by Amy Lane
Jackson grunted. “How about the ‘What happened to the twelve serial killers’ game. That should be a hoot!”
Ellery groaned. “God—the firm will love that!” Technically they were still on vacation. Ellery’s mother had left that morning to fly up to Sacramento and reassure Jade and look after their house. She’d been planning to stop by his firm and debrief on the Karl Lacey situation as well.
“No rule says they’ve got to be ours,” Jackson said, surprising him. “I mean, we tracked Owens in our spare time. This could be that too.”
“Doesn’t that violate the Jackson Rivers hero code?” Ellery asked curiously. He’d be honestly fine with just doing his own goddamned job for a little while.
“Janie Isaacson thinks we’re heroes,” Jackson said humbly. “Anthony thinks we walk on water.”
“You walk on water.” Ellery smiled softly to himself. Anthony had been put on speakerphone when Jackson got out of surgery the first day. He’d been excited and scared—apparently Gleeson and Adkins had gotten quite close to Kaden’s house that night—but mostly?
He’d been happy.
Kaden and Rhonda had applied to be his foster parents.
He was in a place with a room, and a dresser, and people who cared about him.
And toys. And kids to play with him.
And—in Jackson’s words—he seemed to blame all this on Jackson and a little bit on Ellery.
“I spent less than two hours with him,” Jackson grumbled. “I think he should blame some of that on Kaden and Rhonda.”
“I’m sure there will be plenty of blame to go around,” Ellery soothed.
Jackson let out a sigh. “I miss my cat.”
And that complaint Ellery was on board with 100 percent. “I miss your cat too.”
“AJ’s moving in with Crystal, you know. What if Billy Bob likes them better?”
Once the threat to the Camerons was over, AJ took reluctant leave. But apparently Jade had put him and Crystal in touch with each other—two people with the same baggage, she’d thought. Maybe they could help each other.
Two days after the introduction, Crystal had made the offer. She’d told Jackson in her own dreamy way that AJ was very grounded, and she liked his aura in her home. AJ had told him that she was easy to talk to and affectionate, and bright and funny and educated. All the things his current roommates were not. Crystal would sit on the couch with him in her jammies and watch a romantic movie on television.
She was a sister.
Two people who needed each other, together.
“We bribe him with love and affection,” Ellery said. The probability of Billy Bob forsaking Jackson was miniscule, but telling Jackson that wouldn’t register. Telling him they had a plan—that would calm him down.
Jackson grunted. “If we ever do this again, I want to be home,” he said plaintively.
Ellery fought hysterical laughter. “If we ever do this again? Are you high?”
“A little. Morphine.”
Ellery giggled some more. “Jackson, I love you. I love you so much my heart aches with it sometimes. I imagine you when you’re old, and your hair’s gone salt-and-pepper, and you still don’t have an ass to fill out your jeans. Could you… maybe, just for me, imagine a different challenge for the two of us? You know, besides side-by-side recovery beds?”
“Keeping a car longer than a minute and a half?”
“Ace says the new one will stick,” Ellery told him practically. Ellery, of course, would wait and see, but Jackson seemed to have a lot of faith, based on the car he’d watched Sonny and Ace drive up in that fateful day.
“That would be pretty neat,” Jackson said, and he must have been high, because he sounded like a schoolkid from the fifties. “A car. For a while. But what sort of challenge do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe us. Living in peace. Maybe that’s a challenge. What do you think?”
“Mm.” Jackson’s eyes were closing, because he was still in recovery too. “Someday we’ll have to plan a wedding.” And then he fell asleep.
Ellery was stuck, eyes wide as he stared at the ceiling, wishing either one of them could get out of bed. He wanted to grab Jackson’s hand and hold him to that half-stoned promise, dammit, but they didn’t have any witnesses!
But hey. Just having him say the words… that was an improvement, wasn’t it? That was…. Ellery’s eyes closed of their own volition. That was a miracle right there.
A miracle.
But not a challenge.
Funny how life had a way of throwing challenges at them all on its own.
Different Bowl, Same Fish
THE HOSPITAL was pressing down on him. Dark, antiseptic, cold. Ellery was in that echoing dim hellhole somewhere, and Jackson had to get him. Someone was after him—the square, blank, unempathetic evil of Karl Lacey, or Grant Leavins was chasing Ellery Cramer with weapons flashing dully in the light, and Ellery, earnest, hard-working, doing things by the book, was sitting with his nose in his laptop, filling out paperwork.
And Jackson was lost, lost in the labyrinth of the hospital, and every move was harder, moving through molasses, moving through hardening concrete, and Ellery wouldn’t look up.
The bad guys were coming, and Ellery…. Ellery was hurt, and he could bleed, and Ellery wouldn’t look up!
Look up!
“Baby, I’m here.”
Jackson gasped and flailed, groaning when his wrist hit the rail of the hospital bed. Shit. He had a bruise there already from the night before.
With a concerted effort, he pulled his shit together, taking in Ellery’s hand on his chest, his other hand in his hair.
Then common sense seeped in.
“You’re not supposed to be out of bed.” Jackson was allowed up now—he’d even been able to relieve himself so he could go home tomorrow. But they’d cut off his morphine drip the day before, which meant the nightmares were back.
“Some asshole kept yelling my name in his sleep. Had to do something.”
Jackson grimaced, sweat wringing from his stupid hospital gown. He wanted a shower. He wanted his cat. He wanted home.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I’m sorrier.” Ellery dropped the side of the bed so he could lean his head sleepily next to Jackson’s. “You… I can never make them stop.”
“I… I’m so afraid you’ll get them.” Oh God. That was his worst fear. Ellery had always had this curious innocence to the horrors around him. Jackson had known them intimately. His dreams were always that he couldn’t protect the people he loved from the things that had touched him with slimy fingers.
Ellery’s shrug was just as pure as Jackson feared. “I have faith. Say a little prayer before I close my eyes. Superstition. It’s surprisingly effective.”
Oh! Jeez. “I think I have to go to temple with you,” Jackson mumbled. “Does the year start again when we go back home?”
Ellery let out a short laugh. “Sure. Why do you have to go?”
Jackson raised a hand and feathered a touch down Ellery’s cheekbone. “Do you think….” He swallowed. So much had happened, so much of it violent. “Do you think I didn’t ask God for you to be all right?”
Ellery’s smile held a sort of boyish delight. “Really? How’d that go?”
Jackson remembered the upended pew. Before Lucy Satan had flown back home yesterday, she’d told Jackson quietly that the pew had been paid for, and so had the hospital mirror. There were some things Ellery didn’t need to know.
“Not so great the first time. Your mom got there and helped me out, and it got better.”
Ellery’s eyebrows went up. “There’s a story behind that,” he said, running his finger along the tape on Jackson’s hand.
“I don’t… let’s not… I just wanted to tell you I’m grateful for you,” Jackson said at last. “Can we just leave it there? I’m grateful. This whole stupid mess—our house being bugged, assassins—I mean, assassins. Rogue military leaders. It’s all so
out of our league, you know? You and me… we belong back in your house in Sacramento, defending the innocent and the not-so-much, right? We don’t belong here. But here we are—and all I want out of it is you. I’m grateful for you. I… I wouldn’t be much good if you weren’t here.”
“I beg to differ. But you asked God, and here we are. So, you’ll go to temple with me.”
Jackson sighed. “The rabbi was okay. I don’t think he’ll kick me out, right?”
“Only if he’s a fool.” Ellery’s eyes were focused intently on his face, and Jackson couldn’t even pace to get away from it.
“So your dad gets here tomorrow,” Jackson said, an attempt to change the subject.
Ellery nodded, but his eyes didn’t dim. “You okay with that?”
“I like your father.”
Ellery smiled fondly. “Pretty much everybody does. I mean, are you okay with the plan? Leaving the hospital, flying home, checking on everybody.” Jackson had texted his family a lot in the past week, itching with frustration that he couldn’t touch them and see that they were okay. Ellery’s mom had been the one to suggest he go make sure everything really was good when he got back home.
Unspoken was the knowledge that the hospital was wearing on him. That he’d needed to be sedated in those first few days to stall out the panic attacks that would hinder his healing. Jackson would stay by Ellery’s side no matter what—but he was pretty sure Taylor and Ellery had planned the trip home so he didn’t have to.
He couldn’t decide if going home to see his cat and make sure his family was okay made him a coward or not—another thing to obsess about while he fought not to lose it in recovery.
“I cannot tell you how happy I am that you’re going to the firm to check on things,” Ellery said now into the dark of the wee hours. “The texts I’m getting from them—they’re starting to set my teeth on edge.”
Jackson had seen those texts—they’d been frustratingly vague. Lots of stuff about Just heal, we’ll talk when you’re better.
Jackson had heard that shit before he’d left the police department. We’ll talk when you’re better had been code for You don’t really have a job right now, but we don’t want to break it to you while you’re in the hospital because that will make us feel bad.
“Think they’re getting pressure from the government?” Jackson asked, wondering. Burton had visited the day before, looking like sautéed death. He’d been on his way to Ace and Sonny’s—or to see Ernie, more likely, but he wouldn’t say that, not even now. Before he left he told them that Lacey still had friends in high places, people who did not buy the story that Lacey had been killed by mercenaries because of his involvement in the behavior modification project that had brought him disfavor in the first place.
He’d reluctantly admitted that he and his handler hadn’t been able to keep Jackson and Ellery’s names entirely out of it.
“It was either talk about your investigation after Lacey hit the woman in Sacramento or talk about Ace and Sonny. You guys, I’m sorry, but—”
“Thump-thump,” Jackson had said cheerfully, miming the bus they’d been thrown under. “Yeah. We get it. No worries.”
Burton had grimaced. “They can make things uncomfortable,” he said with a sigh. “Which is a shitty way to pay you guys back. You did a huge thing, do you realize that? I was undercover for months, and you two—”
“Mostly Jackson,” Ellery had said, rolling his eyes. “You may recall, Ace and I were locked up.”
“Mostly the two of you,” Burton said. “If I’d blown up a car and come in guns blazing for nothing but my own enjoyment, they’d be shipping what’s left of me back to my parents in a box. But you guys caught them by surprise. Not military. Not law enforcement. They weren’t expecting to take you and have consequences—and whatever your mother has been saying to people, Ellery, those are some fucking huge consequences—and they certainly weren’t expecting a military assault from a scruffy PI.”
Jackson had chuckled then. “Did you hear that? I’m scruffy.”
“You work hard at scruffy,” Ellery had returned. “The last set of new clothes you got was scalpeled in half.”
“Heh heh heh….”
Well, it had seemed funny when he’d been on morphine. Now that he had a bandage across his forearm and one from right clavicle to left armpit, with stitches underneath and no morphine, it wasn’t quite so amusing.
Not now, when Ellery was looking at him with worried brown eyes.
“I don’t know what they can do,” he said quietly. “But… you know. I like my job.”
Jackson nodded thoughtfully. “Not the only place you can do it,” he said, hoping to reassure.
He wasn’t sure if it worked or not, but Ellery got a speculative look in his eyes that meant he was thinking about something important.
Good.
“You should go back to bed, Counselor,” Jackson said gently. God, he yearned for the two of them together, in the same bed again. At home, Billy Bob by his ear. He swallowed hard against the fierce, painful cramp in his stomach, but Ellery looked up anyway.
“Baby…,” he whispered, reaching up to brush Jackson’s cheek.
His fingers came away wet.
“I want to go home,” Jackson whispered. “I want to go home with you.”
Angry, painful cleansing tears pushed behind his eyes, pushed at his throat.
“I want that more than anything,” Ellery said gruffly. “Even my job.”
Jackson nodded and stopped fighting them. He was just so tired of fighting.
Ellery stayed there by his side, stroking his hand, his forehead, his arm, while Jackson purged the fear, the terrible soul-crushing anxiety that had stopped his breath since before they’d left Sacramento.
It wasn’t until Ellery held Jackson’s hand to his cheek that he realized Ellery was crying too.
HE’D CALLED Ace and offered to come visit, but Ace, in his own laconic way, had told him to wait another three days, and then he could come visit and pick up the car in the same trip. Then, before Jackson could get his feelings hurt, he added that Burton had arrived right after he’d visited Jackson, after being gone since they’d taken out Lacey and company. He’d knocked on the door, shaken Ace’s hand, clapped Sonny on the back, and pretty much walked into Ernie’s room, and that had been that. Ace assumed they were eating while he and Sonny were sleeping and said the shower went on at four in the morning, but other than that, the two of them had dropped off the map.
“I think he might be sleeping some,” Ace confessed. “He looked like fuckin’ death warmed over.”
“I remember. But that’s a lot of people for such a small space—I’ll come see you the day Ellery gets out. How’s that?”
“More’n fair,” Ace proclaimed, and they hung up.
But Jackson didn’t leave until Ellery’s father showed up.
Sid Cramer was a sweet-faced man with a curly halo of graying hair and such a gentle way about him that Jackson suspected him of magic. He was possibly the one person Jackson had ever met that Jackson would nap in front of. No nightmares with Ellery’s dad in the room. It was like a rule.
“You’ve got all your clothes?” Sid asked him, kicking back in khakis and a dad sweater in the corner of the hospital room with his own laptop. Ellery told Jackson he was a lawyer as well—family law. It seemed fitting that such a sweet man would make his living seeing to adoptions and making sure that orphaned children were taken care of, but a corporate shark, Sid was not.
“Ace brought them by when we were both laid up,” Jackson confirmed. He’d also brought their laptops, but—according to Ace—things had happened, and now they were both radioactive paperweights. One of Jackson’s jobs after he flew back to Sacramento was to secure them both new laptops and set them up. Ellery was starting to twitch without work from the firm to finish up.
“Don’t forget to tell everybody hi for me,” Ellery said. Jackson searched his face carefully for signs of fever, of fatigu
e. It had been a lot more fun when he’d been on morphine too—there’d been no worry then. But Jackson was never going to forget that moment, Ellery bleeding underneath him, realizing that there were some things Jackson’s counselor couldn’t talk away.
“I will,” he said soberly. “I’ll even tell the cat.”
“You’re not visiting the cat and leaving him there, are you?” Ellery asked, horrified.
“No—I’m taking him to our house, spending three nights there, and then leaving him for twelve hours to come get your sorry ass. Is that okay?”
Ellery smiled faintly. “That’s more than fine. I just….” He looked embarrassed. “You know. Didn’t want to taunt him about things going back to normal when they weren’t quite.”
“No, Ellery, that’s me you’re taunting. ’Cause I’m going to be home without you, and it’s gonna sorta suck.”
Ellery grimaced. “Well, you’d drive us both crazy here,” he said, looking troubled. “I… just call me, okay? Middle of the night, call me.”
Jackson looked away. The night before lay heavily between them, but they both knew this was the only option. “Yeah, sure—”
“Dad,” Ellery said calmly, “go grab his phone.”
Sid stood stiffly up, stretching, and held out his hand. Jackson squinted at him and handed it over.
“Now drop it on the floor and smash—”
“What in the hell!” Jackson flailed, snatching the phone back while Ellery’s father looked bemusedly at his son. “What are you doin—”
“So help me, Jackson, I’ll report the phone stolen right now if you don’t promise me you’ll call. I’ll be sleeping next to my phone, do you understand me?” Ellery’s voice cracked, and Jackson felt like shit. “Remember when you slept with anybody that breathed so you didn’t have to be alone?”
Jackson looked at Sid Cramer apologetically. “Yes, fuckwad, and I so appreciate you bringing that up in front of your father.”
“Dad forgives you—and so do I. But I took that away from you, and now I’m sending you back home without me, and I want your word of honor that you won’t try to do it alone.”
