can be fixed?” God, what if he wasn’t? Ellery could walk into a lion’s den armed with pictures and words—what if Ellery wasn’t sure?

“I have faith if you do.”

Jackson touched noses with Billy Bob and realized again how close his cat had been to not being. “Okay,” he whispered. “Faith. I have some. But I also know that if I don’t get back to work, you’re going to need faith and a tranquilizing dart to keep me from going batshit crazy.”

Ellery’s sigh had a gearing-up quality this time. “Don’t worry, Jackson—the firm needs you after your absence. And if they don’t, I’ve got an idea too. And Owens is still out there, and Bridger hasn’t named half the guys on his payroll, and—”

“Bad guys,” Jackson said happily. “There’s bad guys we can get.”

“Yup. And then there’s us.”

Jackson smiled. “You’re such a superhero.”

“Shut up.”

“Nope. That’s not part of the fixer-upper package.”

This time Ellery’s kiss landed on his cheek, and Jackson turned his head just a little so he could taste it. Yeah. After a little more healing, he wanted more of that.

“As long as you admit you can be fixed,” Ellery said against his mouth.

“Fixed creatures don’t wander,” Jackson breathed.

Neither would he.

SCOTT BRIDGER
had grown leaner in the past four weeks, and Ellery was glad for the bolts on the floor that held his leg and wrist chains. Jail had brought out the feral alien in him, and the veins and tendons in his neck and temples bulged with every snarled word.

“I told you,” Bridger snapped, “I have
nothing
that you don’t already have. You have his address—”

“A shitty apartment that hasn’t been occupied in months.” Ellery hated that—it suggested premeditation. “There wasn’t even any furniture.”

Bridger’s aggressive bulldog stance retreated, even cowered. “That’s… that’s weird.”

“You fucking think? All we know about this guy besides his old military file is what he looked like in his driver’s license two years ago, but….” Ellery shook his head. This wasn’t even his case. He wasn’t planning on defending Bridger and certainly wasn’t defending Owens. But Arizona had told him privately that the DA had turned the search for Owens over to the DOJ and was currently focused on prosecuting the men they had.

They had plenty of evidence to put Bridger and Chisholm away, and some of their more prominent flunkies as well. But Owens was gone. The chief of police had given a press conference calling him an underling, a perpetrator of petty crimes and one murder.

Jackson had taken one look at his police ID and told Ellery that he’d had plastic surgery, was wearing prosthetics between his gums and cheeks to change the shape of his face, and had subtly changed the color of his hair to a light brown from a much darker color.

And both of them had looked at each other grimly and swallowed.

There was something bigger going on here—something Chisholm and Bridger hadn’t known about and Sacramento’s criminal justice system was too preoccupied to pursue.

Looking at Bridger’s face now, Ellery had that gangrenous feeling in his stomach all over again.

“Anything,” Ellery said now, not too proud to beg. “Do you have anything that can help us get this guy? Remember, you just rolled over on him. He is out, and he’s dirty, and if you could beat Luanne Chisholm to the bloody pile of meat I saw on a morgue slab, what could this guy do to you?”

Bridger blanched. “Hey, I knocked that girl out. She didn’t know. I told her she was going to see her father and she….” His voice dropped. “She died happy. She never knew her Uncle Scott was a scumbag who….” He swallowed and pulled his armor on all over again. “Owens….” He closed his eyes. “I… I was beating the body because… because I didn’t want anyone to know—you know this. And Owens watched me and….”

That quickly, the aggressive bulldog was completely gone.

“You gotta understand,” he whispered. “I’m not like that. I did the things I did because… practical, you know? But Owens, he got off on it. He got….” His voice dropped to a whisper. “He got
hard
. I think he
came
, watching me do that to her.” Bridger shuddered. “I mean, the guy came to my house for barbecues, hung out on my couch, but… until that night, I didn’t know. And we were dirty. Dirty cops. Hookers, drugs—that’s what dirty cops do. But I think there were more DBs than there should have been these last two years, you know?”

Ellery swallowed. “All female?”

Bridger shook his head. “Naw, but young. All young.”

“White?” Ellery knew serial-killer profiles—who didn’t watch TV?

“Pretty,” Bridger said with a shrug. So ethnicity wasn’t his profile. “Pretty and… dirty. Like us.”

Oh God. Pretty junkies. Pretty sex workers. Young. He and Jackson, they had some work to do.

The guard came in then; Ellery’s time was up.

“Hey, Cramer,” Bridger said, some of the bulldog coming back. “You gonna give me anything—you know, for the info?”

Ellery nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to make sure you and Owens get homes in separate prisons, with lots of protective custody.” He was trying to be a hardass.

Bridger almost cried. “Thanks, Cramer. That’s fucking human of you. Thanks.”

Ellery left the county lockup fighting the urge to vomit—and the burning need to shower. He needed to talk to Jackson. Jackson had a way of making these things human. They were still horrible, but Jackson didn’t see monsters—unless he was dreaming.

Every night for the past week, Jackson had thrashed in his sleep. He’d calmed down with Ellery’s quiet touch, but Ellery wanted… more.

He wanted to make all the monsters go away.

Stupid wish—Jackson’s demons had been fully formed and full of flesh before Ellery arrived—but still. This was not going to make them rest any easier.

But Ellery keeping a secret might be the first thing to send Jackson running.

EVERY NIGHT
for the past week, Ellery had gotten home and Jackson had been in the middle of trying to make dinner. It had been sweet but not perfect. Jackson could grill fish with one arm and toss a nonfigurative salad. He could make spaghetti, but he’d spilled some of the noodles, because Ellery had caught him trying to sweep the floor and scoop them up, his arm still dutifully taped in the sling.

It beat takeout, but Ellery would pick sex, even over home cooking, any day.

Jackson had been suspiciously finicky about sex.

It was like trying to pet a feral cat. Ellery would come up behind him while he was attempting a one-handed stir of mac and cheese, and Jackson would rub up against him for a moment and then dodge fluidly away. He would crawl into bed at night wincing in pain, but when Ellery suggested maybe a pain pill would be good, he’d grunt no and turn his head.

Ellery was wondering if he’d have to wait another six weeks for the cast and pins to come out before he’d get to touch him.

But driving home with that horrible fear in his stomach, that feeling of despair etched into his skin by Bridger’s words….

He thought he was going to have to be the one to change. He called Jackson at the first stoplight. “I’m getting dinner,” he said crisply.

“But—”

“You’re supposed to be getting better and helping Crystal with her workload,” he said, no bullshit in his voice. “Not playing maid. You suck at it. I’ll be there with Thai food in an hour.”

“I can’t decide if I’m being rewarded or punished.” Jackson’s sourness had a decidedly wounded flavor.

“You’re being taken care of,” Ellery shot back. “Now have a snack, take a pain pill, and be prepared to listen to me bitch and moan about my day.”

Jackson grunted. Ellery had very deliberately
not
talked about the worst parts of the deposition, just because they riled Jackson as much as they riled Ellery.

“Now
that’s
what I’m talking about!” Jackson said after a moment. “I take it the relationship is back on?”

Ellery was so confused he almost missed his green light. When the honking behind him had stopped, he managed to talk again. “It was never
off
.”

“Oh, it was. There was cuddling and shit, but it was all about ‘Oh, poor Jackson. He’s hurt. We have to be fucking gentle!’ God. I can’t even pay rent. Your mother bought me a fucking car, do you know that?”

“It arrived last night, Jackson. I was there.” His mother had bought the exact same Honda, but she’d made this one silver.

“Jesus. Stop being so considerate of my fucking feelings. I was shot, not lobotomized.”

Ellery took a deep breath and dodged a truck that was actively trying to kill him. “You ever think that maybe I just wanted to be…
gentle
with you?”

The puzzled silence on the other end of the phone told him that no, that thought had not occurred. “I’m sorry I’ve had to nap a lot,” Jackson said contritely. “Or that I’m not… Captain America—”

“
You’re
not Captain America? You
are
Captain America. God, you let that superhero thing go to your head. My lawyer powers are not bigger than your PI powers, and—augh! Traffic sucks in this city! Just shut up and let me bring you takeout!”

He hung up and swung into the parking lot of the Thai place on J Street, trying to lose some of his inarticulate irritation while he waited for food.

By the time he pulled up to his house, the pumpkin curry sending soothing waves of food-joy through the car, he thought he had a handle on what had happened.

Jackson was feeling helpless. Ellery had made him feel
more
helpless by protecting him. Oh holy Jesus, and Ellery thought
he
was the grown-up in relationships. He had nothing on a guy who’d had to fight for every scrap of affection he’d ever earned.

Jackson was sitting at the kitchen table, typing one-handed at his laptop while Billy Bob gazed at him affectionately from the table runner in front of him.

Ellery glared at the cat, and Billy Bob licked his whiskers back.

“You are not supposed to be there,” he muttered, setting the takeout down. He scooped the cat up and set him on the floor. Billy Bob had the nerve to kick his single back foot at Ellery, and while the gesture was awkward, it was also unmistakable.

Fuck you, bub—I’m no more helpless than a hungry jaguar.

Jackson eyed him with unfriendly green eyes, hair falling forward over his forehead, jaw squared and ready to fight.

Ellery grabbed the back of the chair and jerked it around, the scraping sound on the tile echoing throughout the kitchen.

“What in the he—”

A kiss—hard and real, like that first time in Jackson’s hall, fighting to top. Jackson returned it, biting his lip hard, pulling back and planting one hand on the back of Ellery’s head and trapping him there.

Ellery gave back, taking charge, resting some of his weight on the table but using his other hand to burrow under Jackson’s shirt. His left side was off-limits, but his right side was still sound, if a little thinner than it had been. Ellery grasped his bicep, kneaded his pec, skimmed fingernails across his nipple. Jackson tightened his hand in Ellery’s hair, and he pulled back.

“What are we doing?” he rasped.

Ellery pinched his nipple hard enough to make him gasp and then sank to his knees.

The tile was hard, but Ellery ignored it and undid the fly of Jackson’s cargo shorts. He tugged sharply, and Jackson pushed up, leaving himself bare-assed on the kitchen chair, his rampant erection thrusting out from the V of his hips and groin.

Ellery glared up at Jackson accusingly. “I have
missed
this!” And then he lowered his head and took Jackson’s thrust inside his mouth.

Sweaty, yes—and musky. Salty and good. Ellery sucked hard and deep, feeling the head of that cock in the back of his throat, swallowing to keep from gagging, holding his breath for as long as he could, just to hold it all inside.

Jackson groaned and grasped his hair again, hauling him back so he could meet that furious pair of hot green eyes. “What are you doing?”

“No condoms.” Ellery smiled through the glaze on his swollen lips. Jackson had told him that while healing, half-delirious with drugs and pain—he’d tested negative, he’d said. Ellery should be relieved, he’d said.

Ellery was more than relieved.

“I know that, but—”

Ellery didn’t want to hear it. He wrapped his lips around that perfect fat and shiny cockhead and sucked him even deeper, satisfied on some visceral level to have Jackson’s flesh in his mouth, against his palate and tongue. He pulled back, hollowing his cheeks, and sucked again, spurred on by Jackson’s surprised grunts, his arousal, the frantic tugging in Ellery’s hair.