by Amy Lane
God. “A good pickpocket could get into the office while the cleaning crew works. I hear you.”
Ellery scrubbed at his face with one hand and—incongruously enough—petted Billy Bob as he sat on the table with the other.
Jackson’s snaggletoothed, three-legged battered Siamese cat looked like an escapee from a horror movie about cats, but boy, had he been glad when Ellery had gotten home that morning to feed him and clean his litter box.
For his part, Ellery was getting more and more used to the creature’s way of closing his eyes and purring until he drooled—usually all over Ellery’s suits, but Ellery didn’t care. He’d never owned a cat before, but this cat certainly decided he owned Ellery as well as Jackson, and that was fine all around.
Where Jackson went, Billy Bob went, and right now the cat wasn’t moving from Ellery’s house off American River Drive.
“What are you thinking?” Crystal asked quietly.
Ellery let a terrible smile curl up at the corners of his mouth. “I’m thinking we had sex in all of those rooms,” he said, channeling Jackson in his soul. “I hope they’re homophobic as fuck.”
Crystal’s pure, chiming laughter sounded nearly cacophonous in the tenseness of that room, but Ellery couldn’t hold it against her. She’d found two bugs at the firm—one in Ellery’s office and one in the office of Carlyle Langdon, Ellery’s immediate superior. They had not found any bugs at Jade’s workstation, which was both a relief and not a surprise.
Jade Cameron was part of Jackson’s de facto family—they’d been lovers for a while, but mostly they were siblings of the heart. Jade worked for Ellery’s firm as a paralegal—sharp as a tack, bossy as hell, the firm would collapse without Jade.
But Jade was a woman of color, and Karl Lacey had made it clear at their last meeting that he didn’t regard her as a threat.
Not having a bug at her workstation was almost an insult, but it was also a relief. It meant that Jade and her boyfriend, Mike, were off the radar, and hopefully so was Kaden, her twin, who lived with his family up in the mountains somewhere. Ellery had visited with Jackson over Christmas, but he still never had a grasp of the geography north of Sacramento—and now he was glad.
Jackson’s family was, for the most part, safe.
Which meant Jackson could, maybe, worry about his own health for a change.
Yeah. Sure. That’s what he was going to worry about when Ellery presented him with this news. His health.
“I’m thinking Jackson’s gonna be pissed,” Crystal said, damned near reading his mind. “I have no idea what you two are into that someone would be bugging you—”
Ellery started waving his hands around to get her to not ask.
“And I’m not going to ask,” she conceded. “But whatever it is, you should resolve it quickly. What are you going to do tonight?”
Billy Bob took that moment to meow piteously, because in spite of Ellery’s nonstop touch as the cat had been eating, nobody loved him and nobody fed him either.
“I’m going to take Billy Bob somewhere safe,” he said, thinking fast. “And I’m going to find a place to sleep tonight.”
He didn’t elaborate. For one thing, his “place” was in a cot next to Jackson’s hospital bed where he’d spent last night. For another, he was going to destroy the bugs in Crystal’s hands, then come back with her little handheld bug finder the next day and see how fast their opposition worked.
And he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to spend another night in his own house until they’d figured out how to stop their enemy cold.
“THREE BUGS?” Jackson asked, looking pale still, but not quite so woozy. “There were three bugs in our house?”
“Yeah.” Ellery sighed and leaned his head back against the rest. “And Crystal has your cat.”
“Why not Jade?” Jackson tilted his head carefully to catch Ellery’s eyes, and Ellery grimaced.
“Because Crystal was already there. If she left with the cat, well, she was already part of the equation. But Jade and Kaden are out of this, apparently. No bugs at Jade’s station, and Mike actually had one of those little bug finders in his garage.”
“Heh.” Jackson’s tenant—and best friend—had lived next to Jackson in the duplex for nearly eight years. He’d been part of Jackson’s holidays, along with Jade, Kaden, and Rhonda, and he’d worried about Jackson with all of them. He wasn’t the most diplomatic of guys, but Ellery was proud of the friendship they’d forged since that August—especially because Mike and Jade were now living together, and passing muster with Jade and Mike meant he could be part of Jackson’s family.
Mike had his own weapons cache, his own Kevlar, an air compressor, every tool known to man, and a garage organized within an inch of its life. That there was a bug finder in the back recesses of a drawer somewhere and Mike would know where it was didn’t surprise either of them in the least.
But it was pretty amusing.
“They’re clear,” Jackson breathed, his relief palpable.
“They’re not the center of this one,” Ellery reassured him. “Once again, it’s you and me.”
Jackson grunted. “A couple month’s peace.”
“And it’s over.”
“They listened to us have sex.” He sounded plaintive, and Ellery didn’t blame him. Jackson had so little that was his.
“They listened to us have a lot of sex,” Ellery amended grimly. “Think that was fun for them?”
Jackson chuckled, low and dirty. “I think we should ask them. Do we have a plan?”
Ellery breathed out slowly. “Yeah. And you’re going to need to feel good enough to travel. How we doing?”
Jackson thought about it, which was reassuring. New, but reassuring.
“No,” he said reluctantly. “Not tomorrow.” He shuddered hard, and Ellery watched a sweat pop out on his brow.
“Are you going to throw up again?” he asked, hating to see Jackson hurt like this.
“Could you, please, just this once, for me, leave the goddamned room?” Jackson begged.
No.
WHILE JACKSON lay sleeping in the aftermath, Ellery grabbed his freshly charged burner phone and started making calls.
“Ellery!”
“Dad?” He’d thought he dialed his mother’s cell phone.
“Sh… she fell asleep. This isn’t your usual phone?”
Ellery took a deep breath. He was used to asking his mother for advice. Not because his father was incapable or incompetent—just the opposite, in fact. But his father was all about nurturing and his mother was all about going out and slitting the throat of the opposition. Ellery had always assumed he needed to be about slitting the throat of the opposition—right up until he’d met Jackson.
Suddenly nurturing skills seemed to be high on his priority list.
“My office and home were bugged,” he said, and now that it was out of his little bubble of associates, he realized how dire that sounded. “We caught someone trying to bug my car. We just thought—”
“Oh yes. I can see how this would feel much safer. That’s very clever of you, son—well done.”
Ellery glanced to where Jackson lay on his side, eyes closed. “Thanks, Dad,” he said, needing the praise badly. “But now we have to go get the guys who did it.”
“Who do you think did it?”
Wow. This was tough. Saying military people sounded paranoid. Saying Commander Karl Lacey, US Navy, officer in charge of really illegal behavior experiments sounded way worse.
But this was his father. His father would believe him.
“Dad, remember Tim Owens?”
“The serial killer who almost killed Jackson? Yes, son. I’m not senile.”
Ellery grimaced. No. “We… I’m not sure how much Mom told you, but we think he was… trained. Messed with somehow, in the military. Like somebody was supposed to teach him how to shoot a gun, but they taught him to like killing instead.”
“This would be the man who tried to put pressure
on our finances, right?”
“Yeah, Dad.” He’d forced three of his mother’s contracts to bail on her firm. His mother—being his mother, actually—had garnered four more in their stead, but even if she hadn’t, both his parents were pretty wealthy, independent of their jobs as lawyers.
It was the principle of the thing.
“Well, he’s a bad man. He must be stopped. Do you have a plan?”
Ellery stifled a laugh. It was an absurdly simplistic way of looking at the situation. But then, it was exactly the way Jackson would look at it.
“We….” He looked around reflexively. “We have a line on some people who may have some ideas. But first there’s a client I need to look after. I got her into protective custody yesterday—”
“Did somebody try to harm her?” Sid Cramer always sounded so worried, even about people who weren’t his, strictly speaking.
“No, but they tried to harm the man Jackson was talking to—”
“How’s Jackson?”
Ellery grunted. “A concussion—”
“Oi. How’s he doing?”
Ellery couldn’t stop himself from smoothing Jackson’s hair back. “He volunteered to stay for an extra day so he can move without throwing up.”
“That’s encouraging!”
Well, yeah. Actually.
“He even had backup at the scene,” Ellery told him, hoping to reassure.
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Ellery—he’s starting to trust other people! You should be very proud.”
Ellery’s dad—the man could spin sunshine out of bird shit. “Mostly he just didn’t want to piss me off,” Ellery replied, but he couldn’t sound sour—that was an improvement too.
“So, what are you going to do about your client?”
Ellery pinched the bridge of his nose, a habit he’d learned from his mother, although it never had helped him think any more clearly. “I think I may have to turn her over to my boss,” he said thoughtfully. “I….” He hated to do it. Carlyle Langdon was a damned good attorney, but Ellery couldn’t see him running all over town to make sure Janie Isaacson wasn’t convicted—or killed—because of what she’d seen. “I don’t trust anybody but us,” he said after a moment. “But if we don’t check out this lead, I don’t know if I can….” So much he didn’t want to say. He pulled up his father’s own words. “Can stop the bad guys,” he finished pathetically.
His father’s silence had an assessing quality to it. “You do plan to send your mother a brief about this, don’t you?”
“And the assistant DA and all my bosses and the lawyer I dated back in school and Jackson’s old cop buddy from the force and—”
His father chuckled. “Very good, son. I’m impressed.” Then he sobered. “But they didn’t believe you last time. I think you need to go one step further.”
Ellery grunted. He knew what his father was talking about. “Print won’t touch it,” he said after a moment. “But you’re right. Someone not afraid to put it out there in the public.”
“Do you follow any bloggers who’d be willing?”
Ellery sighed and tried to rack his brain. “I’ll ask around,” he said. God. It was Sunday. He and Jackson had entertained wild plans of doing absolutely nothing this day. And Ellery was mortally tired of hospitals.
But if Ellery hated them, Jackson hated them even more—to the point of phobia.
“I’ll let you go, son—just keep us posted.”
“Course, Dad. You know me.”
“Always the good son. Stay safe.”
Ellery’s father hung up, and Ellery stood, stretching and prowling restlessly around the hospital room.
“You don’t have to stay,” Jackson said softly.
Ellery startled and whirled and saw that no, his eyes weren’t open, but he’d obviously heard.
“You don’t like the hospital,” Ellery responded automatically.
“Yeah, but you’re making me twitchy. What did your father say?”
Ellery moved toward the bed. “He said I should tell the press.”
“Smart guy. But put a hold on it—we don’t want to spook them.”
“Do you know anybody who would do it?” Ellery had been planning to ask Crystal.
“Look in my phone contacts under bloggers—”
“You have your contacts organized?” Ellery asked, aghast. He actually had to run a search for people—he still hadn’t figured out how to get them alphabetized by last name only. He had to remind himself not to underestimate Jackson Rivers—he always had a surprise up his sleeve.
“My contacts are my life,” Jackson grunted, not even kidding a little. “Find Valerie Palmer—she’ll take all your stuff and sit on the story until you’re ready. I’ve used her before to flush out informants.”
Ellery’s turn to grunt. “I’ve never even heard you mention her.” He felt absurdly hurt. “Ex-lover?” He always had to ask.
“Yup. And now, she’s not the only one in my phone,” Jackson told him, smiling slightly. “Where’s my cat again?”
“Our computer friend’s,” Ellery said to avoid saying her name.
“Yeah. You told me.” Jackson swallowed. “I’m gonna miss him.”
“When?” By habit, Ellery checked Jackson’s monitors.
“When we go on the road. That’s where we’re going, right?”
“Yeah.”
In September, Ellery had been running down a lead that would clear one of his clients—and he and Jackson had found a little garage in Victoriana instead.
The occupants—Ace Atchison and Sonny Daye—had set off both their alarms, but after a little bit of poking around, Jackson had come to some pretty sound conclusions.
The first was that if nobody bothered Ace and Sonny and their little entourage of fiercely loyal employees, then Ace and Sonny wouldn’t bother nobody back.
The second was that if somebody did bother Ace and Sonny, Ace would be deadly and Sonny unbalanced. They’d very carefully backed away and let Ellery’s client—who was guilty of so very many other things besides the one he was accused of—take a plea.
But when Ace and Sonny’s name had come up in an investigation of Karl Lacey in November, they’d both known this day was coming.
“Ellery?”
“Yeah?”
“We shouldn’t take the Lexus.”
Ellery sighed. “I hear you.” Reluctantly he began to gather his briefcase and his coat. He left his small overnight bag because he would be coming back, but he had to hurry now or he wouldn’t make it.
It was three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, but most of his paperwork was already filled out, and the local car dealerships wouldn’t be closed until five.
“I’ve planned something big,” Ellery said, mostly to warn him. He’d been doing research. “Something with power and a dependability—”
“Not a gas guzzler,” Jackson said, sounding like that was a make-or-break item.
“Fine. But sturdy. Like an SUV built like a tank.”
“Oh God. Nobody needs that much SUV—ostentation is bad.”
Ellery found a chuckle—first one of the day. “Oh, Jackson. Six months together and still so much to learn.”
Jackson groaned. “Send me pictures,” he said, pointing to his phone by his bedside. “I get veto power.”
And Ellery was going to refuse—he was.
Then he saw the helpless mutiny on Jackson’s face and remembered how well he’d handled pretty much everything the day before—right up until a planter had fallen on his head.
“Fine,” he said gracelessly. “I’ll send you pictures.”
And then he kissed Jackson’s cheek softly and turned to leave.
“I’ll call Val,” Jackson mumbled. “You and me. Team.”
“Sleep first.”
“Fine.”
But as Ellery turned around and left the room, he had no doubt—none at all—that Jackson would wake up and finish his job.
THE NEXT morning, after running more
errands than he could count, he settled Jackson into a smoky gray Infiniti QX30—and tried hard to ignore Jackson’s grumbling.
“Are you kidding me? Wait—what did you pack for me?”
“Pink satin thongs,” Ellery snapped, throwing his suitcase in the back. “You own three pairs of jeans, Jackson, and you were wearing one when you went into the hospital.”
“Four now,” Jackson reminded him sourly.
“How could I forget. I packed three pairs of jeans, which means you’ve got nothing left.”
“Underwear?”
“No, because I want you to go commando.”
“You know, you are an awfully big smartass for a guy who had to beg me to get this car instead of a Chevy Tahoe.”
“Do you know I had to buy you new underwear?” Ellery had stopped by Penney’s that morning. “Seriously, I can’t believe you got laid so much when you had more holes in your boxer briefs than you do in your body!”
“You left a few pair of the old ones in for luck, right?” Jackson asked, sounding legitimately worried.
“Luck? Is that what the little action figures were for?” Ellery got into the driver’s seat and belted himself in. He’d left his Lexus in a long-term parking garage and double-set the alarms on the house that morning as well. Billy Bob was with Crystal—and by all accounts destroying her carpet, which Ellery had promised to reimburse her for.
Jackson blushed, one of those things that always caught Ellery unaware, like his self-consciousness about his old acne scars. “No, they were just… uh….”
Ellery felt stupid—and then stupidly glad he’d brought the little plastic toys, tucking them into a corner of Jackson’s duffel. “Mementos,” he said, thinking about how much Jackson hadn’t brought from his old duplex. Granted, much of it had been destroyed, but it was a patent reminder of all the things Jackson had never had but Ellery took for granted.
Jade had called Jackson that morning, pissed because usually she watched Jackson’s cat, and Crystal had apparently told her about the bugs. Jackson had called her back on the burner phone and explained the situation to her.
She was not pleased.
Ellery hadn’t heard her exact words, but Jackson had pulled the phone away from his ear and grimaced until Ellery took it.
