Page 37 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

Cowboy relaxed a little. “Okay,” he whispered. Then, a little less frightened, he said, “Thank you, Mr. Rivers. I liked school. You’re right, I’ve been sort of bored, in my head, you know?”

“Smart kid like you,” Jackson said, “I bet you were. Don’t worry. It will make Isabelle feel more like a mom if she sees you reading some schoolbooks.” He was also thinking about Randy, who wasamazinglysmart with books but not great with almost anything else. That kid would have come insohandy right now, and Jackson hoped for the thousandth time that Randy was safe and cared for. “So that’s one thing—you write down your teacher’s name, and I’ll get you some books and stuff, and we’re good.”

“Okay, then, what’s the other thing?”

Jackson slid his phone over, and Cowboy started typing in his teacher and school. While he was doing that, Jackson started with the hard stuff.

“Okay, so you said four other boys, right? Caleb was the one who went back. Do you remember the others?”

Cowboy frowned and, unconsciously, took a big healthy bite of what was left of the doughnut. His eyes widened comically and then closed, and Jackson watched in fascination as the hit of sweetness hit the kid’s bloodstream like heroin.

He smiled slightly and said, “Caleb, Jacob Cornell, Danny, and Otto.” He opened his eyes again, and the most bemused smile crossed his face. “Otto Karekes,” he said in sudden memory. “It was areallyodd name, and he said he was German.” His face fell. “And then he said this was better than he could expect to see in some other countries, where he might have been killed outright. I….” He turned troubled eyes to Jackson. “Do you think he was okay? Jacob too? Otto was the one who hurt his leg.”

“I’ll do my best to find out,” Jackson promised soberly. “And now one more thing. Sh… erm, Retty. She’s the employee you had the most contact with. Can I get a description of her? And Twitty too? Tall, short, dark hair, light hair, that sort of thing. Let’s go with Retty first.”

Cowboy was much more lucid—and much braver—now that he had some sleep in him. He described Retty as having long, wildly curly black hair, a square jaw, and—in Cowboy’s words, “Rough skin. Her cheeks were red. She was wearing, like, work clothes and that jacket—green with the logo in white. She looked, you know. Regular. Like a waitress or a lunch lady or someone who works at a pizza place. Like, no makeup or anything, and her shoulders were… sort of forward.”

The boy hunched his shoulders and, apparently unconsciously, assumed a grim expression, but also one that was almost… slack.

Retty reallywashired muscle, Jackson thought. She was the attack dog. And Twitty—who was blond and thin and looked “like she should be on a magazine”—was the face of the operation.

Interesting.

Jackson winked at the boy when he was done and told him he was so smart and told him that they would probably leave on the trip that afternoon. He said this exchanging glances with Sean, who nodded, the unspoken order passing between them that Cowboy needed to be out of town by then.

And then Jackson turned toward Isabelle Roberts, who was wearing a set of Sean’s sweats and a clean pair of crew socks. She wasn’t a wispy woman—she filled out the sweats with middle-aged curves and comfortable hips—but she wasn’t self-conscious about it either.

“Ms. Roberts?” he said, pulling up near her to give her the illusion of privacy, “I saw Bobby last night. He can’t come—”

“He’d be easy to follow,” she said promptly, and he nodded.

“Exactly. But he wanted you to know that he’s really proud of you. And he and Reg aresoglad you’re safe.”

Her wide green eyes sheened. “Thank you,” she whispered before shaking herself. “Are you sure there’s no way I can go to my apartment? I wouldreallylove my own clothes.”

Jackson laughed a little and pulled out a wad of cash Bobby had shoved into his hands before they’d all left the hospital.

“He gave me this to give to you,” Jackson said. “For clothes. Apparently he got tippedreallywell under the table on his last carpentry job. He was going to buy you cross-stitch patterns, but he said there was probably enough here for clothes too.”

Ms. Roberts gaped in surprise at the wad of cash before counting it. She gave Jackson a droll look. “You would think after three years on his own, he would know what things cost,” she said, her voice ringing with such amazing momness that Jackson’s mouth twisted. “Dear God. Well, me and Cowboy are going to have afieldday at a Target somewhere out of town. Did you hear that, Cowboy? New clothes for the both of us. And then T-shirts at Disneyland.”

Cowboy gave her an unfettered smile, hugging Charming the dachshund close and seeming, for the first time, like a fourteen-year-old boy. “Awesome,” he said, and Jackson had some hope for the lot of them.

He and Ellery would make Sacramento safe for these two people if they had to dig a trench under all of Moms for Clean Living and its environs and let the building collapse into dust. There was no other way.

As soon as he got into Jennifer, his phone buzzed with Dex’s message that Henry had woken up, and Jackson should be by around lunch. He closed his eyes for a moment and sent up a prayer to Gru—or the spaghetti monster or the sky daddy or whoever was in charge of making sure smartass ex-soldiers with hero complexes could survive—and took off for Reba Milton’s apartment complex.

When he’d found a spot to park on the cracked, crumbling asphalt, he got out of Jennifer and paused, scoping out his enemy. He spent a moment staring at the two-story structure, old, with peeling paint on the warped eaves, cracked yellow stucco, and concrete stairs that didn’t look like they’d take a grown man’s weight.

The place was located on Watt near Whitney, and there was such a spotty vibe in this area. This particular complex was shoved between two brand-new strip malls, for instance, and while the strip malls appeared busy and prosperous, the complex, with the full concrete apron and the single row of apartments on the ground and on the top floor, was so damned….

Sad.

Jackson, Kaden, and Jade had grown up in a place much like this, not too far away from this one, but their complex had been surrounded by houses with trash in the yard and other complexes with the same concrete floor. No greenanywhere,not even a tree in the back. But the difference, Jackson tried to remember. The difference in the apartment Jackson had shared with his mother versus the apartment Jade and Kaden had shared with their mother, Toni….

Jackson shuddered, remembering the bare, scarred walls in his mother’s apartment. The one couch, stained, the battered kitchen table and chairs that wobbled. He’d slept on a mattress on the awful brown carpet in the living room, and she’d had the one bedroom, with the bed that squeaked and howled whenever his mother was putting out for drugs, cash, or food.

Not often for food.

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