Page 72 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

Cody’s grin added a hint of the devil to his angelic features. “What can I say? The kids made me as some kind of LEO from the get-go, and….” He swallowed. “Jackson, they were begging me—I meanbeggingme—to get them out of there. And then I heard that one kid sobbing from the closet, and….”

“I hear you,” Jackson said, relenting. He was pretty sure that the entire reason he’d tagged Cody Gabriel for this mission in the first place was that Gabriel would take his plays from the same playbook Jackson favored. He’d been a little disappointed when Cody had needed explicit instructions before he’d gone wandering through the house, but the frantic scream of “Rivers, Plan B!” had given him some solid reassurance that his faith hadn’t been misplaced.

“Hey, you found your own lost souls anyway,” Cody said, grinning. “Which did not surprise me one bit.”

“They were lurking outside of the fence,” Jackson told the others. “They’re the ones in worse shape. Much like the kid who….” He paused. “Ellery, did you fill them in on Otto?”

Ellery nodded. “Yes. He’s got his own advocate.”

A tired- but pleasant-looking woman wearing sun-and-moon pajama bottoms and a giant sweatshirt with cats all over it, gave a game wave.

“And Aileen already okayed Otto’s temporary residence at your halfway house, Jackson. I hope that’s okay. The older young men are being very responsible, and Jade and Mike will be spending the night there for a couple of nights to make sure it’s all going well.”

Jackson nodded, thinking of the bitter young man who’d thought that Moms for Clean Living had been a change of locale, nothing more.

“There’s another kid there—I don’t know his name—but apparently his homelife fit right in with the Moms for Clean Living philosophy. We may want to place him at the halfway house too. There’s five beds,” he said to Aileen. “So the place will take two more, but you may need a social worker willing to sleep on the couch. Like I said, the older kids have been pretty decently vetted—”

“And they’re very protective,” Aileen said. “We’ve met. No, it’s a good place, and I appreciate the extra beds.” She gave a nod to her fellow advocates. “We may need them. Homes for LGBTQ teens are not as plentiful as we might wish, so a place like yours might be the difference between helping these young men and sending them back to their parents.”

Jackson unconsciously put his hand on his stomach, fighting the temptation to lean against the wall. “Please, no—”

“They’ll do their best,” Ellery told him softly. He glanced at the army he’d thrown together with an hour’s notice. “Thank you, everybody. I can’t thank you enough—”

“We’re so grateful,” said a slender young man with three piercings and ink on his wrist disappearing into his sweatshirt cuff. “Getting these kids out of there—so often they run away, or—” They all swallowed at the same time. “—resort to self-harm,” he finished raspily. “Getting them legal help and social workers and therapists—it all starts with an act of bravery, and you two definitely did that.” He paused and said, “What would you have done if they’d caught you?”

Jackson shrugged. “Screamed ‘Kidnapper’ and run for the minivan anyway?”

Cody Gabriel started laughing helplessly, and Jackson found he had a few chuckles to spare. Unconsciously hestraightened. If he could laugh now, he could make it through the next few hours, right?

“We woulda thought of something,” Cody said, and they continued on the debrief before Ellery’s army dispersed among the kids, taking the paperwork Jackson had smuggled in his pants with them.

“I should have taken pictures of that,” Jackson muttered, half to himself. His attention was wandering—he couldn’t seem to yank it back.

Ellery entered a text, and a moment later every advocate in the place was pulling out their phones to take pictures of the stack of paperwork they’d grabbed.

Jackson had no doubt in a few minutes Ellery’s phone would be blowing up with the evidence they’d need to study that night.

For the moment—just the moment—they’d done all they could do.

He wasn’t sure where the yawn started—somewhere between his balls and his toes, probably—but it managed to work its way up past his knees, which grew suddenly weak, rumbled in his stomach, which was a mess anyway, and climbed into his throat and his brain and his eyes.

By the time the yawn was done with him, Andre, Cody, and Ellery were all staring at him.

“Jackson,” Ellery said quietly, “it’s eight o’clock at night. We’ve been up more than thirty-six hours.” He gave a polite little yawn that barely showed his pointy teeth. “It’s time to call it a day and wake up to do it again tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Jackson said in the middle of another yawn. “I just have to take Cody home.”

“Cody, do you have parking for the minivan?” Ellery asked.

“I do,” Cody told him. “Think she’ll let me drive her?”

“She was pretty good to you at the end of the day,” Jackson said, digging out the keys. “I think she appreciates people whoare good to kids. And she might remember you from when we met. So yeah. Drive safe.”

Cody grinned. “My own car is getting an overhaul—this’ll be like a treat. I’ll be real nice to our lady, you hear?”

“I hear,” Jackson said, laughing softly to himself.

Christie shook his head. “I don’t even want to hear it about that fucking ca—”

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