School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,123

Ziggy’s head gave a hard bounce with the sound of a dropped watermelon. Right as he and Burton got to Ziggy’s prone form, Ellery stuck his head out the door and got quietly sick, the shock and pain of doing what he’d just done with his injuries obviously hitting his nausea centers hard.

“Got him?” Jackson asked Burton, who nodded once. Jackson watched as he ripped Ace’s knife out of Ziggy’s shoulder and handed it to Ace, who had arrived in time to see Ziggy go down. They were rolling him over, binding his wrists and ankles with zip ties, as Jackson stepped gingerly around the mess on the ground to help Ellery back into the SUV.

“Sorry,” Ellery said weakly, tears of pain rolling down his cheeks.

“There’s no sorry for that,” Jackson told him, voice all gentleness, as he reached over Ellery for the water. “Here. Rinse and spit, and I’ll dump the rest.”

They’d had nothing more than coffee in their stomachs that morning, so there wasn’t much to clean up, but Jackson knew the misery of being that kind of hurt.

Ellery nodded, meek as a child, and did what Jackson said. Jackson dumped some water on his T-shirt and went to wipe Ellery’s face with the hem when the pain in his shoulder stopped him.

Like wildfire and lighter fluid, the graze on his bicep roared through his adrenaline and across his nervous system, hitting him hard enough to make him weak with it.

“Oh my God,” he muttered, leaning against the door frame of the battered Tank. He used the other hand to wipe Ellery’s mouth and took a couple of deep breaths to clear the spots in front of his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Ellery asked. He was leaning back against the headrest, eyes closed, face pale, working hard on breathing.

“You took out the bad guy with a car door, Ellery. It was fucking epic. Once we get some breakfast and some doctoring into you, I’m going to make you call your mother and tell her that story. She’s going to be so proud.”

Ellery’s shoulders started to shake, and his rusty chuckle told Jackson that he was going to be all right.

In spite of the many places on Jackson’s body that felt like shit, Jackson was pretty sure they both were.

JACKSON MADE sure Ellery stayed put until the ambulance got there, but as soon as Ziggy was bound up and rolled to the sidewalk, where he lay limply and bled without pity, Jackson, Ace, and Jai went to check on the kids. And on their driver, who had been frighteningly quiet.

The children were all seated, two by two, in the first four rows of the bus, and they greeted Jai with tentative smiles and waves. He crouched near the front of the aisle and began to speak to them, low and in what was probably Russian. Jackson heard his own name mentioned, and he turned and waved over his head, relieved beyond words.

Sophie and Maxim were sitting together, wearing travel-stained clothes and clutching each other’s hands. They looked tired, but Jackson could see a trash bag full of fast-food wrappers and empty water bottles in the back of the bus, so he was pretty sure everyone there had been fed and watered and might even have gotten some sleep.

They weren’t battered or bruised—scared, possibly for a long time to come—but not hurt physically, and that was a win.

For a moment, Jackson let his heart slow, let some joy seep into his chest. Tage, who’d gone through hell in the hopes that he could save them, would have at least part of his family back again.

But the joy was short-lived. Their safety had come at a price, and while they were going to walk away from this school bus unaided, the same couldn’t be said for their driver.

Jackson could barely remember seeing Jason Constance before, when he and Ellery had gone into the desert and almost not come back.

The man had looked tired then, but fit, in command, militarily crisp and ready to go face the bad guys.

This was not the same man. This man had his shoulder and arm wrapped in a dirty bandage that might have once been a cheap T-shirt. His face was bruised, and he was as worn as a discarded shoe.

One with no sole—or soul—left to speak of.

Ace got there first, wrapping his arm around Constance’s waist and helping him out of the bus. He stumbled when he got to the stairs, and Jackson reached around him, he