School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,115
softly and took the two ice packs and spread them out along Jackson’s spine. Jackson hissed at first and then relaxed. The main bruise itself was just below Jackson’s left shoulder blade. The bullet had missed the spine and the shoulder itself and that was a blessing, but Ellery was very aware that without the tactical gear, Jackson would have been dead.
He wasn’t chuckling anymore.
“You wore the body armor for me,” he said softly. “The helmet. You got help from Hardison and Fetzer because I asked you to. You… you’re not careless with your life anymore, Jackson. You might not ever play it safe, but I have no doubts, none, that you want to come home to me.”
“Good,” Jackson mumbled. “Because seriously, if I’d known you’d take such good care of me when I got hurt, I would have hooked up with you way earlier.”
“You lie,” Ellery chided. “You would have taken me home for a night and then tried to let me be a pretty memory.”
“You would have been a beautiful memory,” Jackson insisted.
“Right up until I made you take me home again.”
Jackson chuckled, barely awake. “I said that at the very beginning. You were a forever kind of guy.”
“So were you,” Ellery said, standing and giving Jackson a kiss on the forehead. “You just didn’t know it yet.”
Jackson’s shoulders shook once, and then his eyes closed. Ellery went into the bathroom to wash his hands, and by the time he came back, Jackson was fast asleep. Ellery turned off the light and set his phone for twenty minutes to take the ice packs off before closing his eyes.
He took a moment in the darkness to listen to Jackson’s even breathing before giving a prayer of thanks.
The Early Morning Coffee Swim
FIVE THIRTY in the slutty crotch of dawn found them gulping coffee from thermoses as Ellery drove to the courthouse, and Jackson fielded a call from Andre Christie.
“Adele Fetzer says hi,” he said as soon as Jackson picked up. “She and Hardison are both a little bloody but still standing.”
Jackson let out a breath. He’d dropped them both off where the EMTs were waiting before driving off into the night. Hardison had sustained a through-and-through in his calf, and Fetzer had some cuts along her face and arms from the exploding door.
“That’s good to hear,” he said carefully. “How about you?”
“Really fucking grateful for Kevlar,” Christie said, sounding pained. “Doc says the ribs will heal. I’ll live. How about you?”
“Spent the night in,” Jackson lied cheerfully. “Nothing to report.”
“You,” Christie barked, “are a worse liar than my twelve-year-old son, who says he’s passing all his classes. You are aware there’s news footage of you helping two little old people out of that meat grinder and into a whatever-the-fuck model SUV that actually was.”
“Which station?” Jackson asked, playing for time. His back throbbed—though much less than it would have without Ellery’s ministrations—and he’d had to wash down some extra ibuprofen for the sleep headache and sore muscles that morning. To say he wasn’t thinking at optimum was an understatement.
“No, seriously, what in the fuck were you driving? They got a clear shot of your face, but that vehicle, that was really something.”
“An Infiniti-QX,” he said, giving up because it wasn’t worth the trouble. “Some friends tricked it out—bulletproof.” Or, more, bullet resistant. There were little round dents in the side panels now, but no penetration. The glass had held too—only a couple of nicks. Jackson felt like the car should have had its own residence and naked sports cars to rub it in oil.
“Fucking nice,” Christie muttered. “And since I saw the footage, I’m glad your Kevlar held. How’s your back?”
“Hurts like a motherfucker, but functional,” Jackson told him, slumping awkwardly in the passenger seat. Next to him Ellery grunted, and Jackson would have shrugged if it wouldn’t have hurt.
“Functional is all we can ask,” Christie conceded without judgment. “Can’t say the same for the bad guys.”
Oh damn. “Tell me,” Jackson ordered, putting the phone on speaker so Ellery could hear.
Christie’s account—terse and militarily precise—was both harrowing and grim.
“Well, to begin with, not sure if you saw this, but SWAT got to the apartment complex just as the first shots were fired,” Christie said. “And believe me, that was the thing that saved everybody’s life.”
Based on Jackson’s tip—and with Christie’s lieutenant’s backing—Christie had gotten a midnight search warrant for Dima Siderov’s apartment. Since shots were being fired as they arrived, the SWAT team was able to enter apartments that housed