School of Fish

by Amy Lane

  Jackson met both their eyes and then flickered a glance to where the young, fit SWAT commander was going over protocol and planning.

  “Show me where they’re not going to be,” he said. “Get me in, get me to the Dobrevks’ apartment, help me slip in and out. The rest of this—” He indicated the massive police presence, everybody focused on the SWAT commander. “—it’s going to go down, and it’s going to be bloody. I just need to get these guys out.”

  “Here,” Fetzer said, pulling out her phone. “We’ve got a readout of where the cops are going to go. We used to patrol this place all the time. I can tell you where they’re not gonna be!”

  Jackson grinned at them. “I’m point—”

  Fetzer shook her head. “I’m point, civilian. You’re in the middle, and Jimmy’s riding cleanup. Our job is to get you there and get you out, and you need to look like you’re with us or one of these assholes in uniform will shoot you, and we’ll have to pretend we have no idea who you are.” She nodded and flicked his tactical helmet. “Give us a sec to get ours from the shop and we’re going. All that gear you’re wearing is the only fucking reason I’m doing this. Most sense you’ve shown since you wandered into the precinct yesterday afternoon.”

  Jackson grinned wolfishly. “Like it? It was my boyfriend’s idea.”

  Hardison chuckled. “Yeah, well, let’s hope you see him again to thank him. This is truly the dumbest thing we’ve done in thirty years.”

  “Twenty,” Fetzer said. “We spent our first ten years lucky to be alive.”

  “Yeah.” Hardison looked nostalgic. “This is like a second honeymoon for Adele and me. Let’s not get dead!”

  TWO MINUTES later they were following Fetzer’s floorplan and ghosting through the shadows of the complex while Fetzer broadcast their location quietly over the radio at her collar.

  Jackson could hear the squawk of Lieutenant Chambers as Fetzer finished. “What? Fetzer, you get your ass back to the insertion point—”

  “Will do,” Fetzer said, and she released the Talk button and chuckled to herself. “Me and Jimmy will get back there just as soon as we’re done with this.”

  “Aren’t you going to get in trouble?” Jackson asked.

  “Sure,” Hardison said behind him. “Lieutenant’ll yell at us when the op is over, maybe. If she remembers. Right now they’ve got ten more minutes to set up, and shit’s going down there. We can hear it.”

  Fetzer took them to the deepest shadow under a stairwell, and they all crouched for a moment, getting the lay of the land. “You got infrared goggles on that helmet?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Jackson said, although he knew she did.

  “Too bad.” With three well-placed shots, Fetzer took out the three lamps in their corner of the quad, and they all stayed still and held their breath at the flurry of shots afterward. None of the shots were aimed at their location, and they eased up after a few painful heartbeats.

  “Dobrevks are upstairs,” Fetzer whispered. “Up this staircase and directly overhead. Jimmy, you want to stay here and cover us while we go up there?”

  “You asking or suggesting or telling?” Hardison asked, pulling deeper into the shadows and aiming his service piece through one of the gaps between concrete steps.

  “Telling,” Fetzer told him, and he grunted.

  “Thought so. Sure, Adele. Love to stay here while you two make yourselves targets. Jesus, don’t get dead.”

  “You neither. Got extra clips?”

  “You ask that now? Do I look stupid? Now go!”

  With that, Fetzer left the safety underneath the stairwell, Jackson on her heels.

  God, he hated these complexes—had some shitty, terrible, frightening memories of running through them—but this moment here? Crouching behind Fetzer and running as quickly and quietly up those goddamned concrete stairs in the darkness? This was one of the worst. A shot echoed through the quad, and then another, and the staircase rang as a piece of concrete ricocheted behind them. Fetzer put on a burst of speed, and Jackson followed just as Hardison’s pistol echoed beneath them: one, two, three shots, and a muffled scream that followed.

  They reached the landing, and Fetzer grabbed Jackson’s chest, tugging until they were in the shadows again, at a doorway. Jackson checked the apartment number and nodded.

  “Your people,” she muttered.

  Jackson stood to one side and tapped on the door. “Mr. and Mrs. Dobrevk? Are you there? Sascha sent me.” He paused for a moment and listened—heard a struggle and upended furniture and a muffled scream.

  He met Fetzer’s eyes, and she shook her head, reaching over to give the door a quick knock before yanking her hand back.

  Just in time for the door to explode in a shotgun blast of pellets and splinters raining over them, making Jackson grateful for both the helmet and the goggles. Fetzer risked a look through the night vision and jerked back.

  “He’s got her to his left so he can use the gun,” she said. Jackson’s ears were still ringing from the blast, but he heard her.

  “I’m dropping down for the shot,” he said, waiting for her hard nod before crouching and peering over the bottom edge of what was left of the door.

  His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he could make out the young man, thin at the wrists and neck, holding poor Mrs. Dobrevk across the shoulders while staring eye-level out the door.

  Jackson aimed carefully and took out the gunman’s kneecap.

  He howled and dropped Mrs. Dobrevk, his gun drooping, and Fetzer crashed through the door in time to hold her gun to his unprotected head.

  Jackson followed her, scrambling upright, getting there to relieve the young man of his weapon as he dropped to the floor and moaned.

  Jackson holstered his own gun and cracked the shotgun, removing its ammo before shoving it through his belt, where it hung, heavy and useless, thank God.

  Fetzer was speaking into her radio, saying, “Suspect apprehended in apartment 220A. Please advise.” She nodded at Jackson and whispered, “Get them out,” while she waited for a reply.

  Jackson showed her the shotgun and set it on the counter that stood between the kitchen and living room in the humble apartment and then turned to Mrs. Dobrevk, who was crouched on the floor, sobbing.

  “Where’s your husband?” he asked.

  “Tied up,” she hiccupped. “Tied up in the bedroom. He used me to keep my husband silent. He said Dima’s men would be after us, and that we would bait the trap.”

  Which was what Jackson had suspected; one way or another, the Dobrevks were going to be in the thick of it tonight. He grabbed a knife from the butcher’s block and strode down the darkened hallway, thinking that he really did need to get night-vision goggles, because it was all he could do not to knock into shit as he walked.

  Mr. Dobrevk was tearful and grateful to be cut from his zip ties and reunited with his wife. Jackson told them to stay down behind the door while he went to scope out the sitch with Fetzer.

  The situation wasn’t good.

  They could both hear Hardison down below the stairs, the reports of his pistol precise and specific—and usually followed by a scream or shouted swear word from somewhere across the quad. But the fact that he was still down there firing meant that going back through the quad was not a good situation.

  “I’ve got nothing,” Fetzer said. “The captain says to stay put and protect the civilians, but—”

  Bullet fire crashed through the window, and she and Jackson dropped to the floor.

  “Yeah,” he muttered in the silence that followed, a silence punctuated by the original gunman’s moans. Fetzer had administered first aid, tying a scrap of fabric around the wound with a towel to keep pressure on it, but this kid—and he was truly only sixteen, if that—was going to bleed out before anybody got to this corner of the complex. “That doesn’t work for me. I’ve got an idea.” He looked at her, making sure she could see his eyes. “I’m going to disappear for a minute. Tell your captain not to
shoot me when I come back.”

  “How’s he even going to see you?” she demanded.

  “Oh, trust me. Everyone will see me.” Although Jackson rather hoped Ellery wouldn’t, because he was really keen on the idea of just getting home in an hour or so and saying, “Danger? Not so’s you’d notice.”

  “All right,” she muttered. “What’s your plan?”

  Fish in a Bulletproof Bowl

  ELLERY STARED at his television screen in absolute shock.

  “Kill him,” he muttered. “I’ll kill him.”

  “You can’t kill him,” Jade said on the other end of the phone. “You can’t kill him because this is as safe as I’ve ever seen him.”

  Ellery tried to swallow the pounding of his heart, but it wasn’t going anywhere. “Sure,” he said in a weak voice. “I guess.”

  It wasn’t like he was going to get any sleep anyway. As soon as Jackson had left, the Tank making an obscene amount of noise through the modified muffler and exhaust manifold, Ellery had wandered around the house aimlessly, finally settling down on the couch with the cat next to him and the computer in his lap. He’d managed to cruise politics and humor for a good half hour before his phone vibrated against his thigh with Jade’s ringtone, which Jackson had programmed with the theme from Wonder Woman.

  “What are you doing up this late?” he asked, tired to his bones.

  “Turn the TV on to the local news,” she had ordered, no preamble. “Or the computer, but it’s going to be on the TV—yes! There!” She named the station, and Ellery had fumbled with the remote on the end table.

  And watched in horror as Jackson’s modified Infiniti SUV drove over the curb and onto the lawn of what appeared to be the Dobrevks’ apartment complex and then circled around to the back.

  “What in the hell…?”

  “Wait,” Jade muttered. “We’ve got another angle coming.”

  Some enterprising soul had brought their phone camera—it had to be a phone, because the picture was grainy and shaky—and taken footage of Jackson pulling the vehicle behind the apartment complex, then scrambling to the roof to assist three people from a balcony looking over the field behind their unit.

  Two of the people appeared to be civilians, and the third—the one who stayed to help the civilians down off the balcony while Jackson steadied them on the top of the Tank—was a police officer.

  Jackson was, as promised, dressed in full tactical gear, with a helmet and Kevlar and armor plates inserted over his chest and back. He moved fluidly, not like he’d been injured. Or even like he’d been the man who’d needed a break and some water after getting injured in the heat that afternoon.

  Ellery watched breathlessly as Jackson set the two civilians on the ground and then assisted the officer down, all of them seemingly unnoticed by the cadre of officers surrounding the apartment complex and getting ready to go in.

  Once the passengers were secured, Ellery expected Jackson to simply drive off the lawn and drop everybody at the curb, but to the horrified fascination of the person taking the video, and to Jade’s and Ellery’s, he didn’t do that immediately. Instead, he installed the officer—Ellery remembered her, Officer Adele Fetzer—in the driver’s seat and had her pull the vehicle into what appeared to be a breezeway that led into the complex itself. Jackson ran even with the vehicle on the passenger side, and as soon as Fetzer stopped the SUV, he dodged into the breezeway.

  “Come out, baby,” Jade said over the phone, and Ellery made an incoherent noise of agreement.

  “Come out,” he whispered.

  “C’mon, Jackson, where’d you go?”

  “Oh my God!”

  They both said it at the same time, as Jackson appeared with another cop, this one with an arm draped over Jackson’s shoulder as he limped, obviously injured. They had just emerged from the breezeway when Jackson’s body jerked, but he didn’t go down.

  “Fuck,” he squeaked. “Was he hit?”

  “He’s got a vest,” Jade muttered.

  “But he was hit, right? That was a hit.”

  “He’s still walking,” Jade told him. “Maybe the other guy was hit.”

  “Augh! I don’t want to hope the other guy was hit.”

  “Well, hush. They’re getting into the car right now!”

  Ellery wanted to correct her—it wasn’t a car, it was an SUV—but he figured correcting her on that point, at this moment, might actually be grounds for a he-had-it-coming defense in court.

  There. Jackson was assisting the second cop—probably Fetzer’s partner, Hardison—into the back, and then he swung into the front passenger side himself, and Fetzer gunned the engine, taking them all out of the camera’s reach and hopefully to safety.

  “God,” Ellery burst out.

  “Right?” Jade muttered. “Motherfucking werewolf Jesus, right?”

  “Fuck. Me.”

  “Not on a dare,” she retorted but didn’t wait for a response. “Ellery, what in the hell was he doing there?”

  “Getting the Dobrevks out,” Ellery told her. “Apparently our, uh, friends down south blew up Alexei Kovacs tonight, and I know you don’t know who that is, but—”

  “He’s Dima Siderov’s rival,” Jade said promptly.

  “Wow.”

  “I’ve been researching!” she defended. “So the gangs blew up, and the Dobrevks were vulnerable. Either side would want them dead.”

  “Pretty much,” Ellery agreed. “So Tage’s cousin called Jackson to go help and….” He made a helpless sound. “And he did.”

  Jade’s own helpless sound gave him a little bit of heart. “And he’s fine,” she said softly.

  “He’s going to have a hell of a bruise,” he muttered. “We saw it. He was hit.”

  “But did you see him?” she said, and then her voice pitched to beyond the phone. “Good choice in tactical gear, honey. That served him really well!”

  “Ask Ellery if I can buy him some more. That shit’s expensive!” Jade’s boyfriend, Mike, was nothing if not pragmatic.

  “Tell him sure,” Ellery mumbled on the phone just as it buzzed in his hand. “Wait, that’s Jackson.” He switched over the calls, Jackson’s rough, breathless timbre sending a wave of relief that took him out at the knees.

  “Got the Dobrevks,” Jackson said briskly. “On our way to Sascha’s now. Didn’t want you to worry.”

  Ellery burst into a cackle of semihysterical laughter then, and Jackson crooned softly, “It’s okay, baby. I’m fine. Safe as a kitten the whole time.”

  And Ellery couldn’t stop laughing, not even when Jackson had to end the call.

  But the phone call must have done something for him, because by the time Jackson got home, he was asleep on the couch, wrapped in one of the afghans that had survived the trip from Jackson’s original duplex to Ellery’s house. It was a bright amalgam of colors, clashy as hell, and warmer and softer than it looked.

  Billy Bob was cuddled up to his chest, purring like a champion, the subtle vibration working soporific magic.

  “C’mon, Ellery, time to go to a real bed.”

  “Mm….” Ellery uncurled reluctantly and allowed Jackson to remove the cat and guide him to their bed for what was left of the night. “Everyone safe? Kittens out of trees? Tage’s parents hidden?”

  “Yeah. We’re all okay.”

  “Sure you are. Strip.”

  Jackson made a hurt sound. “Uhm, didn’t we already do that?”

  Ellery was suddenly very, very awake. “Take off your Kevlar and your clothes and lie on your stomach. I’ll be right back.”

  Jackson narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms defensively—and winced.

  “Who told?” he asked, squaring his shoulders—and wincing again.

  “You were on the news, Jackson. And while covering the plates with mud was a good idea, after tomorrow I wouldn’t drive the Tank again anytime soon. Now stop arguing and go lie down. We have to be up in three hours, and it would be great if you got some sleep.”
<
br />   Ellery came back into the room with some aloe-and-arnica gel, a couple of ice packs, and some ibuprofen and water—and he was still not prepared for the extent of the bruising on Jackson’s back, or the blood seeping through the bandages along the outside of his upper thigh.

  “Irritating man,” he muttered, setting his supplies aside and handing Jackson the ibuprofen.

  “Sorry,” Jackson mumbled, sounding half asleep already. He swallowed the pills with a gulp of water before turning back to rest his head on the pillow, hands under his cheek. “Thank you for not leaving me.”

  Ellery’s breath caught, and he lowered his head and kissed Jackson’s shoulder, which was about the only part of his back not sporting a swelling black bruise.

  “Can’t get rid of me that easy,” he said softly, rubbing the topical gingerly on his back, trying to soothe and not irritate. “Thank you for only going when it mattered, and not out of pride.”

  “Mm…,” Jackson murmured in response to Ellery’s hands. “Is that what it was?”

  “That made you want to be in the thick of it? Yes. Partly. You like to have control, Jackson. Being in the middle of the violence makes you feel like you can contain it, I think. Keep it from getting to the people you care about.”

  “If that’s what the hurt is about, I suck at it.”

  Ellery chuckled softly and took the two ice packs and spread them out along Jackson’s spine. Jackson hissed at first and then relaxed. The main bruise itself was just below Jackson’s left shoulder blade. The bullet had missed the spine and the shoulder itself and that was a blessing, but Ellery was very aware that without the tactical gear, Jackson would have been dead.

  He wasn’t chuckling anymore.

  “You wore the body armor for me,” he said softly. “The helmet. You got help from Hardison and Fetzer because I asked you to. You… you’re not careless with your life anymore, Jackson. You might not ever play it safe, but I have no doubts, none, that you want to come home to me.”

  “Good,” Jackson mumbled. “Because seriously, if I’d known you’d take such good care of me when I got hurt, I would have hooked up with you way earlier.”