Page 9 of Fish in a Barrel
“Yeah, well, you’re looking a little beefcake,” Henry said, voicing what seemed to be the universal opinion. “And thank God. It gets boring telling people to eat, believe me. You don’t have to mother a bunch of bulimic porn models like I do. I’m over it. If you can down a cheeseburger without being nagged, my job issomuch easier.”
“I would like to add that we appreciated the view,” Galen said, inclining his head regally.
Jackson grunted. “My back looks like a war zone,” he muttered. “Not much of a view.”
Ellery frowned, surprised, but Jackson was heading toward the hallway, accepting the ribbing of their friends, so he didn’t say anything, but he was thinking it.
Jackson’s back was scarred, like the rest of him. Ten years ago he’d survived a sniper shot that had vaporized a lot of muscle and bone but thankfully missed his heart. The trauma had still almost killed him, though, and the event was written on his skin. His shoulder and chest were a battleground of scar tissue from countless surgeries, and his back had a fist-sized smooth spot, a crater where the bullet had emerged, ripping what seemed like half of Jackson with it. And for any other man, that would be enough, but Jackson hadn’t sat idle. He had stitched knife wounds, bullet grazes, road rash—his back and his front were mapped with an active, violent life, and Ellery had never flinched from seeing those souvenirs of the times Jackson had lived. He’d always been so excited, so thrilled, to have Jackson Rivers in his bed, and he knew the physical scars weren’t nearly as painful as the emotional scars his love carried.
He hadn’t realized Jackson was embarrassed to wear those marks on his skin.
Given that Jackson was rallying from his temporary embarrassment and giving Henry, Jade, and Galen a ration of crap for looking, it wasn’t the time to talk about it, but still…. Ellery filed it for later.
He really wanted to talk about it later.
“Look, Jade lives with an old guy who I don’t even want to imagine without a shirt—”
“He’s one of your best friends, and he’s hotter than hell,” Jade retorted, standing up for her unlikely boyfriend, Mike, with the staunchness Ellery had come to expect from her.
“Yeah, I’ll take your word for it,” Jackson muttered. “But Henry,yourboyfriend is one of the hottest guys I’ve ever seen in my life, and you roomed with porn models formonths.Galen, your boyfriend films them for a living. Seriously, don’t you people have anything better to do than watch my scrawny ass in the copy room?”
“Nope,” Henry said cheerfully.
“Me neither,” Jade agreed.
“It made a pleasant break in my day,” Galen added with a smirk.
Jackson let out an outraged sound when Jade took his arm and pulled him back so they could let Galen, Henry at his elbow, go into the conference room first.
“Besides, honey,” she said softly, “we’ve worked hard to see you this healthy—let us revel a little in our achievement, okay?”
Jackson gave her a sweet lopsided smile. “Thank you for getting me this far,” he said, completely sincere, before dropping a kiss on her forehead. Looking over his shoulder, he winked at Ellery before swinging into the conference room.
“Now, do you guys want to hear some weird shit? Because Ellery and I have got some weird shit, and maybe some bad news as well.”
“How bad could it be?” Henry asked, and Jackson smirked.
“Bad enough for Jade to have to go to the policeman’s benefit costume dinner with Ellery as backup tomorrow while you and I run down some leads,” he said.
Jade’s eyes grew wide, her horror palpable. “I take it all back,” she declared. “Jackson, you get me out of this bullshit or I’ll kill you myself!”
“No can do,” Jackson replied, grimacing at Ellery. “Unless Galen wants to be his plus-one. But you guys need to hear the whole story before you decide. Because Arizona Brooks tried tohandus a victory today, and she risked her job to do it. You guys, somethingveryfrightening is going on in the DA’s office, and I think we’re going to need to go to the wall on this one. We areveryclose to having Brentwood declare a mistrial and throwing Zeke in jail while he postpones the retrial indefinitely. You may or may not have noticed, but the nice people of Sacramento seem to have put a monster in the DA’s office, and if we don’t put our collective foot down, there’s not going to be anything to do but pick up body parts that he leaves in his wake.”
Everybody recoiled, including Ellery.
“Dammit,” Ellery muttered, “I knew letting you readBeowulfwas a mistake!”
“I can’t believe I missed that shit in high school,” Jackson said wolfishly. “That was someprimeentertainment!”
“Ha-ha,” Galen intoned dryly. “Now tell us what happened.”
Ellery took over the conversation from there, and when he was done, the silence around the table was ruminative—and worried.
“So you and me need to get us some ballin’ costumes for tomorrow night’s do,” Jade said soberly. “Because I get it now. Galen can’t do this. He’s right. People put him on retainer because they trust him not to be too chummy with the police, and he needs to keep that reputation. But yeah, if it’s going to be balls to the walls cops and unions and kamikaze prosecutors, we need to have eyes and ears open there to see what’s going on.” She paused and asked Jackson the question Ellery had forgotten during that breathless kiss under the thruway. “What are you going to be doing, baby boy? I assume you’ve got a plan?”
Jackson nodded. “So,” he said, “given that guys like Cartman and Boehner tend to work on the ‘you lick my balls and I might scratch your back’ principle, I think we need to find the people who haven’t been licking their balls.”
“Where would they be?” Henry asked.