Page 52 of Fish in a Barrel
Ellery gave her a hard-eyed glance. “It’s all I can give you right now, Arizona. McMurphy’s knife and my boyfriend’s back have already instigated an investigation. How far it goes depends on how much of a prick Cartman wants to be about this, and that’s not coming from me. That’s coming from my liaison at the Department of Justice, whom I had to awaken at two in the morning to get protection for Cody Gabriel, so he’s probably in a really shitty mood!”
He was also a friend of Ellery’s mother, but Ellery declined to say that.
Arizona nodded. “I’ll give him the civil-suit thing and tell him he doesn’t need the heat.” Her mouth looked thin and strained, and for the first time, he could see she wasn’t really young anymore. She’d always been such a fierce opponent, but fighting for the bad guys apparently took it out of her.
“Do that,” said Ellery. “I’d love to go home early.”
“I’M SOpissed,” Jackson said an hour later, as Ellery piloted the Lexus home.
“I know.” Ellery wasn’t pleased either. He’d heard Arizona’s side of the bargaining with Cartman, and he couldn’t have done any better, but the terms had been heinous.
“Drop the civil suit? We had todropthe civil suit?”
“Zeke and Arturo agreed to it,” Ellery said patiently, but it was as much to soothe his own temper as it was to soothe Jackson’s. That had been their ace in the hole—everything brought up in the criminal suit was game to be brought up in the civil suit. And Galen Henderson had been prepared to skin the powers that be for their last nickel in Ezekiel’s defense, but Cartman had been adamant. If the DA was going to drop all charges, the civil suit had to go.
“But Zeke needed that money!” Jackson protested. His little trip to jail had pretty much exhausted the social security and family stipends that paid his rent in the care home, not to mention the hospital bills.
“The city is paying his medical expenses,” Ellery reminded him. It had been the biggest sticking point, and frankly, the reason for the suit. Ezekiel would need far more in the way of medical care than the average person to recover from his injuries. “And his care-home expenses for the next five years.”
“It’s not enough,” Jackson said bitterly. “Zeke’s in his twenties. Do they think he’s going to drop dead at thirty and that’ll be that?”
“It was nice of Annette to suggest the GoFundMe,” Ellery said, but that was never the silver lining people thought it was.
“The fucking police broke his body!” Jackson roared before coughing wetly into the crook of his elbow, and Ellery couldn’t even reprimand him.
“I know,” he said on a sad sigh. “And we didn’t want them to do it again.” His voice wobbled. Oh Lord, his voice was wobbling. How could he be the grown-up when his voice was wobbling? But he’d had to. He’dhadto present the offer to Arturo and Ezekiel. That was hisjob, and Arturo wasn’t stupid. He’d watched the jury too, during deliberation, and he’d seen that the verdict was not guaranteed. It never was in cases like these that involved the police. People didn’tlikegoing against authority, no matter how much they complained about corruption. Arturo had looked at Ezekiel and promised him that he’d always have a home as long as Arturo was in charge of the Sunshine Prayers Care Home, and Ezekiel had started to cry.
And that had been it. Any hope of them getting some sort of recompense from the city for the copious amounts of pain and suffering inflicted upon them had been traded in for the certainty that Zeke wouldn’t have to go through all that again.
“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, when he’d recovered his coughing fit. “I don’t want to yell at you.” His voice had hit the raspy, thin stage right before laryngitis. “Particularly because I’m not going to be able to say anything shortly, and if I’m talking to you it should be good. I’m just… I’m mad. And I shouldn’t be. Zeke’s out of danger, and that is absolutely where our focus should be.”
Ellery gave a choked laugh and reached across the console for Jackson’s hand.
Jackson didn’t disappoint him, and because they were at a stoplight, Ellery could raise their laced fingers to his lips.
“You’re perfect,” he said gruffly. “I’ve rarely felt shittier about anything in my professional life as I have about this deal. It’s not fair. It’s not even close to fair. Would you believe Brentwood looked appalled?Brentwood? And Arizona kept shaking her head, like she could shake off the stigma of being a part of an organization that would do this. This isn’t what they signed on for. It’s an abomination, and I don’t know how to make it right.”
“We keep Zeke out of jail,” Jackson rasped. “We keep going.” And then he said something else, but that was it. No voice. And the traffic light had turned, so Ellery had to let go of his hand and drive.
Interlude to a Storm
JACKSON KNEWEllery would be 100 percent about getting them home so he could baby Jackson before dressing for the party and doing his own recon into the dangers of the night. Ellery would have claimed that attending the party was not nearly as hazardous as what Jackson had done the night before, but Jackson knew that playing the political game was no less risky, particularly not when he’d had his opponent on the ropes earlier that day.
And as disappointed as they all were in the bargain Ellery had struck, Jackson knew, deep in his bones, that there would have been no bargain at all if Ellery hadn’t used every knife in his drawer to carve through the lies to the hidden motives of the DA’s office to put Ezekiel Halliday in jail.
Ellery was treating the DA’s annual costume party like a frivolous gesture—a social obligation that was important in appearance only, but Jackson knew the truth.
If they wanted to see how big the nest of snakes they’d kicked truly was—and how venomous—the surest way to count scales, tongues, and teeth was to attend that party, Jade in tow.
Before he’d gotten his back sliced to ribbons, Jackson had entertained fantasies of infiltrating the party from the kitchen, Henry working coms, to see what was being said when Ellerywasn’tin the room, but even he could see that wasn’t an option right now.
He’d taken his ibuprofen like a good boy, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel like absolute two-day-old reheated crap.
Still, as he stripped off his bloodied shirts and tossed them in the hamper, he watched Ellery cluck over the sports coat that could probably never get clean and felt a flutter of want.
It wasn’t that he was horny, hot, and bothered—not really. If he’d been alone after a day like this, he would have curled up in bed and shaken out the fever, existing on pain pills until everything stopped hurting or his stomach exploded. It was that with Ellery there, fussing over him, he knew he didn’t have to do that, and he was grateful.
And he wanted to do the same for Ellery, because even though Ellery’s skin was intact, Jackson could see he was still hurting.
