Sunshine and Blood #6
By the time he got back, pizzas steaming in the passenger’s seat, the roadblock had moved east about two miles. He grimaced. It was a good thing he’d switched cars. Jai would have to drive them home as he and Brady hid under camping gear in the back.
“Ooh,” Jai said as he pulled the vehicle under the garage overhang. “Good choice. See,” he said to Ace, “I told you he couldn’t fuck it up entirely.”
Ace rolled his eyes. “I told you, and I think Sonny and George will back me up on that.” He nodded at Eric.
“But he’s right about it being a nice choice.
Take the pizzas inside. We’ll clean up here shortly.
” He gave Eric a brief searching look. “Spend some time with Brady. If our plan to get the phone back goes through tomorrow, you two might not have much of that for a while.”
Eric swallowed. He knew what Ace was trying not to say. He’d figured it out for himself. The plan to get the phone back had a few moving parts, but what happened after that was simple.
Get Brady to the LA FBI field office and send all the information on the phone to the several journalism contacts Burton and Brady had curated during the meeting.
Once Brady was in protective custody—and that part would be tricky, Eric knew—the rest of them were going to just fade into the background.
Never to be heard from again.
Brady would be the eye of the storm—the one with the bright lights in his face, the one testifying, the one probably under a US Marshal’s care until the right people were arrested.
After the whirlwind died down, maybe they’d see Brady again.
But maybe they wouldn’t.
Brady was in law enforcement, after all, and the people in Ace’s garage were… not. It wasn’t unthinkable that once this enterprise was over, Brady wouldn’t have a reason to be a part of their little circle anymore.
There’d be no reason to crawl back in bed with Eric once Brady really knew him for who he was.
It’s okay, Charlie—you can trust me.
Sure. Sure, Eric could trust Brady not to turn him over to law enforcement—but trust him not to turn away when he knew what Eric was?
Probably not.
Eric mustn’t forget—must never forget—what Jules taught him, which was that trust usually only lasted until the come dried.
A cynical thought from a hard man, yes, but as Eric entered Ace and Sonny’s little house, the pizzas in his arms, he heard the television and soft laughter from the living room.
His heart twisted a little, and he realized he liked Brady’s laugh—surprisingly deep, and deeply surprised, as though laughing was the last thing Brady expected to find himself doing.
George was in the kitchen, gathering plates, and he gave Eric a sweet smile.
“So did it have pinstripes?” he asked.
Eric chuckled. “No,” he said. “But it is going to go to my boy toy in my Palm Springs pied-à-terre, so maybe pinstripes would have been overkill.”
George let out a delighted giggle. “Explaining the cash?”
“Explaining the cash,” Eric agreed. “I also threw in an extra grand, which our boy will be pocketing for his own, uhm, pied-à-terre exploits. Not that I envy his wife, but I think it worked out.”
And now George winced. “Ooh—I think I dated that guy in college. I hope he gets syphilis.”
It was Eric’s turn to laugh in surprised delight. “You look so sweet!” he said as Brady came in from the living room.
“Oh, I am,” George told him complacently. “Just ask Sonny.” He lowered his voice. “He tries not to swear in front of me. We don’t tell him what I sound like in the ER.”
“I didn’t hear a single swear word,” Brady said, and while he didn’t lean up against Eric like, say, a kitten, he did brush the small of Eric’s back with his hand. Eric gave him his kindest smile while George snorted.
“You weren’t listening,” he said pertly. “You had no idea who I was.”
Eric cocked his head. “No?”
“No,” Brady confirmed. Then he grimaced. “And then the cops stormed the ER lobby, and George spirited me out the back door and told me that Ace or somebody would meet me, and I was like, ‘Wait, Jai’s nurse?’”
George preened. “Yes,” he said simply. “Jai’s nurse. That’s a nice way to be known.” He sobered. “And Jai and I will be leaving early tonight so I can work here all day tomorrow. You can’t get hurt because I won’t be there, you understand?”
“We’ll do our best,” Eric said, and he glanced into the living room to see if Ernie had heard. If ever there was a time for psychic intervention, now was it.
But Ernie had retreated back to the bedroom, and Eric turned toward Brady and George in surprise.
“Something,” George said simply. “He won’t say what.
He says Ace is a wild card, and it throws things off, and the storm is simply too big for him to see all of it.
” George smiled weakly, and of all things, his eyes darted to the spot on the rug, the one everybody hated so much.
“He’s only one person. This is gonna take all of us. ”
Brady was the one who asked the question. “What happened there? You all keep looking at it. What—”
George shook his head. “I… I can’t.” He swallowed.
“When you see people at their worst, you learn all sorts of things about people you never wanted to know. It’s…
it’s harder when it’s people you love. People you respect.
” He sighed. “Let’s just say we all need Ace.
In one way or another, we need to know somebody like Ace Atchison is out here in the middle of nowhere, doing his best. And Ace needs Sonny.
So we protect Sonny and hope Ace can protect himself. ”
Outside they heard approaching voices, Jai, Ace, and Sonny, and they all busied themselves with other things. As they entered the house, Sonny sounded fractious and unhappy, and Ace’s voice had taken on the patient tones of somebody trying to soothe a frightened child.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “You know me, Sonny, I’ll be—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Sonny muttered. “I don’t want to hear how you’ll be fine. You say that, and….”
Eric had his back turned, but he knew that Sonny, too, had looked to that place in the living room, where the carpet stain would never leave.
“This is a different sort of storm,” Ace said. “You, George, and Ernie are gonna do just fine. We knocked out all the other cars. Monday is usually our day off when Jai covers—it’ll be like switching days off is all.”
“Last time me and Ernie were alone together—” Sonny began, but Ace cut him off with a hiss and a quick, darting look toward Brady and Eric.
Sonny blinked. “You know, that’s how rattled I am.
I forgot they wouldn’t know about that.” He turned toward Eric and Brady as he was taking off his boots and said, “And the important thing about that is that I didn’t kill the guy.
And I could have. But we got too many bodies out in the desert as it is. ”
And with that he turned to stalk barefoot toward the bathroom, muttering to himself as he went.
It was Brady who broke the silence with a rusty chuckle. “You know, you all don’t have to worry about me telling a soul about that conversation. I’ll be honest—I’ll let the worms in the desert do their job. I’m not opening that can.”
Ace gave a grunt and shook his head. “That’s probably best. I’d better run him some clothes. I hear the shower going, and he’ll stay in there all night when he realizes his only other choice is to run across the living room in a towel.”
WHILE ERIC had driven Ernie’s old sedan to Ace and Sonny’s, the change of the roadblock location meant Eric could be recognized if he drove the SUV out of the garage after already being seen in the Crown Vic.
It was confusing (they had to explain it to Sonny twice), but in the end, Eric left the sedan and Jai drove the SUV home—and loved it.
As Eric and Brady crouched on the floor in the third row, sweltering under a tarp, tent, and sleeping bags and trying not to disturb the stuff too much, Eric was rather pleased with his choice as well.
He’d been thinking about this exact situation when he’d scoped the thing out, and sure enough, it held up.
Still, the roadblock was a tense moment—made even more tense by Jai’s unexpectedly pixilated sense of humor.
“Da, this is my vehicle. Here is the registration. Dimitri Gordotin, da.” It was the name Eric had given the guy at the lot, because Ace had texted it to him, as well as a picture of an ID with George’s photo on it. Apparently, Jai’s ID had the same name. Clever—very clever.
“Haven’t I seen you around before?”
Eric didn’t recognize the suspicious voice, but Brady apparently did. Eric could make out his rolled eyes, even in the darkness, and Brady put his lips next to Eric’s ear and muttered, “Schmuck.”
“I have one of those faces,” Jai said, so deadpan Eric could practically smell carrion. Next to him, he heard Brady’s sharp intake of air as they both struggled not to laugh.
“Yeah, buddy, don’t fool yourself” came the cop. “Your face ain’t nearly so common as all that.”
“I did not say it was common,” Jai said. “I just said you will see it everywhere.”
They couldn’t see what happened next, but Eric imagined it was that sudden flash of large teeth, but not bared in a real smile. Bared in the sort of smile one might see a predator give before springing on a gazelle that used to think it was tough shit.
The cough and the sound of shifting backward spoke for themselves.
“Yeah, well, you take that face and get it out of my sight. Let me know if you see that guy I showed you, right?”
“I will,” Jai said. “If he shows up in your nightmares, you should let me know too.”
“Get out of here!” It was a shout, and Jai stomped on the accelerator, probably spraying gravel all over the guy.
Brady said loud enough to carry, “I hope you got him in the eyes with that shit. He likes to swagger into the fast-food places and demand free food.”
“Nice people you work with,” Jai said with disgust. “I’m sure it breaks your heart to quit this job.”