by Amy Lane
With a toss of the Kleenex into the garbage, he decided he was okay with that.
“It’s been going on since you met me,” he said, smiling faintly. “It’s been who I am. Don’t tell me after all your bullshit ‘I love you’ crap yesterday, I’m too much for you.”
Ellery inhaled sharply through his nose, and Jackson knew he’d annoyed the man to his last breath.
He was wrong.
Ellery bent down and claimed him, mouth to mouth, germs and slippery elm tea and all, his tongue a powerful presence, his hands framing Jackson’s face with the tenderness missing from the kiss.
He pulled back, breathing hard, and Jackson stared at him, appalled. “Oh my God! Get some Airborne—you’re going to get—”
“Your sickness is mine, asshole,” Ellery snapped. “I don’t say ‘I love you’ to just anyone.”
Jackson glared at him. “You will probably talk the germs to death,” he muttered in disgust. “Jesus, if anyone could, you could.”
Ellery rolled his eyes. “I already took Airborne, by the way. If I don’t get sick, you can’t blame my mouth.”
Jackson grinned, feeling loopy.
“No. Don’t say it.”
“Heh, heh, heh….”
“God, you are such a child.”
“No, seriously, ’cause you’ve got such a pretty mouth!” Ellery was close enough that Jackson could reach out and touch it too, tracing the lines of it with his knuckle.
“I love you, Jackson, but I’ll kill you. No jury on earth would convict me.” He dropped a kiss on the top of Jackson’s head. “And I do love you. And your sickness is mine. Let’s get to work so we can get you in bed and get better.”
Jackson allowed himself an unheard-of luxury and relaxed into Ellery’s warmth, the protection of his shoulders and his hands on Jackson’s upper arms. Suddenly, like nothing he’d had in his life before, Ellery offered home.
“Lots of Airborne,” he said gruffly, tilting his head so he was resting it on Ellery’s forearm. “I really do feel like shit.” Beyond the wall of cotton wool, his head pounded and his throat ached and his chest struggled for air.
“I know.” Ellery ran his lips along Jackson’s temple. “I think my immune system is in better shape than yours was, but I’ll be careful. I promise.”
“Thank you.” He took a deep breath in anticipation of standing up and going to ask Crystal to run down the financials again, but Ellery put a little more pressure on his shoulders.
“Sh. Just… not yet.”
Jackson closed his eyes, feeling weak, knowing—for now—that Ellery would guard him with his strength.
“Okay,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. “Just another minute.”
The sleep hit him like a sledgehammer. His eyes closed, and he rested his face on his hands before it even hit him that Ellery had dosed his tea with codeine.
Ninja Fish
ELLERY DRAPED his trench coat over Jackson’s shoulders before slipping out of the room, the paperwork to request Crystal to run down the financial records already filled out.
Jade was waiting for him as he crossed the office.
“Where’s Jackson?” she asked suspiciously. Well, she’d been torn between chewing him out and crying on him. Either one would have been unpleasant, and she probably thought Ellery was trying to save him from making a choice.
Sort of.
Ellery was mostly trying to save Jackson from himself.
“Asleep on his desk,” he said, feeling a little smug. That’s what heathens got when they’d never tasted tea. “Probably dreaming of purple trees.” ’Cause grape-flavored cough syrup and slippery elm—get it?
Jade gave him one of those irritated glances that said not only did she not get it, “it” was not worth her time to get.
“You drugged him?” Just to make sure.
“Hm… how to answer that, how to answer that—”
“Ellery!”
“Yes!” he snapped, done with the game. “Yes, I dosed him, yes, I lulled him to sleep, no, I don’t regret it. It will take Crystal an hour, maybe two, to get this done, and by the time we have workable information in our hands, his shoulder might hurt too much to move, and that would be a blessing.”
Jade grunted and followed him down the hall. “He was supposed to take it easy today,” she muttered.
“Yes, well, there’s a kidnapped detective and”—this irritated him because it meant Jackson was right—“a serial killer still on the loose. When that is resolved, I’ll bring him in to the hospital myself.”
She let out a sigh. “You think the cops ever get tired of him being right?”
“I know they get tired of me being right. I don’t see why that should change.”
To his surprise, Jade let out a startled cackle. “You irritate everyone, Cramer. It’s not just the cops.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
They’d come to Crystal’s office by now, and Ellery paused to try to change gears from the snark and bitch he usually engaged in with Jade to the gentler, more delicate personal demeanor he needed to work with their most proficient computer expert.
“You’re going to leave him there, right?” Jade asked, suddenly quiet and sober as well.
Ellery gaped at her.
“I mean, Crystal gives you some info, you and me get in the car and direct the police—Jackson can sleep through the whole thing.”
“No,” Ellery said, trying to keep his brain from exploding. “Because this isn’t that movie. In that movie, you and I get our sorry asses shot down and he spends the rest of his life guilty and self-destructing as he enacts his revenge.”
Now Jade looked like he’d thrown a bomb in her brain. “What movie are we in?”
“The movie where he wakes up by the time we’re ready to roll, and hopefully he’s breathing and thinking a little better, and he can help save this poor woman who is basically living through hell right now.”
Jade pulled her upper lip up just enough to show even white teeth. “That movie does not make sure he’s okay at the end,” she hissed.
“But it does make sure he’s speaking to the two of us,” Ellery snapped. “And it makes sure that Tess Dakin has the best possible chance of making it out alive, and if that happens and he doesn’t have her death on his head, I can deal with an extra day for him in the hospital.” He shuddered, a little queasy. “I’m not happy about it, but if you love that man, you have to love all of him.” As Jackson himself had so eloquently pointed out.
The door to Crystal’s office opened, and Crystal herself stuck her head out.
“Are we talking about Jackson?” she asked, peering at Ellery and Jade through her glasses and pushing back her mouse-brown hair. “I’d like to worry about him too.”
“How do you know we’re worrying?” Jade asked curiously, and Crystal shrugged.
“Jackson is sort of a shiny soul,” she said calmly, crossing her arms in front of her. Today she wore a thick chenille sweater, but in the summer she’d be wearing a very thin long-sleeved T-shirt. Crystal had marks on her arms that belied the mild-mannered, casual-psychic, computer-geek first impression, but her heart, Ellery was starting to suspect, had always been a lot purer than the people who surrounded her.
That was more true now than it had been when she’d been a heroin-addicted computer hacker. Jackson had seen it in her first, and Ellery was beginning to trust his judgment.
That boy on the floor of Owens’s hideout could call at any time.
“Shiny?” Ellery asked, in spite of himself.
“Shining. He attracts other souls to him,” Crystal said softly. “Sometimes the good”—she nodded at Ellery and Jade—“and sometimes the evil.” She regarded Ellery levelly.
“He had a run-in with some pure-grade evil,” Ellery said.
“I thought so. You and Jade were very worried—the floor felt all wobbly.”
Of course it did. “We were worried,” Ellery admitted. “And now we’re all worried.” He
held up the paperwork. “Crystal, a detective who followed Jackson the other day is being held somewhere in this area.” He flipped to the map Jackson had so cleverly plotted. “We need you to run Owens’s financials again—we need any patterns in this area. We think he lives there—so things like bank withdrawals or where he fills up his car or even where he buys cigarettes or a lottery ticket or—”
“Or distilled water or a lighter or a spoon,” she rasped.
Ellery stared at her. “Yes,” he said, hating himself for being surprised. “We think he has a drug problem—and it’s escalating. And he’s got a detective.” Ellery swallowed. “And he had Jackson the other day, and his level of crazy is escalating too.”
She nodded and patted his arm. “Well, losing Jackson probably set him off. Just like losing Owens is going to set off that cold steel man who was here yesterday.” She shuddered. “Make sure he never learns about Jackson. He doesn’t know how important Jackson is to us. To bringing down Owens.”
She reached out and took all the paperwork from Ellery’s hand.
“He is, isn’t he?”
Ellery nodded mutely. “Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“Owens isn’t the last person in the line,” she told him soberly. “This will be done in half an hour.”
Ellery grimaced. “Really? The codeine will wear off in about two.”
“Did I say half an hour?” Crystal smiled prettily. “I meant an hour and a half.”
“What do you want for Christmas?” Jade asked bluntly.
Crystal smiled. “I really love caramel popcorn,” she said, and with that, disappeared back into her office.
“Think she wants almonds with that?” Ellery regarded the doorknob to her office like the portkey to hell.
“You will have to ask her.” Jade turned on her heel. “I’m going to go pretend that the rest of the office will fall apart without me, and you should probably go brief your police friends and maybe one of your bosses, you think?”
Ellery grunted. Neither prospect was attractive, but…. “Yeah. Sure.”
She stalked back down the hallway, which was a good thing, because the rest of the office would fall apart without her, and Ellery looked down the corridor at Langdon’s office. Jade was right—Langdon would have to be told.
But first he pulled out his phone and hit Kryzynski’s number.
“No, we haven’t found her,” he snarled. “Yes, our captain is shitting bricks. Do you have any ideas?”
Ellery quickly outlined where they thought she was and their reasoning, and Kryzynski swore.
“That sounds awesome—but it’s a helluva big area. Don’t you have anything more specific?”
“We think he’s in a warehouse of some sort—something far away from people—maybe a rental property, but without a For Sale or Rent sign in the front.”
“Why no sign?”
Ellery tried not to sound superior. This was Jackson’s reasoning, after all. “Because he doesn’t want to risk someone knocking on his door. It’s going to be an isolated place—no in-house neighbors. And it probably has amenities—a shower, a sink, that sort of things. And light,” he finished, not wanting to think of why.
“A studio?” Kryzynski asked grimly.
“Exactly. We’re running financials now, looking for a way to narrow down the area. There are a lot of properties like that on Watt Avenue—”
“And a lot of secluded spots around Arcade Creek,” Kryzynski verified. “Can you send us some victim locations? I know you’ve been telling us for weeks, but we don’t have the info at our fingertips. Some victim locations and—”
“You can use them as an epicenter and work out, looking for overlaps,” Ellery said, understanding why the full weight of the department helped. “Sure—I’ll start faxing those over to you.”
“We should have listened to you,” Kryzynski said into the sudden silence. “You and Rivers—you’ve been this investigation, and it wasn’t even your job.”
“He’s been killing innocent people,” Ellery said, some of the fury he’d wanted to spend surfacing in his words now. “How could you not….”
Dirty pretty. How could you not see the pretty for the dirty?
“He picked victims we wouldn’t look at,” Kryzynski confirmed. Then he sighed. “You know, it wasn’t until I saw Rivers talking to that kid today—”
“AJ?”
“See? I didn’t even know his name. But he was talking to the kid, calming him down. You forget, when you become a cop, you think about being that cop. Owens may be a serial killer, but I think our system helped make him.”
Ellery grunted. “Get in line. I think you had help from the US military to do that. I’ll send you victim locations—the ones we’re pretty positive about. District Three isn’t where he lives—we’ve pretty much eliminated that, so none of those victims. They may have been his—”
“But they won’t lead us there. I hear you. Go do what you gotta, Ellery—and, uh, thank Jackson for us, okay?”
“When he’s feeling better,” Ellery told him. Because right now, Jackson would probably shoot the entire police department the bird.
“Did he really get—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ellery said, surprising himself with his own venom. “If you need the evidence and the deposition, it will happen, but not until.”
“Oh.” Kryzynski sighed. “We found the body on the side of the house—the guy looked wasted. He probably couldn’t have lived much longer even without the knife in his throat. How’s he handling that?”
“Like all macho bullshit dealers handle pain.” Ellery’s stomach churned, and he recognized his own hypocrisy. As an attorney, if he had Jackson on the stand, he’d grill him unmercifully, but he wasn’t Jackson’s attorney. He was Jackson’s lover, and that made all the difference.
“Shoving it down and torturing himself with it?” Kryzynski muttered. “’Cause that’s fun.”
Ellery let out a short bark of laughter. “You have no idea.”
“Ever dated a firefighter?” The bitterness—oh, dear God, the bitterness.
“I’m fine where I am, thank you,” Ellery told him. “And where I am is we’re running addresses and he’s sleeping off a really shitty couple of days.”
“He didn’t look too good this morning.” Duh.
“He’ll look a little better if we can get Dakin back. You guys go hunt and keep me posted.”
“Will do. Take care of your guy.” Kryzynski sighed, like this was tough to admit. “He really is a good one.”
“I just hope I remember that when he wakes up pissed,” Ellery told him, and then he rang off.
Langdon wasn’t in—which bothered him, mostly because he and Jackson were devoting an awful lot of hours to the opposite of defending people, and the undying gratitude of the police department was not really a lucrative asset for a defense firm to embrace.
But then Jackson had brought in clients when he hadn’t even been trying—and heroin family was going to pay well, so maybe Langdon could forgive him a little.
He’d have to, because Crystal was right. After Owens was stopped, Ellery and Jackson were going to have to take a long, deep look at Karl Lacey—because apparently a self-destructing whirlpool of evil like Owens did not just poof into life as the invisible henchman of a dirty cop. Owens had been building up to be the perfect storm for a long time, and he’d had some help along the way. Lacey had been a cold bastard, and it seemed to Ellery he held a big enough paddle to fan the flames of Owens’s psychosis to a right conflagration.
Ellery went back to his office moodily and took care of the paperwork for cases that actually brought the firm money. His e-mail pinged after about forty-five minutes—Crystal had sent him seven stops that showed up frequently on Owens’s finances and a list of properties near the stops. Several of the stops were fairly close together. He got his hair cut near where he bought his cheap scotch, for example, so there were only three lists of properties.
Ellery took Jackson’s map out to Jade, along with the lists. “I need this blown up,” he said without preamble, “and copies made of these. It’s going to take a few of us looking properties up on satellite, pinning locations to the map—it’s almost eleven. Owens has had her for eighteen hours.”
Jade nodded soberly. “How long’s he been asleep?”
Ellery didn’t have to ask who “he” was. “About an hour. Let’s see if we can get set up before he wakes up. He won’t feel like he’s lost so much time.”
She nodded and took off toward the copy room, and Ellery went back to study the lists of properties.
Some he could eliminate on general proximity to other properties. Some, MapQuest revealed to be already occupied by squatters, or even unregistered businesses. Some were in too poor a shape to be used as a home or a studio of any sort.
Picture by picture, Ellery worked to whittle, refine, and generally guess his way down to three workable lists while Jackson’s heavy breaths rattled his chest hard enough for even Ellery to hear it.
That steady, heavy pattern of breathing interrupted itself once, twice, and Ellery looked up from his computer and watched Jackson’s eyes open.
For a moment, he obviously didn’t know where he was, and Ellery saw stark terror startle him all the way awake. Jackson jerked hard, his hands scattering papers to the floor, and stood abruptly, congestion rattling in his chest. Wildly he looked around, falling to a fighter’s defensive crouch before Ellery could calm him into putting two and two together.
“Jackson,” Ellery said slowly. “It’s good to see you awake.”
Jackson closed his eyes and shuddered. “Okay,” he said, not moving from his crouch.
“You’re in our office.” Yeah, no—Jackson was going to work in Ellery’s office for as long as he worked at the firm. Ellery was never letting him fall asleep and wake up alone again.
“What—why am I here?”
“You fell asleep because you’re sick. You’ve slept for about two hours. We’re just about to start a big mapping project so we can put pins in it and see if we can find Tess Dakin.”
