Page 13 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

The rain had picked up velocity, and the temperature had dropped. Sacramento never did snow and rarely did ice, but Jackson felt a distinctly unfriendly cold as he squelched his way across the ragged grass/dirt patch that hugged the outside of the complex. The good news was, he could follow the smallish-sized prints—most likely Isabelle’s—of basic tennis shoes like Jackson’s, and the size tens of a growing boy.

Jackson could almostseethe gangly lines of the kid as he ran a little to the side and behind Isabelle, hugging her hip like she was his last best hope.

Because she was.

Jackson pulled out his phone and called Ellery.

“Have you found them?” Ellery asked.

“No,” Jackson told him. “But look around the room. See if you can spot Isabelle’s cell phone. Let’s see if she’s got it. Call John and havehimcall her. Tell her I’m trying to find her. But….”

“But what?” Ellery asked.

“Do me a favor and find someplacenotin the apartment. Ellery, how’d somebody find this kid? I am at my wit’s end. Somebodyfound this kid.Tracked him to Isabelle’s place. When did that happen? I’m thinking anything—bugs, previous surveillance, phone cloning,something.Find a landline, get hold of Crystal and AJ, and ask them what they can do to find out how this kid was tracked. Andthengo to John and Galen’s and tell themin person.I’m starting to think that being lost in the rain could be the best thing to happen to these two people, but that doesn’t mean I want to leave them out in the cold.”

“I hear you,” Ellery said. “What are you going to do?”

Jackson saw the place where Isabelle and Cowboy had found the sidewalk, marked by dissolving puddles of mud and dirt in roughly shoe-sized globs. He shone his phone light along the sidewalk, taking note of where the footsteps turned. Glancing around, he realized they’d gone in the mud for a good quarter of a mile, skirting yards, sticking to the alleyway where the trash was collected when they had to walk on concrete. What made them decide to hit the sidewalk now?

And then he heard the squeal of air brakes, the choking scent of diesel, and he saw the square giant’s head of a city bus. It squeaked to a halt in front of the small bench and overhang, but as the doors opened—and Jackson sprinted through the rain toward the bus—nobody was eagerly getting on.

But a lone figurehopped off,holding an umbrella and leaning against the open door as a sputtering flame revealed the driver, trying to light a cigarette in the rain.

Jackson got there in time to hold the umbrella and shelter the older Black man from the wind.

“Thanks,” the man breathed, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “If I’d missed my smoke break, I might have killed someone.”

Jackson laughed. “Hey,” he said, thinking hard, “you’re running a little early, right?”

The man had tightly napped gray hair, painstakingly smoothed back from his forehead with pomade. That and the cigarette under the umbrella struck Jackson as charmingly old-fashioned. This man probably shined his shoes and pressed his uniform, and Jackson respected that kind of ethic.

“Yup,” the driver said before another blissful drag. “Every night. I time myself two minutes after the bus heading down J. This one’s heading for the train station, you know.”

Jackson nodded. He’d seen the destination in the LED banner above the window.

“So there’s a bus heading down J,” he murmured. He’d ridden these buses a thousand years ago—and one awful, memorable night nearly a year and a half ago. He knew that bus headed down J Street and knew it had three or four stops to go.

God. He couldn’t call John or Galen; their destination and their phones had been bugged or tracked. Who did he know in this part of town—

Oh God.

Jackson swallowed, knowing what he had to do.

But first, “Thanks,” he said to the older man. “Stay warm and dry tonight, it’s nasty.”

And then he broke into a jog toward J Street, where the 5-F was about to head close to two blocks from Henry’s brother’s house, and where, hopefully, Jackson would be able to find somebody who could pluck their two fugitives from the rain.

“MY BROTHER’Swhat?”

David Worrall—known as Dex from his adult film days—sounded really rattled on the phone, and Jackson didn’t blame him.

“He’s being taken to the hospital now,” Jackson told him, feeling cold and desperate and wretched. “I’m sorry, Dex, thisisn’t how I wanted to tell you. But he put himself in harm’s way protecting Isabelle Roberts?”

“Mrs. Bobby’s Mom?” Dex blurted, and there was a note of… of wonder in his voice when he called her this childish name. Jackson, whose own mother had betrayed him with bad drugs and bad boyfriends pretty much from the day he was born, knew that sound—he heard it in his own voice when he spoke of good mothers, and he’d met Isabelle and knew her for one.

“John and Galen brought her a kid to take care of,” Jackson told him. “We’re pretty sure Henry put himself between the shooter and the kid and told her to get to the flophouse. I’ve been to the bus stop, Dex. The only bus that’ll get her there is—”

“The 5-F,” Dex said, and Jackson recognized the sound of somebody sprinting for shoes, keys, a jacket.

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