“Elijah!”
No response. Apparently the area wasn’t just bouncy, it also had an invisible soundproof barrier.
Jericho was this kid’s hero? Yeah, right. He glanced back toward the car, saw Nikki peeking over the dashboard, and shrugged obviously enough for her to see. He was out of ideas. He could climb up and grab the kid, but the wreckagewasunstable, and places that might handle the kid’s weight wouldn’t necessarily carry Jericho’s. Pretty ironic if his attempts to save the kid ended up getting them both hurt.
“Elijah!” Nikki’s voice was loud. Not fearful, just angry. “Get off there right now. You need to get back to school! I’ve had enough of this!”
But the soundproofing evidently worked against Nikki’s voice too. Elijah didn’t even turn his head.
“Get him down!” Nikki ordered Jericho.
“Great idea. Got any suggestions onhowto get him down?”
“Just climb up there and grab him,” she said scornfully. “What, have you been reading child-raising books? You think you need toreasonwith him and give him the opportunity to correct his own behavior? Ignore that bullshit and get my kid off that garbage and back to school!”
It would be so easy to sever this relationship. Nikki was . . . difficult. That was the most charitable way to describe her. He’d helped her enough, surely. She might be his father’s widow, but she’d never been his mother. The kids were animals, wild and ungrateful and usually surly. His life would be a hell of a lot easier without any of them in it.
Then Elijah turned his head, just a half inch, enough to get a quick glimpse of what Jericho was going to do. And there was something in the movement, some mix of tentative bravado and desperate desire to be noticed, that pulled at Jericho. Something he recognized all too well. He couldn’t walk away from the kids, because they were in the same place he’d been in after his mother had died, and he’d needed someone to help him out and care about him then, although he hadn’t been able to admit it.
“I’m worried about you, Elijah,” he said. The boy slowed his bouncing, at least a little. “I really want you to be safe. I want you to have fun, but I’d hate it if you got hurt.”
“Just grab him,” Nikki said tiredly. “I swear, I’d thought a Marine would be a bit more interested in discipline.” She raised her voice. “You’ve got about three seconds to get your ass down here, boy. If I have to climb up and get you, there’s gonna be a whupping coming your way.”
Elijah turned away and bounced a bit harder. Apparently if he was going to get whupped, he’d make the crime worthwhile.
That was when a new voice entered the exchange. “Hey.” It was male, authoritative without being pompous, and even with one word, enough for Jericho’s body to recognize it and respond. “Hey, Elijah.”
Elijah swiveled his head to see the new arrival, and Jericho let himself do the same. Wade didn’t bother to look toward the adults, just stared at the boy. “That’smypile of wreckage you’re messing up,” he said firmly. “Get the hell off. Now.”
There was a part of Jericho that wanted Elijah to respond to this new order the same way he’d responded to the earlier ones. A part of him that wanted at least one person in the world to be immune to Wade’s effortless charisma. But Elijah immediately started picking a path down off the rubble, like a tiny robot programmed to respond to only his master’s voice.
“Don’t suppose you’re looking for babysitting work?” Jericho asked, and Wade smiled. Damn it, that smile shouldn’t have made Jericho’s core warm. He wasn’t a kid anymore, and he needed to get himself under control.
By the time Elijah was off the wreckage, Jericho had his game face back on. “Why did you leave school?” he asked as the boy approached.
Elijah shrugged, then nodded his chin toward Jericho’s duty belt. “Can I shoot your gun?”
“No,” Jericho said with a scowl.
Elijah turned to Wade. “Can I shoot yours?”
“I don’t have a gun with me,” Wade said. “Sorry. Now, you were on your way back to school, as I understand it?”
“I don’t think so,” Elijah said breezily. He wasn’t being rebellious, just correcting Wade’s misapprehension.
“Oh, you are,” Nikki said. “And you willstay there!”
“Can I get a ride back in the police car? Can I run the sirens?”
“No,” Jericho said. But it presented an interesting problem. The school was on the far side of town; Mosely wasn’t big enough for that to be an unwalkable distance, at least for a healthy adult, but Elijah was young and Nikki had only recently stopped using a cane after being shot in the thigh. Giving Elijah a ride in the squad car would be a reward, but expecting him to walk back, escorted by his mother, would be a hardship.
“I can drop him off,” Wade said easily. “You too, Nikki, if you’d like a ride somewhere.”
“That’d be great—” Nikki started, and then she frowned as two dark sedans bounced over the rough curb into the parking lot. “What the hell? I thought the feds were gone.”
Wade raised an eyebrow. “They’re like fleas. You might get rid of them for a while, but they never stay away forever.”
Jericho could have argued that federal officers were a hell of a lot more persistent and annoying than any fleas he’d ever encountered, but he kept his mouth shut. He saw Special Agent Hockley step out of the driver’s seat of the lead car and braced himself for the sneering.
