Page 51

“Stand. Aside.” There was no question Jack meant it.

Ellery stepped back from the doorway and Jack walked past him without a glance. Ellery followed in indignant silence. He felt shaky, his heart pounding as hard as if Jack had actually shoved him out of the way.

He followed Jack into the living room, where Dylan stood, as if at bay, in front of a shelf full of trophies and awards. Dylan didn’t speak. He stared at Jack with an expression reminiscent of Macbeth’s at the sight of Banquo’s ghost in the buffet line.

Jack, sounding only slightly less robocop, began, “Dylan, I don’t like this anymore than you. I thought you might prefer to drive over to the jail with me. We won’t need handcuffs if you—”

That was the point at which everything went sideways.

Maybe it was the wordhandcuffs. Maybe it was the wordjail. Maybe it was everything everywhere all at once.

Whatever it was, Dylan sprang toward Jack, crying, “I refuse to be taken prisoner!”

Jack, abruptly sounding a lot less like Chief Carson and a lot more like himself, exclaimed, “Oh for—! Will youpleasenot force me do this the hard way?”

It was doubtful Dylan heard him.

Fists up, he began to circle Jack, bobbing and weaving in a boxing style that had probably only ever existed in 1940s cartoons. Truth be told, with his tongue sticking out and hair standing up in tufts, he bore a worrying resemblance to Bugs Bunny.

“You won’t take me alive, copper!” he panted.

“This can’t be for real.” Jack muttered. “I have to be dreaming.”

Ellery brushed past him. “Dylan, listen to me. Don’t resist arrest or it’ll be harder for me to bail you out. Just go with him and I promise—”

“Are you kidding me?” Jack broke in. “You’re going to spend the money you need to keep a roof over your head on his bail bond?”

Ellery tried to—well, he wasn’t exactly sure. He was not trying to grab Dylan, he was trying to reassure him, soothe him, but Dylan seemed to view Ellery’s approach as an attempt to subdue him. He knocked Ellery’s hand away, bounced past him, and did a move resembling the Kazotsky Kick. In other circumstances, it would have been quite impressive for a man of his age—or a man of any age.

Jack was not impressed. “Dylan,” he growled, “I’m not in the mood for this.”

Dylan bounded up, bounced back and forth beneath Jack’s nose—all the while pummeling the air with his fists.

Jack drew in a long breath and squared his shoulders. “I’m warning you—” He jerked his head back as Dylan’s fist grazed his nose.

Ellery, recognizing that Jack had reached the end of his tether, pushed between them. “Okay.Enough.”

Unfortunately, he miscalculated and managed to plant himself on the receiving end of the short, efficient jab Jack intended for Dylan. The punch caught Ellery on his chin, and he stumbled back, landing on his ass. There was a singing sound in his ears. For a few moments he saw stars.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

From an echoing distance, he heard Dylan’s alarmed, “Ellery!” and Jack’s horrified, “Jesus Christ.”

“Ouch,” Ellery said. Which was an understatement. It wasn’t the first time he’d been punched—accidents occasionally happened on set—but it was the first time he’d been punched by someone intending to get maximum results with minimum effort, and it hurt.

A lot.

The jolt of two large nerve clusters getting mashed together created a neurological overload that was both shocking and excruciatingly painful. The lights flickered and for a second or two his entire infrastructure teetered on total black out.

“Ellery?” Jack knelt beside him. “Can you hear me?” His hands, hands Ellery knew very well, were warm and gentle as he tipped Ellery’s face up. “Let me see.”

Ellery didn’t try to respond. For one, he couldn’t. For another, his instinct was to turn to Jack for comfort. So he kept his eyes shut and accepted Jack’s help.

Jack’s fingers lightly traced the throbbing junction of nerves behind Ellery’s jaw. He swore softly and Ellery opened his eyes.

Jack’s sun-streaked brown hair had fallen boyishly over his forehead. His eyes were wide with worry and remorse. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Ellery said thickly. He’d bitten his tongue—hopefully not too badly—and he could feel it starting to swell. He wiggled his jaw and prayed that all of those years of braces and retainers had not been made irrelevant.