Page 11 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

Damage Done

LATER, WHENhe could think beyond the panic, Jackson would remember to thank Ellery for driving like a bat out of hell.

During the trip itself, through thankfully empty streets on the rainy late evening weeknight, he spent his entire time focused on Henry’s voice through the phone, starting with “Die, bitch, die!”

“Yeah,” Henry gasped, his voice falling to a ragged whisper. “You run away, you fucking cow—keep bleeding as you go!”

“Henry!” Jackson spoke into the phone. “Henry, who’s there?”

“She’s gone,” Henry breathed, but it sounded weak, like he wasn’t quite present anymore. “She’s there. They got away. The boy, Bobby’s mom, they got away. Told them….”

He trailed off as Ellery made a hard turn that left Jackson’s eyebrows and his last bowel movement somewhere at a red-light violation that would cost Ellery a fortune to pay.

The moment to gasp and grab the Holy Shit bar gave Jackson a braincell with which to think. The boy and Isabelle Roberts—Henry had put himself in harm’s way to give them a chance to escape.

A female shooter. Henry had worked hard not to be all the bad things—racist, misogynist, homophobe—but Jackson supposed when somebody shot at you trying to get to a sweet middle-aged woman and a teenager, you had the right to slip.

“Where’d they go?” Jackson asked. God. Henry—Henry, his “padawan,” his assistant, hisfriend,one of the best friends in a life blessed with great ones—and Jackson could hear him growing foggy and faint on the phone. Henry had risked his lifefor someone because Henry was, in his heart, a hero. Jackson had to think beyond the pugnacious young redneck who had become a part of Jackson and Ellery’s life and think to what they werealldoing with their lives, which was protecting people who couldn’t protect themselves.

“Fire escape,” Henry mumbled. “Out the back. Told Cowboy to help her….” For a moment his voice drifted off, and then he started to… to sing? “Da-da-dun da-da-dun da-da-dun da-da-dun dun da-da….”

Jackson frowned, and for a moment they were sitting on the couch talking about everything and nothing and killing aliens again.

“What in the hell is that?” he asked, almost indignantly.

“Cowboy music,” Henry murmured. “Get it? Cowboy?”

For a moment, Jackson was incensed, his worry knotting his stomach, his adrenaline roaring through his ears. “How dare you,” he snapped. “I’m gonna kill you myself!”

“You love me,” Henry murmured, sounding more and more out of it, and Jackson’s irritation faded as though wiped clean. “NowLanceis gonna be pissed,” he said, his voice growing fainter. “I love Lance. Do you love Lance?”

“Not like you do,” Jackson told him, voice gentling. “Tell me more about Lance.”

“Pretty…,” Henry mumbled, his voice fading even more. “So pretty… make sure he knows….”

Oh God. “Knows what?” Jackson snapped into the phone. “Henry, make sure he knows what?”

But there was no response save tortured breathing and a faint unconscious moan of pain.

Jackson had heard this sound before, too many times to count. Oh God.

“Henry!” he barked, peering frantically to the street as Ellery made another surprise left, this one knocking Jacksonagainst the window. Ellery hadflown,Jackson realized, because they werethere.They were half a block from Isabelle Roberts’s apartment, and while Jackson kept the phone pressed to his ear, his eyes darted around the unlit block, hoping for two figures dashing through the rain. “Do you see them?” he asked Ellery.

“I barely see the street,” Ellery snapped tersely. “I’ll let you out in front of the building so I can circle the block to look. Hurry! I hear sirens!”

First responders were on their way; Jackson knew that sound. He needed to get to Henry to get any more information Henry could give him.

And, oh God, to make sure Henry was okay.

Please let him be okay.

He didn’t remember shutting the door of Ellery’s Lexus when Ellery pulled up to the curb, but he must have. The apartment was on the second floor of an old, graceful two-story stucco building, and he raced up one set of stairs, hearing in the back of his mind the clatter of footsteps down the set of stairs on the other side of the building. But first… 2B, 3B, 7B—the door to 8B was wide open, and the nonstick stucco surface of the stairs was a mottled, rain-washed red.

Jackson ignored it and burst in, following the blood drops past the small kitchen on the left to a closed door shattered with bullet holes, splintered wood still falling like snow.

Jackson pushed the door open gingerly and took in a master bedroom, decidedly female, with a bloodstained white eyelet comforter and billowing eyelet curtains in front of the wide-open window in the back.

Henry was sprawled between the bed and the wall, bullet holes penetrating the wall chest-high above him, two of them.

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