Page 21 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

His voice might have wobbled on the part about Lance getting there, and Jackson shot him a sharp glance that said he knew more about Lance’s fury that Henry had gotten hurt on their watch than Ellery had first let on.

Jackson outlined what they knew, his twitchiness easing as he got deeper into the case.

“So this ‘Retty’ carries out the commands and ‘Mrs. Twitty’ calls the shots,” John said thoughtfully, and Galen made a face.

“The names are unfortunate,” he pronounced, but John shook his head.

“No, I get it—it’s like Johnnies. Some of the kids keep their names long after they’ve quit the business. That was their identity, and they hold on to it. Retty and Twitty, no matter who they arenow,have a history where these names meant something.” His murky green eyes sought out Jackson’s. “That’s what you meant by us having to run down leads,” he said.

Jackson nodded. “Yes, exactly. Also, John, you have contact with the kids who have recently come off the streets. Usually Henry is our contact—”

“Or Isabelle,” John murmured glumly.

“But you need to do this for us,” Jackson urged. “Ask them if they’ve heard of anything like this. As old as it makes us all feel, these women have been here for, what? Two years? They’ve come after school libraries, and some of your kids might have been affected. Tell them it’s for Isabelle and I’m sure they’ll do it.”

John grunted. “And now thatweall feel ancient, yes, I’ll do that. I haven’t visited that side of the business in a few days. Dex and I promised to keep our noses in.” He shrugged. “It’s an easy business to exploit the models in. We made promises that we wouldn’t let that happen. Just because we’re working the other sides of the business now, the ones where everybody keeps their clothes on, there’s no reason to break that promise, right?”

“Right,” Ellery said, wondering if heshouldtell his mother about John and Dex’s involvement, because if anybody could help keep them separate and safe,shecould.

“Good,” Jackson said. “I’ll run down the—”

And before he could finish his plan, the waiting room grewveryloud andveryexcited.

Dex and the flophouse boys had arrived.

WHEN ELLERYhad been a teenager focused on academic success—and filled with moral rectitude and sexual frustration—he used to dream of being in a room with affable, well-muscled young men who thought nothing of draping their arms over his shoulders and telling him how glad they were to see him.

As a man in his thirties, with a fiancé he loved more than he had ever imagined lovinganybody,he found the experience… unnerving.

“Dear God,” he said to Jackson as the fifth kid from the flophouse left off hugging him and went to hug John, “areanyof them wearing sweatshirts?”

Jackson—who often spent his weekends playing basketball with the guys or assisting Henry with their mentoring, shook his head.

“It’s March, Ellery—we’re lucky they’re wearingshirts.”

Ellery shot him a disbelieving glance, but Jackson nodded soberly, and Ellery thanked his lucky stars until areallybig kid, in his early twenties, with the grave, sober look of somebody much older, approached. This onedidhave a jacket on—denim, but it still counted—and so did his boyfriend, a smaller, almost bandy-legged man who was close to Ellery’s age but who had the open, trusting expression of a child.

“My mom,” said the taller of the two. “Jackson, Ellery, is my mom all right?”

Jackson turned to Bobby—Isabelle Roberts still called him Vern but nobody else did—and gave him a tight smile.

“Yeah, kid. We’ve got your mom stashed someplace safe, and the boy they were protecting too. Henry, he was working really hard to make sure they got away.”

“But who?” Reg, his boyfriend, asked plaintively. “Who would want to hurt his mom? She’s such a nice lady and—”

“Rivers?”

The hard, angry voice from the doorway made Ellery’s heart sink. Jackson turned toward the door with a mask of careful neutrality. He wasn’t going to get angry back at Lance, Ellery realized. No matter how mad Lance Luna was, Jackson was going to take it.

“Hey, Lance,” Jackson said, softly but loud enough to carry. “I’m glad you could get off your shift. The guys have missed you.”

That set Lance back a moment, Ellery could tell. It pulled his focus to the mass of bodies in the room, the kids from the flophouse that Lance helped Henry mentor, and Ellery saw the exact moment Lance swallowed down enough of his fury to dealwith Jackson in an adult way and not with the misplaced anger of a child.

Ellery tried to remember the momenthe’dfaced adulthood like that, and what he came up with was when he’d walked into a witness interrogation room to interview Jackson’s brother—and met a large, well-muscled Black man with two children and a deep distrust of lawyers whowasJackson’s brother in all the ways that counted.

Letting go of your preconceptions and your prejudices was always the most adult moment of your life, Ellery thought ruefully—and itshouldhurt.

He just really didn’t want Jackson to be the one in the fallout.

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