Page 15 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

He got a smile—and the teeth, too, looked freshly scrubbed. “For me, it was like, ‘Surprise! There’s more food!’”

Jackson chuckled softly. “Did Henry eat with you?” he asked, and before the kid could shrink in on himself, he added, “becauseImade him soup before he went to sit down with you, but he can pack away alotof food.”

That earned him a wistful smile. “He said he was keeping us company,” Cowboy confided, “but he had a whole bowl.”

“Good,” Jackson told him soberly. “He’ll have lots of energy. He’ll need it.”

Cowboy’s eyes glossed over. “Is he okay?” he asked, nakedly pleading. “He was so nice to me, helped me cut my hair, helped me wash, and put stuff on my skin so it didn’t hurt.” The boy held out wrists with gauze wrapped loosely around them, and Jackson figured Henry had helped treat the chafing sores that came from wearing grime-stiff clothing for too long.

“He got hurt,” Jackson said carefully, aware Dex was holding on to every word. “Dex and I are going to check on him once we get you two someplace safe. Then I’m going to go out and figure out who hurt him, but first I need your help. I know you ate, and I know everybody changed into their jammies.” Henry had been wearing flannel PJ’s much like Cowboy’s—Jackson figured Isabelle kept a pair for him from the nights he’d gone over to her place to help keep an eye on a new charge. Sometimes kids got kicked out on the street because their parents were assholes, but sometimes there just wasn’t enough mental health access out there, particularly for juveniles coming into things like schizophrenia. Henry had brought more than one kid in from the cold to a severe care facility after John and Galen had brought them to Isabelle’s.

“Isabelle went to change too,” Cowboy said softly. “Henry and I sat on the special couch mats… you know, to keep the creepers off.”

Jackson had noted those, too, as he’d run into the snug little apartment. “Red plaid?” he asked, not because it mattered, but because getting a detail right would make Cowboy more confident in his own judgment.

“Yeah,” Cowboy murmured. “Henry said they were just until we knew I was all cleaned up.” He sighed. “I like being clean. You don’t think about that when you’re little. How nice it is to not be dirty.”

“Well, you’re in the right place,” Jackson said. “Because we’re all partial to showers ourselves.”

Cowboy gave him a little smile then, a hopeful one, and Jackson’s stomach roiled. God, he’d been in this position before, but he would always, always be afraid of letting that trust down. He had a terrible need to call his brother then, to check on the kid not too much younger than this one that had become more than a rescue or a victim—had become family.

This kid had a better place waiting for him. It was up to Jackson and his friends to get him there.

“So there you were,” Jackson said, aware that Dex was making good time on the nearly deserted, rainy streets. He reckoned they had about twenty minutes before he was banging down K-Ski’s door, begging for asylum, and it was time to get a move on. “You were clean, you were dry and fed, settling down to watch some tube—”

“And talk to Henry,” Cowboy said. “He said it was important we talk.”

“About what?” Jackson asked casually. But he was fooling nobody, and he knew it when Cowboy shrank into himself, like a marshmallow in hot butter.

“About the bad lady,” Cowboy whispered.

Jackson nodded. “Were you ready to be brave then?” he asked soberly.

Cowboy nodded, and Jackson felt a moment’s vertigo from staying turned around in his seat for so long. He fought it and wondered if he could give Henry’s brother some sort of good-driving award for not killing him like this.

“Good boy. So how about you be brave for me now?”

Cowboy swallowed. “When I escaped from the place—the Clean Living place,” he whispered. “That’s when I saw her. She… she’s fast. Like that soccer lady? Megan?”

“Rapinoe?” Jackson asked. “So she’s fast and fit?”

Cowboy nodded vigorously. “Like she trained to catch boys,” he whispered, and part of Jackson wanted to smile, because that sounded like some Roald Dahl villain shit, but part of him was horrified, because the boy wasafraid.

“Did she almost catch you?” Jackson asked.

Cowboy swallowed. “I think she caught Caleb,” he whispered. “Caleb went back inside the Clean Living place, to make sure the other boys were okay and maybe see if they could get away. And the lady….” He swallowed.

“Did she have a name?” Jackson asked.

“Retty,” Cowboy said promptly. “They… they called her Retty.” He glanced down. “She put me in the back of the van after my mom gave me to the people.”

Jackson nodded. “Your mom shouldn’t have done that,” he said softly. “Maybe she got scared. Raising a boy is a big job. Sometimes people like this promise they can help.”

Cowboy whispered, “It’s because I was bad.”

Jackson swallowed, and part of him wanted to shove this away and not talk about it, but part of him needed the boy to get it out now so he knew he’d be okay.

“How bad?” he asked. “Like, muddy shoes in the living room bad? Forget to do your chores bad?”

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