School of Fish (Fish Out of Water Book 6) Read online

  “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.”

  “So,” Colonel Constance said, “you’re the one he keeps tabs on in the desert?”

  “Yessir,” Ace said.

  “Ernie said you’d come to stop this man from trafficking minors?”

  Ace nodded to the RV. “In there, sir.”

  Constance’s dark eyes took in the gore on Ace’s arm and the very, very dead man missing the back of his head at their feet. “So, uhm, what in the actual fuck?”

  “That would be our question too, sir,” Ace told him, a tiny part of him relaxing. Maybe he wouldn’t need Cramer’s number after all. “He started firing on us. My friend here subdued him, and I was just asking him some questions when he grabbed my gun and gave it a blowjob.”

  Constance’s eyes widened, but other than that his expression remained impassive. “Think that was the happy ending he had in mind?”

  Ace thought about it seriously. “He was real fuckin’ scared,” he said at last. “Kept talking about how someone’ll kill him if he doesn’t get his ‘product’ to its delivery drop-off.” Sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades and coated the top of his ass. “Speaking of which, sir, is there any way we can get those kids out of there and give ’em some water.” He grimaced. “I should check the car and see if Ernie’s got some bottles or something in—”

  “He’s got three cases in the trunk,” Constance said, shifting as he stood. “Uh, he mentioned that when he called Burton and had Burton call me.”

  Ace met those tired brown eyes with his own and wondered if his expression was that same mix of uneasiness and acceptance that Ernie’s gift seemed to fill Constance with.

  “That was right fortunate,” Ace said with a slow nod. “Can we…?”

  Constance nodded. “But you might want to take off your coveralls and wash off your hand,” he said, and Ace grimaced.

  “Well, Ernie said the blood wouldn’t be mine.”

  Constance got on the radio while Ace and Jai let the kids out of the RV. They were all young—between eleven and fourteen, maybe—and all terrified.

  And only a few of them spoke more than a few words of English.

  “Russian,” Jai said shortly. “And Polish. Some Ukrainian. I speak.”

  Ace followed him dutifully, giving each kid a bottle of water and a wet wipe so they could wash their hands and faces and maybe cool off a little. He’d rummaged through the trunk of the Sentra and had also found several five-packs of kids’ T-shirts, rainbow colors, and exactly fourteen pairs of shorts in various kids sizes.

  There were fourteen kids.

  By the time Jai had talked quietly to every kid who spoke one of the languages Jai could get by with, each kid had gotten a camp shower—or rather, a wet-wipe in all of their places—and a clean set of clothes.

  The clothes that they left in a pile next to the RV after they changed reeked of several days’ sweat and piss. Most of the kids had chafing marks on their thin arms and on their necks from where filth-stiffened cotton had rubbed them raw.

  “They are hungry,” Jai said softly.

  Ace gave him a flat look and pulled out several boxes of saltines and three jars of peanut butter he’d found in the same Walmart bags with the clothes.

  And the whole time, cars passed them on the interstate, looking curious but never stopping, and Jason Constance argued angrily on the phone.

  Finally he shouted, “I’ll take them, then, goddammit! Because I’m not turning them over to mobsters so you can track the fucking money trail. Fine, have my stars. Come down here to the fucking desert and track the psychopaths that you people made and then tell me what a goddamned imposition it is to do the right goddamned thing!”

  He hung up then, stabbing angrily at his phone, and Ace was surprised the unit didn’t get pitched across the desert. He left Jai talking to the children and walked over to see what was doing.

  “They’re out of Sacramento,” Constance said, body still shaking with rage. “They were supposed to be turned over to a mobster in Vegas. I would like to return them to their homes, but….”

  Ace plucked the phone out of his hand as he went to pitch it and substituted a rock instead.

  Constance threw the rock out into the desert, where it probably continued in a short, shallow orbit around the earth until it reached Canada. Oregon at the very least.

  “I have a suggestion,” Ace said, thinking he liked this man that Burton looked to very much.

  Constance just stared at him. “Yes, and….”

  “You gotta make sure me and Jai don’t get arrested or shit.”

  “I can’t guarantee civilian safety.”

  “Killed’s on us,” Ace told him bluntly. “We get killed, we pretty much had it coming. But how about you let Jai and me deliver this RV to wherever it’s going. You seem to know the address. We stop and fix it up at the garage, we can have it running well enough to get to Vegas sometime in the small hours of the morning. Don’t worry. Me and Jai can do what needs doing.”

  Constance regarded him through narrow eyes. “What exactly do you think needs doing?”

  Ace wondered if it was a trick question. “Well, we need to set some high-grade explosive in that bustedass vehicle and drive it into the mobster’s house and detonate it. And then get the hell out of there before we’re recognized.”

  “That’s a terrible plan,” Constance told him flatly. He paused. “But only because there might be more kids in the compound and because you and your friend can’t be seen.”

  Logistics! Ace grunted. “We can find an alternative. We could just deliver the dead guy to the live guys and skitter away.”

  Constance grunted. “I’ll have Burton meet you. And the dead guy….” Constance looked around at the vasty nothingness surrounding this spot on 15. “He doesn’t need to spend the night in the RV.”

  “Understood,” Ace said. “But what’re you gonna do?”

  Constance looked at his pilot, who was sitting in the plane, obviously waiting for orders. “I think I’m gonna have Huntington over there fly to our base of operations and return with another vehicle.”

  “Make sure it has AC, sir,” Ace said, looking over his shoulders to see that Jai had organized the children in the shade of the RV, each sitting quietly on the ground, legs folded, with water and crackers and peanut butter.

  “Way ahead of you, soldier.” Constance looked unhappily at the RV and chewed his lower lip. “I shouldn’t ask you to do this,” he said, sounding helpless. “But they want me to have soldiers drive the kids to Vegas and put them in danger and….” His eyes creased at the corners, making him look much older.

  “Then don’t worry about it,” Ace said, shrugging his shoulders. “Right thing ain’t always the government thing. I got no illusions.”

  “I used to,” Constance said, sighing.

  “Well, give your orders and then c’mere and meet your cargo. Jai’s got names and family members from most of them.” Ace felt the same bleakness that was saturating Constance’s expression. “Most of ’em have families, sir. These children may not speak English, but they’re missed.”

  Burton’s CO squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them, command falling like a mantle on his shoulders again. “Then we need to do right by them.”

  “Yessir.” Ace turned to go talk to Jai about the children, expecting Constance to go do his ordering thing with the helicopter pilot, but Constance surprised him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Ace?” he said, the first time Ace had heard the man say his name.

  “Sir?”

  “Burton’s friends reflect well on him.”

  Ace laughed o
utright. “Burton’s a better man than I’ll ever be.”

  Constance shook his head. “No, sir. But I’ll let you keep yourself a secret. You seem more comfortable that way.”

  Ace nodded his head. “Man, I just wish all the assholes in the world didn’t have to use this fuckin’ road.”

  Constance chuckled, and Ace had no idea why. He just turned back toward the kids and figured the sooner he and Jai could get into that RV and get it back to the garage, the sooner Sonny might be able to forgive him.

  Reflect well on Burton—ha! Burton was off saving the world or some such shit. Ace really only had one goal in life, and it was to keep his skinny blond dirty bomb of a boyfriend from detonating and killing them all.

  It’s a good thing Sonny was his favorite thing in all the world; the rest of it wasn’t a hardship.

  “Jai,” he said, striding up to the big man as he sat on his haunches. “How about you and me go to Vegas and kill some mobsters.”

  Jai brightened. “You,” he said soberly, “are the best boss in the world.”

  “Tell me that after Sonny yells at us for an hour.”

  “Da.”

  Meanwhile, back in Sacramento….

  “PLEASE?” JACKSON begged, not sure if Ellery really understood how important this was.

  “No.” Ellery Cramer, Jackson’s boyfriend, could be an amazingly sexy man. He had deep brown eyes, a decisive nose, a square—if bony—jaw, a brilliant legal mind, and a sense of humor that was both sly and devastating.

  He could also be an unbearably prissy stickler for the rules.

  “But I’ve only got a week to go!” Jackson wailed and then hated himself for it.

  Ellery sat on the edge of the bed, all decked out in his summer-weight olive work suit and tie, even though it was their own damned legal office and he didn’t have to go to court. He could have been wearing basketball shorts and a tank top if he wanted, but of course he wouldn’t. Jackson had tried—tried—to set his phone alarm to get up before Ellery so he’d be all dressed and ready when Ellery was, but Ellery had caught on to that the week before and had started disabling Jackson’s phone in the middle of the night when he got up to pee.

  Ellery Cramer only did things right, and infuriatingly enough, that included Jackson’s return date from his recent heart surgery.

  “They didn’t even have to crack open my chest,” Jackson told him. Needlessly, of course, because Ellery had been in the waiting room during the entire procedure. “I was out in two days. It was practically outpatient surgery.”

  Ellery regarded him flatly. Jackson had been out in two days because hospitals freaked him out so badly they couldn’t be sure his heart rate would slow down enough to let him heal, and because he got no sleep.

  “It’s just,” Jackson continued, soldiering on in spite of the hard brown-eyed glare, “I really have been obeying all of the rules, haven’t I? And I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t feel up to it. I promised, right?” He smiled prettily. Once upon a time, he’d been mostly sure he could get away with anything from a lover on a wink and a prayer. It wasn’t that he thought he was handsome, but people tended to respond to confidence, and he had a certain swagger.

  Ellery was not that lover. Never had been. But then, Ellery hadn’t let himself get brushed off and had stuck around long enough to see all the demons that swagger covered.

  Ellery was made of tougher stuff than the parade of one-night wonders that had marched through Jackson’s bed before they’d met. And he knew it too.

  “You did,” Ellery said. “You did promise.”

  Augh, guilt! This was not supposed to be a situation calling for guilt.

  “So, since I’ve been a model recovering patient,” Jackson said, pushing up so the covers fell away from his bare chest, “and I feel fine, and you’ve come running with me for the last week and taken my heart rate after swimming too, I thought that maybe—just maybe—I could, you know, get back into the game early.”

  “No,” Ellery said.

  “Please?” Jackson closed his eyes because he didn’t want to see himself turn into a big needy whiny baby. “Please, please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeze? Ellery, I’m bored!”

  “Read a book,” Ellery said, his voice clipped.

  “I’ve read books.” Mostly textbooks. Jackson had been taking online courses over the last eight weeks in order to keep his PI skills sharp so he could better help Ellery at the firm. Ellery claimed Jackson knew as much about criminal search and seizure laws as Ellery knew, but Jackson thought Ellery was probably blowing smoke, because Ellery was damned smart.

  “God, read a novel. Think of ways to redecorate the house. Go to the shelter and adopt a cat.”

  Jackson stared at him. “Adopt a cat?”

  And finally—finally—Ellery looked away. “Look, it’s what my mother said when she was here in the spring.”

  “She said our cat was inappropriate,” Jackson told him, feeling miffed.

  “He licks his balls at every opportunity.”

  “That’s unlikely since somebody got him fixed!”

  Ellery’s brown eyes snapped. “I got him fixed so he wouldn’t run away and break your heart. And my mother also said that the cat was going to need some company when we both went back to work. And since you’re returning next week, I….” His brows drew down and his mouth pursed, and the resulting expression was grumpy and uncomfortable and very, very dear. “I don’t want him to be lonely.”

  Jackson turned to the cat, who was sitting on the other side of the bed with his one remaining back leg shot up in the air as he—yes—licked where his balls used to be.

  “Did you hear that, Billy Bob? Ellery loves you.”

  The battered, mostly-Siamese cat looked up, his tongue halfway extended from his mouth, and blinked one-and-a-half crossed blue eyes at him. He had a snaggletooth, an ear that had healed ripped, and he’d lost his leg when Jackson’s old duplex had been shot up. His neck was as big around as Jackson’s wrist, and he tended to thug walk, even on three legs.

  The fact that Ellery spoiled the cat rotten almost—almost—made up for the fact that he’d gotten Billy Bob fixed while Jackson had been in surgery for a gunshot wound.

  “I do,” Ellery said primly. “And I would feel better about both of you if Billy Bob had some company.”

  Jackson looked at him, hurt. “Don’t you want to help me pick out his buddy?”

  Ellery glanced away again. “Well, yes,” he admitted. “I do, but….” He swallowed. “Dammit! I’m starting to feel bad. You really are working hard at recovery, and Henry’s getting better, but he’s getting on my last goddamned nerve.” Ellery took a deep breath and pulled some of his composure back. “He was in the military for ten years, and he tends to rely on orders,” he said after a minute. “It turns out I don’t mind a little independence.” He sent a conciliatory little smile Jackson’s way.

  Jackson sat up completely and held a hand to his chest, hoping his heart was doing a victory lap and not threatening to quit again. “That’s it? You’re caving?” Billy Bob leaped off the bed in a fit of pique, and Ellery stood and backed up like a hunted man.

  “No, I am not caving. I am making a concession to the fact that I’m not caving.”

  “Oh no,” Jackson said, hopping out of bed. “I’m not going to get that kitten without you, and if I’m not getting the kitten without you, you have to let me come back to work.”

  Ellery stared at him, mouth moving like he was trying to find holes in Jackson’s legal theory, and there were probably a boatload, but Jackson didn’t care.

  “So you start the coffee, and I’ll get—” Jackson wrinkled his nose. Ellery had bought him a truckload of new clothes while he’d been stuck at home in Ellery’s amazingly spacious house, and Jackson had sort of promised to wear some of them. “—dressed. In the appropriate wear for my job,” he added, all virtue. “I’ll be showered and out the door and ready to go in—”

  “Five days!” Ellery countered, with
an admirable return of his earlier resolve. “So help me, Jackson.”

  “I’ll jockey from the office,” Jackson pleaded. “Henry can do all the footwork. I’ll just help Jade.”

  “Jade will strangle you,” Ellery said seriously. “If you’re in that office and underfoot, she will kill you.”

  “Jade loves me like a brother,” Jackson returned, indignation lighting him up inside. Jade Cameron and her twin brother, Kaden, and their late mother had taken Jackson in when his own mother had bailed on the job of family while they’d all been in middle school. Jackson and Jade had spent part of their lives as on-again/off-again lovers of convenience, but in truth, the dynamic that worked best for them was as brother and sister.

  “Which is exactly why she’ll kill you.” Ellery scrubbed at his face with his hands. “Look, Jenny Probst at the public defender’s office wants me to take a pro bono case. I need some vetting. She’s pretty sure the kid is innocent, but he won’t speak up in his own defense. She wants some help getting him off, if she can. She says he wasn’t made for jail. If you want, I can let you vet the case, look into it, maybe even help me interview him, but you can’t leave the office. Is that understood?”

  “Not even for lunch?” Inwardly he winced. God, he just had to push it one more inch.

  “If you’re good,” Ellery said sweetly, “we can have lunch together.”

  Jackson paused, thinking that even though they’d been shut in together for much of the past eight weeks while Ellery and Jackson’s family monitored his recovery, this was still an attractive prospect.

  “Fine,” he said, thinking. “Define good.”

  “I’ve got a meeting. I’ve got to go. But I’ll send Henry back for you. You may pick the files up from the PD’s office. Come directly to our office with them. Do not pass go. Do not save children from the burning building—that’s what the fire department is for—and do not rescue kittens from trees.”

  Jackson grinned at him, so happy he could practically dance. “But if I rescue the kitten from the tree, does that mean I can keep the kitten!”