School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,113
the complex. “That doesn’t work for me. I’ve got an idea.” He looked at her, making sure she could see his eyes. “I’m going to disappear for a minute. Tell your captain not to shoot me when I come back.”
“How’s he even going to see you?” she demanded.
“Oh, trust me. Everyone will see me.” Although Jackson rather hoped Ellery wouldn’t, because he was really keen on the idea of just getting home in an hour or so and saying, “Danger? Not so’s you’d notice.”
“All right,” she muttered. “What’s your plan?”
Fish in a Bulletproof Bowl
ELLERY STARED at his television screen in absolute shock.
“Kill him,” he muttered. “I’ll kill him.”
“You can’t kill him,” Jade said on the other end of the phone. “You can’t kill him because this is as safe as I’ve ever seen him.”
Ellery tried to swallow the pounding of his heart, but it wasn’t going anywhere. “Sure,” he said in a weak voice. “I guess.”
It wasn’t like he was going to get any sleep anyway. As soon as Jackson had left, the Tank making an obscene amount of noise through the modified muffler and exhaust manifold, Ellery had wandered around the house aimlessly, finally settling down on the couch with the cat next to him and the computer in his lap. He’d managed to cruise politics and humor for a good half hour before his phone vibrated against his thigh with Jade’s ringtone, which Jackson had programmed with the theme from Wonder Woman.
“What are you doing up this late?” he asked, tired to his bones.
“Turn the TV on to the local news,” she had ordered, no preamble. “Or the computer, but it’s going to be on the TV—yes! There!” She named the station, and Ellery had fumbled with the remote on the end table.
And watched in horror as Jackson’s modified Infiniti SUV drove over the curb and onto the lawn of what appeared to be the Dobrevks’ apartment complex and then circled around to the back.
“What in the hell…?”
“Wait,” Jade muttered. “We’ve got another angle coming.”
Some enterprising soul had brought their phone camera—it had to be a phone, because the picture was grainy and shaky—and taken footage of Jackson pulling the vehicle behind the apartment complex, then scrambling to the roof to assist three people from a balcony looking over the field behind their unit.
Two of the people appeared to be civilians, and the third—the one who stayed to help the civilians down off the balcony while Jackson steadied them on the top of the Tank—was a police officer.
Jackson was, as promised, dressed in full tactical gear, with a helmet and Kevlar and armor plates inserted over his chest and back. He moved fluidly, not like he’d been injured. Or even like he’d been the man who’d needed a break and some water after getting injured in the heat that afternoon.
Ellery watched breathlessly as Jackson set the two civilians on the ground and then assisted the officer down, all of them seemingly unnoticed by the cadre of officers surrounding the apartment complex and getting ready to go in.
Once the passengers were secured, Ellery expected Jackson to simply drive off the lawn and drop everybody at the curb, but to the horrified fascination of the person taking the video, and to Jade’s and Ellery’s, he didn’t do that immediately. Instead, he installed the officer—Ellery remembered her, Officer Adele Fetzer—in the driver’s seat and had her pull the vehicle into what appeared to be a breezeway that led into the complex itself. Jackson ran even with the vehicle on the passenger side, and as soon as Fetzer stopped the SUV, he dodged into the breezeway.
“Come out, baby,” Jade said over the phone, and Ellery made an incoherent noise of agreement.
“Come out,” he whispered.
“C’mon, Jackson, where’d you go?”
“Oh my God!”
They both said it at the same time, as Jackson appeared with another cop, this one with an arm draped over Jackson’s shoulder as he limped, obviously injured. They had just emerged from the breezeway when Jackson’s body jerked, but he didn’t go down.
“Fuck,” he squeaked. “Was he hit?”
“He’s got a vest,” Jade muttered.
“But he was hit, right? That was a hit.”
“He’s still walking,” Jade told him. “Maybe the other guy was hit.”
“Augh! I don’t want to hope the other guy was hit.”
“Well, hush. They’re getting into the car right now!”
Ellery wanted to correct her—it wasn’t a car, it was an SUV—but he figured correcting her on that point, at this moment, might actually be grounds for a he-had-it-coming defense in court.