Chapter 15 Lines Dissecting Love #2
Jai had procured (Stolen? Ernie was pretty sure it was stolen) a small backhoe to shovel dirt and gravel in after they’d torched a vehicle and sent it to the bottom of the pit.
He wasn’t sure if Lee and Jason had any idea how many bodies he and Jai had hidden there, but Officer Daily, who had bugs in his brain, was certainly not the first.
The extra gallon of gasoline—and the rag stuffed in the gas tank and lit as Ernie shoved the thing over the edge in neutral—made for a satisfying whoosh and boom as it hit the ground and blew, but Ernie was quick to push mounds and mounds of gravel and dirt over the same edge, until the black smoke stopped rising and hopefully, the body in the back, in the place where the cops usually stored their weapons, was covered.
Nobody had ever come out here before, but then, Ernie wasn’t sure how much Lee knew about his involvement when Ernie and Jai were left in charge of the garage and things went awry.
It could be that Lee and Jason just kept people away, which Ernie wasn’t sure how to feel about. It wasn’t that he thought of himself as a serial killer or mob muscle, but, well, his hands weren’t clean of blood.
Lee knew that about him, though. In fact he’d told Ernie on more than one occasion that it gave him peace, because he knew his Club Boy would be safer if he could protect himself.
Still, by the time he’d plodded the half mile to the road and then set out to the south, where he knew he’d meet Jason and Cotton, he was relieved to see that the black smoke had already started to dissipate in the sky.
It was getting toward lunch, he thought vaguely, and he wondered if it was awful that he was hungry.
Suddenly all he wanted to do was make fried chicken and chips, with big glasses of lemonade. Something hearty and filling—comfort food at its best.
He’d become so lost in the dream of food, making food for his friends, food for his lover, food for them all together, healthy and happy, that he almost had a heart attack when Jason and Cotton, coming north from the base, zoomed up from behind him.
“Ernie?” Jason said, his voice having the dubious note in it whenever Ernie’s “witchiness” was calling the shots. “What are you doing here?”
“Unimportant,” Ernie said, his voice so weary it dragged. With an effort that felt like he was an old man in a walker trying a trick from his youth, Ernie hopped in the back of the little red Mazda and said, “Victoriana Hospital. Have you heard anything?”
“In surgery,” Jason said grimly, shifting the car roughly, making Ernie yearn for Ace.
Ace was hurt, he knew. So hurt. “Ace, Eric, even Jai, who needs his arm and shoulder set. Apparently George jimmy-rigged a saline drip using collapsible water bottles and boiled water, salt, and sugar. Amal called us and said it was the only reason Ace and Eric made it to the hospital.”
George, who had tried so hard not to be afraid of the blood on his hands—so funny that it was the blood he knew about that had saved them.
“And our package?” Ernie asked. All this blood, all this pain, all this sacrifice. Had it been good?
“The phone hit the airwaves before the dust had settled from the massive car wreck that took out every police vehicle for three counties,” Jason said with a grunt. “Lee and Brady are in transit. They should be nearing the FBI field office in LA in the next hour.”
“Good,” Ernie said. He closed his eyes, feeling the last of his control on his psyche fading out. Lee, did we do good? Was it worth it?
And his brain, like it sometimes did, found exactly who he needed, even when he was far away.
Yeah, Club Boy. We were fucking heroes.
Tell me when you’re home.
Love you, Club Boy. Let go.
So Ernie did.
AN HOUR later, the motorcycle came to a smooth and abrupt stop in front of a great glass building in downtown LA. Brady, who had been holding his breath as Lee Burton piloted that thing like an invisible bat in a mechanical hell, tried not to let his knees buckle as he swung off the back.
“Gun,” said Burton over Bluetooth. Besides relaying news he’d gotten from the disaster zone they’d left in their wake, it was one of the few things he’d said.
Brady passed his gun over, no questions asked, still reeling from the list of injuries, of car crashes, of heroism and blood that Burton had been able to glean from whatever had been going on in his ears during that terrifying ride.
“Good,” Burton said. “Helmet and your personal phone.”
Brady handed those over too.
“You good to go, Cowboy?”
Brady liked that. Cowboy. Maybe if his Eric was Charlie, Brady could be Charlie’s Cowboy.
He was thinking in circles, and he had to get his shit straight.
“Yeah,” he said. “You coming with?”
Burton shook his head grimly before turning his blank, tinted-visor-covered face toward the many surveillance cameras that Brady had no doubt were currently taking their pulse and X-raying their bones.
With a vicious little laugh, Lee Burton extended his middle finger to all watching as a final no to Brady’s question and then goosed the accelerator and pulled out.
Brady had no doubts that in two hours, he’d be in Victoriana General, pacing the waiting room with his friends, sending fractured killer’s prayers for his brothers.
Brady would have given anything in the world to join him there, but God. So much blood. He couldn’t let that be in vain. With a determined squaring of his shoulders, he turned to the entrance of the building and stepped inside, holding the phone up over his head along with his other hand.
As he’d suspected when he’d seen Burton flip off the surveillance cameras, he was greeted by a phalanx of Special Agents, weapons drawn, expressions locked down and ready for Armageddon.
“Hey,” he said, loud enough to carry. “Did you guys see all that fun information released to the news outlets today? Blackmail, kiddie porn, higher-ups?”
There was a change in that mass of bodies. A listening quality. Sure, sure, he could imagine that information making the rounds, freaking people out, starting a panic.
“Anybody want to know where that came from?”
An older man stepped forward, hair cut close to his scalp, a combination of black and gray. “Yes,” the man said, “yes, indeed. We would like to know where that came from.”
“I’ll tell you,” Brady said. “But first I need to see Jessica Chambers so I can speak to her in private.”
The man’s eyes went wide. “We can do that for you, sir. Do you care to surrender that phone?”
Brady shook his head. “Let me speak to Jessica first, and then I’ll tell you all a story. But you need to promise me you’ll listen, or I’ll rip the SIM card right out of this thing and crumble it to dust.”
He put his other hand to the back of the phone, where he knew he could access the card, and he rather enjoyed watching everybody hold their breath.
“That’s what I thought,” he said softly. “Jessica Chambers. Now.” He paused and heard his stomach grumble. “And you know, I wouldn’t mind coffee, a bagel, and a trip to the bathroom, either. You would not believe my day!”