Fish Out of Water (6 page)

It was like Kaden and Rhonda’s house—happy families won sometimes. They just did.

And speaking of happy families….

He found Dave and Alex out by the parking garage behind the ambulance entrance, sharing a cigarette break. That was pretty much where he expected to find them this time of day, because they would have screwed each other silly in Alex’s car for the first part of their lunch, and this was their comedown.

You learned a lot about the nurses who took care of you on a daily basis. Dave had given him his twelve-o’clock painkillers and had talked about taking his break with his boyfriend. Alex had changed his catheter bag at two, and he’d always looked freshly laid. It hadn’t been that hard to put together.

“Hey, handsome—you taking care of our property?” Alex asked as Jackson trotted out of the parking garage to greet them. Alex—tiny, perky, and blond as a cheerleader—smoked like he was about to hide the cigarette from his mother.

“It’s not yours anymore,” Jackson said, smiling. “The hospital gave me a full lease on the equipment when I left. You remember the paperwork?”

“Oh no, honey.” Dave was taller, wider, darker in hair and skin, and built like a tank; he wielded his cigarette like a magic wand and camped like a Boy Scout. “We don’t
do
paperwork.”

Jackson rolled his eyes. “Who needs paperwork when you bitches put out in person, right?”

“You know it, baby,” Alex purred. He drew hard on the cig and then crushed it out in the sand pit. After he’d exhaled smoke, he stepped forward and shook Jackson’s hand. Some of the cheerleader fell away and he gave a genuine smile. “How you doing, hon?” he asked seriously. “The whole hospital is talking about your friend this morning—apparently you stepped on Dr. Snidenhower’s toes.” The boys knew Kaden, Rhonda, and Jade—they’d been his only visitors over those months of recovery. Jackson had seen Alex and Dave working as he’d been pulling the strings that got K out of the hospital and into the jail—and he’d been grateful.

“Yeah, well, that guy was a jerk when I was here,” Jackson muttered. Hence the nickname Snidenhower. Jackson had it on good authority that Alex and Dave were the only reason he wasn’t walking around with a colostomy bag under his belt. Scheideman was a little overzealous with requesting surgery, and apparently both of Jackson’s boys—as he’d called them by the end—had lobbied fiercely to let Jackson’s body try to heal first.

It was a thing for which Jackson would forever be grateful.

“The guy’s a jerk anyway.” Dave flicked his ash into the sand pit, dark fingers curving gracefully. “But that’s not what you’re here to talk about, is it.”

Jackson shook his head. “You know what I’m here to talk about?”

Dave looked over his shoulder to see if anyone else was coming out to the back bay to nurture their filthy habit. Nobody so far, so he gestured Jackson in with a jerk of his chin. “Your boy? The friend who caught the po-po bus? So, Scheideman got pulled off that poor dead kid in the cop’s uni—he was trying to resuscitate him because he didn’t have the balls to call TOD.”

Nobody wanted to call TOD on a cop.
Nobody
.

“So….”

Dave tsked his impatience but kept going. “So Doc Memphis called TOD, but Scheideman got sicced on Kaden, the hot guy with the cute kids.”

“There was a wife too,” Jackson supplied dryly, mostly to see Dave roll his eyes.

“Right. Anyway, so a guy—not in uniform, but smelled like bacon if you know what I mean—he grabs Scheideman’s arm on the way down the hall, and he’s talking like they’re planning a terrorist attack. Anyway, I got into the room about two steps after them. You were at reception raising six sorts of hell—baby, I just stayed out of your way. Anyway, Scheideman didn’t even look at the chart when he called for the Haldol. He didn’t know your friend had been throwing up—”

“Like a
champion
,” Alex confirmed. “It’s not that the meds weren’t appreciated, just that, you know, makes it that much harder to figure out if he’d been roofied.”

“Did they run a tox screen?” He’d asked for one—had asked every doctor within shouting distance for one—but that didn’t always mean what he hoped for.

“Honey,” Dave cooed, “would we
do
you that way?”

Jackson blinked. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, we ran you one—
before
the Haldol—and no, the doctor didn’t ask for it. We had the blood work in before ol’ Shiny Man opened his mouth.” Dave dropped his camp for a second. “You were in our unit for months, Jackson. And we saw the marshals there for protective custody until the case got out of court. Honey, if you were there battling for Kaden, screaming for a tox screen, you knew what you were doing.”

Jackson let loose a sigh of relief and managed a smile. “You know, some people don’t believe in guardian angels anymore, but you two give me faith.”

Dave exhaled the last puff and ground his cig in the sand. “Yeah, you say that, bitch, but you never put out.” He winked and nodded to Alex. “Baby, our break’s up. I’ll cover for you if you go get the results from the car.”

Jackson gasped a little, but Dave looked at him meaningfully.

“Go,” he said, his voice dropping. “We made copies. We did the same for you, although I know you don’t remember. The minute the po-po came asking for your charts, Alex and I felt a tingle in our short hairs.”

“Wait!” Jackson called, hoping for a break—or a familiar name, at least. “Do you know the name of the cop who was putting weight on Scheideman?”

Dave shrugged, but Alex nodded. “Yeah—name was Owens. Short guy, dark hair, sort of greasy. Wore a uniform. Totally fucking average—I couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup if he was sucking Scheideman’s dick.”

“Well, baby, if Scheideman was getting his dick sucked, I say let it happen—it can
only
mean good things for us.” With that Dave flopped his wrist at them and turned and flounced off.

Jackson and Alex started walking toward the garage, and Jackson was sure that to anybody watching, it would look like Alex and Dave had a spat of some sort and Jackson got to calm Alex down.

Jackson waited until they had disappeared from sight of the hospital to ask, “You were afraid someone was going to fix the tox screen results?”

Alex shrugged. “Shiny Man isn’t the only guy who welcomes kickbacks. Usually they’re from drug companies, but… well, you were the first. But after you started to use us as a resource, Dave and I, we sort of started to keep an eye out for that kind of thing, right? I mean, Scheideman wanted to give you a crap bag, and somebody—I’m not sure who—was trying to convince us that you took a .22 in the chest and not a hollow point in the back.”

Jackson squinted at him in the dark of the garage. “I never knew that—who was it?”

Alex shrugged. “It was eight years ago—you know that. I didn’t even see him. I heard him talking to Scheideman, and Dave and I made copies of all your charts. When the DA’s office came and asked for medical records,
that’s
what we gave them. And like I said, you started to PI for your firm, and we started to… let’s just say we’re very, very careful when we see an officer-involved shooting.”

“You could have told me.” Jackson felt a chill snake through his bowels. “I mean I….” He thought of Kaden. “Alex,” he hissed, wishing he could say this telepathically. “You guys could put yourself in danger—”

“Dave gets frisked at least twice a month walking home from the liquor store with cigarettes and wine,” Alex said matter-of-factly. “It’s our neighborhood—we’ve lived there for twelve years.”

“You guys have been together since—”

“Nursing school, yes, since the dawn of fucking time—pay attention here, Jackson. They get away with it because he’s black and he wears Converse and pedal pushers on his off hours, and you know Dave, he says it’s a crime against fashion—”

Alex was trying to make light of it, but Jackson could hear the bitterness. “Is it because of this, you think?”

Alex nodded quietly. “Yeah. I think it’s because of this. Most of the nurses—and I know you get this—we fight the good fight together, Jackson. But me and Dave—I mean, it only takes one cop with a grudge and Dave’s kissing a brick wall when he just wanted some fucking cigarettes.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Jackson asked, a sort of fury burning in his gut. All of the things he hadn’t known….

“We gave you info when you needed it,” Alex said mildly. “Look, we’re all for doing what’s right, but you can’t protect the world.”

“I can’t even protect my family,” Jackson muttered.

“Yeah, well, the next time you come asking for info, you could always bring us smokes and wine.”

Jackson made a mental note to do just that. He thought of Dave—sassy, bitchy, easygoing Dave—who did the softest blood draw of anyone on his floor and could talk someone down from a shitty-assed night of pain with a matter-of-fact kindness that warmed Jackson’s soul.

“Cases of it for Christmas,” he said.

Alex winked at him and pointed. “Kk—there’s our fabulous fuckmobile!” He reached out with his remote and clicked while they were about three cars away.

It did not blow up—and for half a second, Jackson’s heart stopped because he thought that was what had happened.

But it
did
catch fire, quickly, like an accelerant had been poured all over the interior.

He and Alex stopped flat-footed, staring at the old Ford SUV as flames raced along the interior. A horrific crack popped through the air as the back window burst, and another one as the side window exploded.

“Mother
fucker
!” Alex snapped as the roaring sound hit them both. “I had three pairs of designer scrubs in there. And
shoes
, Jackson—a new pair of nice cushy nurse tennies and….” His voice caught, and Jackson threw an arm around his shoulders while he fished for his phone and called the fire department.

Oh yeah. He wanted them first. No cops on the scene until the last possible moment.

“You got insurance?” he asked as the two of them backed up a couple of steps. The heat was getting intense near the car, and Jackson felt a little pang—the car was about ten years old. He’d bet it was one of their first big purchases together.

“Not for a fucking arson fire!” Alex snarled, running his fingers through his hair. “God
dammit
, Jackson. You know what was in there, don’t you?”

Jackson paused as dispatch connected him. “Of course I do,” he said. God, somebody let this fucking day end.

“WHAT DO
you mean the company owes them a car?” Even over the phone, Ellery sounded puzzled, which was funny, but he also sounded like the stick was easing slowly out of his sweet ass, which was sexy.

If Jackson hadn’t been watching Dave and Alex remind themselves in a quiet bubble that they were glad to be alive and it was only the fucking car, he could almost have been distracted by Cramer’s voice on the phone.

“I’m saying they had copies of Kaden’s tox screen in their car—and it was rigged to catch fire when Alex hit the clicker.”

“Not blow up?” Ellery asked, but he sounded confused and not skeptical.

“Because a bomb has casualties,” Jackson muttered. “A bomb draws attention to itself. A car fire means a short—if this is a short in the wiring, they’re at fault, nobody cares. But I’m telling you, I watched that fire spread as we were walking toward the car. It didn’t just start to smoke and then spout flames—”

“It burned fast and hot from the beginning?”

“Oh yeah,” Jackson confirmed. The black smoke roiling off the vehicle had driven him and Alex outside, but he was watching the firemen coat it in foam and call towing for the carcass. God.

“Why not just steal them?” Ellery asked, but not like he doubted Jackson’s assessment.

Jackson thought about poor Dave, harassed for being a nurse, for being Jackson’s friend. For being black. “Because this sends a definite message,” he said grimly. “They don’t want these guys on our side.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen. I’d say they’re a valuable resource.” Jackson could hear clicking on the other end, and it sounded like Ellery was furiously double-tasking.

“Yeah—they were doing me a solid and this was the result. I get that we’re not made out of money—”

“An early-model SUV?” Ellery said, and it sounded like he was clicking buttons.

“Yeah, about ten years old.”

“Well, the replacement is five years old, and it should be there at the end of their shift. Keys will be delivered to the information desk by the main entrance.”

“Yeah?” Jackson was shocked. This was movie money, right here. “How’d you get the partners to agree so fast?”

“The partners don’t know yet,” Ellery said grimly. “But I’ll make a case for reimbursement. How many cases have they helped you out on?”

“Ten, twelve—ask Jade to look them up in my work laptop. It’s under the reception counter. It’s documented.”

“Good. This will be compensation—tell them they’re officially on retainer as professional consultants, which, by the way, makes fucking with them a bigger crime than it already is.”

Oh God. Jackson hated being indebted to this guy—he really did. But this was solid. Truly fucking solid. “It’s fucking hard to hate you when you’re being a decent person. Ask Jade for the paperwork and tell her what happened—she knows these guys, she’ll make it a priority.”

“You still going to Connie’s house?” Ellery asked, apprehension in his voice.

“You can’t keep me away,” Jackson growled. “What the hell did Kaden wander into?”

“You, sir, need to move your ass and find out.”

Ellery hung up crisply, and Jackson was left staring at his phone. God, he’d been pissed that morning—not even so much at Ellery but at having to make himself naked, show his scars, just to get this guy, this guy who held Kaden’s future in his hands, to stop looking like he’d stepped through the looking glass and start working like this was a real fucking case and their lives depended on keeping Kaden alive and out of jail. Forever.

Well, apparently Ellery was doing that. Jackson could almost forgive him for being an uptight prick who looked at Jackson—and Jade—like they were trash.