Page 110 of Fish in a Barrel
He called Jai.
Jai told him, “Do not worry. We have people.” Then he proceeded to give George directions to a gas station in Barstow with no video cameras in the immediate vicinity. “We are closer,” Jai said. “Is there anything you need?”
George looked at the woman and her child, huddled in the back of the Jeep. “Are you hungry?” he asked, thinking that Mom might have enough English to understand.
“Sí,” she whispered.
“Food and clothes,” he said to Jai. Looking wistfully at Lola, he added, “Woman’s medium—stretchy—and something in a child’s size seven. Summery. With flowers.”
“Da,” Jai said. “Get there safely.”
And that was when George remembered that Amal had toldhimto be safe, and George, thinking that Amal would be fine, hadn’t said the same thing. He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand and tried not to fall apart.
“WE’RE GOINGwhere?” Ellery asked as Jackson started throwing clothes into a duffel. There they’d been, enjoying a Saturday morning swim after some rockin’ sex—a celebration of Ellery’s new 3-D printed mobile cast, of course—when Jackson’s phone started going off with theAvengerstheme music. Jackson had popped out of the pool so quickly it had been like levitation, and then he’d shouted, “Ellery, we’ve got tomove!” as he’d run into the house.
When Ellery had gotten there, Jackson had been dressed already, dark blond hair slicked back against his head, wearing new cargo shorts and apoloshirt, which meant he was serious, and packing.
“Victoriana,” Jackson said tersely. “One of Ace’s people. He’s in trouble, and it’s bad, and we need to help.”
Ellery scrubbed his face irritably and tried not to shiver as the air conditioner took advantage of the fact thathewas dripping all over his carpet.
“Well shit,” he muttered. They owed Ace’s people. They owed themeverything. “Drive or fly?”
Jackson paused in the act of throwing shit into his duffel. “What’s quicker?” he asked. Then his phone buzzed again on the dresser—Avengersagain. He lifted it up and said, “Drive or fly?” He blinked once and nodded to Ellery. “Drive, but only if I’m behind the wheel.”
Ellery nodded. Fair enough. Jackson drove like a bat out of hell, and there was no arguing with that. Besides, Ellery’s hips ached when he drove with the cast. That accident in August was not so far away as all that.
Jackson listened for a moment, his jaw tightening, and when he spoke next, he sounded almost angry. “Man, do not fucking insult me by asking me that. We will fucking be there—and so will his mother. Why would his mother come? Well, for one thing she’s got contacts at the DOJ, and for another, you guys helped save her baby boy. So yeah. And fuck ‘last favor.’ Goddammit, Ace, there is no ‘last favor’ here. There’s no ‘favor.’ We got your fuckin’ back, ’cause I know you guys got ours.”
Ellery swallowed hard on the lump in his throat brought by pride and started to dress in his own outfit, much like Jackson’s. As he did so, he made lightning-quick decisions between his navy pinstripe suit and his summer-weight gray and made a mental note to pack the guns and Kevlar.
When Ace Atchison called, it was lawyers, guns, and money—and Ellery could provide all three.
And his mother too.
Part 2
JAI WASwaiting as George pulled up to the gas station, and so was Ace. Jai was driving a shitty minivan with big paint chips missing. Ace was driving the terrifying yellow car that Jai had taken up to the campsite once when he and George were still pretending that they were just fuck buddies who met in a tent.
Ernie poked his head of dark wavy hair out from Ace’s passenger window, and George had to wrap his brain around what the plan could possibly be.
Then a young woman—dark-haired, dark-eyed, brown-skinned—popped out of the minivan from next to Jai, and George gave up. He had no idea. He was lost.
But as George pulled the black Jeep up to the motley collection of people waiting for him, he was mostly looking at Jai anyway. Tall, broad-shouldered, slouching against the minivan, he looked solid, safe, and kind.
George didn’t even want to look at himself in the rearview mirror. He’d cried for ten minutes after he found out Amal was in jail. It was a good thing one of them looked calm.
He turned toward the woman and her child, but the young woman by Jai’s side had already approached and rapped sharply on the back door so George would unlock it. As he did so, the young woman broke into a patter of Spanish so quick that George wasn’t even sure he’d been trying to speak the same language. At the same time, Jai approached his door and opened it, and George found himself spilling out of the Jeep and sobbing on his giant boyfriend’s shoulder in the middle of the cracked and weed-laden pavement of a Barstow parking lot, deserted because the Walmart, Laundromat, and gas station had all apparently gone out of business in the last couple of years.
Jai stepped back and cupped his cheeks. “We must hurry, little George. This place has no cameras, but if police come by, it will seem very strange.”
George nodded. “Uhm, who’s going with whom?”
“Alba is going to take your friends to her family’s house in the minivan.” He scowled. “And she’s going to drive very carefully, because we don’t have so many cars that we can give her another one.”
The young woman, who was currently handing food over to the mother and her daughter, grinned impudently at Jai. “I drive as carefully as Ace does,” she said pertly, and George actually saw Jai pale.
“I hope not!” Jai burst out, but Alba just laughed and turned back to the mother and daughter in the back of the Jeep.
