Jackson Rivers has always
bucked the rules—and bucking the rules of recovery is no exception. Now that he
and Ellery are starting their own law firm, there’s no reason he can’t rush
into trouble and take the same risks as always, right?
Maybe not. Their first
case is a doozy, involving porn stars, drug empires, and daddy issues, and
their client, Henry Worrall, wants to be an active participant in his own
defense. As Henry and Jackson fight the bad guys and each other to find out who
dumped the porn star in the trash can, Jackson must reexamine his assumptions
that four months of rest and a few good conversations have made him all better
inside.
Jackson keeps crashing his
bicycle of self-care and a successful relationship, and Ellery wonders what’s
going to give out first—Jackson’s health or Ellery’s patience. Jackson’s body
hasn’t forgiven him for past crimes. Can Ellery forgive him for his current
sins? And can they keep Henry from going to jail for sleeping with the wrong
guy at the wrong time?
Being a fish out of water
is tough—but if you give a fish a bicycle, how’s he going to swim?
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Cat gives this one 5
Meows with a 2 Purr heat index...
Ellery and Jackson are
back with yet another caper. Ellery is opening his law firm and has a case
before he gets the doors open. The case is a man accused of killing and dumping
an ex pornstar and drug dealer in the dumpster. The case brings us the Johnnies
(now I need to go read that series because sexy men and sounds so good the ones
I met here) Jackson’s favorite porn stars. But is Jackson well enough to investigate
this case after all the stuff from the past few months?
This is book 5 of the
series and I do recommend reading it in order. However, Amy Lane does a great
job of giving enough of the past books to help you stay caught up and pulling
in the new characters and making you want to read that series as well. I love how she titles each chapter mostly with
a sentence about fish or sharks!
I really hope we get more
Jackson and Ellery soon!
If you like established
couples, flawed men, lawyers, PI’s, pornstars and an allover great romantic
suspense with a touch of mystery this is for you. Need I say more?
Excerpt…
Prologue
Donuts in the Morning
THE ALARM went off and
Jackson Rivers groaned. “Really? You made the appointment for eight in the
morning? Really?”
Ellery Cramer grunted.
“Yes, really,” he said. “I’ll shower first if you want, but we’re going.”
“Augh!” Jackson pulled
himself out of bed, and Ellery watched as he fumbled for the phone. “I’ll
shower first, Counselor. This is my damned doctor’s appointment. There’s no
reason for you to have to get up too.”
Of course there was,
Ellery thought grumpily. Because if Ellery, personally, didn’t ride Jackson’s
case about this doctor’s appointment, Jackson quite simply wouldn’t go.
They’d just gotten back
two days ago from a case that had almost cost them their lives and had resulted
in a lengthy hospital stay down in Southern California. Ellery’s body felt
battered and bruised, just from the drive back to Sacramento, but he and
Jackson had wanted to be home in Ellery’s gracious American River Drive ranch
style so badly, they’d left as soon as possible, even though they’d had to
split the trip into two four-hour stretches.
It was just so good to be
home.
Ellery stood up and
stripped out of his pajamas, wondering how cold it was outside. It had been
mid-January when he and Jackson had gone south to investigate a rogue military
megalomaniac who had been training assassins and turning them into serial
killers. Karl Lacey had left one too many bodies in his wake. And after
cleaning up a mess so gruesome that even one of his pets couldn’t stomach it,
Jackson and Ellery had felt honor bound to stop him.
But the physical toll—on
both of them now, but mostly on Jackson—had been brutal and long-lasting.
As Ellery made his way to
the bathroom, he tried to count how many weeks Jackson had spent in the
hospital. He didn’t bother to count the year Jackson had spent nearly a decade
ago when a sniper had tried to take him out for wearing a wire to catch a dirty
cop—that was old news. No, Ellery counted the times Jackson had been under care
since they’d first gotten together in August.
Well, it had been three
weeks from the drive-by on that case, the one that had rendered his shoulder
mostly useless for the better part of a year.
Then there had been ten
days from a raging infection in November, when they’d taken down the
Dirty/Pretty killer and had been alerted to Karl Lacey’s presence in the first
place. The infection had been bad—but the worst part was that Jackson had
fallen into a swimming pool with a raging fever and his heart had seized. He’d
been told he’d have a heart murmur for probably the rest of his life after
that, and that eventually he’d need surgery to clean out the scar tissue left
from the attack.
Jackson was still a thin,
pale version of himself. Between the heart attack and the infection and seeing
his mother dead in the morgue—God rot her junkie’s soul—he’d been left with a
violent phobia of hospitals that, as far as Ellery was concerned, had occurred
a day late and a dollar short.
And even that phobia
hadn’t kept him out of trouble. Before they’d left for So-Cal, he’d had a
planter fall on his head and, hey, hello, a concussion.
And then there was So-Cal.
Ellery paused at the
bathroom door, leaning his head against the frame. His fault. This last one had
been his fault. They’d been chasing down Karl Lacey and his partner in
crime—some asshole named Hamblin—and in the chaos of a battlefield, and Jackson
had given him a gun.
God, Ellery had been so
proud. He’d only just learned to use one, and he’d listened to Lacey taunting
the two of them, talking about “breakage” and “collateral damage” to dismiss
the swath of carnage his serial killers had been leaving in their wake. And
Ellery—Ellery Cramer, the defense attorney with the nice house in the spendy
suburb and the educated liberal parents, who was known for being smart and
sharp and never losing his cool—had fired on the guy blindly, through a tin
wall.
And Lacey had fired back
and almost taken him out.
Jackson had been wounded
in the hospital when one more goddamned assassin had tried to finish the job.
Adjoining beds. They’d
shared adjoining beds for two weeks.
Ellery sighed and
stripped, then threw his stuff in the hamper before getting creakily into the
shower with Jackson.
“This is nice,” Jackson
murmured, wrapping his arms around Ellery’s shoulders. They were both thinner
than they had been—but Jackson’s heart needed more weight at this point. That
had been one of his promises upon leaving the hospital. The hospital itself
left him too freaked-out to eat, to heal. He’d promised to eat regularly, to
keep himself healthy, if they’d let him go. And they had.
“I felt like you needed
me,” Ellery said weakly. He was tired. He really just wanted to sleep today.
But God, even though Jackson liked Dr. Keller, the cardiologist he’d been seeing
since November, Ellery just didn’t trust him to go to the appointment. Not
right now. Not when even saying the words outpatient clinic made
Jackson’s hands tremble.
“I do,” Jackson soothed,
rocking them both back and forth. “I do need you.”
“You think maybe we can go
out to lunch after this?” Ellery asked. “Maybe call up your sister? See if her
boyfriend’s working?”
“Mike’s coming by with lunch,”
Jackson laughed. “Probably about an hour after we get back.” Jade wasn’t,
strictly speaking, Jackson’s sister. They had, in fact, dated during much of
their early twenties. Or as Jackson put it, “booty called.” But Jade and her
twin, Kaden, had been Jackson’s only family after Jackson’s mother pretty much
bailed on the job in grade school, and the three of them were tighter than most
blood siblings Ellery had known. Jade’s boyfriend, a redneck with the habit of
saying the wrong thing politically while he was doing the right thing as a
human being, was as devoted to Jackson as Jade was.
If Jackson didn’t need so
many people looking after him, Ellery might be jealous.
As it was, he was just
grateful for the help.
“Whatever we got them for
Christmas, it’s not enough,” Ellery murmured. Jackson was soaping his scarred
body, and Ellery fought the temptation to hide. Jackson’s scars were legion and
horrific—and there were a shit-ton more now than there had been when they’d
met.
“I’ll make a note of
that,” Jackson said, nuzzling his ear. “We need to add Ace and Sonny and Burton
and Ernie to the Christmas list.”
Ellery groaned.
“Seriously?”
“We’ll just send them
something,” he said. “Or, you know, send Ace and Sonny something and have them
give Burton and Ernie’s thing to them. Way way way in the future.”
Ace and Sonny owned a gas
station in the middle of the desert, slightly south of hell. But they’d been
there to help Jackson and Ellery take down Karl Lacey and his band of
mercenaries, so Ellery could definitely agree to that. Ellery had seen much
less contact with Burton and Ernie—and he wasn’t sure he wanted more.
Burton was a government
assassin. No, he didn’t have business cards that stated that overtly, but after
Jackson had recounted the parts of their adventure that Ellery had been
unconscious for, Ellery would take it on faith. Burton had saved their bacon,
and he’d saved Jackson’s family, and Jackson had apparently sworn fealty to him
while Ellery had been in surgery.
Fantastic.
Ernie—Burton’s
boyfriend—was a flakey psychic with no record of existence. And Ellery thought
Ernie liked it that way. Once upon a time, Ellery got up, put on a suit, did
paperwork, and only assassinated people verbally, but now, after knowing
Jackson Rivers slightly less than a year, this was his life. Putting together a
gift list for hit men and their psychic boyfriends.
Color him surprised.
Angst and pain, Amy Lane
Amy Lane has two kids in college, two gradeschoolers in soccer, two cats, and
two Chi-who-whats at large. She lives in a crumbling crapmansion with most of
the children and a bemused spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a
penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all
the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this
day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and m/m romance--and if you
accidentally make eye contact, she'll bore you to tears with why those three
genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are
worth the urge to write.
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