Chapter 12 At the Hanging Stoplight #2
So Brady breaks into the station house, and we make a distraction so he can get out—that was the plan, right?
There was an assortment of responses—“Yes,” “Yeah,” “Right,” and one “Da,” from Jai, who was apparently out burying some meth dealer who had taken a shot at Brady an hour ago.
Seriously, Ace didn’t know why they were so concerned about the guy in their living room.
It wasn’t like Ace was going to get any sleep anyway.
That’s not going to be enough, he typed. This had been bothering him all day, ever since Burton and Jason had given him and Jai the plan. He’s going to break out of there, and we’re going to need to get the phone to Burton and Eric so they can crack it and send the info out, right?
And again, that assortment of nods-by-text.
What are our bad guys doing while we do that?
….
And now there were a lot of thought bubbles that Ace had sort of been hoping would have some sort of thought behind them.
Yeah, I thought so. They’re massing, people.
We need to do some bait and switch—get the cops chasing people one way while Eric and Brady go the other.
Burton, you’ll probably be needed in the field, so Eric will have to upload the info and spread the word all on his lonesome.
Jai, you’re gonna have to sacrifice your SUV.
Sonny and our new friend will remain here and keep us informed.
“I am not!”
Sonny’s voice, real and not online, startled Ace so badly he almost dropped the phone. He and Sonny fit so well together, he hadn’t even registered Sonny’s presence over his shoulder, reading as he typed.
“You are too.” Ace stared at him. While Sonny could be cantankerous and contrary, he didn’t usually gainsay Ace when they were doing “superhero shit,” as he put it.
“Am not.”
“Sonny, you stay here with Dimitri, and odds are you’ll be safe. Cops’ll show up, you say the boss ain’t here, call ’em fuckheads, and they’ll leave. We leave the place closed, and you know what’ll happen?”
“You’ll do something fool stupid and get killed without me?” Sonny asked, his voice breaking.
Ace frowned. “Aw, no, Sonny—you know that’s not the plan.”
“I don’t care what the plan is, Ace. I’m tired of being the little woman and sitting at home while the big men go out and almost get killed. I am worried, do you hear me?”
Ace blinked, because that was some emotional rawness and honesty from Sonny, and he usually didn’t speak that language.
“I’m listening,” he said soberly. “I am. I get it that you worry. I just—I don’t want to take you with me ’cause this is my choice to be in danger, you hear? It’s not yours. I don’t want you to get hurt—”
“I don’t care about me getting hurt,” Sonny said, his voice breaking. “I care about you out in the desert, dying alone. That’s what I’m worried about. I get that the world ain’t safe, Ace, but don’t make me send you into the void all alone!”
Ace stared at him, taking his hand and squeezing it, not sure what to do.
They’d developed a nice pattern here in the recent years; Ace went out and did the danger, Sonny stayed back and held on to his shit.
But for some reason—maybe it was the scope of the thing here, the many people involved, the danger to their friends—Sonny wasn’t willing to settle for that.
While he debated what to do, his phone buzzed, and he saw it was from Ernie, and it wasn’t on group chat, either.
Let him come, Ace. I’ll mind the store.
I thought you were burned out, Ernie. They tried hard not to abuse Ernie’s gift. Ace felt like it had gotten a real workout this week.
This is all hands on deck. George is taking the day off. He’s already called in.
This was news to Ace. He’d thought George was working.
Where’s he going to be?
At the garage. We’ll be like dispatch at a police station, Ace. Me, George, your new guy—we’ll be able to tell you who’s going where. Jai will drop me off early. You and Sonny can take off from there.
Okay, he typed back, dumbly. Why ain’t this on group?
Cause I don’t want Crullers to know.
Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Ernie that’s…. He couldn’t think of a word big enough to cover the enormity of lying to Lee Burton. He’d never had a best friend before Lee. Ace didn’t know how to tell him a lie.
Me and Lee will be okay, Ernie typed. But you won’t if you go out without Sonny. A lot about tomorrow is cloudy, but if you and Sonny go out, I see me and Sonny in Disneyland next weekend, with Cotton.
Of all the fucking weirdness.
Ace stared at that text, reading it again.
I’m sorry?
“Why would I go to Disneyland without you, Ace?” Sonny asked, puzzled.
Ace grunted. “I don’t know,” he said. “But you certainly wouldn’t be going if I’m dead. So let’s have some faith in Ernie and do it his way.”
Disneyland, Ernie typed, and Ace could almost see his shrug. It’ll be fine.
And with that Ace went back to group chat.
Me and Sonny’ll be distractions and help with the Brady/Eric relay. Dimitri will hold the fort here. And then, taking a page from Ernie’s book, he added, It’ll be fine.
And then Burton typed, Goddammit, Ernie!
And things sort of broke up from there, with Ace and Jai lingering to set up places/times and asking Jason for a backup plan, in case the phone wasn’t in the police station.
Ace wasn’t sure what Lee and Ernie would be saying to each other, but he had a feeling that if they were in the same house, there would be naked bodies at the end of it, and Ace didn’t want any part of that.
It was uncomfortable thinking of a friend that way.
By the time Ace was done, their guest had emerged from the shower looking cleaner, shaved, and somehow smaller without the layers of clothes currently meeting their maker in the heavy-duty washing machine Ace had bought with their work coveralls in mind.
Even clean, Dimitri wasn’t a looker. His features were knobby—chin, nose, ears, everything stuck out like it should be twisted to make Dimitri run. But clean, Ace could see the exhaustion in the man’s eyes, and the feet peeking out from Sonny’s old sweats were cracked and bloody.
Well, wouldn’t be the first time the rug had gotten blood on it.
But Ace could help the other thing too.
“Sonny,” he said, “get some of that thick lotion paste we use on our hands and give it to him. I’ll get him my thick socks.
We’re asking him to work a full day tomorrow, and this ain’t no good.
Dimitri, go ahead and sit on the futon. We can put something on your feet so they don’t fuckin’ hurt, okay? ”
He stood and moved toward the room, but Sonny stopped him, a hand on his hip. “Ace?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For… you know. Hearing me. Seeing me. I… there’s nobody in the world I could care about like I care for you, you know that, right?”
Ace smiled a little, his throat unaccountably tight. “I’m glad, Sonny, ’cause I got no plans to go anywhere without you.”
Sonny grinned then, irrepressible. “’Cause I just showed you I wouldn’t let you, right?”
And Ace couldn’t bear it. Dimitri in the next room or not, he pulled Sonny close, not to kiss him but to hold him, tight and dear, his body trembling.
This was a bad business. It had been bad from the moment George had told them all about the kids, abused, terrified, and forced to go back to the man who had hurt them, because he was supposed to be a man of God.
Everybody at Ace’s house that day—they’d told the truth.
They’d do it all again. Not a one of them wouldn’t have stepped in, taken Ace’s place, and done the killing himself.
But it was hard—damned hard—to be the one who’d killed.
Ace had done it before, and he reckoned the way his life was going, he would do it again.
But knowing that Sonny would love him for the murderer he was? That meant something.
Sonny returned the embrace, tight and hard, and the only thing that pulled them apart was the slight sound of Dimitri’s breathing.
He’d fallen asleep on their futon, bloody feet and all.
Ace and Sonny woke him up to tend to his hurts, and then after giving him a couple of ibuprofen and a blanket, they retired to their own bedroom.
Normally, they watched some television around this time, but they both had phones—they could watch their shows on Ace’s phone, shoulder to shoulder in bed.
Ace felt like some time alone with Sonny was the thing he’d been missing from his whole day.
He locked their bedroom door that night and left the light on in the kitchen, although he kept the living room dark. He didn’t reckon on that beat-down man on his futon making any plans to kill him and Sonny, although they kept Duke in with them, just in case.
Ace tried to be generous, but not stupid, and it’d served him and Sonny pretty well so far.
JASON LET Burton drive back from the base after Ernie’s text about the guy taking shots at the camper, but Burton’s blood was still up. And then Ace had texted him about cops converging on the garage the next day, and he was still frothing at the mouth.
He collected Ernie from Jai and George’s house with a terse nod from Jai, who said, “I have planted our ugly flower. Let us see if he sprouts bones, yes?”
Burton grunted. God knows the people in this cul-de-sac had planted plenty of such flowers before. “I’d rather not have to harvest those, if you know what I mean.”
Jai rolled his eyes. “You treat me like amateur. You know better.”
Burton shook his head, remembering everything from exploding RVs to entire branches of the Russian mob disappearing somewhere in the desert and had to admit that yes, Jai was better than that. “I just hate that it was close to our home,” he admitted. “I—”
Jai gave him one of those looks—one of those looks that said that Lee Burton may have been a sanctioned killer and good at his job, but Jai had survived the streets of Moscow as a gay orphan. Burton may have been trained to be a killer, but Jai knew in his bones that nobody was safe.