Damage Done 1
LATER, WHEN he could think beyond the panic, Jackson would remember to thank Ellery for driving like a bat out of hell.
During the trip itself, through thankfully empty streets on the rainy late evening weeknight, he spent his entire time focused on Henry’s voice through the phone, starting with “Die, bitch, die!”
“Yeah,” Henry gasped, his voice falling to a ragged whisper. “You run away, you fucking cow—keep bleeding as you go!”
“Henry!” Jackson spoke into the phone. “Henry, who’s there?”
“She’s gone,” Henry breathed, but it sounded weak, like he wasn’t quite present anymore. “She’s there. They got away. The boy, Bobby’s mom, they got away. Told them….”
He trailed off as Ellery made a hard turn that left Jackson’s eyebrows and his last bowel movement somewhere at a red-light violation that would cost Ellery a fortune to pay.
The moment to gasp and grab the Holy Shit bar gave Jackson a braincell with which to think. The boy and Isabelle Roberts—Henry had put himself in harm’s way to give them a chance to escape.
A female shooter. Henry had worked hard not to be all the bad things—racist, misogynist, homophobe—but Jackson supposed when somebody shot at you trying to get to a sweet middle-aged woman and a teenager, you had the right to slip.
“Where’d they go?” Jackson asked. God. Henry—Henry, his “padawan,” his assistant, his friend , one of the best friends in a life blessed with great ones—and Jackson could hear him growing foggy and faint on the phone. Henry had risked his life for someone because Henry was, in his heart, a hero. Jackson had to think beyond the pugnacious young redneck who had become a part of Jackson and Ellery’s life and think to what they were all doing with their lives, which was protecting people who couldn’t protect themselves.
“Fire escape,” Henry mumbled. “Out the back. Told Cowboy to help her….” For a moment his voice drifted off, and then he started to… to sing? “Da-da-dun da-da-dun da-da-dun da-da-dun dun da-da….”
Jackson frowned, and for a moment they were sitting on the couch talking about everything and nothing and killing aliens again.
“What in the hell is that?” he asked, almost indignantly.
“Cowboy music,” Henry murmured. “Get it? Cowboy?”
For a moment, Jackson was incensed, his worry knotting his stomach, his adrenaline roaring through his ears. “How dare you,” he snapped. “I’m gonna kill you myself!”
“You love me,” Henry murmured, sounding more and more out of it, and Jackson’s irritation faded as though wiped clean. “Now Lance is gonna be pissed,” he said, his voice growing fainter. “I love Lance. Do you love Lance?”
“Not like you do,” Jackson told him, voice gentling. “Tell me more about Lance.”
“Pretty…,” Henry mumbled, his voice fading even more. “So pretty… make sure he knows….”
Oh God. “Knows what?” Jackson snapped into the phone. “Henry, make sure he knows what?”
But there was no response save tortured breathing and a faint unconscious moan of pain.
Jackson had heard this sound before, too many times to count. Oh God.
“ Henry !” he barked, peering frantically to the street as Ellery made another surprise left, this one knocking Jackson against the window. Ellery had flown , Jackson realized, because they were there . They were half a block from Isabelle Roberts’s apartment, and while Jackson kept the phone pressed to his ear, his eyes darted around the unlit block, hoping for two figures dashing through the rain. “Do you see them?” he asked Ellery.
“I barely see the street,” Ellery snapped tersely. “I’ll let you out in front of the building so I can circle the block to look. Hurry! I hear sirens!”
First responders were on their way; Jackson knew that sound. He needed to get to Henry to get any more information Henry could give him.
And, oh God, to make sure Henry was okay.
Please let him be okay.
He didn’t remember shutting the door of Ellery’s Lexus when Ellery pulled up to the curb, but he must have. The apartment was on the second floor of an old, graceful two-story stucco building, and he raced up one set of stairs, hearing in the back of his mind the clatter of footsteps down the set of stairs on the other side of the building. But first… 2B, 3B, 7B—the door to 8B was wide open, and the nonstick stucco surface of the stairs was a mottled, rain-washed red.
Jackson ignored it and burst in, following the blood drops past the small kitchen on the left to a closed door shattered with bullet holes, splintered wood still falling like snow.
Jackson pushed the door open gingerly and took in a master bedroom, decidedly female, with a bloodstained white eyelet comforter and billowing eyelet curtains in front of the wide-open window in the back.
Henry was sprawled between the bed and the wall, bullet holes penetrating the wall chest-high above him, two of them.
Unlike the holes in the door, in which the wood splintered outward toward the hall, the holes above the bed were splintered in.
Henry had gotten some shots in through the door—that much was easy to see—but someone had gotten their own shots in through the short section of wall that outlined the bedroom, and taken Henry out.
“Henry!” Jackson fell to his knees on the floor, aware of the blood soaking through his jeans. “Man, how you doing?”
“Jackson,” Henry croaked. “They went out the back. She went out the front. You gotta find ’em.”
“I will, brother,” Jackson murmured, smoothing Henry’s lank blond hair back from his forehead. “But first you gotta get help.”
“All alone,” Henry mumbled. “Outside, all alone.”
“We’ll get them,” Jackson promised. “Did you see who it was?”
“Woman,” Henry mumbled. “Logo on the jacket. Good call. Sent them back.”
Jackson could see it, see Henry checking the door, straight from getting Jackson’s hurried texts about the danger Cowboy was in. He’d sent pictures of the Moms for Clean Living—the woman had obviously worn the logo on the jacket, but how? How? How did she know where Cowboy had been taken? Who had she followed? How had she known?
“You did good,” Jackson told him, scanning his body. Henry’s front had two spreading splotches of red, but most of the blood seemed to be coming from the back. Shit. Hollow points? But the holes in the wall were small, and they would have spread. Maybe .22s that had shattered on impact. Bad at close range, but not a .45 or 9mm. Hell, what did Jackson know? He survived gunshots, he didn’t treat them.
He’d grabbed Henry’s hand and was squeezing it, trying to still his racing mind, trying to think , when he heard a clatter on the stairs.
“Medics!” he cried out. “EMTs! In here!”
“Don’t let Lance yell,” Henry whispered, and the last time Jackson had knelt before a fallen friend, he hadn’t been able to talk because of a punctured lung. Henry was hurt, he was bleeding, but he could move his arms, his toes.
“Course he’ll yell,” Jackson told him. “He’ll yell at me. Can you fuckin’ hurry ?”
“Of course we can,” murmured a squat man with thinning hair and a usually genial smile, who was hunkering down next to Jackson. “But we’re gonna need you to move, okay? I mean, I know it’s usually you who’s bleeding, Rivers, but you do know this goes differently when you’re not the one hurt, right?”
“Yeah,” Jackson said.
“Find them,” Henry mumbled, obviously losing consciousness again. “Can’t let them get lost.”
“Where they heading?” Jackson asked urgently, pushing to a squat but keeping his grip on Henry’s square-palmed hand.
“Flophouse,” Henry mumbled. “My apartment. Don’t let them upstairs. Warp the kid for life.”
Jackson let out a startled “Ha!” before he was elbowed aside, and he stood disoriented, trying to decide what to do next.
At that moment Ellery came storming in and the friendly EMT who knew Jackson on a first-name basis, started talking. “Hello, Henry, I see you got shot here. Is there anything we should know about you?”
“Blood type B-pos,” he mumbled. “On PrEP protocol. Jackson can call my people.”
Jackson looked at Ellery, who said, “I’ll call his people. What do you need to do?”
Jackson scanned the billowing curtains and glanced again at Ellery, who swallowed and nodded.
“Go,” Ellery said. “Go. You got your phone, be safe as you can. Find them.”
In the silence after he spoke, they both heard an indignant “Mew!” and Jackson grimaced. Under the bed he could see two sets of paws, one gray, one black, barely peeking out from under the bed skirt, and he gave a startled little laugh.
“Shit,” he said, indicating the paws. “Uhm, Ellery—”
Ellery grunted. “I’ll get them,” he muttered. “I can see the carriers in the closet from here. We’ll find a place for them until Isabelle gets home.”
Jackson nodded, and feeling oddly fortified by knowing that Isabelle’s kittens would be safe, took two steps forward and kissed him hard on the mouth before turning to slide out the window and onto the fire escape.
It smelled like wet metal and piss, and Jackson put his feet on the outside rails of the ladder, holding himself steady as his running boots let him slide right down.
The rain had picked up velocity, and the temperature had dropped. Sacramento never did snow and rarely did ice, but Jackson felt a distinctly unfriendly cold as he squelched his way across the ragged grass/dirt patch that hugged the outside of the complex. The good news was, he could follow the smallish-sized prints—most likely Isabelle’s—of basic tennis shoes like Jackson’s, and the size tens of a growing boy.
Jackson could almost see the gangly lines of the kid as he ran a little to the side and behind Isabelle, hugging her hip like she was his last best hope.
Because she was.
Jackson pulled out his phone and called Ellery.
“Have you found them?” Ellery asked.
“No,” Jackson told him. “But look around the room. See if you can spot Isabelle’s cell phone. Let’s see if she’s got it. Call John and have him call her. Tell her I’m trying to find her. But….”
“But what?” Ellery asked.
“Do me a favor and find someplace not in the apartment. Ellery, how’d somebody find this kid? I am at my wit’s end. Somebody found this kid . Tracked him to Isabelle’s place. When did that happen? I’m thinking anything—bugs, previous surveillance, phone cloning, something . Find a landline, get hold of Crystal and AJ, and ask them what they can do to find out how this kid was tracked. And then go to John and Galen’s and tell them in person . I’m starting to think that being lost in the rain could be the best thing to happen to these two people, but that doesn’t mean I want to leave them out in the cold.”
“I hear you,” Ellery said. “What are you going to do?”
Jackson saw the place where Isabelle and Cowboy had found the sidewalk, marked by dissolving puddles of mud and dirt in roughly shoe-sized globs. He shone his phone light along the sidewalk, taking note of where the footsteps turned. Glancing around, he realized they’d gone in the mud for a good quarter of a mile, skirting yards, sticking to the alleyway where the trash was collected when they had to walk on concrete. What made them decide to hit the sidewalk now?
And then he heard the squeal of air brakes, the choking scent of diesel, and he saw the square giant’s head of a city bus. It squeaked to a halt in front of the small bench and overhang, but as the doors opened—and Jackson sprinted through the rain toward the bus—nobody was eagerly getting on.
But a lone figure hopped off , holding an umbrella and leaning against the open door as a sputtering flame revealed the driver, trying to light a cigarette in the rain.
Jackson got there in time to hold the umbrella and shelter the older Black man from the wind.
“Thanks,” the man breathed, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “If I’d missed my smoke break, I might have killed someone.”
Jackson laughed. “Hey,” he said, thinking hard, “you’re running a little early, right?”
The man had tightly napped gray hair, painstakingly smoothed back from his forehead with pomade. That and the cigarette under the umbrella struck Jackson as charmingly old-fashioned. This man probably shined his shoes and pressed his uniform, and Jackson respected that kind of ethic.
“Yup,” the driver said before another blissful drag. “Every night. I time myself two minutes after the bus heading down J. This one’s heading for the train station, you know.”
Jackson nodded. He’d seen the destination in the LED banner above the window.
“So there’s a bus heading down J,” he murmured. He’d ridden these buses a thousand years ago—and one awful, memorable night nearly a year and a half ago. He knew that bus headed down J Street and knew it had three or four stops to go.
God. He couldn’t call John or Galen; their destination and their phones had been bugged or tracked. Who did he know in this part of town—
Oh God.
Jackson swallowed, knowing what he had to do.
But first, “Thanks,” he said to the older man. “Stay warm and dry tonight, it’s nasty.”
And then he broke into a jog toward J Street, where the 5-F was about to head close to two blocks from Henry’s brother’s house, and where, hopefully, Jackson would be able to find somebody who could pluck their two fugitives from the rain.
“MY brOTHER’S what ?”
David Worrall—known as Dex from his adult film days—sounded really rattled on the phone, and Jackson didn’t blame him.
“He’s being taken to the hospital now,” Jackson told him, feeling cold and desperate and wretched. “I’m sorry, Dex, this isn’t how I wanted to tell you. But he put himself in harm’s way protecting Isabelle Roberts―”
“Mrs. Bobby’s Mom?” Dex blurted, and there was a note of… of wonder in his voice when he called her this childish name. Jackson, whose own mother had betrayed him with bad drugs and bad boyfriends pretty much from the day he was born, knew that sound—he heard it in his own voice when he spoke of good mothers, and he’d met Isabelle and knew her for one.
“John and Galen brought her a kid to take care of,” Jackson told him. “We’re pretty sure Henry put himself between the shooter and the kid and told her to get to the flophouse. I’ve been to the bus stop, Dex. The only bus that’ll get her there is—”
“The 5-F,” Dex said, and Jackson recognized the sound of somebody sprinting for shoes, keys, a jacket.
“Send Kane and the kid to a friend’s,” Jackson blurted. “Don’t tell me who. We have no idea how the shooter knew where to find the kid—phones are suspect.”
Dex made a low moan in his throat. “Can do,” he rasped. “Which way should I turn when I come out of my street?”
It was a good question—a great question. Two blocks ahead, Jackson could see the lights of the bus brighten as it came to a halt in front of a covered bench. If Dex turned right and was in front of the bus, he’d be looking in the wrong place. If he turned left and the bus had passed him… well, he’d at least find Jackson, and they could look together.
“Call me when you’re there,” Jackson huffed. “I’m about two blocks behind. I should be able to see where it is.”
“Gotcha. Kane !” Dex rasped before he hung up. “Baby, you need to listen and do what I say, okay? Grab Frances, throw on her jacket, and—” The phone went dead, and Jackson breathed a sigh of relief.
Dex had remembered not to use the phone.
Jackson sighted the bus, which had just started moving again. Checking both ways as he came to a darkened intersection, he jogged grimly on.
Dex called to ask which way to turn—left, Jackson told him, hoping—and after that he didn’t remember much. He lost sight of the bus, because it was supposed to be faster than he was, and was startled almost out of his shoes when a glaring set of headlights coming in the opposite direction swung around, cut into the street in front of him, and pulled a dirty U-turn until it came to a halt at the stop sign of yet another darkened street. This part of Sacramento was largely residential—not a lot of streetlights, just the impression of people sleeping peacefully behind the patter of rain in the leaves.
Which was why Jackson stared uncertainly at the black SUV until the window cranked down and the inside light went on. Jackson got a glimpse of Henry’s brother—truly one of the most masculinely beautiful men Jackson had ever seen, with blond hair, a rectangular face, a charming twist of a smile, and dimples—who was wearing a wet windbreaker and an expression of urgency on his face.
“I got ’em,” he said, indicating two passengers in the back seat with a jerk of his chin. “Get in!”
Jackson’s stomach muscles turned to jelly, and he realized how tight he’d been holding them. He hopped into the passenger seat, and as the door thunked shut and the heater hit him, he suddenly felt the cold March rain deep in his bones and started shivering.
He took a couple of deep breaths, and Henry’s brother—showing an empathy that had made him one of the founding models of John’s porn empire before he quit to become a family man and help run the place—idled at the empty intersection, checking for cars on the nearly deserted street until Jackson got his bearings.
“All right, Mr. Rivers,” he said grimly. “They’re safe, we’re here. Where do we go next?”
Jackson groaned and leaned his head back against the headrest.
And that, he thought, was the million-dollar question.
“Think. Think, think, think…,” he muttered to himself. Normally he would start making phone calls, but he’d already pushed his luck calling Dex. The problem was, he didn’t know how the shooter had found their way to Isabelle’s place. With a frown he thought maybe he could ask her.
“Hi, Isabelle,” he said, turning in his seat. To his side he said, “Dex, go down J Street and head toward the Carmichael/Fair Oaks area. I’ll give you directions as we get closer—”
“Is this K-Ski and Billy?” Dex asked, and Jackson gave a sigh of relief because he and Dex knew some of the same people.
“Yeah. We need people who can make Cowboy feel safe and who know who Isabelle knows.” Billy used to model for John and Dex’s company. He’d moved on to working in one of their subsidiary companies, but like most of the kids who worked at Johnnies, he remembered Isabelle Roberts fondly.
“I still see Billy,” Isabelle said softly from the back. “He brought me a bag of romance books for Christmas.”
Jackson turned in his seat again and really looked at the woman. She was shivering in Henry’s hooded sweatshirt and a pair of pajama bottoms that were muddy at the cuffs. She’d been wearing slippers with rubber soles when she’d fled out the fire escape, not sneakers as he’d thought, and they were coated in mud and plastered to her feet. He saw a faint glimmer of pink peeking out at the ends and thought fondly that the woman had probably gotten a pedicure recently, and the graying hair plastered to her head had been cut and streaked. Bobby told him once that his mom had grown old quick in their small town, but once Bobby was able to move her to Sacramento and give her a job she enjoyed, she’d gotten young and happy again.
Jackson hoped Isabelle Roberts could recover from the events of this night, because she deserved to be young and happy some more.
“Well, somebody raised him right,” Jackson said with a small smile. “And yeah. I think Detective Kryzynski and Billy might be the two perfect people to look after you.” His smile slipped a little. “Isabelle, can you and your friend tell me what happened? I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Isabelle nodded and, Jackson noted, tightened her grip on the hand of the young man sitting, silent and big-eyed, next to her. “But first,” she said, “my kittens—Lizzie and Janette? Did you—”
“Ellery got them,” Jackson said, hoping that was true. “I’m sure we’ll find somebody to look after them.”
“Oh thank you,” she said, all gratitude, and then, soberly, she added, “So about tonight.” She gave the boy a reassuring smile. “John and Galen had already gotten young Cowboy something to eat, but he agreed to come to my apartment to clean up a little, get some clean clothes, and maybe eat a little more.”