Page 53 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

Her eyes and mouth grew round, and he nodded.

“Yeah, I know for a lot of people here my fiancé could be absolute salvation, but try not to cash that ticket in too much. We’re getting married in June. He’s busy.”

Her grin went radiant, and he inclined his head.

“But if you need to get hold of me, there’s my number, and if you’ve got some emergencies, and I know you know what one of those could look like, let us know.”

“Cramer and Henderson,” she read softly. “You two went to the wall for that special-needs kid, the one who got assaulted by the police when they tried to pin a crime on him.”

“That was our case, ma’am.”

“The court reporter drew pictures of your back,” she said, startled by the memory. “This here, sir, is a golden ticket.” She waved the card. “I’ll reserve it accordingly. And Cora is down that hall, up the stairs, and in the room on the left. There’s nosecurity, no counselors, nobody there—she cleared the place out as she was taking that fucking troll to check her wounds.”

“Thank you, Honey,” Jackson said with a nod. “I’ll try to make sure your friend Cora stays out of the crossfire. She didn’t deserve any of this.”

“No, she didn’t,” Honey agreed. “Fucking troll.”

“Let’s get her.”

Honey gave him a toothy grin and nodded him in the right direction. Jackson, after taking a glance up and down the hall to ensure nobody else was in this area of the building, took the short flight of carpeted stairs, holding on to the wooden stair rail. This reallyhadbeen designed to be a large, multiroomed home. He’d just been in a ballroom that had been divided into what he suspected was a reception area and a cafeteria behind the added wall at Honey’s back. The floorwasa sturdy hardwood laminate, but many of the patches were cheap tile. The baseboards were matching laminate, but the desk had been made of cheap particle board, coated white. The place was a hodgepodge, and Jackson could see how the building repairs alone—not to mention staffing issues—would be enough to make somebody desperate to get the help her patrons needed.

He was halfway up the stairs when his pocket buzzed with Cody’s number and the picture Jackson had taken before they’d left.

Meeting about to end. Told people about my phantom boyfriend—let’s see what falls out.

Jackson nodded. Good. They needed to know what Shitbag Retty had actually beendoingin the facility—not just Cowboy’s mother but the other people who had come to get help with their addictions and ended up being used by the Stepford Dragons.

Retty might be on premises. Gonna talk to director and maybe to her. If you hear hollering, you know where to find me.

Good hunting.

Same.

No question about it—Cody Gabriel was good. Jackson had no doubt he’d slouched right under the radar into a support group for recovering addicts—the boy had that pretty face and a direct manner that could appeal to the hardest heart. And he reallyhadbeen there, and he had a sort of moral fiber Jackson had rarely seen.

But Jackson couldn’t help but miss Henry. No, Henry wouldn’t have slouched under any radar. In fact Henry would have been the one approaching the pretty girl behind the Plexiglas, and Jackson had no doubt that Henry would have gotten her life story before he went running hell for leather to find Shitbag Retty and shake the truth out of her—or carry her, fireman-style, back to the car for further interrogation there and a skillful evasion of a kidnapping charge.

Everybody had a style of their own.

Jackson’s style, he decided, was a little bolder than Cody’s and less savage than Henry’s—he wanted to know what in the hell Retty was doing here.

As he grew even with the door, he heard moaning, as though somebody was in pain, and figured he was about to find out.

The doors and doorframes were sturdy wooden structures—he imagined they probably matched the hardwood under the laminate, in a deep blond color that served to make what would probably be a dismal, depressing building at least a little hopeful. Jackson tried the glass knob, and it twisted easily, allowing him to slip inside what had probably been a guest bedroom suite at one time but had been converted into an infirmary with three beds, a tile floor, and a white-tiled bathroom toward the rear of the space.

The beds were gurneys—hospital style with wheels on the bottom—and two of them were stripped down to the vinyl.

The third housed a woman in sturdy jeans, dried stiff around an equally sturdy set of hips. The rest of the woman attached was stout and real—not someone who played tennis on her lunch hour and ate salad, Jackson thought. Like Cowboy had said, someone you’d meet serving your lunch or driving a bus or bagging groceries. This woman had known hard times and hard work.

And right now, she knew pain.

Henry hadn’t known the extent of the damage he’d inflicted; he’d just known he’d gotten her through the door.

But her shoulder and the side of her chest were bandaged and seeping, and Jackson wondered if the .22 bullet hadn’t fragmented through a beam in the drywall, spraying her with high-velocity pellets as opposed to a single, possibly deadly projectile. A part of him thoughtI need to go back to the crime scene and see,while most of him was thinking,Oh shit!I found her!Now what do I do?

Then Retty spoke, demandingly. Her face was, as Cowboy said, red, rough, and blotchy, and her hair was a crispy frizz of graying curls, and her voice was adeepSouthern drawl.

“Cora, you cunt,” she moaned. “You need to fix me up right now.”

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