Pond Skipping 1
“YOU WOOK chippew,” Cody said through a mouthful of homemade blueberry muffins.
After they’d gotten out of the shower, Ellery had gone on a cooking bender, making sure there was frittata for everybody, and because frittata didn’t travel well—or age well, and his mother was apparently still very much asleep—he broke out the blueberry muffin mix and whipped up two dozen while Jackson scanned his morning email.
Jackson had to admit the smell and taste of a freshly buttered blueberry muffin really did sustain a man, both in body and soul.
The sex helped—and so did the coffee.
And so did the sleep.
That last one was something he didn’t want to think about. The open wound in his chest may have been purged and dressed, but it was still raw and red, and Jackson knew from experience that some wounds had to be healed again and again and again before the scar tissue formed.
“I managed some rest last night,” Jackson admitted, piloting Jennifer toward his old duplex on Elvas. “After forty hours of not sleeping, it’s like I opened a whole new dimensional plane.”
“Ouch,” Cody said. “But then, you know. Job well done.”
Cody sounded damned proud of himself, and Jackson cast him a sideways glance. The former undercover cop appeared happy and eager to roll, and a little like an Australian shepherd, face turned toward the sun and the wind, looking forward to going out and harassing the sheep until they fell in line.
“Yeah,” Jackson said, trying to remember what they had accomplished last night and not what he feared had happened long before they’d been brought in on this in the most awful of ways. “Can’t let my demons get in the way,” he said.
Cody grunted. “I got me some of those,” he admitted. “Living on the streets—the things I did for a fix. God, all of it.” He shook his head. “I wake up screaming more times than I want to admit.”
Jackson’s breath caught just hearing that.
“Same,” he admitted, and something about admitting it to somebody else who had been there… it mattered. “Sometimes the shit we cannot control, the things we should have done but couldn’t—it’s crushing .”
Cody may have been a happy puppy, but he also had a shepherd’s sensitive hearing.
“What’s got your panties in a twist, boss?” he asked.
Jackson blew out a breath. “Well, my past stuff is a massive tangle you do not want to—”
“Sure I do,” Cody said, not even batting an eyelash. “I mean, we’re partners on this gig, right?”
“Yeah,” Jackson said, bemused. It had taken him and Henry months before he’d realized they were partners, and how awesome it was to have somebody who had your back but who didn’t have all of those… tangling emotions that a lover did.
“Aw, c’mon, Rivers. I haven’t had a partner in crimefighting for years —tell me we’re partners!” And then, to reaffirm every instinct Jackson had about him being an Australian shepherd, Cody held his hands in front of him like paws and panted. “Please, please, please, please, please …. ”
Jackson had to laugh. “Okay!” he confessed. “Okay, okay. You and me are partners.”
Cody sighed. “Until Henry’s okay, it’ll do.”
Jackson’s heart gave a twist. The wistfulness in his tone had been unmistakable. “Listen,” he said, matter-of-factly, “like I told you, someday we’ll have a third law partner in our office and we can afford to throw you more work—”
“Really?” Cody asked, so excited Jackson almost felt bad for saying it.
“Well, yeah ,” Jackson said with a laugh. “Right now it’s Ellery and Galen. They each carry about thirty cases at any given time. Some of them are easy come, easy go, and some of them are, you know—”
“Like this one,” Cody said. “All hands on deck.”
“Yeah,” Jackson confirmed. “In most firms the PI to lawyer ratio isn’t quite this high but―”
“But you guys are more interested in the truth than the payout,” Cody filled in, and Jackson had to give it to the guy. He got it.
“Yes. We were going to make AJ another PI, but he’s really more comfortable as our tech guy, and we borrow Crystal sometimes—”
“Why borrow?” Cody asked.
“She works for our old firm.” Jackson lowered his voice and glanced around, which was stupid because they were in the car, but he still felt like it should be hush-hush. “They have resources we don’t always,” he said. “Access to some of the crime databases, easy entry to do financial runs. AJ can get that stuff done—hell, I can get that stuff done—but if we want it quick and deep and dirty….”
“Gotcha,” Cody said, nodding. “She’s your gal.”
“Yeah,” Jackson said. “But we can’t afford her, really, although she keeps promising that we’ll have the perfect employment opportunity for her. We just don’t know it yet.”
“And she would know that how?” Cody asked, sounding doubtful.
Well, he was passing out a lot of secrets, wasn’t he? “She’s the second most powerful psychic I’ve ever met,” Jackson told him.
Cody sucked in a breath, and Jackson wondered if this was when they lost this guy, right when Jackson was starting to hope they could find a place for him.
“Who’s the first?” he asked.
Jackson let out a chuckle. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. His existence is so secret, the government thinks he’s dead.”
“Good,” Cody said, absolutely sincere. “The government can fuck up things like a good psychic.”
“They nearly did,” Jackson told him seriously. “Which is why we don’t tell anybody who he is or where he lives. Anyway, Crystal’s pretty awesome, and she loves to help, and someday, we’ll be able to pay her as much as she deserves.”
Cody laughed softly. “And I’m in the queue. I get it.”
“Hey,” Jackson said seriously, “I’m pretty sure you’re getting paid for this little job. I mean, not enough , but I know I saw Jade make you fill out a W2 yesterday.”
Cody chuckled. “You got me.” Then he sobered. “And as much as I’d love to ask more questions, now that we’re in this shitty neighborhood―”
“Hey!” Jackson protested, “I own that duplex!”
“Oh, seriously?” Cody managed to sound apologetic like an eighteen-year-old boy who’d just shoved his foot in his mouth. “Okay. Uhm, why?”
Jackson eyed the duplex critically. It had gotten a new coat of paint and some landscaping on the postage-stamp lawns the year before, and Mike kept the gutters clear, the lone fruit tree watered and growing, and the driveway was kept oil-stain free.
“Well,” he said, “after I got shot in the name of truth and justice, I went and got my degree and bought this place. I rented out one side of it to the guy who’s now sleeping with Jade, who’s like my sister, and I love them both, so that’s fine.”
“And the other side?” Cody asked curiously.
Jackson wrinkled his nose. “So you know, I’m sort of a kept man. Ellery won’t let me help with the mortgage, he won’t let me make a car payment, and he keeps paying me a salary. It’s embarrassing.” He pulled into the driveway of the side that he used to live in. “He was literally moving all my shit into his house without asking, and when I complained, he told me to do something good with this side. So I made it sort of a stopping place for young guys getting out of jail and trying to get straight. Jade and Mike and me and Henry work as mentors. We talk to the POs. We look for kids who just need a frickin’ break. We get them jobs and try to find junker cars and stuff and help them move on to a place of their own. It only holds, like, five people, and we were waiting on some recommendations to fill all the beds, so I think some of the boys we rescued are going to end up here. One of the child advocates took the couch last night to make sure everything is kosher between the first two residents—who are barely eighteen, by the way—and the kids who got placed.”
Cody was staring at him. “Wow.”
“Shut up,” Jackson muttered.
“No, seriously. Fucking wow .”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Jackson said, turning the minivan off and unhooking his seat belt.
“I’ve been picking my nose for six months, and there was all this glorious public service here waiting for my help?” Cody demanded. “How could you?”
“You were getting your shit together!” Jackson protested.
“ My shit is boring ,” Cody told him, absolutely sober as a judge. “Somebody else’s shit? My God. That’s so much easier to sort.”
Jackson had to laugh. “That, my friend, is the honest-to-God truth. Okay, fine. Come in, meet the guys. We’ll see what we can do. Henry’s usually pretty timed out as it is, and these guys will miss him, so it’s probably a perfectly wonderful idea.”
“Damn straight,” Cody said, and they both slid out of the car.
JADE HAD left for the office, and Aileen, the patient advocate, was supervising instead.
Jackson had a moment to glance around his old home, appreciating the changes. He’d had pictures of his family—Jade, Kaden, Kaden’s wife, Rhonda, and their children—on his walls. He even had, treasured and on the dresser of his bedroom, a photo of the four of them and Jade and Kaden’s mother, Toni, at Jackson’s graduation from the academy only a few weeks before her passing.
Thanks to Ellery, the photo had been copied, and the copy formatted on a plaque in the living room, with a dedication to Toni Cameron’s Home for Hope, along with pictures of the new residents as they’d graduated from work programs or working jobs they were proud of. There were new apartments and first days of junior college. Jackson hoped for college graduations someday in the future, but hey, the place had only been open for a year and a half.
And yet it was still doing good.
The furniture had been bought used, but it was sturdy—sturdy leather couches in the living room, afghans culled from thrift stores piled on top, and a solid wooden table with chairs and new pads on the seats in the dining room.
As Aileen let them in, Jackson smelled coffee and pancakes, and he had a moment to grin at Aileen, who was no less frowzy and sleep deprived now than she had been in the hospital the night before.
It had apparently been a long night.
“You made them breakfast?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. Your young men made breakfast. They’ve been….” She looked over her shoulder at Geordie, who was slight and Black and moved like a dancer—or a pickpocket, which is why he’d been in jail—and Nilas, who was also not tall, but thick and muscular, with pale skin and black curly hair. Nilas had been a fighter—probably still had it in him—but he’d been put away for assault. Jackson always suspected the other guy had it coming, because he hadn’t seen even a flash of temper in the gentle Nilas.
He was standing over the stove now, wearing a gingham apron over his white T-shirt and jeans, flipping pancakes.
“I said I didn’t need any!” Geordie protested, elbow deep in a dish tub.
“And I said you’re too skinny,” Nilas retorted. “Look, I finally got good at making the faces, and we’ve got extra sausage. Let me show off here.”
“Trying to make me fat,” Geordie tsk ed, and then glanced at the table. A fourteen-or-so-year-old adolescent whom Jackson had never seen sat there, his newly shaved hair a pale yellow and his bright blue eyes darting from one young man to the other, a hesitant smile on his face.
“Otto?” Geordie asked. “You want some more?”
“It’ll make me sick,” he confessed, staring down at his plate in embarrassment. “Ask Danny and Enrique.”
Jackson recognized Danny as the slight, bitter young man who had gone from a bad home to the Moms for Clean Living, and Enrique as the other boy who’d been strapped to the seat with him. They sat close now, although it was clear they’d both been bathed and had made use of the clothing stores, and while they were less emaciated than Otto, they were clearly appreciative of the food.
“I’m fine,” Danny said, although judging by the surreptitious looks he kept sending Nilas at the stove, he probably hadn’t eaten in peace in a long time.
“I’m starving,” Enrique said bluntly. “I mean, yeah, I just ate twice what we usually got fed at that fucking place, but I could eat way more.”
Nilas laughed. “So two more portions. Excellent. Aileen, you good?”
“I’m eating some of the fruit in the fridge,” the woman said. “But you are really nice to ask.” She glanced at Jackson and Cody. “I have to admit, I was expecting to get here and go all den mother on this place, but Nilas and Geordie have been trained up.”
“Miss Jade wouldn’t let us get away with that,” Geordie said, and Jackson had to smile at “Miss Jade.” Her mother had been “Miss Toni” to Jackson, because you showed respect to someone when they made sure you were cared for, and he was glad to see the tradition passed on.
“This is a good place,” Aileen said, smiling at the boys. “If I can get some funding for a supervisor for these kids, I think, and if Nilas and Geordie don’t mind, we’ll keep taking your beds for a little while, Jackson. I know you usually have adults here, but….” She grimaced. “This is an unusual situation.”
“She means we’re all queerbies,” Danny said. “Gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay.” He chuckled, like it was a sort of victory to just say that.
“That all you got?” Enrique asked. “Your dad did not have nearly the imagination of my mom. Fudgepacker, cocksucker—”
Jackson cleared his throat meaningfully. “Please don’t,” he said when the boys glared at him, defiance plastered all over their faces. “Your language is your own, and I get it. You want to make your identity your own, and you take charge of those words that hurt you. But right now you’re using them to hurt us , the adults who are trying to protect you. It’s not kind.”
Enrique’s face was made of points, whereas Danny’s features were rounder and softer, but their expressions were mirrored as they glanced at each other and swallowed.
“Sorry,” Enrique said. “Just….” He shuddered. “Those women. We couldn’t even say fucking gay there, but we all knew that’s why we were stuck in those awful rooms with those awful pictures, learning Bible verses on our knees.”
“That’s no way to learn Bible verses,” Geordie said, coming to the table and drying his hands off on his apron. “I mean, my mom had her flaws, but we were always taught to sing them. I know whole tracts of the book.”
Enrique shook his head. “Man, I’ve been force-fed about as much of that book as I can stomach.”
“Don’t eat books,” Nilas said, coming to the table with a griddle in one hand and a spatula in the other. “Eat pancakes!” Carefully—and artistically—he spatula’d three minicakes and a banana-shaped cake onto each of the boy’s plates, and then, using bowls on the table, added a ladle of strawberries across the “mouth,” along with whipped cream eyeballs, nostrils, and teeth.
While the boys were cracking up over the “food faces,” Geordie had gone to the stove and come back with a plate of sausages and made sure each boy got two more. He turned to Otto and held out two more in tongs. “You sure you don’t want more, big O?”
“Later,” Otto whispered with a smile. “You fed me lots last night.”
“It’s been lonely,” Nilas admitted, taking the griddle back to the stove and pouring more batter on it. “I know you’ve been trying to vet more guys for the place, Jackson, but seriously, hanging out with these little dudes is way more fun.”
“You’re right,” Enrique said, meeting Jackson’s eyes. “You all have been kind. You forget, you know? People aren’t always shitheads.” He frowned. “Can I say that?”
“Yes,” Jackson told him. “The other stuff was being mean to yourself. It’s fine to say shitheads when they’ve been shitheads.” He grimaced. “But because they are shitheads, I need to get some more information from you. Not that I don’t want to see how you’re all doing,” he added hastily.
“He checks in on us all the time,” Nilas said. “Just so you know.”
“Thanks,” Jackson said, smiling at the kid. It was nice to have backup. Then he turned his attention to the young people around the table and pulled up a seat. “So here’s the thing. We’re trying to bring down the shitheads. We need your help.”
“Bring them down?” muttered Danny, who seemed to be the kid who could hold on to a grudge with two fists. “What the hell do you mean bring them down? You found us in there. Isn’t having us all there not bad enough?”
“We need proof,” Aileen said. “Specific incidents, examples of behavior modification and child abuse.” She sat down next to Jackson. “And we need it corroborated by the other kids from the place.”
Jackson grunted. “That’s what Miss Aileen needs. And that’s going to bring down the whole house of cards that held you guys—make no mistake. But I’m trying to bring down the money men. The guys that funded that nightmare. The guys that put them up to it—”
“Nobody had to put Retty up to nothin’ ,” Danny muttered, eyes narrowed. “That bitch was on us every day. Liked to administer punishments, loved to take away rations. And when anybody made a break for it, she would fucking run you down. She wouldn’t even always take you in, you know?” He gave a chin jerk to Otto. “Sometimes she’d just stalk kids, let them know she knew where you were. Then when she needed something, she’d throw them scraps of food and have them go do shit. Pick some guy’s pocket. Put out for somebody. Whatever it was that you got poor Otto here on.”
Jackson caught Otto’s eye and winked. He was going to make this kid a legend.
“Molotov cocktail through a lawyer’s window,” he said boldly, just to watch Danny and Enrique’s impressed expressions. “Fortunately, I know the guy, and he’s not pressing charges.”
“Knows the guy.” Geordie chuckled. “Look at him, getting all modest. Knows the guy.”
“What do you mean?” Danny asked, suddenly suspicious.
“They’re engaged ,” Geordie told him patiently, popping the last of the sausages in his mouth. “They’re, like, made of good works, these people. Knows a guy.”
“Anyway,” Jackson said, rolling his eyes, “I need more dirt. Who gave Retty her orders?”
“Engaged?” said Danny, obviously stuck on this point. “Like, to a guy?”
Jackson grimaced. “Thanks, Geordie, for totally derailing this conversation.”
“It’s important,” Danny said, his voice rising, and suddenly Jackson had nowhere to focus but on this kid.
“It is to me,” Jackson said softly. “It is to Ellery—the, uhm, guy.”
“It’s important,” Danny said again, like he was struggling for purchase, emotions windmilling.
“Okay,” Jackson said, exchanging glances with Aileen. “You’re right. It’s important. I know why it’s important to me , Danny. Why is it important to you?”
“Because we spent weeks in that place. Where they didn’t give us food unless we said their stupid prayers. Where they threatened to cut off our dicks if we liked who we liked. Where we weren’t allowed to talk to each other because they listened , but they could walk into our rooms any damned time they wanted, just to check to see if we had boners or not. And you—you’re going to marry a guy, and you’re not ashamed of it, and you’re kickass and not stupid. You’re who we all want to be, and you gotta front , man, like, wear that shit! We gotta see you’re fronting, and you’re wearing that shit, and it’s not evil, and it’s not something that should get your dick put in a clothespin, and it’s not the fuckin’ devil. I don’t give a shit if your guy’s a fuckin’ troll , man—you fuckin’ front .”