Devil's Bargain (Red Letter Days #1)

Devil's Bargain (Red Letter Days #1) Page 7

Four months later

"P ansy, where the hell is the DeMontis file?"

"Under D."

"It's not under - oh. There it is." Jazz grabbed it and slammed the lateral filing cabinet shut, then used a corner of her assistant's desk to support the folder as she flipped the massive thing open. "Dammit. Has Lucia not filed her latest surveillance report yet?"

Pansy, for answer, clicked keys on her computer and a sheet of paper was spit out of her printer. She chunked a couple of holes in the top and handed it to Jazz. "E-mailed ten minutes ago."

Jazz read the text, frowning, pacing, and reached across Pansy for the desk phone. Pansy glided her chair out of the way and sorted mail. No suits for Pansy these days; she had on a flower-patterned top, black pants, cat-eye glasses, and red streaks through her dark hair. The real Pansy, Jazz was sure. She'd told her to wear whatever she liked, but it had taken a good two weeks, in the beginning, for Pansy to slowly give up the formal wear.

Jazz continued to set a bad example by modeling the latest in fleece pullovers, blue jeans, and - on special occasions - loose-fitting shirts over colored T-shirts. And by failing to practice political correctness in the workplace.

The past few months had been tense at first. They'd kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the attack, for...something. But the Cross Society had been mysteriously quiet. And despite Laskins's scare tactics, the world hadn't come to an end. Evil psychic ninjas hadn't shown up to kill them, and the Cross Society hadn't even demanded their hundred thousand dollars back. And so, they'd settled into business as usual.

Jazz read as Pansy sorted mail, flipping junk into the trash, catalogs into a to-be-reviewed pile, personal mail for Jazz and Lucia into a third. Pansy hesitated over one envelope and ripped it open with a sharp little steel opener and pulled out a check. The printing was familiar. Their favorite client, DeMontis, had come through with another payment. Pansy waved it at Jazz, who nodded as she dialed the phone.

Lucia picked it up on the second ring. "Hol��," she said.

"Can you talk?"

"For now. I'm busy cleaning toilets."

"I hope you're using hands-free on the cell, because, you know, ugh."

"Very funny. What?"

"The report," Jazz said. "You still haven't seen them make the drop?"

"I think that's what it says in my last report, why, yes. And let me ask again why I'm the one wearing a sloppy green apron and emptying trash cans and scrubbing toilets? Is this a commentary on my national heritage?"

"It's a commentary on the fact that you agreed to take this crappy industrial espionage case, not me," Jazz replied. "I like the background checks."

"You like the divorce cases," Lucia said gloomily.

"I like easy work where I don't get shot. So, are these guys just smarter than you, or what?"

"You know, if you're trying to piss me off, that's not very difficult when my eyes are burning from cleaning products, and I'm contemplating how men always miss the urinals."

"I like you better pissed off."

"Love you, too," Lucia said. "Two more days and I'm out of here, and then you can come and show them how to scrub a bathroom while I call you and make taunting remarks about your detective skills."

Jazz hung up without a response.

"We're losing money on that one, boss," Pansy said. "Two weeks of her time? Unless she brings in the whole pig, not just the bacon - "

"I know." Jazz nodded at the check in Pansy's hand. "Covers expenses, right?"

"Yeah, but I've got a bonus coming. Oh, and boss?" Pansy hesitated, then blurted out, "He called again."

"He?" Like Jazz didn't know.

"Ex-boss."

Ex-boss meant James Borden, of course. "Did you hang up on him? Insult him using lots of short Anglo-Saxon words?"

"I like him," Pansy said mournfully. "Do you, you know, have to - "

"Make him suffer? Yes, Pansy, I do. It's my job. And it gives me such a nice, warm glow of satisfaction, too." Jazz piled mail on top of the heavy DeMontis folder and headed toward her office. "If he calls again, tell him - "

"He's coming."

She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to look at Pansy, who had the grace to seem embarrassed. "Repeat that."

"He's on a plane," Pansy explained. "He's going to be here in a couple of hours, tops."

"You told him I wouldn't talk to him?"

"Boss, I've told him a thousand times. Which is, you know, how many times he's actually called, and you'd think somebody at GPL would start tracking those phone charges, wouldn't you?"

"If he shows up, call Security," Jazz said grimly, and walked into her office.

Pansy called, "Want me to make reservations? Someplace nice?"

Jazz slammed the door with a kick, and heard a muffled "Okay, guess not," through the wood. She snorted back a laugh.

Borden, coming here. Jazz dropped folder and mail onto her desk, and sank down in her chair. She picked up a catalog and flipped through it. She stared blankly at the latest in tasers and rubber bullets for crowd control.

Pansy opened the door without knocking, sailed in and slammed a cup of coffee down on Jazz's desktop. Jazz looked up, surprised.

"I know, you told me I'd never have to get coffee," Pansy said, "but honestly, don't you think you should at least talk to him?"

"I don't want coffee, and why the hell would I do that?" Jazz asked. She tried to go back to her law-enforcement catalog.

"Because he's a total hottie who's obviously crazy in love with you?" Pansy took the catalog out of her hands and handed her a copy of Elle. "Here. Try to find something that looks like it didn't come out of the gang-banger collection."

"I'm not dressing up for Borden."

"He dresses up for you."

"Does not."

"Does - " Pansy was interrupted by the phone, switched in midstream and snatched the receiver out of the cradle. "Jasmine Callender's office, this is Pansy, how can I - oh, hey, Manny. Yeah, she's right here. Tell her to buy some new clothes, would you?"

She extended the phone without looking at Jazz, who tossed Elle unopened back on the desk and took the receiver. Pansy, like Lucia, had a nice manicure. Jazz studied the short, stubby nails on her right hand as she held the phone to her left ear and said, "Manny?"

"Is this line - "

"Secure? Yeah, Manny, it's secure." She rolled her eyes at Pansy, who shook her head. "What's up?"

"I have something you might be interested in. A private client brought it in."

He was being careful. With Manny, private client usually meant a cop who was working off the books, for various reasons - maybe because the department had shut down the investigation, maybe because the budget was too tight to run the tests he or she wanted done. Manny usually threw them a discount, and sometimes an outright freebie.

Something strange might mean something he wanted out of his lab, which meant violent crime. Jazz was not averse to that.

"Okay," she said. "I'll drop by. You still in the same place?"

"I'll bring it to you," he said.

She blinked. "Excuse me...?"

"I'll bring it to you. To the office."

"You're leaving your lab."

"Yes."

"By yourself."

"Yes." Manny - Manny!  -  was starting to sound irritated. "I do get out, you know. Sometimes."

"If you say so," she said, and gave Pansy a pantomime of a wide-eyed what the hell? "Today?"

"An hour."

"Are you going to be wearing a disguise, or - "

"Shut up, Jazz." He hung up on her. She took the phone away from her ear and stared at it, then replaced it in the cradle.

"You know," she said to Pansy, "there are some days when the world is just too strange for words, and this is one of them."

Pansy patted her on the hand and handed her Elle.

She put it back and picked up Guns & Ammo and, without even thinking, reached for the coffee and sipped it. Pansy grinned in triumph and left, shutting the door after herself.

Borden was coming, after a four-month absence. That made her feel warm and odd, and impatient with herself for it. She'd cut the cord with him. With Gabriel, Pike & Laskins in general. She and Lucia - she presumed - hadn't had contact with them since the last red envelope had arrived, via FedEx, and that had consisted of taking the envelope, unopened, sticking it in another FedEx envelope and sending it right back with a sticky note reading Not playing the game.

Maybe Borden was coming to deliver a last-ditch personal appeal. Maybe GPL - or the Cross Society - was desperate enough to try to whore him out.

Like we're that important. She didn't believe it. She didn't think Lucia believed it, either.

Maybe Borden was just...coming to see her. Someplace nice for dinner. She hadn't even thought about dinner with him, not since Arthur Bryant's, when everything had gone to hell with one phone call.

No. No dinner. No conversation. I want nothing to do with James Borden.

And some part of her brain added, Well, sleeping with the enemy might be kind of fun. Not to mention informative.

She told it sternly to shut up, sipped coffee and eyed Elle while determinedly reviewing the latest in zip-tie cuffs in Law Enforcement Supply.

Manny arrived an hour later, on the dot, looking freshly scrubbed and far neater than Jazz could remember - practically presentable, in fact. He'd forgotten to take off the lab coat, but other than that, the button-down shirt and blue jeans were clean, if a little frayed, and the tennis shoes were almost brand-new. He'd gotten a haircut - or, more likely, done it himself - and it made him look ten years younger. He'd even shaved, but as usual, the constant five-o'clock shadow made him look a bit shifty.

His eyes were nervous, trying to look everywhere, bright with terror, but he was here. Standing beside Pansy's desk, hands in his lab-coat pockets.

Shaking but upright.

Jazz stood in the doorway for a second, taking it in; there was a tight bloom of happiness inside her, seeing him. She loved Manny, she always had. He was a gentle soul, and he'd never deserved anything that he'd endured. It was nice to see him finding his strength again.

And then she saw him smile, and something clicked into focus with blinding clarity.

Ahh. He was smiling at Pansy. And she was smiling back, warmly. They'd been spending time on the phone, and Pansy had started taking all the drop-offs to Manny. But this was a big step forward.

No wonder Manny was out of the house and looking human again. Sometimes, the best therapy was just plain old hormones.

"Manny," she said, since clearly Manny was at a loss for words when it came to chatting up women - that part probably had nothing to do with his posttraumatic stress and everything to do with being a lab geek from way, way back. Manny looked relieved and put out at the same time. "Hey, bro, it's good to see you."

He nodded jerkily, shifted his feet and abruptly held out a package. It was wrapped in brown paper, taped securely and tied with string. The tape was evidence tape, and he'd practically hermetically sealed the thing.

She reached out and took it off his hands.

"Anything you want to tell me about this?" she asked, and got a violent shake of his head. "Who dropped it off to you?"

"A friend," he said. Which could mean anything, or nothing. "You don't need to know. Just...take a look at it. Tell me what you think."

"Anything in particular I should be looking for?"

"You'll know," he said. "If I'm right. Um, I - authenticated - anyway. There's nothing hinky about them. I checked."

He shoved his hands back into the lab coat. The package felt light in her hand. Paper, maybe. Clothing. Nothing very substantial. The packing he'd wrapped it in probably weighed more than the item.

"Want to stick around, or...?"

"No," he said, and whirled around to look at Pansy, who looked back, startled. "No, I - bye."

He hurried away, jerky movements, head down. He took the stairs, not the elevator. Pansy and Jazz watched him go.

"Huh," Pansy said contemplatively. Which Jazz supposed kind of covered it.

She shook her head, went into her office and closed the door.

Using a pair of sharp scissors and a pocketknife, it still took her about ten minutes to strip away the tape-reinforced paper to reveal...a tape-reinforced box. She slit the tape, put the box down on the table and reached into her desk drawer for a pair of latex gloves, which she donned before lifting off the top of the cardboard box. It had been designed for letterhead, she saw - plain white, no markings unless they were hidden by the evidence tape. She didn't know if it was Manny's box, or the one provided by his "friend" - but then, she realized, Manny would never damage it by slapping tape all over potential evidence.

Inside lay a sheet of paper and what looked like three eight-by-ten photographs underneath it. She focused first on the paper, which was computer printing on plain copy stock.

Jazz: Note time and date stamp on photos

Nothing else, but for Manny, that was the equivalent of a page-long memo. She set the paper aside and looked at what was underneath.

The first picture underneath was grainy black-and-white, clearly taken in low light. The note was right, there was a time/date stamp on the lower right-hand corner in block white letters. The photo was of an alley, a part of a sign flush against a building that said vet Palace. Since veterinarians rarely had that kind of neon, that had to be the Velvet Palace, a not-so-gentlemanly club over on the raw side of town. There were three men pictured. Two were standing under a floodlight, and the camera caught a good shot of one of their faces. She didn't recognize him.

She stared at the picture for a moment, frowning, waiting for a penny to drop, but nothing came to her. She picked up the photo and moved it over atop the letter.

The second photo showed the second man's face. He was wearing a cheap rumpled business suit, but again, nobody she recognized. He was handing over a wrapped package to the third man, who was hidden in shadow.

The last photo was clearly taken as the meeting was breaking up, and one of the men was already hidden by the open back door of the club, the other preparing to enter. But it had the face of the third man, who up to that point had been hidden in shadow.

She felt a short-circuit shock of recognition and adrenaline like a fist to the temple. She put both hands on the desk and stood up, staring down at the picture, which showed her ex-partner, Ben McCarthy, staring almost full-face at the camera. She even knew the clothes - a long black trench coat, dress shirt, black slacks. No tie. Ben had never worn a tie, except at trials.

He was sliding the package into the pocket of his trench coat.

She stared at him for a long few seconds, trying to slow down the beating of her heart, and then focused on the date and time.

"Son of a bitch," she whispered, and sank back in her chair.

That's what had been nagging at her about the previous photos. Date and time.

The same date and time that Ben McCarthy had supposedly been on the other side of Kansas City cold-bloodedly putting bullets in the heads of two unarmed men and a woman.

The pictures clearly showed that he'd been behind the Velvet Palace, taking a payoff.

"You son of a bitch," she amended, in a lost whisper, and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. "You lied. You lied."

He hadn't lied about being innocent - he hadn't been guilty of the killings - but he hadn't produced this alibi, either. Probably because it was nearly as bad, and would have unearthed more than just this one incident. Maybe he was protecting himself. Maybe he'd just plain believed that he could beat this thing, and then it had been too late to change his story.

Besides, two criminals and a payoff in an alley behind a strip club was probably not the world's most believable alibi.

He hadn't known about the pictures.

She stared down at them. The date and time. The faces of the men with him.

She'd been looking for evidence of Ben's innocence all this time, but she hadn't expected this. She also had no idea who had given it to Manny, or why. Why now?

Authenticate, she warned herself. This is crap without provenance. Without testimony from the guy who took them.

First step would be to find subjects number one and two in the photos.

She put the photos back in the box and carried them out to Pansy's desk. Pansy, on the phone, looked up, saw her expression, and apologized to whoever was on the other end of the line before she hung up.

"Boss," she said. That was all, but it was enough. Jazz set the box down on the corner of her desk.

"I need these scanned," she said. "Evidence rules. I'm going to need some copies to take with me, too."

Pansy nodded and reached in her desk drawer for latex gloves. "Did Manny already do the printing?"

"Believe me, Manny would have done everything it was possible to do to these photos, short of burning them and sorting through the ashes." She cleared her throat. Something felt tight in there. "Pansy."

"Boss?"

"It's important."

Pansy nodded solemnly. "I can tell that."

"Soon as you have them done - "

"I'll let you know," she said. "You want me to talk to Lucia?"

"No, I'll do it." Because Lucia had contacts at the federal databases, who might or might not, depending on the political climate, be willing to run the faces against their records. But for now, Jazz was burning to do it the old-fashioned way: pounding pavement. "Soon as you can, all right?"

"Doing it right now," Pansy said, and fired up the scanner. Jazz didn't wait. She was already on her way back to the office to gear up.

When the knock came on the door, she figured it was Pansy, returning the pictures, but instead it was James Borden bearing gifts.

To be exact, a fruit basket in his right hand that would have looked perfectly at home on Carmen Miranda's head, and in his right hand, a red envelope.

She blinked at the fruit basket, holstered the gun that she had just loaded and transferred her stare to his face.

Damn, he's pretty, some traitor part of her brain told her. She ignored it. She wasn't interested in pretty. She was interested in those photos telling her that Ben McCarthy had been on the other side of town when people were being murdered with his gun.

Borden raised the fruit basket and his eyebrows at the same time. "I come bearing...um, looks like bananas, papayas, some pears..."

"You come bearing trouble," she said, and crossed to take the basket from his hand. It was heavy. She deposited it on the side table with a frown. "What if I don't like fruit?"

"It's good for you," he said. "Chocolate seemed a little cliched. But hey, there's some pear honey in there, too. And pear butter. Are you going to shoot me?"

"Thinking about it," she said shortly. "I'm on my way out."

The humor drained out of his face. "Jazz, wait. Look, I'm sorry, but I want - need - to talk to you."

"Bad timing," she said grimly, and adjusted the shoulder rig under her loose jacket. "Some other day, maybe, but this one's just turned a little more interesting than normal, so if you don't mind - thanks for the fruit, now get the hell out."

"I can't. I need to - "

She rounded on him and took a step into his space, spearing him with a glare. "Look, I don't care what you need, okay? You come here with your - your fruit basket and your stupid red envelope and just expect me to be available? Well, it's not that easy. I'm an Actor, after all. Free will. Whatever."

"You're not the only one," he said, and it occurred to her that she'd never heard anybody say, one way or another, what exactly James Borden's role was in this little opera. Spear-carrier? Chorus? Actor? Lead?

Assuming she bought any of their bullshit, which she so very definitely didn't. She'd gone to the cops and put in her statement about Blankenship's murder. Lucia had put together an absolutely amazing cover story for why she'd been there on that street at that particular moment, and while detectives like Ken Stewart hadn't cared for it, they hadn't been able to poke holes in it, either.

And Wendy Blankenship's killer was in jail, awaiting trial. That was something.

Sometimes, at weak moments, she wondered how the red envelope had managed to put her there on that street at the right time, if Laskins hadn't been on the up-and-up with her. But she didn't wonder too long or worry too much.

Too busy. If everything she did mattered, then she was damn well going to make every moment count.

"Right. I'm going...and, you're not leaving," she said, as Borden walked over to her couch and sat down, all arms and legs and angles. "Why aren't you leaving?"

"I told you, I'm not going without talking to you." He'd done something new to his hair, she decided. She wasn't sure she liked it, but then, she hadn't liked his last hairstyle, either. At least he looked comfortable today, not tied up in the suit and strangled in a tie. Blue jeans and that long-cut leather jacket she remembered from before. She'd never noticed before, but he had on some academic ring or other, something large, round and gold. Harvard or Princeton or something equally Ivy League, probably. He didn't seem the type to have taken his J.D. at Podunk University.

"Okay, it's possible that I'm using words that are too short for a smart guy like you to understand, but - "

"We have something we need you to do."

"We? I just see one of you standing - "

"The Cross Society."

"Stop interrupting me!"

"Stop acting like an asshole."

"Hey!"

He uncoiled from the couch. It was probably unconscious, the way he tried to use his superior height and reach to intimidate her, but she didn't like it. She stepped right into his space, staring into those dark eyes.

"Call me an asshole again," she invited softly. "Go on."

"I said you were acting like one, not - "

"I know what you said."

Silence. She watched him breathe. Some part of her was acutely aware of him, of the warmth radiating off him, of the smell of his cologne and the matte-velvet slide of his skin. The quick throb of the pulse in his neck.

"I have work to do," she said, and reached around him for her jacket.

He grabbed her wrist.

She pivoted, came in behind him and used her leverage to bend his arm up behind his back. Slammed him against the wall with such force that the pictures rattled. That was all right, they were Lucia's choice anyway. Not like Jazz Callender had a lot of Kodak moments in her life.

She felt his shoulder muscles jumping, trying to resist, but she had the pressure point and he was off balance, and she grabbed the back of his neck and held him still.

"Seriously," she said, "don't think that just because you're a big guy you can take me. Maybe you can, if you get lucky and I get stupid, but any normal day, Counselor, I'm going to whip your ass, all right? So don't get tough with me. And don't even try to tell me what to do."

He moved his head fractionally, trying to get a look at her. She pressed harder. Her fingers curled into the soft hair at the nape of his neck, and God, it felt good.

"You can beat the crap out of me, and it doesn't change anything," he said. His voice was stressed but even. "And if you break it, you buy it. Assault on a lawyer - that's pretty dumb."

"Not like I've got a ton of assets you could want," she replied, and pressed a little harder before letting go and stepping back. Borden caught himself with both hands against the wall, pushed off and spun to face her.

"Foreplay with you must be murder," he said. "Fine. Do what you want, Jazz, but just read it. Please. Personal favor to me."

"You should have given it to Lucia. She might not have shoved you into a wall."

She got an adrenaline-pumped smile in response to that. He was breathing fast, watching her, and she wondered - not for the first time - if buttoned-up, nicely dressed Counselor Borden might not have some kink under there.

"No," he agreed, "she'd have thanked me and taken it and shown me the door, but that wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. Lucia's bulletproof glass. You're - "

"I'm what?"

"You listen. I might have to let you thump me a few times, but you listen while you're doing it." He took in another deep breath, let it out with deliberate slowness, and said, "I wouldn't come here if it wasn't important, you know that. There's a life at stake."

"From what your buddies tried to tell me, there are always lives at stake. Hell, there are lives at stake when I pick up milk at the store. Isn't that what it means to be a Lead?" She couldn't say the word without the coating of sarcasm, it just wasn't possible.

Borden shrugged. "Yeah, that's true. But this isn't about you. Not this time. This guy's got a wife and kids, and I'd rather not see this - happen."

"So this is you. Begging me for a favor."

She saw a tensed jaw muscle flutter. "Not exactly."

"Well, this is me, walking away."

"Fine. I'm still not begging. I'm asking, Jazz."

She stared at him for a long few seconds, and then reached out and grabbed the envelope from his hand. She weighed it for a second, then yanked it open with unnecessary force. Wasn't like it was resisting arrest, after all.

Inside were the details on the daily routine of a middle-aged man named Lowell Santoro, film producer. Pictures of a tired-looking guy with male-pattern baldness chatting on a cell phone. The letter - on official Gabriel, Pike & Laskins stationery, signed by Milo himself - contained instructions to shadow Santoro for three days, starting tomorrow. Audio and video surveillance.

She focused on the address provided as her starting point.

"You're kidding me," she said, and looked over the top of the letter at Borden. "Los Angeles? You want me to fly to L.A. to shadow this guy? No way."

"It's important."

"Yeah, so you've said, and no, I'm not going. I've got things to do. I've seen the TV shows. They have private detectives in L.A."

"We want you," Borden said, which was nice but stupid. Not cost-effective.

"Sorry," Jazz said, and slid everything back into the envelope. "The answer's still no." She tried to give it back. Borden showed absolutely zero willingness to take it from her. She rattled it impatiently.

He just looked at her.

"I'm serious," she said. "I've got things to do. I'm not going to L.A. Not now. Next week, maybe."

"It has to be now. Today."

"It's not going to happen." She thought about the photos, sitting on the desk. The tantalizing thought of a lead, an actual honest-to-God lead after all this time. A chance to throw proof on McCarthy's lawyer's desk and demand action. A chance to sit in the courtroom and see Stewart's face as Ben McCarthy became a free man.

A chance to see Ben smile again.

Borden must have seen it in her eyes. "You're not going to do it."

"No," she said, and instead of coming out cold, the way she'd intended, it sounded regretful. "No, I'm not."

"You're going to let a man die."

She didn't have an answer to that, except to say, "If what you guys said in that car was right, there are other people out there. Other people who can stop it. It doesn't have to be me."

"You know what, Jazz? Sometimes, it does." He didn't sound angry, just sad. Sad, and a little lost. "Sometimes there just isn't anybody else to step up and do what has to be done. You should know that."

She didn't say anything at all to that. Borden shook his head.

"Fine," he said. "I'll get you copies of the autopsy photos. Maybe you can put them in your scrapbook."

"That's not fair."

"Yeah? You know what? None of this is fair!" He shouted it at her, and for a second she saw something flare, something hot and wild and desperate, and it jumped across to her like ignition through a wire. "This is my friend! Do you understand me? My friend! So yeah, you want me to beg? I'm begging! Please, Jazz. Please help me save his life!"

She swallowed and came a step closer to him. His pulse was beating fast along the matte-velvet skin of his throat, and his lips were parted. He looked on the edge of doing something...dangerous.

"If you don't go," he said softly, "I will."

"What does your boss say about that?"

"That I won't come back."

"But I will."

He nodded slightly.

"So it's not really just your friend I'd be saving," she said. "Right?"

No answer. He didn't move, didn't speak.

"That's a hell of a blackmail, Counselor. And it only works if I believe even a fraction of the bullshit the Cross Society is peddling."

"Then don't believe it," he said. "Go on with your important case. I can't stop you."

He started for the door, then came back and grabbed his fruit basket.

She watched in disbelief as he stalked out the door, handed the basket to Pansy, whose lips parted in a silent O of amazement, and kept going, heading for the elevators.

Jazz caught up to him at the reception desk. "Hey! Counselor!"

He stiff-armed through the glass doors and into the elevator lobby, where he hit the button twice before stopping. He didn't look at her.

"Borden," she said, and then, half-desperately, "James."

That got his attention. He glanced over at her, then away.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't like being - manhandled. You might have noticed that the first time we met. And I really don't like being manipulated."

"Yeah," he admitted. "Sorry. I'm not trying to manipulate you. I just - I just don't know where else to go."

Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, she knew that. "I'm keyed up," she said. "I've got some new information about..." For some reason, she didn't want to explain it to him. "About a case. Asking me to take three days away from it's a pretty high price to pay."

He nodded, eyes on the closed elevator doors and the lit call button. "Maybe so," he replied, "and I can't ask you what's more important. I can only tell you that my friend is important to me, and I'm willing to go if you don't. So tell me now, because buying a last-minute plane ticket is murder."

Maybe I could send Lucia...No, she couldn't pull Lucia out, not now; Lucia had taken weeks settling her cover, and she was getting close to breaking the case. Despite the jokes earlier, Lucia wasn't going to disengage, and she damn sure wasn't going to pull out of undercover work to go work for the Cross Society.

Jazz took a deep breath and held it. The pictures would keep. They'd kept all this time, three days wouldn't kill her. It would give her time to pull the details out of Manny and verify the provenance.

"Fine," she said. "Fine, I'll go. Tell Laskins I'm cooperating."

"That would be a pretty free interpretation of events," he said, and looked at her with a trace of a smile.

"You're a lawyer. Prevaricate."

"Sorry I gave away your fruit basket."

"Please tell me that was Laskins's choice of a gift."

His smile was purely giddy. "Fruit baskets don't turn you on? Come on, Jazz. Bananas, pear honey - it's practical and seductive."

"Are you hungry?"

"What?"

She said it slower. "Are...you...hungry?"

"Why?"

"Because I want to talk to you about your friend. If I'm going to fly off to L.A. to protect his ass, at the very least I should know a little something about him."

Borden looked more stunned by that than by her agreement to take the case. "Um...okay. Where do you want to - "

"Wait downstairs," she said. "I'll be there in a minute."

The elevator arrived with a musical ding. She watched him get in and press the button for the first floor. Just before the doors closed, she said, "By the way? If you want to send a woman a present, chocolate's seductive. Bananas are just crude."

The closing doors cut him off before he could come up with any kind of a response.

Jazz stopped by Pansy's desk on the way back to her office. Pansy was turning the fruit basket this way and that, trying to catalog contents without unwrapping the shiny paper.

Jazz picked it up and carried it into her office.

"Pear honey," Pansy called after her. "He must really like you. That's kinda kinky. Think of all the applications..."

She slammed the door, gathered up the photos into a briefcase, added her collapsible truncheon, PDA, a few more files she needed to catch up on, and grabbed the travel bag she always kept ready in the closet, with changes of clothing and toiletries. She shouldered it, opened the door again and saw Pansy jump.

"I'm going to L.A.," she said, and Pansy's eyes went narrow with surprise.

"It's not on your schedule - "

"Add it. Three days in L.A."

"With...anyone?"

"Please. It's a fruit basket."

"Is it a case? Because I should open up a file if - "

The red envelope was in Jazz's briefcase. She took it out, tossed it to Pansy, and said, "Make two copies, and give one to Lucia. In case."

"In case what?" Pansy asked, frowning.

"In case I don't come back."

Pansy gave her a long, measuring stare. "You have to come back. You know that, right? I don't give you permission not to come back."

Jazz smiled. "I have to sign bonus checks," she said.

"Damn straight."

It wasn't romantic, really, as dinners went. Maybe midway between the Formica bustle of Arthur Bryant's and some French restaurant with low lights and unpronounceable food - the restaurant was brightly lit, Italian, and full of the smells of garlic and parmesan and red sauce. Instead of soothing violins discreetly whispering through concealed speakers, this place featured waiters who sang opera. Loudly. Jazz supposed they were lucky the waiters actually could sing.

She politely clapped after the second aria from the guy topping off her tea and gave him a not-too-subtle bug-off sign, which he took with good grace. Across from her, James Borden was digging into a plate of chicken parmesan, with bread sticks. She stuck to spaghetti.

"Here," he said, as she was questing for a meatball with her fork. He slid an envelope across the table toward her. Not red, this time. White, but still the size and shape of a card. She raised her eyebrows and opened it up.

It really was a card. Flowers on the front, and inside, a handwritten note that said, simply, Thank you.

With a plane ticket for one to Los Angeles, leaving in - she checked her watch - four hours.

"Should give you enough time to eat, get there, check in and relax a little," he said, watching her.

"You bought the ticket this morning. Before you actually talked to me."

He substituted a mouthful of chicken parmesan for an answer.

"Am I actually that easy?"

"No," he mumbled. "I was willing to take the risk."

She studied him, twirling spaghetti on her fork, and said, "Tell me about your friend."

He did, after swallowing. Lowell Santoro. College roommate. One of those running buddies that Jazz had always wanted and somehow never really had, apart from McCarthy - someone to laugh with, raise hell with, experience life with. "He was older than I was," Borden said. "It didn't matter, we both acted like twelve-year-olds. He never met a girl he didn't try to talk into bed, but he never had one hate him afterward, either. Lowell's always been - honest. I know that sounds strange, but it's true. He's just got nothing but truth in him."

"Uh-huh," she said doubtfully, and took a sip of crisp white wine. It had a nice cool undertone to it, the perfect counterpoint to the salt of the spaghetti sauce. "So he's Don Juan and Saint Francis, all rolled up into one. And he was, what? A law student?"

"He changed after the first year, took film courses. That's how he got into producing. It was a good thing. He wasn't going to be a great lawyer. Too honest."

"Unlike you."

"Unlike me," he agreed. "He met Susan - his wife - his last year in college. They got married, moved out to L.A. He's a good guy, Jazz. What's going to happen to him - he doesn't deserve it."

"What is going to happen to him?" Because that wasn't in the letter. Just instructions on how to conduct surveillance. No warnings. She supposed the Cross Society thought it would predispose her toward what to watch out for.

"It's not clear," Borden said. Or prevaricated. "Something fatal. And something painful."

"Car accident? Building collapse? Bullet?"

"It's a human agency, that's all that I know."

"I hate it when you talk like - "

"Like a member of the Society? Jazz. I am one."

She knew that. She just didn't like to think about it. Conversation collapsed into silence as they ate, and the waiter came around to deliver a selection from The Marriage of Figaro, and it was dessert by the time Jazz said, "About the fruit basket?"

He looked up from his tiramisu, took a sip of wine and raised his eyebrows.

"Was it Laskins's idea?"

"Mine," he said.

"You're hopeless."

Borden had the good sense to look embarrassed as he shrugged. It might have been the wine, or the marinara sauce, but she felt a surge of warmth toward him, entirely unconnected to the undeniable surge of - what the hell had that been? Lust?  -  she'd felt in her office, when she'd had him up against the wall. That was unsettling. She preferred lust. Lust was simple - it had a beginning, middle and end to it. You could shut lust up by giving it what it wanted.

This feeling...it had more of a feeling of sticking around.

He was watching her. She realized she'd been staring back, felt a rush of blood heat up her face and turned back to the cheesecake she was not really eating.

"How's Lucia?" he asked. Which was completely the wrong thing to ask at that moment.

"Don't you know? I mean, don't you guys know everything?" She heard the edge in her voice.

"Yeah, sorry, I don't actually sit around and monitor your lives on a daily basis."

"Who does?"

He changed the subject. "I take it that she's okay."

"She's fine. Better than fine, actually. She's happy as a clam. That girl really likes undercover work. It's a little scary, how good she is at it, for somebody who wears a lot of - you know - designer clothes."

"What's she doing now?" he asked around a mouthful of brandy-soaked ladyfingers.

"Right now? Probably emptying trash from the sixth-floor restrooms." Jazz glanced at her watch. "Actually, I take it back. She's on her break, sitting in the lunchroom, watching Spanish-language soap operas."

"You're kidding."

"I told you. She likes undercover work. You're not going to do anything stupid like follow me to L.A., are you?" she asked, without any transition, and watched him scramble to keep up with the conversational left turn.

"Do you need me to?" he asked. Not, she noticed, Do you want me to.

"No," she said. "I don't need you there. And it would probably be easier if you stayed out of my hair. Having somebody around with a personal stake in things is distracting."

"It's just that he's - like family." Borden shrugged, but it didn't look casual. "I don't have a lot of that."

"Family? Hell, sometimes I have too much. Want a sister?"

She'd said something wrong. She saw the flinch. Unless he already knew Molly.

"I had one," he finally said, and met her eyes.

She knew that look, had seen it on the faces of too many families. Lost. Baffled. Wounded. She hadn't just made a mistake, she'd opened a vein. "What happened?"

"The usual. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time." His smile cut like glass. "Not everybody's a Lead. She never even got to be an Actor."

Not a good time to express her skepticism on the whole theory. "Any other family?"

"My mother lives in Canada. Father - " He shrugged again. "I don't really know. So, Lowell means a lot to me. He was there when I needed him."

She studied him. "Then I'll do everything I can."

He nodded, sipped wine and fiddled with his fork. "Want me to drive you to the airport?"

"Sure." She shrugged and then frowned. "You don't have a car."

"Rental. I need to take it back to the airport and catch the red-eye back to New York."

"So you weren't planning to stay."

"No, I was planning to go, but which way I was flying depended on you."

There was something underneath that, something like a cliff she could easily fall from, and she backed up fast. "Okay, then. If you could give me a ride, that would be great."

Borden called for the check. They argued over who was going to pay it, but in the end, she let him put it on the GPL tab. They exited into a rush of late commuters and a cool whisper of wind, and walked together like a couple along the sidewalk back toward the office. Borden silently took her shoulder bag; she just as silently let him. Her gun wasn't in it, anyway.

"Is somebody going to start taking potshots at me again?" she asked him. He missed a step, stumbled and lengthened his stride as if trying to leave that awkwardness behind him.

"I doubt it," he said. "Generally, once Leads are inside the Society, it's not in the best interest of the opposition to try to get rid of them unless they really present a problem. Their best chance of success is before you're fully informed, before there are others watching your back. Or to get to you first and put you on their side."

"Huh," she said. "So that's why they tried to kill us in the parking garage. Because we hadn't actually joined up yet, but we knew enough not to join them."

"Yes. It was their last opportunity to stop you without directly coming after the Cross Society."

"This thing - this L.A. thing - this isn't just to get me out of the way, right? Because something's going down here?"

He jammed his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders, looking lost in thought. "Interesting thought," he said, "but I don't think so. I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible, but..."

"You don't know?"

"Do I seem like the secret master of the world to you? No, I'm not sure. But I don't think they'd do that." Still, he was frowning, concentrating on his feet. She wished she hadn't brought it up. "I suppose we'd better get you to the airport."

"Yeah," she agreed softly.

They walked in silence for another few hundred feet, and then Borden unlocked a dark red rental car and handed her inside - literally, offered a hand, as if she was a lady in big skirts getting into a carriage. She was taken aback by that, but she had to admit, the warm touch of his fingers on hers was nice. And he hadn't done it to be showy; it was, she sensed, just something he did. She remembered him doing it for Lucia, at the limo door...but not her. She supposed her body posture at the time had been in the language of touch me and die.

The car felt small and intimate with the two of them inside of it. Borden drove competently, without any hesitation, although she knew he couldn't possibly know his way around that well. Could he? She concentrated on traffic and taillights, on road noise and the peripheral glow of his face in the wash of headlights. When she looked over, she was struck by how...good he looked. A little rough around the edges, a little tired, a little worried. Human.

"Hey," she said. He looked over at her, then back at the road. "I'm going to make sure nothing happens to him. You know that, right?"

"Right," he agreed. "Make sure nothing happens to you, either, would you? As a favor to me?"

She hadn't really noticed, but clouds had convened overhead while they were in the restaurant, and now big, fat raindrops began to pelt the windshield - a few at first, and then a silver shower. Borden activated the wipers. They were already on the freeway. Ten minutes, she thought to herself. Ten minutes and I'm at the airport, ready to get on a plane. This is not how I wanted today to end.

She drummed her fingers on the armrest nervously, watching the rain-smeared road, and was surprised when his right hand suddenly came down on her agitated left one, stopping her from tapping out a rhythm. He didn't say anything. His long, tapering fingers wrapped slowly around hers, exploring. More sensual than anything she'd felt in a long time. This wasn't reassurance, wasn't a quick impersonal touch of the hand...this was something else.

She looked down, watching as he turned her hand over, palm up, and began to lightly trace fingernails down the center of it. She felt light-headed. Tense. Oddly out of breath.

"Come back safe," he said softly. "That's not a request, all right?"

"All right," she agreed. Her pulse was hammering, and that was stupid, stupid. It was just skin, just a touch, not even a touch anywhere she could call intimate. But she could barely keep her voice level.

Borden reclaimed his right hand for the exit to the airport. She clenched hers into a fist, willing herself to stop feeling so...so...

She had no words for how she felt at the moment, except frustrated.

Borden pulled up at the curb, set his hazard lights and got out to grab her bag from the backseat. She was already out of the car by the time he'd managed it.

As she shouldered the strap, he stepped in closer and looked down at her. She looked up.

"See you," she said.

"Yeah."

She thought, for a blinding instant, that he was going to kiss her - the thought was right there, in his eyes, naked - and then something happened, something out of the corner of her eye, and she snapped around to watch...but it was just a car squealing up, a frantic father yelling at kids, people running late.

Normal life.

She turned back to Borden, but the thought was gone. He was behind a polite screen again.

"I should go," she said, and nodded toward the door. He inclined his head, too. "Right. See you. Um...thanks for the ride."

He didn't say a word. When she looked back, he was still standing there, hands in his pockets, looking after her.

After negotiating security again, Jazz got on the phone to Lucia in the waiting area, exchanging information in short, vivid bursts.

"You're sure you want to do this?" Lucia asked as Jazz watched a family of five meander its way into the gate area. Mom, dad, three kids who should have been poster children for their various age groups. Toddler in a stroller, burbling happily. Six-year-old with a neon-pink Barbie backpack, from which Barbie herself peered, battered and well loved. A disaffected preteen who sat with his face buried in his Game Boy screen, kicking the legs of his chair. "Jazz?"

"Remind me never to get married," she said.

"What brought that on?"

"Kids."

"Ah. I think you'd surprise yourself."

"Me? Hardly. Not the motherly type, me."

"Depends on your definition of motherly." Lucia sounded amused. "I think of you as a mother wolf, defending her cubs to the death."

"Yeah, well, I think of myself more as the single wolf, defending myself. Sorry. What were you saying?"

"I was saying this is a nice chat we're having, but I've got work to do. So, you needed something...?"

Jazz hesitated, kicking a foot out rhythmically, watching the shadow move on the floor. "Lucia. Would you do me a big favor?"

"Big?"

"Major."

"Of course."

She sucked in a deep breath, let it out, and said, "Pansy scanned some photos for me. Would you put them out on the wires, see if anybody can match the images for me? Not the last one. I know who that is."

"Oh, yeah? Who?" Lucia sounded interested, not invested.

"Ben McCarthy."

Silence. Jazz listened to the distant, constant hiss of dead air, and finally said, "You still there?"

"Yeah. What kind of pictures?"

"Potentially exculpatory pictures."

"Ah." Nothing in her partner's voice now, which was something in itself. "After I put them on the wire - "

"No, you don't need to do anything else," Jazz hastened to say. "I'll take care of it."

"I could ask around."

Jazz stared hard at her shoe. "I couldn't - that's a lot of favor."

"If I can wrap up this case today, I have free time tomorrow," Lucia pointed out. "And you're not coming back for what, three days?"

"Yeah."

"You'll go nuts."

"Probably," Jazz said, smiling. "But seriously, only if you have time, right? This isn't work. This is - personal."

"I know," Lucia said.

"Be careful."

"You're the one flying off to L.A. without backup."

Good point. Jazz looked around. Nobody seemed to be watching. They'd been free of surveillance for months now, after that initial bout of scariness. "I'm good," she said. "No bullets whizzing as of yet."

"Speaking of whizzing, I'd better get back to cleaning toilets."

"Yeah, right. Listen, I'll call you from L.A., all right? To check in."

Lucia agreed. Jazz folded the phone just as the flight attendant made the first boarding call.