School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,109

I can actually stand.”

Fetzer’s grim chuckle echoed over the phone line. “Don’t gush on, my boy. I’ve got shit to do. Stay put, you hear?”

“That 6:00 a.m. meeting is really important,” Jackson told her. “If I don’t make that, this other shit might not matter.”

“Well, we all got a job to do. Stay safe.”

“Will do.”

Jackson signed off then and swore. Oh, he hated this. Sending other people out into the thick of things while he hung back was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.

But Ellery had been right. They had people counting on them in the morning, and this thing was bigger than the two of them.

Irritated and unhappy, he stalked to the closet and got out their Kevlar, then unlocked the gun safe and pulled out their guns. While Ellery finished his calls, he grimly set about cleaning and loading their weapons and hoped their regular trips to the gun range since March had made Ellery a better shot.

It certainly hadn’t made Jackson happier at seeing Ellery with a gun, but there was grim shit going down. They needed all the backup they could get.

Ellery came in while he was packing up the cleaning kit and putting the guns back in the safe for the next morning. By the time Jackson had washed his hands and brushed his teeth, Ellery was in bed, setting his phone to go off at unholy buttcrack a.m., and Jackson was feeling the exhaustion of the day seeping into his bones.

“God,” he muttered, yawning and turning out the light. “So much for a nap.”

“So much for recovery,” Ellery fretted. “You were supposed to ease into things.”

“I am easing into things,” Jackson told him soberly. “If I’m not out at that apartment complex getting my ass shot off, I’d say I’m being a model citizen.”

Ellery’s brow furrowed, and his chin jutted. “That’s not funny,” he said. “Dammit, Jackson—”

Jackson put two fingers over Ellery’s mouth and then removed them for a quick kiss. “Don’t. We’re both tired. We have to be up at fuck-all in the morning. Let’s go to sleep and not argue so we can wake up and not argue and do the shit we need to do because it’s important, okay?”

He saw the reluctant curve to Ellery’s lips, and a little bit of triumph soothed the parts of his soul left raw by staying out of the fray.

“I would love to go to sleep and not argue,” Ellery said.

“Good.” Jackson smiled a little. “Now roll over so I can spoon you.”

Ellery’s mouth quirked. “Can I be big spoon tonight?”

Jackson searched his eyes in the dark. “Why?”

“Because I need to is all.”

He sounded so much like Jackson himself that Jackson’s heart gave a little throb. He hadn’t been easy on Ellery Cramer in the past year. Maybe Ellery just needed to feel in control of Jackson, of the two of them.

“Sure.”

Jackson rolled over and Ellery’s arm wound around his middle. “Thank you,” Ellery whispered. “Thank you for staying with me.”

Jackson laced their fingers together and spoke the truth. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

HIS PHONE rang less than fifteen minutes later.

“Jackson?”

Jackson recognized the voice, but barely. Tage’s cousin, Sascha, fresh from prison, working hard to get his life back on the straight and narrow.

“Sascha? What’s up?” God, fifteen minutes. He actually had drool on his chin because he’d been asleep.

“My aunt and uncle,” Sascha said fretfully. “They are at their apartment building, and there are shots and shouting. Jackson, they’re crouched in the bathtub, and they’re freaked the fuck out, and there’s cops all over the apartment complex, and if they get caught talking to the cops, they’re toast. You know it, I know it. Tage will never be able to come out of hiding.” His voice caught. “Even if Sophie and Maxim come home, they will always be in danger. Jackson, you have to get them out of there. Please. For me. They can’t be seen talking to cops! That’s the only way I could keep Tage safe in jail was because he didn’t have any connection to the police.”

God. And what Sascha wasn’t saying was that his only hope of staying gang- and bullet-free while he got his life together was to avoid any notice whatsoever, and that meant his family too. Sascha, in fact, was one of the people Boris and Olga Dobrevk were trying to protect by not going into hiding with Tage.

He swung his feet over the edge of the bed. “I’ll get ’em,” he muttered.