Page 70 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

He ran to Jennifer while Cody was still clambering over the fence himself, noting that two of the smallest teenagers had squeezed, knees to ears, in the back storage area of the van under the hatch, and that blankets had been tossed to the kids who’d been hiding out in the rain.

He got a glimpse of Piper Lutz coming from one side of the street and Valerie “Twitty” Trainor coming from the other as Cody hopped in, and he hit the ignition.

He’d backed up and was squealing down the street, the minivan’s front bumper guard scraping on the ground withevery pebble in the road, by the time Cody slammed the door shut and was wrestling with his seat belt.

For a moment, the only sounds were the minivan’s straining engine, the panting and whimpers from their full back seat, and the “snick” of the seat belt clicking into place.

Jackson took a deep breath and said, “This wasnotPlan B!”

Cody chuckled breathlessly. “Hell, son, this wasn’t even PlanF,but we pulled it off, right? Where to?”

“Davis Med Center,” Jackson told him, driving one-handed while he pulled his phone from his jeans. “But while I’m driving, I need to call in the reserves.”

“Oh God,” Cody moaned. “You don’t mean….”

“Yup. Lawyers, guns, and money, my man. The shit has hit the fan.”

THE FIRSTcall was to Ellery so he could mobilize child services and call Dave and Alex so they could warn the hospital they had an influx of adolescents that needed to be admittedstatand not housed in the ER. The third was to Andre Christie, Sean’s partner on the force, so he could get Fetzer and Hardison to the ER to help take custody of the kids, since they’d all been briefed on the situation beforehand.

And when all that had been done, he took a breath and finally asked the one burning question in his mind.

“What part of ‘look around’ did you not understand?”

Cody harrumphed. “The part where our hefty friend back there was locked in a closet, crying, with a clothespin on his nethers, and the kids from the girls’ dorm were sneaking food to the boys because they’d been put on short rations that night. Something about ‘encouraging his perversion.’”

Jackson blew out a breath. “Okay, so that was something, but I don’t know if it’ll get us out of a kidnapping charge.”

“Jackson, there were pictures of drag queens burning in hell with chopped-off penises on the walls.”

“Oh myGod!” Jackson burst out. “That’shorrific.What in the actualfuck!”

“It… it….” The voice came from the seat directly behind them, and Cody glanced back, but both of them shut up.

“It was what, honey?” Cody asked, the compassion in his voice so natural Jackson figured he could forgive the guy for absolutely fucking up their plan.

“It was to make us want to be straight,” said the young woman behind them, one of the ones Cody had helped escape. “It… it was so stupid. One day I was fighting with my mom about my girlfriend, and the next all these Stepford wives were telling me I was going to hell. A van pulled up to my door, and my mom said, ‘These people will help you, sweetheart,’ and she shoved me in.” There was a sound of desolation in the girl’s voice. “She was crying. She… she put me in this fucking Jesus van and she wascryinglikeshewas the one getting hurt.”

“Often they don’t understand,” Jackson said, feeling wretched and hopeful at once remembering Cowboy’s mother. “I think… I think this group of peopleliedto your parents, maybe made this place sound like summer camp or a private school.”

“Ha!” came from a boy huddled on the far side of a seat, with another boy tucked in next to him. Both of them were so slender they fit under the same seat belt. “My old man just needed to rest his beating hand.”

“Well, hopefully you won’t have to go back there,” Jackson said, his head starting to pound.

“May as well,” the kid said glumly, staring out the window into the rain. “At least with the old man, he’d leave me alone sometimes. These people… wake you up in the middle of the night going, ‘Hey, kid, you thinking about dick?’ It’s like, ‘No,asshole, I’m thinking aboutsleep, but now I’m thinkingyou’rea dick.’”

That made Jackson’s shoulders stiffen. “So there were men in that house?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said the girl right behind him. “Two of them. Fuckers. Liked to think all we needed to straighten us out wastheirpenis.”

Next to him he heard Cody make a pained noise. Fuck. Yeah, that too.

“They left me alone,” said the miserable, sick girl from the back.

“That’s ’cause you bit that one guy,” said their helpful friend with the buzz cut. “Epic move, Denise—seriously, we told that to all the new kids when they showed up. Told ’em you could fight back and end up on the street, but it might be worth it.”

“Wasn’t worth it,” Denise all but moaned. “They still had us by the clit. Poor Otto—that one bitch grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and said, ‘Hey, boy, we got a job for you,’ and he didn’t even have anyplace to run.”

“God, he was pissed he couldn’t keep up with Cowboy,” said the boy with the attitude. “But….”

---