Devil's Bargain (Red Letter Days #1)

Devil's Bargain (Red Letter Days #1) Page 4

Two hours later, they had a catered lunch in a quiet, cavelike boardroom, with indirect lighting and a silently playing plasma-screen TV showing the latest disaster footage on one of the news channels. Just her, Lucia and Borden; Counselor Laskins hadn't returned from his other meeting, thank God, so they were able to order sandwiches instead of some impress-the-boss spread. Jazz stuck to tuna fish and low-fat chips. Lucia did her one better with a salad, dry, which Jazz guessed was what it took to maintain that statuesque perfect shape.

She had a cookie in retaliation.

Borden sat next to her, still thumbing through the paperwork as he gobbled down a roast beef on wheat, dripping with mayo. "Not that I want to rush you," he said, "but my boss is bound to bring up the fact that I'm burning billable hours waiting for you to make up your minds. Any decision yet?"

Lucia had her copy of the partnership agreement in front of her, and she flipped pages and scratched notes on a legal pad as she speared lettuce. "No."

"Afraid not," Jazz said. She had another mouthful of tuna salad, which was excellent, packed with walnuts and celery and some kind of lemon spice. "We're going to need time."

"How much?"

"We're not signing anything today," Lucia said. "We have to get back later this afternoon, we'll be in touch. You understand, we have to be sure about this."

"I'd never advise you to sign anything you weren't sure about. Still, we do have some cases coming up, and we'd like to have you on them."

"Very flattering," Jazz said, "but I'm not sure you're going to get us. Yet."

She got a full-on stare from his brown eyes, and remembered how he'd been in the bar - off base, off balance, awkward. Out of his element but determined enough to tough it out. She'd liked that Borden. This one - slick, sophisticated and in control - was less easy to trust.

"Your choice," he said neutrally. "But just remember, I picked out the cookies personally."

Lucia snorted.

Jazz took a second one and ate it contemplatively, watching him.

He suddenly rolled his leather chair back and said, "Jazz, can I have a minute? Just one minute."

She looked at Lucia, who raised her eyebrows in an eloquent whatever. Jazz stood up and fisted her hands in her jacket pockets. "Sure, Counselor."

He led her out into the hallway. Instead of turning toward his office, which was two doors down, he took her to the right, to the big indoor garden with its quietly tinkling fountain and elaborately raked Zen sand. He walked her down the path to a blind corner shielded by a broad-leafed palm. There was a stone bench, but he made no move to sit down. He was staring at the tops of his shoes.

"Well?" she asked finally. "Nice plants. What else?"

"I know you don't trust us," he said. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, and the awkwardness made her remember how he'd been back in K.C., at the bar. Standing up to two men when it was a foregone conclusion he was in for an ass-kicking. For a lawyer, he sure didn't lack spine. "But...please believe me when I say that you need to try to believe me. Things are coming. Bad things. And I don't want you to get hurt."

She felt a sudden chill and stepped closer, trying to get his eyes. He avoided her. "Borden?"

"Look, I can't tell you anything. But things are going to happen, and I'd rather you were inside than out. Right? For your sake as well as ours."

"Are you trying to threaten me?"

That got her a stare, a big wide one, shocked. "No! Of course not. Besides...hell, I've seen you kick ass, Jazz. Threatening you is the last thing on my mind, believe me. I'm just...worried."

"What have you heard?"

"That there were men after you in the airport," he said. "Jazz, you were in danger from the minute I walked into that bar and handed you that envelope, just like Lucia was in danger the moment hers was delivered. I wish I could make this easy for you. I can't. It isn't just...money and opportunity. This is about something else."

The Cross Society. And Eidolon Corporation?

"About what?" she asked, instinctively. Keeping her voice down. He was almost whispering. "Borden? About what?"

"Time," he said. "We're almost out of it."

He was wearing the same aftershave as he had at the bar, she realized suddenly. It radiated off him in warm waves, and she had to fight an impulse to breathe in deeply. She'd stepped closer again without realizing it. Inches from him. He was stooped, looking down into her eyes. She'd always considered herself pretty stocky, but he made her feel delicate, somehow.

She felt his fingers brush hers, then slowly enfold her hand in warmth.

"Watch yourself," he said softly. "Even if you don't do this thing, you need to be careful. You're on their radar now."

"They, who?"

He shook his head but never looked away from her face. The gaze was getting deeper. More intense. She felt her breath coming faster and struggled to slow it down. Warmth was creeping up her arm, and her hand felt unnaturally sensitized, as if she could feel every whorl in his fingerprints on her skin.

"Counselor," she said slowly, "are you trying to come on to me?"

That got a sudden, brilliant grin. "Why, would it work?"

"I don't do lawyers."

"We're even. I don't do cops."

"Ex-cop."

"Too bad I'm a current lawyer."

"So where does that leave us?"

He didn't answer. Silence fell, deep as the Zen pool. Mist drifted through the garden and brushed the back of her neck with damp fingers, and she shivered.

"Nowhere," she finally murmured, and pulled away. He let her do it without a fight. "Also? One more thing. If I find out you're behind those assholes at the airport, your ass is mine."

She was executing a perfect Hollywood exit when he murmured plaintively, "But that was my plan! The ass thing, not the other part."

She didn't give him the satisfaction of turning around. She walked away down the stone path, back to the conference room. Lucia was finishing her salad.

Jazz picked up her purse and the partnership agreement, and said, "I need some air."

Lucia neatly speared the last cherry tomato, forked it into her mouth, and nodded. "Time to go, anyway. I expect we've worn out our welcome."

Borden, still standing in the garden, nodded to them as they left, but never said another word. Jazz wasn't sure whether to be angry or hurt by that, but really, when it came down to it, there was only one logical choice.

Anger at least kept you sharp.

"Well?"

They were somewhere over Illinois, heading toward Missouri, when Lucia asked the single-word question. Jazz, who'd been drifting steadily toward nap land, came awake with a hard jolt. The drone of the airplane filled her ears, and she glanced out the window to make sure they were still flying, not falling. So far, so good.

Lucia was nursing a drink. It fizzed, so it was probably sparkling water, something suave and European. Jazz flagged down the flight attendant and got a Sprite, which she figured was the Americanized version.

"Am I in favor?" Jazz asked. Lucia inclined her head. "Honestly? I don't know. But, presuming it checks out..."

"And if your friend Manny doesn't turn up anything unusual..."

"Then I'd say maybe we should seriously consider it." The money. The thought of that crisp, cashable check in her wallet made Jazz's mouth go dry.

Lucia closed the partnership agreement and stared down at the cover, which was embossed with the logo of Gabriel, Pike & Laskins, LLP. She rubbed a finger over it, silently, and then nodded. Just a bare inch of agreement. "Maybe," she said. "Where would we have the office?"

"What?"

"The office," Lucia repeated. "Garza & Callender Investigations. Where do we hang the shingle?"

Against all reason, Jazz found herself grinning. "K.C.'s a nice town," she said.

"Yeah, it's not bad."

"But it'd be Callender & Garza. Alphabetical order."

"Age before beauty."

"Pearls before - "

"Oh, I wouldn't if I were you." Lucia took a sip of her water. The flight attendant arrived with a small plastic cup of fizzing Sprite on the rocks, and passed it across to Jazz.

They looked at each other mutely for a few seconds, and then Jazz held up the Sprite. Lucia held up the sparkling water.

They clinked plastic.

"Deal," Lucia said.

"If there's nothing hinky that turns up."

"Obviously. Goes without saying."

The Sprite tasted cool and refreshing, like champagne. That's it, Jazz thought with a sudden surge of mingled dread and euphoria, as the plane started its descent for Kansas City. Something just changed.

She hoped it was for the better.

Two independent attorneys had reviewed and signed off on the partnership agreement - and one of them called it a "work of art" - by the time Manny got back to them with the forensic results. "I was thorough," he explained to Jazz on the cell phone. "I got nothing off the letter."

"Nothing?" she repeated, startled. She was standing in the lobby of the second law firm, one selected at random from the phone book, and Lucia was in the restroom. The partnership agreement, well thumbed, was lying in front of her on the coffee table, decorated with grubby yellow sticky notes. "What do you mean, nothing?"

"Well, I mean that the paper's consistent with the official letterhead of Gabriel, Pike & Laskins - I had their nice receptionist courier me some pieces - and the fingerprints on the paper are yours, one James R. Borden, and a woman named Pansy Taylor, who is his - "

"Assistant, yeah, I've met her."

"She's really named Pansy?"

"Apparently. What else?"

Manny shuffled papers noisily on the other end of the phone. She checked the number he was calling from, and saw a caller-ID-blocked message. He was probably phoning from the lab, but with Manny, you could never tell. Even with all of the delicate equipment and lush lifestyle, he'd been known to pull up stakes and move in less than a day. All it takes is money, he'd told her once, with a shrug. She supposed that was true.

"The blood on the note? A positive. Not your type."

I don't know about that, she thought, and suppressed it. "Borden's," she said. "Did you do a DNA test?"

"You said the full ride, Jazz. Yes. DNA profile. I don't know what good it will do you, but it's here. You'll be pleased to know he's not your long-lost brother or anything."

She was, actually. "So there's nothing you can tell me about this letter? Nothing hinky?"

"Hinky?" Manny was silent for a few seconds. "No. Not about the letter."

"But...?"

"It's the envelope."

The big red Valentine's Day envelope. "What about it?"

"Two sets of fingerprints on the envelope, besides yours and Borden's. Not Pansy Taylor's."

Jazz tried to remember if either of the truckers had touched it. No, she was pretty sure they hadn't. "Get any hits?"

"Actually, yeah," he said. "One of the sets belongs to a guy named Bernard Lozano, he was sent up for assault ten years ago, but he's been out a couple of years now. I didn't get anything off of the other set."

Maybe the trucker twins had touched the envelope, after all. The name Lozano wasn't ringing any bells with her. "Okay. Anything else?"

"Ink, paper, blood. That's all you gave me, Jazz. Not a lot to work with here."

"I get it, Manny. Thanks."

He grunted. "You'll get the bill. Oh, and don't come by for a while. I don't like the company."

"Manny!"

"Not you, Jazz. The other guys."

She felt a sudden chill and clutched the phone tighter. "What other guys?"

"The ones who pulled up in a van and sat surveillance outside my building for two hours after you left," Manny said. "I had to move. New address is in the usual place."

He dead-dropped his address and phone numbers into a post office box when he got paranoid. Jazz had been through it before. "I'll pick them up once I'm sure I'm not being tailed."

"I thought you were sure the last time."

I was. She didn't tell him that. "Sorry, Manny."

"Yeah, well, there's a bump in your bill for it." He hesitated. Static crackled the phone. "The other woman? The one you brought here?"

"Lucia?" Who was, as it happened, coming out of the bathroom and heading her way.

"I liked her," Manny said. "She can come around if she wants."

He hung up before she could say another word. She blurted, "You're kidding me!" but it was lost to the ether.

"What?" Lucia asked, sinking down to the couch beside her.

"Manny likes you," Jazz said. "You have no idea how deeply weird that is."

Lucia smiled and shrugged. "People like me. It's a gift."

"Manny's got nothing hinky, except two sets of prints, one belonging to one Bernard Lozano, ex-con, on the outside of the envelope."

"And the letter?"

"Clean. I've also asked him to look into the Cross Society, but it'll take time."

Lucia hitched her shoulders wordlessly. She tapped the partnership agreement with one high-gloss fingernail. For someone who'd been living out of a very small suitcase for two days, she looked fresh from the showroom. Jazz, who'd had access to everything in her own apartment, hadn't managed to achieve much more than comfortable and awake. I need a haircut, she thought, swiping the shag out of her eyes again. Lucia's hair always stayed where it was told. But then it was that glossy, silky black, and Jazz's was coarse and blond and not very damn cooperative, in general.

She was thinking of these things to avoid the next step, she realized. Lucia was watching her.

"Look," Jazz said, "I'm not going to lie to you. I need the money. I need it to pay for Ben's appeal. I want to sign this thing."

"Jazz, I'm not judging you. But these people know you need the money. It's a lever."

"And you don't need it, do you?"

Lucia shook her head. "That's not what they're offering me."

"Then what?"

"Independence."

Jazz had had a bellyful of that. "It's not all it's cracked up to be."

"It is when you've spent half your life trusting your life to pinheads who have no idea how to plan their way out of their offices," Lucia replied, grim lines around her eyes and mouth. "I don't mind fighting for the right things. I mind being wasted. I want to set my own priorities for a change."

There was a passion behind the words that surprised Jazz. A frustration carefully hidden behind Lucia's glossy, composed surface. She met the other woman's dark eyes and saw an absolute fury there, quickly damped down.

"Lucia, we either do this thing or we don't. I don't have a lot of time to burn." She was thinking about Ben, sitting in a cell, waiting. When she'd seen him last, he'd been quiet and guarded, but she'd seen the bruises. A cop in general population. He was a target, and there was no question that his enemies would get him. Ben was tough, but he wasn't a superman, and even the tough had to sleep. "I need this."

Lucia took a breath deep enough to stretch the pin-striped tailored jacket she was wearing. "I'm sorry." There was a cold, hard light in her eyes. "I know you do. But I've been thinking about it, and it just doesn't feel right. I did some checking on the Cross Society. You know who first established it? Max Simms."

"Simms? The serial killer?"

"When he was the head of Eidolon Corporation, he formed the Cross Society as a nonprofit. He was head of it for a year before they started digging up bodies in his basement. The only thing that saved the society from going down the toilet was that he kept his involvement with them strictly low-profile, and somebody else stepped in to run it when he was shipped off to prison. Although my informant says that Simms was mostly a figurehead, anyway. The Cross Society was just a way to funnel money out of Eidolon. Apparently, Simms wasn't getting along with his board of directors."

Jazz looked her right in the eyes. "Then this isn't going to happen," she said.

"No," Lucia agreed. "It isn't going to happen. I'm sorry. I know you wanted it. I wanted it, too. But not if it tangles us up with people like Max Simms."

Jazz felt it all turn to ash, all the hope she hadn't even realized she'd been nursing. She'd schooled herself not to feel, not to care, and she'd been suckered in this time, and it damn well hurt. She stared mutely at Lucia, who stood up, retrieved her designer purse, and said, "Can you take me to the airport?"

Jazz nodded silently. She gathered up the partnership agreement, rolled it up and stuffed it into her coat pocket.

That was it. Game over.

Borden was going to be very disappointed.

Jazz kept her head down, thinking, all the way down in the elevator to the parking level. Lucia didn't speak, either. There was an awkward silence between them, and they couldn't meet each other's eyes.

It was a relief when the bell dinged to announce Parking Level 2, and they could escape from being too close. Jazz put several feet between them as they headed for her car, two rows down.

"I'm sorry, Jazz. I like you. I'd like to work with you someday," Lucia said. It was quiet, almost lost in the squeal of tires of a car pulling out of its space down the row. Headlights washed over them, turning Lucia's rich golden skin pale, pulling diamond glints from her earrings, and since Jazz was watching her, she saw the other woman's eyes suddenly shift to focus behind her.

She knew that look. She felt it in a swift, hot prickle down her spine, and she was diving forward even before Lucia yelled "Gun!" and lunged for the cover of a pillar. Jazz hit the ground hard and rolled, feeling the bite of rough concrete on exposed skin; she banged up hard against the massive tire of an oversize SUV and rolled on her side, fumbling for her gun.

A spray of noise, and sparks off the concrete next to her. She yelped, twisted and aimed for muzzle flashes. They were coming from the window of a slow-moving car, a black Lincoln with tinted windows. Everything was moving in snapshots, freeze-frames divided by the rapid gasps of her breath. More muzzle flashes, and bullets peppered the ground and the cars and the pillar behind which Lucia had taken shelter. Four rapid sharp pops, and she saw gray-rimmed holes appear in the passenger-side door. Lucia was firing. Jazz steadied her hand and squeezed off six shots. Every one of them went through the open window. She couldn't tell if she hit anyone.

The gun - a Mac 10 - disappeared back inside the window, and the car became a blur as it accelerated away. She focused on the license plate, but it was smeared, too, oddly indistinct. Tape? Some kind of disguise. They'd probably stop and peel it off later.

And then it rounded the corner with a screech, struck sparks as it hit the ramp going up, and was gone.

Smoke hung heavy in the air, acrid, burning Jazz's eyes as she blinked and coughed. Well, it's certainly one of the fastest firefights I've ever been in.

She focused on the glittering cascade of castoff on the ground. There must have been fifty shells, maybe more. Some were still rolling. The whole garage reverberated with the sounds of war.

"Shit!" Lucia was suddenly beside her, pale and furious, black eyes wide. She was staring at the ramp, and the gun was still in her hand. Tiny little thing. Ladylike.

"You need a bigger gun," Jazz said, and laughed. It didn't sound right. Lucia looked down at her, and stopped breathing. "What?"

Lucia went down on one knee, never mind the expensive pantsuit, and put the gun on the ground to flip Jazz over on her back. "Hey!" Jazz protested, but everything felt odd, didn't it? Strange and liquid and...

Lucia pressed both hands to her side, pushing so hard Jazz couldn't breathe.

"You're going to be all right," Lucia said. "Jazz. You're going to be all right."

Oh, shit, Jazz thought numbly, and saw the blood flooding over Lucia's hands.

She fumbled in her coat pocket, got her cell phone, and dialed 911 to report her own shooting.

Lucia was right, although Jazz didn't think it had been an actual diagnosis. Sometimes optimism worked out. The bullet had passed through her side and caught a few minor blood vessels, missed her liver and kidneys, and come out the other side. The doctor - way too young to be a surgeon, in Jazz's painkiller-altered opinion - was cheerful about it. "Seen lots worse," he told her, patting her hand. "I have three guys downstairs who had an argument in a bar who wish they were you, I promise."

"How long am I going to be stuck here?" she asked. She hated hospitals. Hated the stiff, starchy sheets, the smell of disinfectant, the clean doctors. Hated the idea that she was lying in a bed that had probably seen more dead people than that kid in The Sixth Sense. Emergency rooms always smelled like blood and vomit, no matter how carefully they were scrubbed. "If I'm all stitched up..." She eased a leg over the side of the bed. And almost passed out. Ow. He grabbed it and moved it back.

"You're here overnight," he said. "And there are some police who want to talk to you. They're already talking to your friend."

Jazz had figured that. She could safely guess that what Lucia was saying was the truth, just not the whole truth. The two of them had been to the lawyers' offices to consult about a partnership agreement. They'd been jumped by persons unknown. Case closed. Jazz figured she could leverage being shot to keep her statement short and sweet. If she had any luck at all, maybe she wouldn't know the cops, and this would be...

Behind the doctor, the big wood door eased open, and a slightly built guy in a cheap suit looked in. He had rough-cut spiked hair and cold dark blue eyes and a rubbery mouth that looked as if it might smile or smirk or scream at a moment's notice.

He looked at her as if she might be a corpse ready for autopsy, nothing but clinical interest.

Apparently, luck was not on her side. God, she really didn't feel well enough for this.

"Stewart," she said with a noticeable lack of warmth. He blinked at her. "You going to skulk or come in?"

"Skulk," he said. "How you doin', Jazz?" He had a Bronx accent, usually stressed for effect, and she felt a familiar weary surge of dislike. Poser. She'd known him for nearly five years, and she'd never liked him one minute of that time.

"Shot," she replied shortly.

"Yeah, so I hear. Doc, can I...?" He gestured from himself to Jazz. The doctor shrugged, stuck his hands in his lab-coat pockets and sauntered out. Stewart - Kenneth Stewart, not that she'd ever called him by his first name or ever intended to - pulled up a chrome-and-plastic chair next to her bed and sat down. He poked the IV bag with a fingertip and didn't look at her as he said, "So. Long time no see."

"Yeah." She didn't want small talk. Her head hurt, and her side was starting to really ache. She suspected the painkillers were more Motrin than morphine. "You already talked to my friend?" She didn't give him the name. If Lucia wanted to go undercover, she wasn't about to blow it for her.

"Friend?" he repeated blankly. Poked the IV bag again, then rang a fingernail off the screen of the heart monitor. "Oh, yeah. Luz something. Hermann's talking to her. Pretty girl. I think I got the short straw."

"Me, too." Not that Stewart's partner Hermann was any great prize, either. "I want another detective. I'm not talking to you."

"Fuck you, Callender." It wasn't a casual, off-the-cuff insult between friends. This was a gut-deep venting of feelings, and she felt the menace behind it.

"Same to you, Stewart." A hot pulse of fury along her spine. Her hand curled into a tight fist, and relaxed. Much as she wanted to kick his punk ass, there was no way she could do it dressed in a backless gown with a through-and-through bullet hole in her side.

"So, did anything happen to you I need to know about?" Stewart asked in a bored tone.

"This is how you conduct an investigation?"

"It is when I know the witness is a lying bitch who wouldn't know the truth if it bit her in the - where were you shot exactly?"

"See my previous fuck you comment. Fine, if we're done, get the hell out. I don't want to look at your ugly face anymore."

Without looking at her, he reached over and put his hand on her side. Over the bandages. "Does it hurt?"

She didn't move. Those twilight-blue eyes - on anybody else they might have been pretty - focused on her face, and his mouth stretched into a vindictive grin. He patted her bullet wound. Not gently. She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from wincing.

"Want to hear my theory?" Stewart wasn't moving his hand. "I think some of McCarthy's drug-dealing asshole buddies decided to send him a message by putting a few caps in his ex-partner. It was a classic drive-by hit, you know. Big dark pimp car, full auto spray. You're just lucky, is all. But then, you get lucky a lot, don't you? I've never seen anybody as lucky as you."

He pressed harder. Jazz knew she was going pale, but she didn't look away from his stare.

"Maybe if you'd tell the truth," Stewart said, "you'd quit being a target. This isn't the first trouble you've gotten into, since you turned in your shield. Is it?"

One attempted firebombing of her apartment, which had failed when the glass bottle full of gasoline hadn't shattered on impact, and she'd been able to scramble over and drag the burning rag out of the mouth of it. She could still smell the bitter tang of the gas, the smoky, oily cloth. No prints on the bottle, according to police forensics. She still wished she'd taken it to Manny. She was pretty sure he'd have come up with something to trace it back to Stewart.

She'd also been jumped coming out of a bar downtown. Two guys with knives. If she hadn't been drunk, she'd have had them, but even so, she'd managed to put them on the run. No good description, though. She'd always wondered if the small one had been Stewart himself.

"I hear that you were just minding your own business and this car rolled up on you. You fired six shots back, your friend fired four, and the car took off. That correct?"

"Don't know. Count the shells."

"Oh, we will." He nodded. "And Jazz? If I catch you in a lie, you're mine."

He squeezed this time. Hard. Fingers digging into her stitched-up side.

She couldn't keep from gasping, but she didn't just lie there for it, which was what he must have expected. She came straight up in bed and stiff-armed the heel of her hand into his nose.

Pop.

Stewart's head snapped back, and he fell off his chair, rolled to his knees and staggered back to his feet. He caught himself with a hand on an IV stand, which rolled, and for a happy second she thought he might go down again. No such luck. He felt his nose with his other hand, sniffed, and glared at her.

No blood. Too bad. She'd been hoping for a broken nose, at least.

"Sorry," she said. "Reflex."

He didn't say anything, just stared at her for a burning second, then turned and walked out of the room. The door slammed hard behind him.

Jazz let out a long breath and closed her eyes. Her forehead felt damp, and now that the crisis was over, she was shaking. And sick to her stomach. She pushed the button for on-demand morphine.

Just what she didn't need. A bullet in her side, no partnership agreement, and a closer acquaintance with Kenneth Stewart.

Lucia came back twenty minutes later, looking not exactly grim but definitely tense. She took the chair that Stewart had dragged close, gave Jazz a long look, and said, "I don't like this."

"Hospitals? Hey, I'm not a fan of them, either. And I think I have more reason to bitch about it."

"No, I don't like that they knew where to find us." She wasn't talking about the hospitals, or even Stewart. "I've been watching for tails. So have you."

"So we missed one. Or they've got some high-tech tracking bug on us." She remembered Borden, walking into Sol's Bar without any reason to be there. That still bothered her.

"No, I've swept us and the car for bugs," Lucia said, and combed sleek silky hair back from her face in a distracted motion. "Nothing. There's no way they've retasked a satellite just to follow us around, so if they're not doing line-of-sight surveillance, then they shouldn't know where we are. And if they were doing line-of-sight, we should have spotted them."

"Unless they're good."

"More than just good. I'm good." Lucia definitely looked stressed, as if she felt responsible for Jazz lying here, leaking fluids. "Those cops - I take it not friends of yours?  -  aren't investigating, they're filling out paperwork."

"It's Stewart," Jazz said, and stared up at the ceiling. It was blank, white, and noninspirational. "He helped put McCarthy away. He's been gunning for me ever since. No, actually, I take that back. He's never liked me. He's just actively started hating me since the whole thing with Ben."

Lucia paused in the act of tying her hair back with a businesslike black elastic band. No scrunchies or decorations for her. She looked different with her hair back. Harder. Jazz approved. "About McCarthy..." Lucia began.

"No."

"You don't think we should discuss that?"

"No, we're not talking about Ben, or his case, or whether or not he's guilty, or what he has to do with this because I guarantee you, he's got nothing to do with it. He's in prison, Lucia. Let's leave him out of this."

Lucia didn't answer that, just finished wrapping her hair in the elastic with a snap. "I called your sister, told her you'd been in an accident."

"Oh, no." Jazz sighed. "What did Molly say?"

Lucia avoided her eyes. "She was concerned. She said she'd tell your dad."

"I bet. I'll expect a cheap floral arrangement delivered to the wrong address next week."

"She's not that bad."

"Bullshit."

"Manny wanted to visit, but - "

"He's got a thing about hospitals. Manny has a thing about everything."

"He did some good work for us, looking into the Cross Society."

"And?"

Lucia shrugged. "On paper, it's legit. He came up with a few flags - not so much red lights as yellow. Max Simms, for one. He may be in prison, but it's likely he's still got some influence." She fell silent. The moment stretched, long and awkward.

Jazz though longingly of on-demand morphine.

"You should go," Jazz said. "I'm sorry to have kept you hanging around. You've got a life to get back to."

"Planes leave all the time." Lucia shrugged. "I'm not going if it means you end up lying unprotected in a hospital bed and the cops aren't going to put out any effort to find out who shot you. And shot at me, by the way. I take that kind of thing personally."

The look in her eyes was usually accompanied by shooting back, Jazz figured. Or, at the very least, grievous bodily harm.

"So you're sticking around," Jazz said. A tight knot in the area of her chest eased a little.

"For a while. Until you get back on your feet, anyway. Also, I'm going to wake up some sources and see what they can find out for me. I don't like the way any of this is playing out."

She started to get up. Jazz stopped her with an outstretched hand. "Wait. Listen, you need to be careful, all right? You're not from around here. If you disappear..."

Lucia gave her an uncomplicated smile. "If I disappear, chica, your cop friends are going to have a lot more trouble than they ever bargained for, because the kind of people who'll come looking for me won't take a shrug for an answer. And they don't ask nicely." She stood up, gazing down at her. "Also...I'm not that easy to make vanish."

"I get that." Jazz found herself smiling back. "Hey. Thank you."

"That's what partners are for," Lucia said, and reached down to retrieve her sleek black oversize purse. She pulled out a large flat envelope and placed it gently on Jazz's stomach. There was a pen clipped to it. "I signed," she said. "It's up to you whether or not you want to."

Jazz stared at the envelope, frowning. "Why'd you change your mind?"

"Because I don't think it matters anymore whether I sign it or not. We're in this together. Whoever these guys are, they're not going to back off because we go our separate ways, and I don't know about you, but I'd like to have somebody I trust at my back." Lucia's dark eyes were level and clear. "And if somebody's going to shoot at me, I'd rather get paid for it."

Jazz laughed. It hurt. She caught her breath, slid the paperwork out and thumbed through it to the last page.

Lucia's signature was flowing and bold over her typed name. Jazz set pen to paper, hesitated a second, and then scratched out her own messy, jerky autograph.

The check was attached to the partnership agreement with a clip. Jazz took it off, turned it over and endorsed it, then handed it all back to Lucia. "Maybe you'd better handle the bank stuff," she said.

"Yeah," Lucia agreed quietly. "I will."

In the silence after she was gone, Jazz went over all the ways that she'd just totally screwed up her life. There were dozens. Hundreds. Disaster stretched out in the distance, as certain as the Titanic and the iceberg.

What if it works? That was the scariest thought of all, strangely. What if it works out, and I don't need to be a cop anymore? Because that was secretly what she'd always thought would happen. McCarthy would be vindicated. They're return in triumph, conquering heroes. Life would pick up where it left off.

What if nothing's the same?

That filled her with a kind of fear that had nothing to do with bullet wounds and drive-by shooters and people attacking her in bathrooms. Those things she could deal with. External threats.

But this...this was different. She'd just done something that would change her future.

She fell asleep still thinking about that, and reaching no conclusions as to whether or not it was a good thing.