Devil's Due (Red Letter Days #2)

Devil's Due (Red Letter Days #2) Page 3

Over breakfast at the restaurant in the Raphael Hotel, which was a good deal fancier than his suit jacket warranted, McCarthy wolfed down a Hangover Omelet stuffed with chili, chorizo and potatoes; Lucia stuck to a large fruit cup and dry toast. She enjoyed watching him eat. He seemed enchanted with everything he tasted, but then, she supposed nearly two years of prison chow would do that. She suspected he was always a bit of a sensualist. Something about his eyes, his smile, the clever exact movements of his hands...

She pulled herself back from the dizzy edge of that thought, and said, "Do you have any idea who could have used your gun to commit the murders?" Because the circumstantial evidence had been convincing. McCarthy's gun had been matched to the bullets in the bodies. There had been footprint evidence at the scene, too, and an eyewitness who'd seen McCarthy with the victims half an hour before their murders, although Lucia doubted the authenticity of that. Eyewitnesses were often wrong.

"Oh, I know who did it," McCarthy mumbled around a mouthful of eggs and cheese. "Stewart."

"He didn't."

"Crazy enough."

"Jazz checked it out. Stewart had an alibi."

"So did I. Funny how that is."

"Stewart was booking a carjacker downtown at the time of the killings, in front of twenty other cops."

McCarthy studied her with those intense blue eyes as he chewed and swallowed, wiped salsa from his lips, and for a second she thought he was going to argue the point. Instead he said, "So what's your story?"

"Excuse me?"

"Fifteen hours of talking, and I don't think you said boo about yourself. Name, rank and serial number, but you didn't exactly meet me halfway. So tell me how you got mixed up in all this - and why the hell you care about a guy like me."

Lucia was, for an instant, thrown. She disliked talking about herself, especially when faced with someone like McCarthy, who was certainly a damn good investigator. She chose her words carefully. "Did Jazz tell you how we came to be partners?"

"Yeah. A letter to each of you, offering to put up the money to open a detective agency. Some kind of nonprofit agency. I get why Jazz took the deal. Why did you?"

"I didn't," she said, and speared a slice of electric-green honeydew. "I turned it down." She enjoyed the look on his face as he assimilated that. "I was leaving when Jazz got shot in a drive-by attack - you know about that?"

He nodded shortly, face set.

"I had my doubts about her as a partner," Lucia continued. "But I don't like people shooting at me, and I don't like people shooting my friends. Even new ones. So I decided that it might be a good idea to stick around. One thing led to another, cases came up, we solved them. And here we are."

She nibbled the fruit. He watched her, concentrating on her mouth, and she felt a surge of self-consciousness that surprised her. Something about McCarthy threw her off stride. He made her hyperaware of how her clothes fit, of the tiny imperfections in the way the sleeves hugged her arms, the way the lapels didn't quite lay straight.

The way her skin shivered into gooseflesh when he stared at her.

McCarthy tilted his head. "Jazz is a walking disaster, but somehow, she does okay. She's also a pretty good judge of character. Me notwithstanding." He continued to watch as Lucia chewed and swallowed. "I know what you mean about sticking around her, though. I wasn't going to be her partner - I was just saddled with her for a week. But she grows on you. You want to protect her from herself. Doesn't generally work, though. She ends up saving your ass more than you save hers, and before too long you're joined at the hip. And then you realize that's not a bad thing."

"Regarding ass-saving, I believe the score's just about even between us now," Lucia replied.

"That tells me something about you."

"What?"

He surprised her with a wicked grin. "You're damn good at what you do. Whatever it is."

"Obviously, I'm a private investigator."

"And I'm your maiden aunt Sally," he snorted. "I've known a lot of P.I.s over the years, and none of them ever came looking or sounding like you. You avoided the question. What's your story?"

"I'm avoiding the question because I don't want to answer it."

"Because...?"

"Because it's none of your business, Mr. McCarthy," she said evenly, and took another bite. Pineapple, fresh and sweet and pulpy. She savored the juice on her tongue and the look of surprise on his face. "I helped Jazz get you out of prison, that's all. I don't owe you any information, any conversation, or anything else."

"Yeah? So what's this?"

"I said I don't owe it. I can still give it of my own free will."

He'd demolished the omelet, and now he set his fork on the plate with a clink and took a drag of coffee from the heavy white cup. Around them, the well-groomed breakfast crowd in their expensive suits and trendy casual wear chatted and smiled. We're both out of place here, Lucia thought, even though she seemed to fit seamlessly into the crowd. There was something different about McCarthy that spoke to the wildness at her core. It wasn't his prison-roughened image.

McCarthy smiled at her. "Okay, so you don't owe me. I was hoping you liked me enough to want to answer, anyway."

"I don't like anybody that well."

"Harsh."

"Pragmatic," she countered. "I hardly know you, except that you might not be guilty of murder, but you're surely guilty of other things. Add that to the fact that your friends and relatives were hardly crowding the gallery today - "

His face shut down even further, hiding emotion. Lids drifted lower to hood his expressive eyes. "Let's leave them out of it," he said. "I was a cop, and my buddies were all cops. Cops stay away, times like these, until they feel better about the facts. Stewart's not the only one who still, deep down, thinks I pulled the trigger on those people." McCarthy stared at his coffee and took another deep swallow. "My brother would have been here, but he's on a tuna boat this season. My parents - " He shook his head.

She took pity on him. "I doubt they could have made the trip," she said. "Your mother is ill, isn't she?"

"Old," he said. "Your folks still alive?"

She smiled noncommittally. "So I'll forgive you the low turnout among your admirers. Still, it does say something, doesn't it? To have more reporters than supporters?"

She got a thin slice of a smile. "Careful when you cut me like that. You'll have to buy me a new shirt. I'll bleed all over this one."

"I'm tempted to buy you a new one whether you bleed all over it or not."

"That's kindhearted of you."

"Call it fashion charity."

He was studying her again, with lazy interest. "I just can't picture you and Jazz as friends."

"Why?"

"She's just - one of the guys, you know? Not so..." He gestured vaguely, letting her finish the sentence with whatever adjective seemed best. Wise of him. "I was surprised how good she looked, last time I saw her. Your influence, or the counselor's?"

He knew about Borden, then. Yes, of course he did. Lucia shrugged. "Maybe both."

"She's not drinking so much."

"No."

"Not getting into fights."

"Well, we're working on that part."

"Good luck with that." He grinned, and caught the attention of a passing waiter to get a refill on his coffee. He drank it black as the devil's heart. "So, if you're not going to tell me anything, I'll just have to tell you three things about yourself, Miss Garza."

"Is this popular at parties?"

"A riot on cell block six."

"Then please, enlighten me."

"One, you manipulate people. Sometimes for their own good, but always to your advantage." He sopped a piece of toast in a remaining bit of peach jam and ate it, watching her reaction. She kept her face bland, but felt the barb sink unpleasantly deep. "Two, you use your looks as deception. You look warm and girlie and elegant, but I'll bet you can hand most guys their asses in a fight."

He was right again, of course. She didn't allow herself to blink. "And three?"

"How am I doing so far?"

"We'll see. And three?"

He shrugged. "You're lonely."

She laughed out loud. "Excuse me?"

"You heard."

"Hardly!"

"I didn't say you don't get attention. Every guy in here has checked you out at least once, and half the women, too. I said you were lonely. A woman as beautiful as you is nothing but lonely. Even when you're with somebody, you're wondering if they're into you or the glossy package, and sweetheart, just from the fifteen - no, make that sixteen - hours that we've been talking, I can tell you that you're high on the paranoid scale, anyway. So the point is, you don't let anybody close these days."

It hit hard, under the armor, right in a soft place she didn't know she had. Years of dealing with a string of men who'd professed love and delivered obsession. Years of mistrusting and holding back and staying cool.

For a second, she hated those blue-diamond eyes and their ability to see everything.

"You're wrong. I'm not lonely. Far from it."

He gave her a slow smile. "That tells me something else about you. You think you're a good liar. And hey, for most people, you are."

"Do you make a habit of insulting people who do you good turns?"

"Usually they want something. Speaking of that, what is it you want?"

Once again, he caught her off guard. "Me? I'm only here out of courtesy."

"Courtesy?"

"It has something to do with manners. Perhaps you've heard of those."

"Sorry, not exactly popular where I've been." She'd struck a nerve; she could see it in the subtle reactions of his face. "You just came in Jazz's place, is that it? Second string?"

Lucia took the insult without reaction. "I want her to be safe, yes."

"What about you? Aren't you in just as much danger, if the two of you are supposed to be partners?"

It was an excellent question, and one to which she didn't have an answer. They were working for the Cross Society, but she had only the vaguest hints as to who those people were and how they operated; for all she knew, the danger that Jazz had ran into head-on had come from someone inside the Cross organization.

She'd seen cutthroat competition in nonprofit groups, but if true, that might be a new low.

In any case, whether it was the Cross Society or - as their mysterious benefactors insisted - the rival Eidolon Corporation, they hadn't sent soldiers after Lucia specifically; she'd only been in the vicinity. Jazz was the target. Then again, the enemy didn't seem prone to doing gentlemanly things like firing warning shots.

Lucia wondered if McCarthy had deduced why she'd taken a table in a protected corner that had no direct view from the windows.

She'd also stayed vigilant for any hint of trouble. The only problem she'd identified so far was an overdose of cholesterol that was surely going to spell trouble for McCarthy's arteries in the future.

She let him see her confidence, embodied in a slow smile. "I think I'm safe enough," she said. "Why? Are you volunteering as a bodyguard?"

"Well," McCarthy said, "I do need a job. Prospects coming out of the big house aren't good, unless you're into loading trucks, making French fries or beating up people for a living." It was said lightly, but she heard the ring of truth. There was a certain grimness in his eyes, the set of his mouth, as he finished his coffee in a long sip. "Okay, the truth. I've got a hundred dollars in my pocket right now, my apartment's long gone and the KCPD wouldn't have me back even as a janitor. So yeah, I wouldn't kick a little work to the curb. Bodyguard, investigator, whatever. If you need it."

"Your job prospects aren't any worse than for anyone else walking out of jail."

"Since my job used to be a police officer, yeah, I think they kind of are. Look, I never deserved to be there in the first place. I lost two years of my life to this crap." He'd gone intense again, head inclined toward her, voice urgent. "I don't even know where I'm going after breakfast. You know how that feels?"

She did, but it didn't seem the time to tell him so. "You begin your life again. That's what people do, Mr. McCarthy. Start over. Reinvent themselves. Become someone new and, hopefully, better."

"Nothing wrong with who I am right now."

"Isn't there?" She raised her eyebrows slowly. "Are you sure?"

She accepted the leather folio containing the check from the waiter. McCarthy gestured for her to hand it over. "I already said I was paying," she said. "Remember?"

"That was before you pissed me off. Now I'm paying."

"Don't be ridiculous," she retorted, and pulled her wallet from her black leather purse. It was specially reinforced to hold her containers of Mace, clips for her gun, a six-inch collapsible truncheon, handcuffs, and - sometimes, but not today - a Taser. "You'll have a hard enough time without worrying about picking up the check for me."

"Then I'll owe you. And pay you back."

"Without a doubt. This isn't a date. And I'm not some prison groupie." Ouch. She really hadn't meant it to be so harsh.

He was staring at her, hands on the clean white tablecloth. Just...watching. As if he knew that last part had been, in some small measure, a lie. She had found him attractive. And yes, this had been a date, hadn't it? Unorthodox as that might be...

She handed the folio to the waiter, who whisked it off so quickly his apron fluttered. Probably afraid that Ben McCarthy, who was looking more than a little feral in his cheap coat and ragged haircut, might come after him and wrestle him to the ground for it.

As she watched the waiter go, she said, "Allow me to make some insightful comments about you, Mr. McCarthy - "

"Just Ben," he interrupted. "This mister-miss crap is getting old."

"Fine. Ben. You are tough, clever, and you're probably the single best liar I've ever met in all of my life. And I've met almost as many as you have."

Her turn to score a hit; she saw him blink, saw the prison-hard Ben McCarthy waver for a second to reveal someone far less armored.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Because Jazz never believed you were guilty of anything," she said, "and you were a dirty cop. She's incredibly sharp, and you had her completely snowed for years. Do you have any idea how much that hurt her, by the way?"

He stared at Lucia for so long that she felt uncomfortable. Whatever was going on in his head, none of it was showing in his face.

"Yeah," he finally said. "I know. And you're right. I'm a son of a bitch."

"Have you changed? Has prison reformed you?"

He gave her a small, cynical smile. "Doesn't it reform everybody?"

Outside, the day was cool and clear, the sky a pale, sun-bleached blue. Lucia took in a deep breath to catch the scent of damp earth and green growing things. She missed that, living in the city. Hadn't been out to hike and climb for too long now, other than on gritty training ranges. She had the credentials to visit Quantico if she wanted to do so; the woods there would help her get her center again, and she could visit the gun range for an excuse... and God knew, the marines would be more than happy to drive her to the edge of endurance in heavy, sweaty field exercises.

The valet arrived in her silver Lexus, parked and stepped out as she came around to the driver's side. She was watching McCarthy over the top of the car, but something caught her eye, something...

Something about the valet. Not right. Something...

McCarthy was talking to her. It was noise. Her world had narrowed to the out-of-focus blur of the valet standing there, holding the door for her.

She started to turn her head toward him, and as she did, she saw his hand emerge from his pocket.

A brilliant glint of silver in the morning light.

Fear bolted through her, there and gone, replaced by a deadly smooth calm. Too late. I'm too late. She brought her elbow in, drove her left forearm out in a stiff arc. It hit squarely against his extended arm, and knocked his hand into the door frame.

"Ow!" The valet stepped back, surprised, and what he'd been holding thumped to the ground. A small metal clipboard, with a receipt stuck under its holder. "Jeez, lady. Chill. I was just getting a signature. New policy."

She felt herself blush as the adrenaline chased out of her system, leaving a thick aftertaste of embarrassment. She apologized as she retrieved the clipboard and signed on the line next to her tag number. She slid a twenty dollar bill under the clip holder. The valet's attitude improved considerably.

In the silence of the car, McCarthy kept studiously quiet about it. She put the car in gear and pulled out, around the circular drive and back onto the street.

"So," he said slowly. "About that bodyguard job."

She glanced at him. At the ill-fitting sport coat, the prison-styled hair, the shirt and shoes so cheap they were the next thing to disposable.

"I've already got a bodyguard," she said. "However, I could use another good investigator. Under one condition. You let me make you look presentable. I wouldn't want you giving a bad impression to our clients."

"Deducted from my wages. Like a uniform."

"If you insist."

"I do."

"Then yes, deducted from your wages."

"Yeah. Okay." He eyed her mistrustfully. "When?"

"Now." She thought for a few seconds, mentally measuring him. "Thirty-two regular, I think," she murmured. "Italian cut. French collar and cuffs. How do you feel about Magnanni?"

"Am I supposed to know what that is?"

"No. Shoe size?"

'Ten."

"Fine. One other thing."

"I knew you were getting to it."

"I'm taking you for a haircut."

"Do I get to pick the barber?"

"No. It will be a stylist, and there will be a manicure, and, if you're not polite, skin treatments."

He sighed and said, "Pull over. I'm getting out."

"I don't think so. We've made a deal. Believe me, this works better if you just let it happen."

"Great," McCarthy said grimly. "Just like prison, with product."

His reaction to being marched into Lenora Ellen's Day Spa was, she thought, gratifyingly furious, but she'd left them with strict instructions, and him with enough promises and threats to ensure his cooperation. Besides, she could see that he secretly craved a little relaxation and pampering. So long as he never had to admit it to, say, Jazz.

Ben's fate sealed, Lucia turned to practicalities. Her overreaction with the valet was out of character for her, to say the least, but it told her something of what her subconscious was doing: worrying excessively.

It was time to set up some insurance. As she pulled her car into a parking spot outside one of the most exclusive men's stores in the city, she hit a speed-dial number on her cell phone that she'd once promised never to dial again.

She'd never been good at keeping promises when it came to Omar.

He picked up on the second ring. "Tell me you're not in trouble," he said, and she laughed, because it was just like Omar. "Okay, then tell me you hit the wrong number in your speed dial."

"No, querido, I'm calling you. And maybe I'm not in trouble - have you ever thought of that?"

"No," he said. "I heard you'd moved. Kansas City, right?"

"Right."

"Would it surprise you to know that I'm in the neighborhood?"

"Tremendously." It didn't. Stranger things had happened, every day before breakfast.

"Just finished up a job in Saint Louis. So. I'm sure you didn't call just to hear my voice, lovely as it may be..." And it was lovely, low and full of warmth. Just now, he was using his native accent, which was cultured and British, but he was equally at home with French, Spanish, American, German and a wide variety of Arab inflections. She'd even once - hilariously - heard him do a fabulously broad Scots.

"I adore your voice, which you very well know," she said, "but no. I was checking to see if you were available."

"Well, I'm not currently seeing anyone - "

"Professionally."

He became quickly serious. "Long term or short?"

"I don't know. We'd best say at minimum a month."

"Huh. Usual rates?"

"Have they gone up?"

"Cost of living, my love, cost of living. Or, at least, the cost of not-getting killed."

She sighed. Omar did not, of course, come cheap. "Fine. Your usual rates, plus expenses."

"Starting when?"

"How soon can you get here?"

He was silent for a few seconds. "Lucia, this sounds a bit more serious than your usual tangle. It's not - "

"Our mutual uncle?" Meaning Uncle Sam, of course. "No. Strictly private. And it's not serious...exactly. Just - uncertain."

"I'm peace of mind, then."

"I can think of no one better."

"But of course!" She could imagine his wide, charming grin. "I am reliably informed by the wonder of the Internet that there is a morning commuter flight leaving in forty minutes. Where do I go?"

She gave him the office address. "There's a parking garage, we're on the second level. I need you positioned there today."

"Hmm. Watching for what, exactly?"

"I don't know. Call me when you're in position."

'Two hours," he said. After a beat, he said, "Lucia? It's nice to hear from you."

"Likewise," she said. "Don't get arrested in the airport."

He laughed. It was something of a standing joke, but not a very funny one, all things considered. Before she could say anything else, he was gone.

She sighed, ordered her thoughts and got on with her part of the bargain with Ben McCarthy: shopping.

One of the first things she'd taken the trouble to do, when she'd moved her operations to Kansas City, was to find the premier clothiers in town, for both men and women. She had a personal interest, of course, but there were always professional considerations. Clients to dress. Undercover agents to outfit for special assignments...

And she always did like to buy quality.

She was choosing the right suit to flatter McCarthy's coloring and body type when she realized that she was being followed, and had been for some time.

She kept her movements slow and natural as she placed the suit back on the rack and turned to a display of French-cuffed shirts. White would make his prison-pale skin look even more translucent. She held up one the color of cream, studying it, and readjusted the focus of her eyes to the mirror a few feet away.

There was someone outside the store, looking in. He was in shadow, backlit by the morning sun, but she recognized the ill-cut suit. Detective Ken Stewart was dogging her. Why me? Why not McCarthy? Although the thought of Stewart infiltrating a day spa made her smile.

Stewart backed up and moved along, an easy stroll, as if he'd just been idly browsing. He was good at this. That was disturbing. She much preferred dealing with amateurs, and professionals who had inflated ideas of their skill levels. If she hadn't spotted him before... You weren't looking for a tail, she reminded herself. You had no reason to suspect anyone would follow you on something as mundane as this. Maybe not, but she'd been hyperaware with the valet. It bothered her that she'd missed Stewart.

After a few more seconds another man passed the glass, this one short, fat and dressed in a dirty blue jean jacket. Shaved head. He hesitated at the door, then opened it and came in. He looked nervous, but that might have been the natural tentativeness of a man ill-used to high-end suits coming in to browse.

No. It wasn't.

In the mirror, his eyes focused on her. Not in the way that a man normally examined her either - this was a pattern-recognition way, as if he'd been given her description. Or a photo.

She carefully put the shirt back on the table and positioned her hand close to her hip, a split second from going for the gun concealed by the tailored jacket she was wearing. She automatically swept the store for collateral victims. The clerk was positioned safely behind a counter; he'd surely duck if gunplay started. Odds were good he'd survive, unless her newcomer was carrying an Uzi, or was an incredibly poor shot. No other customers, unless they were in the dressing rooms. Nothing she could do to minimize the risks.

She balanced her weight lightly around her center, ready to shift at a moment's notice, ready for anything, as the man made his way closer. One hand in his jacket pocket...

She'd humiliated herself with the valet. She wouldn't make the same mistake twice. That meant waiting until a weapon was actually visible and identified, which would put her at a disadvantage, but...

She turned, and time slowed to a crawl. Tick, and his eyes were rounding in surprise. Tick, and her hand moved the small distance inside her own coat, her fingers touching the cool grip of her gun.

Tick, and his right hand emerged with nightmare slowness from his pocket...

...carrying a red envelope.

Time fell back into a normal rush of color and noise, and Lucia felt her heart hammering, knew there was heat flooding her cheeks. Adrenaline was an earthquake in her veins for the second time in an hour.

The courier held out the red envelope to her. "Here you go, lady. No signature required." He sounded spooked. She wondered how she had looked to him, in that instant when she was making the decision whether to kill him.

"Thank you," she said, and took it. Automatic courtesy; she certainly wasn't feeling grateful. He backed up and hurried out of the store fast enough to make the bell hung over the door clatter like a fire alarm.

She turned the envelope over in her hands, frowning down at it. The size and shape of a greeting card envelope. It felt like one sheet of paper inside. Her name was block printed on the outside; the courier had, no doubt, been told exactly when and where to find her, even though her choice of this store had been an impulse.

No point in delaying the inevitable. She reached in her purse and took out a slender little pocketknife, flipped it open and slit the side of the envelope, very carefully. Preserving what evidence there might be. She slid the paper out with a pair of tweezers from her purse and moved shirts to lay it flat on the table.

It didn't require much scrutiny. It read, ONE OF YOU HAS MADE A MISTAKE, and the letterhead said Eidolon Corporation - easy enough to fake, if someone went to the trouble of doing it. No signature. She held it up to the light. No watermark. No secret messages. No hints as to its meaning. "One of you"? Meaning her? Jazz? McCarthy? A member of the Cross Society? Impossible to tell. It was a meaningless taunt, a message designed to unnerve; showy, like the delivery by courier. Designed to prove that they could literally find her anywhere.

Just like the Cross Society. Presuming that someone in the Cross Society hadn't sent it in the first place.

Stewart had been following her. Was it possible he was Eidolon? Eminently, she decided. Cross Society? She hadn't exactly been provided with a full and forthright disclosure of their membership, but somehow she couldn't see Ken Stewart believing in the things that the Cross Society took for granted: things like premonitions, and psychics, and the ability to alter the future.

Then again, maybe that explained the erosion she sensed in him, the jittery nervousness. The world was fraying around him, and he was unraveling with it.

She could completely sympathize.

Jazz would probably have ditched the note and pelted down the street, collared Stewart and pummeled him until she got what she wanted to know...

Jazz.

Lucia's smile faded as she flipped open her cell phone and speed-dialed Borden's number. He picked up on the second ring, sounding lazy and sleep-soaked. He sobered up fast when she identified herself.

"Hey. Um, good morning. What time - crap. It's late. I overslept."

"Is Jazz with you?" she asked:

There was a short pause and then the tenor of the call changed; she heard the rustle of sheets, a sleepy murmur, the quiet closing of a door. He'd stepped into the bathroom, or the hall. "She's asleep," he said. "I don't want to wake her up if I don't have to. Do I? Have to wake her up?"

"Soon," Lucia said. "A courier just delivered a note to me in a red envelope. Did she get one?"

"No deliveries - shit. Hang on." The phone rattled, set down on a counter, she guessed. He was back in less than ten seconds. "Yeah. Somebody slid it under the door. Is it a job?"

"Don't you usually compose the messages?"

"Sometimes," he said cautiously. Borden was Cross Society, in it up to his neck; Lucia liked him a great deal, but at times like these, she was bitterly aware that trust might be a separate issue. "Look, I can't go into the way it works, not on the phone."

"Yes, I get your point. Open it."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

There was a rattle, a pause... "It says, 'One of you has made a mistake.' On Eidolon Corporation letterhead. Holy shit." She heard his breathing go faster. "They know where we are. I have to get Jazz up, right now."

"Wait. Have you ever seen one from Eidolon before?" Lucia realized that she was pacing, a habit when she was nervous. The store clerk was watching her. Not, she was relieved to see, in any way that implied he was a conspirator; no, this was the plain, unvarnished interest she was used to attracting. She gave him a small smile and he found something to be busy with that took him out of her line of sight.

"Lucia, they know where we are. She's not safe here. Hell, I'm not safe - "

"Have they ever sent you a message before?" she asked again, with strained patience.

His composure broke completely. "Look, I don't get messages from anybody. I'm not a goddamn Lead!"

She felt a hot flare of irritation. Leads. According to the Cross Society, she and Jazz were Leads, carrying major roles in the chaotic, enormous play of life and death on Planet Earth. "Actors" influenced certain events at crucial moments, but - again, according to the Cross Society's rather esoteric theory - Leads operated at a kind of nexus point. Jazz had told her, in a quiet voice that meant she had come to believe it, that the Cross Society psychic, Max Simms, had summed it up: Everything you do matters.

It was a frightening thought. It didn't get any less frightening the longer it stuck around.

She kept doggedly on the subject. "Have you ever heard of Eidolon contacting anyone in the Cross Society directly?"

He sucked in an angry breath. "No. If you're done - "

"Almost. Who knew where you were taking her?"

"Nobody."

"You didn't make the call from - "

"I booked the reservations at an Internet kiosk using a one-time-only card. Fake name. Believe me, nobody knew we were coming here."

There were ways, nevertheless, if the opposition was strong enough. And if Eidolon Corporation was what Max Simms had claimed, a major technological entity with ties to the federal government, then retasking a satellite and painting Borden's car with a laser tag wouldn't have been very difficult.

If, if, if.

Borden suddenly said, "It's us. Me and Jazz - maybe it has to do with us."

"You think being in love with her is the mistake they're referring to?"

"I never said - " He gave up on the reflexive male denial, to his credit. "No, I don't."

"Then it's entirely possible it might be referring to the events of this morning. To my helping McCarthy get released."

"Then why not just send it to you? Why send it to you and Jazz?"

"McCarthy's connected to both of us now. I think the better question is, why would Eidolon warn us? Wouldn't they want us to be making mistakes?"

"I have no idea what Eidolon wants," Borden growled. "Look, I barely know what my boss wants half the time. So as far as figuring out motives, good luck. Screw this, I'm waking her up and getting her out of here. Now."

"Yes, you'd better get her back to Manny's." If there was any such thing as a safe place, given what they'd learned about the world and the Cross Society and Eidolon, it would be in Manny's Fortress of Solitude. Wherever it currently resided, since he moved house as often as banks took holidays.

"You're talking like a cop," Borden said. "If Eidolon wants us, they can find us. Well, they can find me, anyway. You and Jazz, it's tougher, since you're Leads. They can only predict you through the effects you have, not your exact location."

"Then how did they just deliver me a note? How did the Cross Society deliver one to Jazz that first night?"

He gave a rattling sigh. "It's too freaking early for philosophy and physics, Lucia. But Leads blip on and off the radar. You're a blur most of the time, but sometimes they can see you clearly. It's like somebody who usually drives really fast having car trouble. But on the more mundane level, have you considered that somebody could have been following you?"

Stewart, again. And if she accepted the idea that the note was legitimately from Eidolon, the Cross Society's adversary in this war of premonitions, then...it changed things. Not for the better. "All right. We'll need to have a strategy meeting later at the office - one o'clock? Bring Jazz through the garage entrance - it's the most defensible. I'll have someone meet you."

"Someone who? You're not giving Manny a gun, are you?"

She laughed. "Not that Manny would need one of mine. But no. I've hired a friend to help us out. His name is Omar. He'll meet you in the garage."

"We'll be there."

There was hope for Borden yet, Lucia thought as she folded the phone and slipped it back in her purse; he had said we without a trace of self-consciousness.

If only they could get Jazz to do the same, a relationship might truly be on the horizon.

"Madam?" The clerk was watching her again, this time with a trace of a frown. "Is everything all right?"

"Fine," she said, and retrieved the blue suit she'd been studying. Much as she hated off-the-rack on men, no doubt McCarthy would resist the idea of tailoring even more than day-spa grooming. She added the ivory shirt and handed the items to the clerk, who blinked at the price tags, then smiled. By the time she'd added the glossy, sleek Magnanni shoes, he was very happy.

She asked him to help her carry her packages to the car, tipped him and slid behind the wheel. As she slammed the door and clicked the lock shut, Ken Stewart rounded the far corner, his hands in his pants pockets, doing his best to look jaunty.

She cruised slowly past him, watching.

He pulled an empty hand from his pocket, pointed it at her windshield and cocked back a thumb. Bang, he mouthed, as he let the imaginary hammer fall. You're dead.

She braked the car, rolled down the driver's side window and leaned over. Her smile must have been disingenuous enough to lure in even a bitter, cynical specimen like Stewart, because he shuffled a few feet toward her.

"One of us would be," she said softly, and let him see that her hand was on the gun in the passenger seat beside her. "And before you ask, yes, I do have a permit to carry it, Detective."

He bared his teeth at her in a crazy grin. A rottweiler raised by wolves. She felt a cold touch at the back of her neck, but allowed only an ironic tilt of her eyebrows as he leveled both hands at her - two imaginary guns, like a kid playing cowboys and Indians - and peppered her with imaginary rounds.

Then he mimed blowing smoke from his fingertips, and those fiercely cold, slightly insane eyes bored into hers. He said, "You be careful, Ms. Garza. It's a dangerous town if you make the wrong enemies."

"Are there ever any right enemies?" she asked, and drove away at a calm and leisurely pace, showing no signs of temper or nerves.

Four blocks later, she stopped at a red light and wiped her damp, shaking hands on her pants.