by Amy Lane
Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Prologue
Unexpected Cargo
Meanwhile, back in Sacramento….
Oops, Here I Go Again….
Fish in a School
Two Fish, One Pond
Big Fish, Little Fish
A Familiar Pond
Worms and Hooks
Big Fish Walking
Extra Credit
A Little Chum
Ducks, Row, Truck
Fish Bowls in the Air
Swimming Fury
Fish in a Bulletproof Bowl
The Early Morning Coffee Swim
It Takes a Fish Bowl to Save a School of Fish
One Last Dirty Stinking Crappie
R.O.R.
Tails, Scales, and Epic Fails
Belly Up or Still Swimming
Fishy-versary
Cold Water
That One Shirt
When Dave Met Alex—
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Copyright
School of Fish
By Amy Lane
Fish Out of Water: Book Six
Jackson Rivers has spent the last eight weeks recovering from heart surgery and working on healing—body and soul. He’s itching to get back to work when Ellery Cramer, the man he’s been living with for almost a year as well as the lawyer he works for, gives him the simplest task—pick up a file on a kid who probably didn’t commit murder, but who refuses to participate in his own defense.
Nothing is ever that easy.
One case connects to another, which connects to the mob, which connects to the local high school—and a bottomless potential for victims and perpetrators, all of whom are on the move. The case has a lot of moving parts, and Jackson and Ellery have to work hard and fast to make sure the machinery of the mob doesn’t mow over everybody they care about. Or rip them apart.
Jackson Rivers has been learning how to take care of himself so he can be there for Ellery, but Ellery has been learning to accept that Jackson will never just let an injustice stand. Together, they’re trying to keep innocent teenagers from going to jail while the streets of Sacramento threaten to explode. They’d better hope they’ve learned enough in the last year to keep it together because for this case, school is the most dangerous place to be.
To the people who got me through quarantine on audio—I feel blessed to know you all in person: Mary Calmes, Melinda Leigh, Karen Rose. Your words are magic, and they saved my life. Also Mate. Because we went a little nuts together.
Acknowledgments
ANNA J. Stewart and Kilby Blades—thanks for the writing sprints, without which this book would still be a flounder in a sea of flounder.
Author’s Note
ALL. FICTION.
Prologue
Unexpected Cargo
At a gas station in Victoriana, California, which is literally the middle of the goddamned desert….
ACE ATCHISON watched the RV pull away from the gas station across the two-lane highway from his garage with flat eyes, Jai, his employee and giant ex-mob muscle at his side.
“D’ya see that?” Ace asked grimly.
“Da,” Jai said, voice also grim.
They’d been taking a break when the RV had pulled into the gas station. The vehicle—old, decrepit, gasping like a fish swimming in smog—had probably left parts strewn across Highway 15 heading from LA to Las Vegas. The guy who’d gotten out of it was possibly in his thirties, but they were thirty the hard way, and he moved like… well, a killer.
Ace and Jai had experience with killers. They’d each crossed that line when the situation had been dire, but it wasn’t a habit for either of them.
This guy moved like he’d shoot a baby because the stroller crossed his path. Ace and Jai had been leaning against the minivan they’d been working on. The family who owned it was across the street at the Subway, getting lunch while Ace and Jai tried not to let the thing die here where there wasn’t even a fucking hotel. They saw the killer open the door, shout something harsh into the RV, get gas, and then go into the mini-mart/food court for a soda, probably because that thing didn’t look like it had any AC.
And the guy had left people sweltering inside it.
As they watched, the tattered yellowing draperies that covered the back window rustled, and two faces pressed against the glass.
Young faces, dirty, and then those faces moved, and two more appeared. And then came two more. And two more.
While Ace and Jai watched, they must have seen twenty faces. Kids, maybe fifteen at the oldest, peaked, terrified, all of them looking out into the sunshine like it was going to be their last chance to see freedom and space.
“You know,” Ace drawled, keeping his fury inside. “I don’t think that man is actually related to any of those children.”
“I would doubt that very much.” Jai kept his voice neutral, but Ace knew Jai had essentially been given to Ace because while he was a very good man, he was not necessarily a good mobster. Jai was not a fan of people who abused the innocent any more than Ace was.
But God, Sonny had barely survived their last adventure. Not that he’d gotten hurt, but Ace had gotten captured, and Ace’s boyfriend… well, Sonny didn’t do well when Ace was in danger.
Because Sonny’s childhood had been a nightmare, just like that of those kids in the RV.
And that decided him.
Ace swallowed. Most of the time, he kept any illegal activities limited to defending or sustaining his immediate family. But this was evil in a way that ate a hole in his stomach.
“Should we take the SHO?” he asked, talking about the souped-up racing machine he and Sonny had built from sweat and tears and the last of their savings from their time in the service, after they’d bought the garage.
“Nyet,” Jai muttered. “He is a coyote, not the main mobster. We take a car we can make disappear.”
They looked at each other. “Ernie’s,” Ace decided. Ernie didn’t technically live with them anymore, but he was still part of the family. Burton, his boyfriend, still went on missions, and Ernie came and stayed in Burton’s old safe room when he did, going home only to bake and to feed the cats. Burton was on an op now. Ernie was adamant he wouldn’t be gone long, and Ernie was a witch and knew those sorts of things.
“Da,” Jai said, and both of them pushed off the minivan.
“Sonny!” Ace called toward the small house that sat off to the side of the garage. “Sonny, Jai and me have to go handle something. You need to come out here and finish this damned minivan.”
Sonny had gone inside to start dinner, because it was getting near closing time, but he popped out of the house like he’d been waiting for Ace’s call.
“The hell?”
Sonny Daye was a small blond man, slender, muscular, mean as a rattail dog. Ace strode up to his lover and gave him a short hard kiss on the mouth, and he melted under Ace’s touch.
“We’re taking Ernie’s car to go stop something bad. We may need Burton to bail us out. And that family needs their minivan ’cause they’ve got three kids and this is no place for them to be.”
Sonny’s face paled at his first words, and Ace kissed him again.
“No fretting. Jai and me, we’re good at this, remember?”
“But Ace—”
“We’ve got to go,” Ace said, feathering a sort of caress down Sonny’s cheek with his thumb. They were not soft men. That touch was sufficient to silence Sonny and give him pause enough to back off and let
Ace go.
“So I’m just fixing the minivan? Seriously?” he said, but he’d already taken that step back.
“You’re what?” Ernie said, coming out of the cashier’s cubicle where he worked for them sometimes.
“It was an RV full of kids,” Ace said shortly as Jai brought Ernie’s little Sentra around the far side of the house. “We need something that can catch up but that nobody will recognize.”
Burton worked covert ops—and Ernie was supposed to be dead. Between them, Ace, Sonny, and Jai kept Ernie in a revolving train of piece-of-shit cars with sketchy VIN numbers. Ace could literally leave this car by the side of the road, and it would disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.
Ernie’s eyes went wide, and then he opened his witchy mouth and said, “Get the children to safety—this blood’s not yours,” just as Jai got up and jogged around the side of the car.
Ace nodded shortly. “That’s really all I needed to know. Keep Sonny calm, willya?”
He didn’t wait for the answer as he slid behind the Sentra’s wheel, grateful Jai hadn’t pushed the seat all the way back. Jai was nearly six foot seven, and that would be damned uncomfortable for Ace.
“You see which way—” Jai began as Ace peeled out.
“East.”
“What is your plan?”
“Hope he doesn’t want to go through the window of that RV,” Ace said shortly.
“Is a shitty plan.”
Jai’s honesty wasn’t always Ace’s favorite thing.
“The question,” he muttered, “is what we’re going to do with the kids once we have them.”
“I’ll ask Ernie for suggestions.” Jai pulled out his phone and started texting.
“Think your nurse friend can help?”
Even with his eyes glued to the road, Ace got a feeling for the pained expression that crossed Jai’s features.
“I dislike dragging him into this,” he admitted.
“Well, I dislike leaving my boyfriend back at home scared to death, but everybody’s got to make sacrifices, Jai. The only way our little operation works is if we keep it under the radar.”
“Da,” Jai said reluctantly. “Let us get rid of the rattlesnake behind the wheel and see if there’s more bad guys. Then we can make plans.”
The RV moved as slow as frozen shit through a pipe. They could see it waddling in the distance, and Ace looked in his rearview mirror and noted at least five miles of nobody behind him and another five miles of nobody in the front. He stood on the accelerator of the little car, and it buzzed its heart out for them, making him feel bad for planning to kill it when this was over.
“You are sure he will stop?” Jai asked, displaying only a mild curiosity.
“You got your seat belt on?” Ace asked. His was on, like it always was, because speed limits were more of a suggestion for the faint of heart than a rule.
“Da,” Jai said.
“Then, sure. He’ll stop.”
And with that, Ace zoomed past the laboring RV, then up the road a quarter mile, where he jammed on the brakes, hit the emergency brake, and allowed the resulting skid to carry the car 180 degrees around in a circle and land on the dividing line between both lanes.
He and Jai had about three heartbeats to regard the oncoming vehicle before the guy at the wheel—eyes looming like boiled eggs, even from the closing distance—swerved off the road and halted, skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust on the side of the road to Ace’s left.
“I’ll talk to him,” Ace said. “You reconnoiter.”
“I don’t even think you know what that word means,” Jai said.
“It means you circle around and bash him on the head,” Ace said.
“Apparently you do,” Jai murmured and slammed the door shut so Ace could pull to the side of the road and out of traffic.
As he was getting out of the car, he noted the driver of the RV had recovered a rifle from somewhere in his nightmare-mobile and had it cocked and ready as Ace stepped out.
“The fuck you doing!” he demanded, his accent thicker than Jai’s and sharper somehow. Provinces, Ace thought. Countries he wasn’t versed in. He’d been enlisted in the military. Nobody’d paid him to learn languages, but he knew this guy and Jai were two entirely different creatures.
“You were dragging something,” Ace said, hands up, keeping his spine loose. “In the back. Looked like your tailpipe was about to fall off. Just being friendly, right?”
The coyote was wearing jeans that had been ready for the hamper five-to-ten wears ago and a T-shirt that had lost its original color pulled tight enough to expose a potbelly. His hair hung in lank strands across a pink, balding head. Ace bet that if he got within five feet of the guy, the smell would knock him flat.
“I do not hear anything,” he said, not moving his eyes from Ace. “Get your fucking car out of my way, or I shoot you here and leave you and your….” His piggy eyes narrowed. “There were two of you.”
“There were not,” he lied. Ace had a face that did that well—he was aware. He didn’t lie to Sonny or Sonny wouldn’t ever trust him again, but this guy got no fucking loyalty from him.
“I….” Pig-eyes probably hadn’t slept in a very long time because he squinted and looked away as though trying to remember. “I do not care,” he decided, and then he cocked the shotgun and fired.
Ace had dropped to the ground before the thing was done cocking. He gave a quick roll, putting him up against the Sentra, slightly angled away from the man with the gun, and pulled his own service pistol from the back of his pants. Squinting against the flurry of dust, he swore. Jai could be back there, just beyond this asshole, and if he missed the bad guy, he could kill his employee, who was also his friend. That was no damned good.
The guy cracked the shotgun to load it, and that gave Ace time to scuttle backward like a crab and duck behind the car. The coyote fired again, twice in quick succession, and the front window of Ernie’s car disintegrated.
“Who the fuck are you?” demanded the driver.
“Like I’m gonna tell you now?” Ace snapped, checking under the car to see which way his feet were going.
“Who sent you? Are you trying to steal my product?”
“What product?” Ace screamed, still telling lies. “All I saw in the back there was a bunch of kids!”
“Who sent—” The man’s scream—Ace could imagine spit flying from his lips as his voice broke—cut off abruptly with a thud and a sort of groan and a crunch.
“Ace?” Jai’s voice said clearly. “You are not dead?”
“Nope,” Ace said, climbing out of the dust and gravel that littered the roadside. His work overalls were covered in sand, and the palms of his hands were cut up some by the small rocks in the roadside gravel, but he was relatively unscathed. He dusted himself off and went to smooth his short black hair back from his brow when his fingers encountered small sharp pebbles.
“Ouch,” he mumbled, drawing blood. “Is that glass?”
“Ernie’s car.” Jai sighed.
As Ace approached he could hear the gurgle of blood their friend with the shotgun was making through a nose that had been turned to powder.
Ace hunkered down by the feebly struggling meat sack, wondering what was broken in him that he didn’t feel like this person was human enough to deserve pity.
“How you doin’?” he asked, not particularly caring one way or the other.
“Mng mnib mmm….”
Ace blinked and translated. He’d been in enough fights as a kid and had seen enough violence as an adult to figure it out. “Yeah, I know he hit you. You were shooting at me. You’re lucky your brains aren’t leaking on the sand.”
The writhing figure on the ground suddenly ceased struggling, and Ace used the Beretta still in his hand to gesture, making his point.
“So, you see, we need to know where these kids were goin’, so we know to give them a special delivery of their very own. Don’t worry, kids’ll be fine. I know that was
a problem and all since you probably left them locked in there with no fuckin’ water. This way, you won’t have to worry none, and you can just slither off into the desert and find another way back home.”
“I’ll… mmm….”
Ace rolled his eyes. “He won’t kill you if he can’t find you. I’d just make sure he can’t find you. Maybe change your name, wash your pits, change your clothes. I’m pretty sure they’ll be looking for an entirely different person.” Some of the whimsy went out of his tone. “One who wasn’t trafficking kids for God knows what to God knows where. Which you will tell us right—”
The sound of chopper blades took him by surprise. He and Jai looked at each other and then up as the small black helicopter that had suddenly appeared above them began a slow circle and started to lower itself to the ground.
And the guy on the ground took advantage of their inattention and grabbed Ace’s gun—and pulled the muzzle into his mouth while Ace gave a jerk with his hand to pull it out.
He’d had the safety on, but the man’s scrabbling hands clicked it off, and as Ace jerked, the gun went off, and gore spattered up Ace’s arm and onto his coveralls.
“What the—” He stared, appalled, as a loudspeaker from the chopper began to blare.
“Put down your weapons and stand, hands over your heads. Put down your weapons and stand slowly, hands over your heads.”
As Ace stood, horrified, he and Jai met eyes.
“The actual fuck,” Jai said.
“You are telling me.”
This was it. He was going to be arrested for a murder he hadn’t really committed and let off for one he had. He knew it. In his head, he was reciting Ellery Cramer’s number, because Cramer was a lawyer and knew about the worst thing Ace had ever done.
The figure who leaped from the passenger’s side of the helicopter and bent down to run toward them was not a policeman, however, and he wasn’t holding a weapon aimed at them.
“Are you Burton’s friend Ace?” he asked. He was a handsome man, in his midthirties, with tired brown eyes and curly brown hair that had gone two haircuts past the military requirement under his cap. He was dressed in fatigues, with a few shiny stars and bars on his shoulder that showed his pay grade was so far beyond Ace’s that he could have eaten Ace for lunch. The patch over his pocket read “Constance.”
