JASON LETBurton 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 wasstillfrothing 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.
“We have been lucky,” he said baldly. “I am willing to give up some of that luck to do what Ace and I did. Everybody in our home feels the same. This ugliness—it has touched all of us in one way or another. Even George and Amal, who have had to treat the children we are trying to protect. Do not be mad that they have brought the fight to us. Be glad, because it will be easier to cast their bones in the desert until the wind no longer screams their names.”
As he spoke, the giant man’s face became fiercer and more determined, and Burton saw an expression that matched what he felt in his heart.
Of course, a part of him whispered. Of course. They weren’t in this cul-de-sac because they were allgay. If that was their speed, they could have easily gone to live in Palm Springs. Theywere here because they werewarriors, and that was the thing that drove them all, even George and Amal and Ernie.
Every one of them would give his life—or their homes—to make the world safer for the people who couldn’t fight for themselves. It’s what Burton and Jason had dedicated their lives, their careers, to do.
And it was why he’d always admired the hell out of Ace, who had done it on a small scale, one crisis at a time, helping the people he knew because that was the only power he knew he had.
But that didn’t mean that later, after he and Ernie had taken their leave and Jason had come to claim Cotton for one more unexpected night together, he hadn’t almost lost his shit with Ace’s text.
“Oh my God,” he muttered, staring at his phone.
“It’s very Ace,” Ernie said.
“He’s letting somestrangersleep on his futon?Tonight?”
“Well he’s right,” Ernie replied reasonably. “He can’t turn the guy into the desert—that’s what we do for the people wekill, not this poor schmuck we were trying to keep alive.”
“Why is it incumbent upon us to save every random desert dweller anyway?” Burton complained. “Eric, Brady… this guy. Suddenly we’re just plucking people up and saying, ‘Hey, here we are! Come turn us in to the authorities!’”
Ernie glared at him. “Has it occurred to you that these people aregodsends? That it’s like the karma gods are going, ‘Oh, hey, this one is gonna be big, and it’s gonna right a lot of wrongs, and Burton, Ace, and Jai can’t do it all alone. They are gonna need somehelp!’”
Burton glared at him. “No,” he said flatly. “Because life doesn’t work like that.”
“You mean the perfect mate for a giant Russian mobsterdidn’tstart their relationship by crashing out of his campground to puke on Jai’s feet?”
Burton had toreallywork not to laugh at that, because it cracked him up every time. Poor George. He couldseethat happening to George—norovirus was an awful, sometimes unpredictable thing, and George had been camping in the Tehachapi mountains to get over a breakup. But to see it happening to Jai? And according to George, Jai had just picked him up under his arm and taken him to his tent, stripped him down, washed him off, and let him sweat out the last of the illness in his tent. “He could have killed me and left me to rot, but no, he took care of me and made me smile. He was stuck with me.”
“Dire chance,” Burton muttered. “Fateful cockup,” he finished, quoting one of their favorite movies.
“Karma at work!” Ernie argued.
Burton stared at his phone, where Ace was making an argument that looked nothing like the one he and Ernie were having. Ace’s was more like,This little old mobster ain’t no big deal—Sonny’s getting him some old sweats, and we’ll be fine.We need him for tomorrow anyway, because our original plan had some shortcomings—here, wanna see how?
Ernie was arguing about karma and chance and fateful cockups, just like Jai had made an argument for warriors gotta do what warriors gotta do, and Burton was at that point where he just wanted to go out in the desert and kill some motherfuckers, because this bullshit was making his head hurt.
So he concentrated on texting some sense into Ace for a few minutes (and when in the history of ever hadtextingactually talked somebody into doing something good for them? Texting was generally reserved forHold my beer! and should never be used for anything more complicated than that.) Which is what he was doing when he saw, in text, in indelible pixels, the phraseIt’ll be finefrom Ace’s feed.
Goddammit Ernie! He’d hit Send before he realized he’d meant to holler it out loud. “Goddammit, Ernie!”
“I am right here, Crullers,” Ernie said from the living room. “And I got the gist of it in text.”
“What did you say to Ace?” It took him a few quick steps to go from the kitchen table to the couch, where Ernie was sitting.
In his underwear.
