Fish Out of Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

time Kaden had gone through it, before Ellery had even arrived on the scene.
    The detail about the dirty cops had thrown him and thrown him hard, and Ellery was suddenly burning to know more.
    But not before he cleared one or two things up.
    “Wait a minute,” he said, studying the crime-scene photo. “Wait—didn’t you say your video was disabled?”
    “Yeah,” Kaden grunted. “And it shouldn’t have been. Denny and I, we work hard to keep that thing in repair.”
    Ellery looked at the picture again. “I knew it—this is too clear to be a video picture. It looks like a camera phone. But… but Officer Bridger—the older officer, the one with the gun—he was calling it in, right? The one who snuck up on you and—”
    “He snuck up on me because I was drugged !” Kaden snarled.
    “I know that!” Ellery snapped. “I’m just saying. I don’t have any actual crime-scene photos. It should be too early for them at all. But now—I’vejust got this one trying to pass itself off as something official. If Bridger was in such an all-fired hurry to get the ambulance for his buddy and get backup for you, who took the damned picture?”
    Kaden stopped short and looked automatically at Jackson. Jackson took one last hard breath—and stepped forward. Ellery wasn’t sure what the man’s demons were, but he could be very sure of one thing.
    Jackson wasn’t stupid either.
    “Let me see that photo,” he demanded.
    Ellery handed it over without conscious thought. He should dig in his heels a little, just so Jackson knew whom he could and could not fuck with, but damn, that guy had a way about him. Ellery was pretty sure his mother would cave to whatever Jackson Rivers asked for, and that woman didn’t cave to anything .
    He heard Jackson’s swallow across the room, and Ellery’s curiosity about what could shake him up this badly began to burn a hole in his belly. Ex–law enforcement showed its mark all over him, but he obviously didn’t like cops, and what Kaden had described was…
    Horrific. Something horrific had happened to him. Something so bad his friend had protected him from an ugly—and apparently accepted—fact of his everyday life.
    “You were lucky, K.” Jackson’s gruff voice shocked the silence that had fallen. “I don’t know why he didn’t kill you.”
    Kaden agreed. “It’s a fuckin’ miracle right there.”
    Suddenly Jackson looked over his shoulder. “Hey, do you have a gun in the store?”
    Kaden nodded, looking puzzled. “We do, but we keep it in the safe because we hate it. And it’s a .22, because who needs a fucking cannon. What the hell kind of gun is that?”
    “SIG Sauer P229,” Jackson said absently. “It’s not standard police issue, but it’s one of the most popular handguns in the world, and I’ll bet it’s got a filed-down serial number—or a suspicious history.” He glanced from the picture he was studying to Ellery. “We need an independent ballistics match—can you request that?”
    Ellery nodded and grabbed his pen to add it to the list of things he’d written there as Kaden spoke.
    “Wait.” Jackson jerked Ellery over with his chin. “Look here—the edge of the photo. What do you see?”
    Ellery left the table and peered over his shoulder. Jackson was actually shorter than he was, not that he carried himself that way. And he smelled… well, like sex. Like sex and faintly of tobacco and a little like sweat. A man who had been called out of bed early, perhaps? Whose bed was anybody’s guess—his reputation, from what Ellery could see, was well-founded.
    An impatient rustle in front of him brought Ellery’s attention back to the photo, and he saw the border Jackson was outlining with a blunt finger. “I don’t know. It’s sort of red and blurry—”
    “K, get over here. What does this remind you of?”
    “My head hurts , Jacky—can you maybe come over here for the man with a concussion?”
    Jackson gave an apologetic grunt. “Yeah. Sorry