by Amy Lane
“I did, indeed. Here, let me take this up, and I’ll be down to help.”
“Don’t you dare. You look like hell.”
Jackson frowned. Mike hadn’t said that to him since February. “Hey, I got to sleep in.”
“Whatever. Go upstairs and chill. I’m afraid you’ll fall over.”
“But…,” he floundered, looking helplessly at Ellery. “What did you say to him?”
Ellery rolled his eyes. “You’ve got luggage under your eyes I could ship to Europe, Jackson. One decent night’s sleep in a month isn’t going to fix that.”
Jackson grunted, and for the first time in the last month, he felt tired. Not manic, not edgy, just… exhausted. Like banging Ellery over the bathroom sink should have been the climax that led to a nap, not to a full day.
He trudged up the stairs, wondering how he could not have known he was hurting that bad. That moment—that breathless still—of the beautiful thing exploding right by his head and the silence that followed, hit him hard in the gut. He set the coffee on the desk throughway that separated Jade’s office space from the reception area and all but ran to Ellery’s office.
It was a lovely space, the corner office, with two windows, one toward the street and one toward the great fruitless mulberry tree that grew between this building and the one next to it. The day was slightly less brutal than the previous week, and the sunlight through the green of the leaves looked tranquil and nonthreatening.
Jackson had painted one wall in this room a sort of sea blue—some gray, some green but enough blue that people didn’t walk away thinking “What color was that wall?” He’d picked out the artwork—an oceanscape done by an artist in San Francisco, and two pictures of the nearby river, with a brilliant sky beyond.
He closed the door behind him and looked at the framed pictures, which had been hung in the past two days, and slowly he sank into the guest chair, which Ellery had chosen to be the most comfortable thing on the planet. There was another one, not so soft, for clients who needed to lean over the desk and didn’t want to feel coddled, but this one was the comfort chair, designed to soothe and calm so Ellery’s clients felt safe.
If nothing else, Jackson liked to think this chair made it harder to lie.
Jackson’s own space—a smaller desk with a chair and a computer—had been set up in the corner, because that’s how they’d worked in their last few months at the old firm, and they’d both liked it. They thought well together, when they weren’t fucking or fighting, and Jackson loved the way Ellery’s mind worked.
Jackson heard a clatter of people coming into the office but stayed put. He and Ellery needed to move the rest of Ellery’s law books in, and hang his degrees on the wall too. Ellery had put pictures on the desk already, though—him and his family, and one, reluctantly taken, of him and Jackson in front of his parents’ house when Jackson looked like death warmed over, mostly because he had been.
“Hey, Riv—” Henry’s voice dropped as he stuck his head in and saw Jackson just sitting. “What’s up?”
Jackson shook himself slightly. “Nothing. Mike told me I looked like death, and suddenly I felt tired. Weird how that happens.”
“Is Mike the guy with the young face and the white hair and beard?”
Jackson smiled. Mike was, in fact, not quite forty-five. Older than him and Jade, but not so much. “Yeah. From Virginia.”
“Nice guy,” Henry said, and Jackson turned toward him, not seeing a trace of sarcasm.
Well, of course. Mike was learning, Henry was learning—rednecks riding the learning curve. Jackson sort of loved that people could do that. Change and grow and learn, become different people by fixing their own damage.
“He is. He and Jade are good people.”
“Yeah. In a million years, I wouldn’t have seen her with someone like that, but now you can’t unsee it, right?”
Jackson laughed and started to push himself up. “Here, they’re going to need some help—”
“They need nothing,” Henry said, coming to sit on the smaller straight-backed chair. “AJ got here while we were coming up the stairs, and now everybody’s falling on top of each other trying to unpack boxes. I feel sort of bad. We walked in here two days ago and sat on camp stools in your reception area, and I’ve sort of monopolized your time. You were supposed to be opening a business.”
Jackson shrugged. “Yeah, well, you are the business.”
Henry laughed. “The thing is—I mean aside from the trip to the police department and the finding the dead body—it’s been sort of a fun two days.”
“Yeah?” Jackson couldn’t contain his grin. “Adrenaline junkie.”
“Well, yeah! I mean I liked being in the military, you know? No offices, lots to do, PT was always an option.” He let out a sigh. “I was going to get my degree in computers before I got out and found something else to do. I thought I had time, you know? But these last two months, I’ve been cleaning up the plumbing in the flophouse and giving the guys rides and helping them with their FAFSA…. I’m not saying I haven’t been busy but….”
“You’re used to having a purpose,” Jackson said intuitively.
“Yeah.”
Jackson pulled out his phone and started pulling up websites. “You got a laptop at home?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Give me your email. I’m sending you a couple of links.”
“To what?” Henry rattled off his email, and Jackson fiddled around a bit.
“To places you can get a criminal justice AA and your PI’s license. I mean, the money’s okay but not great, and you may find something else you want to do, but in the meantime, you know. It’s a thing.”
“Yeah,” Henry said, his voice full of wonder. “It is a thing.”
“Sometimes it’s a fucking boring thing,” Jackson warned. “Stakeouts are the suck. And you started out as a person under suspicion who knows me, so that’s no good for contacts. Unless you find yourself at a law firm—a good one—you’re going to be eyeballs deep in guys banging their mistress or their rent boy or wearing a diaper and a clown suit and getting fed a bottle or whatever—”
“Ew!”
“True story.” Jackson shuddered. “Talk about shit you can’t unsee. But, you know. Sometimes it’s pretty fucking cool. And sometimes it’s dangerous, and sometimes it’ll break your heart. But nobody said you have to do it, and nobody said forever.”
“And right now,” Henry said slowly, perusing the website on his phone, “it’s a thing that interests me that may eventually get me out of the flophouse and into an apartment of my own.”
“Word, brother. Also? If the flophouse ever gets too… hormonal for you? I’ve got sort of a halfway house for young guys just getting out of jail. I worry about them—I don’t oversee them as much as I should, and they need everything from rides to their parole officer’s office to help with their student loans. Anyway, I have no money to pay you with, but if you’re looking for a place to spend your time where there’s not twenty-four-seven man-titty, there’s worse ways to go.”
“I’d be happy to volunteer some time,” Henry said, sounding surprised. “It turns out that babysitting mostly grown young men is sort of a talent of mine.”
Jackson chuckled and was going to stand up and go join the living when Ellery came in. “Oh, here you are. Henry, can you give us a minute? Jackson has some plans for you today, but I wanted to talk to him first.”
Henry rolled his eyes because Ellery sounded like a supercilious asshole when he asked people to leave, but he hopped up and vacated. “I’ll go help….” He waved his hand vaguely. “Whatever they need help with.” And then he disappeared.
Jackson went to push himself up—again—when Ellery waved him down. “Mike’s right,” he said softly. “You look tired.”
Jackson let out a sigh. “Last night… last night was a long time coming, wasn’t it?”
“It’s been the last couple of weeks, yeah. You stopped talking to Rabbi Watson, an
d… you know. The dreams got worse. We talked about this.”
“Yeah. But it didn’t hit me—I mean, really hit me—about how bad I felt until Mike said something. Then I realized, you know, for a while there, I felt better. We were sleeping through the night a couple of times a week. Every bite wasn’t a struggle. I didn’t feel triggered by every stupid thing I’d ever run into in the past.”
Ellery stood behind him, putting warm hands on his shoulders and dropping a kiss on the top of Jackson’s head. “Yeah.”
“I owe you that guy.”
“You owe me noth—”
“No. I do. I owe you the best guy I can be. I… I guess I wanted things to be easier. For me to get better. For me and you to be together. But… but ignoring shit when it was sliding south only made things worse.”
“Last night was not fun,” Ellery admitted. “But I saw it coming a mile away. You’re not that subtle, you know?”
Jackson closed his eyes. “I’ll get up in a minute,” he murmured. “We have so much to do.”
Ellery wrapped his arms around Jackson’s shoulders and brushed soft lips against his ear. “You and I will always have so much to do.”
But for this moment, looking at the office he and Ellery had chosen, knowing they were going to do something they both felt was important, it felt like they were doing something, indulging in a moment of silence, appreciating the solid world they were trying to build in what they knew to be mostly chaos.
His life was worth something. The man at his back was worth something. The heart to enjoy it—his peace of mind—was worth fighting for.
These were good things to remember when he was running around fighting the good fight. He needed to remember what he was fighting for.
EVENTUALLY HE got up and went out to drink his coffee and eat his marzipan pastry (oh my God, yes!) and to get a look at the rest of the office. AJ had finished painting the day before, and Jade and Mike were putting the finishing touches on the books Jade used for reference on the shelf behind her. Jade served people from behind the throughway, and her computer, her office supplies, even the office refrigerator, were all her domain, and she had organized it as thoroughly as God’s pantry. The furniture—a couch, a love seat, and three end tables—was comfortable, upholstered in navy-and-cream tapestry, and hopefully impervious to stains.
The lamps on the pine end tables had charging stations on them.
It looked… comfy. Not homey, but professional and designed to put people at ease who might not deal with lawyers a lot. Jackson had advocated for the charging stations in the waiting area and the changing station in the bathroom, for the pine furniture and not the oak, for the stain-resistant couches and the navy area rug on top of the deep brown carpet. Warm. Solid. Safe. Jade’s office space had a wall done in a playful magenta, and a picture of hers and Jackson’s resignation letter from Pfeist, Harrelson, Langdon, and Cooper, Ellery’s old firm. The letter featured brightly colored sharpies and their bare asses, so she’d set it up out of sight of the customers—and she had a small tub of toys behind the throughway, including a cheap tablet loaded with kids’ games. Sure, the tablet might be the first thing to go—but it might also be the first thing to save the life of a mother who was losing her mind because her oldest had been taken into custody, or the emotional security of the younger sibling whose older brother had gotten popped for drugs.
This was a safe space. This was a space that took people’s lives seriously and gave second chances, and Jackson had helped make it that way.
He looked around with appreciative eyes. “Great place,” he said. “Too bad Henry and I gotta motor in a few.”
“Where you going?” Ellery asked, and Jackson smiled at AJ, who had just walked in the door.
“AJ, do you have hours at Pfinger, Hamster, Whomazoo, and Clopper?”
Ellery snorted. “That’s not actually the name of our old firm.”
“Is now. So how about it, AJ?”
AJ nodded. “Yeah, I do. I need to be there after lunch, actually.”
“Excellent. Ellery is going to provide you with preliminary financials for Robert Sampson and Ash Carver. I need you to have Crystal do a deep dive—in particular, I want to know when Robert Sampson gets his house cleaned and by whom. In the meantime, Henry’s going to go get my scrubs out of the car, and we’re going to go back to the hospital. Sound good?”
“What are you going to do while I’m stepping and fetching?” Henry asked irritably.
“I’m going to be making a phone call nobody here needs to know about.”
There was a collective intake of breath.
Everybody knew who that meant—everybody except Henry, but Henry wasn’t stupid.
“I’ll just go down to the car,” he said. “Keys?”
Ellery threw him the keys to the Lexus, and Henry disappeared.
Everybody in the room took a deep breath because they were all remembering why Jackson and Ellery had spent the last five months in recovery.
In January, they’d gone to San Diego to find the training ground of the monster who had almost killed them both. What they’d discovered was a nest of assassins—and assassins in training—being led by a megalomaniac.
Big stuff for two hometown boys, it was true, and they’d almost lost their lives. Lee Burton—and his psychic boyfriend, Ernie—had been part of the reason they hadn’t.
Just knowing a Lee Burton existed was scary shit—shit that they didn’t let keep them up at night—because they held on to the fairy-tale hope that guys like Burton were watching out for guys like them.
It was time to put that to the test.
Jackson turned back toward the office, and Jade said, “Jackson, are we in danger?” She and Mike had stopped an assassin in their backyard the last time—in spite of the black ops guys in their living room telling them it would be okay.
Jackson shook his head. “I don’t think so. Right now, this guy doesn’t know our names. I’m going on a hunch that this is related to what happened down in San Diego—not Sampson, but the cover-up. There were two things going on with that video disaster. One of them is related to Sacramento’s newest meth lord, who showed up in February and organized the entire trade.”
Everybody nodded soberly.
“I’ll let you know what Burton says,” he told them, and went back to Ellery’s office, Ellery at his heels.
“We didn’t agree to this,” Ellery said as soon as the door closed.
“You didn’t see it coming?”
Ellery paused, thinking. “I had the same suspicions you did. But why not the police?”
Jackson let out a sigh. “Because if this Candy Cormier guy is one of Lacey’s trainees, he’s out of their league. This will be just like before—we’ll stand around waving a flag going, ‘Serial killer! Serial killer!’ and they’ll look at us blankly and go, ‘Where?’ In the meantime, the meth business is booming, this guy is butchering his errand boys, and if Henry doesn’t get charged, Cormier may take business into his own hands and try to kill him off, just to make the case die. And anybody Henry knows or hangs out with will also be in danger.”
“Including us,” Ellery said.
Honestly, Jackson hadn’t thought about that. “Well, I was going to say, including his brother’s family and all the porn kids he’s trying to take care of, and yeah, Jade and Mike and AJ and us. It’s worth it to at least ask, don’t you think?”
Jackson had memorized Burton’s number and deleted it from his phone because he was that paranoid. It picked up on the first ring.
“Rivers?”
“You busy?”
“Not so’s you’d notice.”
Jackson rolled his eyes. That could mean anything from getting a pedicure to sighting a bad guy down a scope.
“Tell him you’re at home, Cruller!” came a voice from somewhere near the phone. “He’s trying to be polite.”
Jackson heard the chuff of air that meant Burton—one of the toughest badasses Jackson had ever met�
�had just totally melted under his boyfriend’s charm.
“Day off,” Burton rasped. “Sorry. Being an asshole comes second nature.”
“First nature,” Jackson retorted dryly. “Don’t let Ernie tell you any different. I’ve got a name for you—a drug dealer who popped up in our area around February and has organized the meth trade with, and I quote, ‘military precision.’ And he likes to butcher his errand boys when they let him down.”
Burton grunted. “Charming. Give me a name and I’ll run it.”
“Candy Cormier.”
Another grunt. “Fuck. Don’t have to run that one. He went rogue when I was behind the scenes. Cormier was his alias—don’t worry about his real name. You’ll never hear it again.”
“Understood. We’re trying to get a guy off a murder charge, and Cormier’s trying to pin it on him.”
“Fuck. Seriously, Rivers, your city is not that awesome. Where did you get the motherfucker magnet? That’s what I want to know.”
Jackson rolled his eyes at Ellery, who was listening in.
“Well, you know, the Kings started winning, and that activated the bad-guy signal. Don’t know what to tell you—blame Xander Karcek.” Karcek had been forced to retire two years earlier when he’d come out, and his absence had cost their beloved basketball team the championship.
Burton made a hurt sound. “I like Xander Karcek. Him coming out of retirement was the best thing on the planet. I’d rather blame you.”
“Sure, you do that. But in the meantime, should we tell the cops about this guy—”
“No,” Burton muttered. “I’ll take care of it. Give me a couple of days—forgiveness/permission, whatever—and then stay the fuck away from him. Unless he’s chasing you, and then feel free to kill him for me, because I was enjoying my weekend.”
“I’d really rather leave the killing to you,” Jackson said sourly. The two assholes he’d taken out in January were eating at his stomach lining daily.
“Which is why I trust you with it if you have to do it,” Burton said, all of the irritation gone from his voice. “Just… you know. Do what you have to do to clear your guy. Did Cormier kill your vic?”
