by Rachel Caine
They came carefully, not taking her word for it. She sat against the wall, hands up, as two uniformed officers rounded the blind corner with guns leveled. When they were sure the situation was under control, she got searched. The baton got confiscated, along with the camera and cell phone.
California Guy was still out cold, bleeding all over the concrete. “Jeez,” the bigger, older cop said, bending over him. “I thought you looked like you’d had a rough time, but this guy needs a plastic surgeon. Good thing he’s in L.A. We’ve got more of them than gas stations.”
The atmosphere got more congenial, when her bona fides were vetted. Ex-cops got a little more respect than bloody-faced regular citizens armed with batons, although the out-of-town private investigator status didn’t necessarily win points. She went through statements to the uniforms, then another round with a blank-faced detective who didn’t seem to be listening but probably was, and a third time to another detective who focused on her like he planned to marry her later. By that time, the aches were kicking in. She’d washed the blood off, but desperately needed a nap and coffee, in that order. Her cell phone kept ringing. That was probably Borden, checking in and getting worried because there was no answer.
“Look,” Jazz pointed out the fourth time it rang, “if you don’t want to have the FBI down here poking around looking for me, you might want to let me answer it. I’m not operating in a vacuum. I have a partner, and I have a lawyer.”
Whatever they thought of that, they let her have the cell phone, and when she answered, sure enough, it was James Borden on the other end of the phone.
But what he said wasn’t what she’d expected.
“He has an envelope,” he said. No preamble. “Get it. Don’t let it out of your sight.”
“Oh, hey,” she said with grim cheer. “Yeah, I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking. Your friend’s in the hospital. I don’t know much about him, but he was still breathing when they carted him away.”
“I know,” he shot back. “But you have to keep hold of that envelope, do you understand? Don’t let it out of your sight.”
The cops had taken it but hadn’t evidenced much interest in it. She’d said it was a card for her niece; they’d returned it without comment. It was currently a thick square reminder poking a corner into her ribs under the jacket.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Thanks for the advice. Any ideas about who my dance partner was today?”
“He doesn’t matter.”
“You know what? He did to me. And I’ll bet he did to Santoro, too.”
One of the cops got called from the room for a whispered conversation at the door, nodded, and came back. Jazz’s eyes tracked him, watching body language. She didn’t much care for the change. He was boring a hole in her with his stare. She hunched her shoulders a bit as she paced the small, dingy room. It was a standard interrogation room—a battered industrial table, some sturdy chairs, a camera in the corner and an observation window.
“I’m coming to get you,” he said. “I should be there in a couple of hours.”
She swallowed a sudden surge of relief, and said, “I’m sorry. Sorry for all of this.”
Another hesitation from him. “You tried.”
“I said I wouldn’t let anything happen to him.”
“You saved his life.”
That was it. No hearts and flowers, not even a fruit basket, just a quick disconnection. She stared at the cell phone for a second, then shrugged and handed it back to the hard-eyed detective, who—from the way he was watching her—must have talked to somebody back in K.C. with a less-than-glowing opinion of her. Probably Stewart. Somebody who’d filled his head full of crap about corruption and murder and drug running, probably. And cited Ben’s trial to back it up.
“Who was that?” the cop asked, weighing the phone in his hand.
“Wrong number,” she said, and smiled as brilliantly as she could, under the circumstances.
It didn’t get more pleasant as the day went on. She got another phone call, this one from Lucia, who was coldly furious and torn between kicking LAPD ass or Cross Society hiney. That felt oddly bracing. Jazz had quite a time convincing Lucia not to come flying to the coast, and in the end had only succeeded because Borden was already on his way and Lucia was convinced she was about to break the industrial espionage case within the day.
Toward the end of the day the cops finally informed her that Lowell Santoro was resting comfortably. He wouldn’t be giving any speeches soon, but he’d narrowly avoided a fractured hyoid bone and a nasty death. His trachea was seriously bruised but intact.
She’d saved someone. She’d actually, finally, saved someone.
Not that you’d know it from the continuing barrage of questions from two increasingly unfriendly LAPD detectives named Weston and Cammarata. Weston was thin and dressed in old, unfashionable suits; Cammarata was more the dress-slacks, snappy-tie, crisp-white-shirt type. He could have walked the halls of corporate zombiedom and looked utterly in place, if he’d taken off that clip-on badge from his belt and stuck a business ID in its place.
Of the two, she found she preferred Weston, who was at least honest in his dislike. Cammarata kept trying to make her think he liked her. She kept reiterating facts to them, stubbornly refused to reveal who’d hired her, and finally reverted to the old standard, “I’ll wait until my lawyer gets here.”
Borden arrived looking, well, like a lawyer. A damn fine one, too. Navy blue tailored suit, crisp off-white shirt, power tie, shiny shoes, a briefcase that looked expensive and was probably worth twice whatever she would guess. He looked L.A. spiffy, in a New York kind of way.
And he had her out of the police station in forty-five minutes, which she figured had to be a new world record for intimidation in a town that had more or less invented the fast-talking lawyer.
“So,” she said as he walked her down the steps to a waiting black chauffeured car, “you don’t do criminal cases. Because you seemed to do that all right, Counselor.”
“Shut up,” he said darkly. She could already tell he was in a towering bad mood, which was weird, because after all, she’d saved his friend. Weird, starting on annoying.
“Is that legal advice?”
He firmly directed her into the car—backseat—and walked around to climb in the other side. He’d gotten another limo for a reason, she saw—better leg room. Not so critical for her, but his knees were an absurdly long distance from his hips.
He flicked the locks, engaged the privacy screen between them and the driver—evidently not a Cross Society insider—and without looking at her said, “You could have called the police instead of going in.”
“Oh, please, what’s the nine-one-one response time in L.A. when you call and say, hey, I’m on stakeout and my subject hasn’t come out of the building yet? I’m guessing it’s twenty-four to forty-eight hours, if they don’t laugh you off the phone.”
“You could have called them when you knew something was happening.”
“By that time, your friend was about ten seconds away from choking to death on a broken throat. Look, what do you think you sent me here to do? Knit doilies? Run and hide when the going gets tough?” She shrugged. “Borden, you know me better than that. If there’s a fight, I’m in it. That’s who I am.”
“I didn’t send you here to stage the first annual Stairwell Smack-down and nearly get yourself killed. Again.” His voice sounded tight and grim, and as she stared at him, she saw the tension in his shoulders. In the hard line of his jaw. “You like this, don’t you? The adrenaline rush. Kicking ass at every possible opportunity.”
“You think I did this for fun?” she asked, and felt her hands trying to make fists.
“Tell me what was going through your head, then.”
“The subject went out of the range of electronic surveillance,” she said. “The subject didn’t reappear on schedule. I went in to check it out, which was exactly what you knew I was going to do. And if you think maybe I should
have checked on him, discovered him being choked to death and gone back to the car, well, maybe you don’t know me very well.”
Borden raised his head, finally, and looked straight at her. “I know you better than you think,” he said. There was something odd in his eyes. “I’m not the only one. Take out the envelope.”
She didn’t. She looked at him, frowning, and then reached into her windbreaker and pulled it free.
“Open it,” he said.
She slit it with a fingernail and pulled out the letter folded neatly inside.
“Read it.”
She didn’t want to, suddenly. It felt as if something was wrong, something was very wrong, indeed, and if she just slid this letter back in the envelope…put the genie back in his bottle…then maybe things would be different.
Instead, she unfolded the crisp paper, and saw the letterhead of Eidolon Corporation. It was a bold red logo, a world in an hourglass. It read in neat typewritten lines:
To Jasmine Callender,
Should you read this, you will have taken matters into your hands that would have been better left to others. We have no choice but to take steps. In acting today, you have forfeited what little protection the Cross Society could offer you. Inform them.
She read it through twice, numbly. There was no signature. She finally looked up mutely to stare at Borden.
“It says—”
“I know what it says,” he interrupted her. “Laskins got a fax two hours ago and read it to me on the plane. Jazz, you were just another Actor before, but they know what you are now, and you’ve proved a real threat. They’ve moved you up to the top of their hit list. You’re not safe now.”
“But they addressed it directly to me,” she said. The words felt strange in her mouth. “How the hell could it be to me, when I took it from the other guy? Why—?”
“They must have known there was a chance you’d do this. I think—” He paused, licked his lips and looked very, very sick. “I think the Society knew, too. They…”
“Let me guess,” she said. “You heard Santoro was on the hit list. They decided to let him get taken out for strategic reasons, and you decided to act on your own. You didn’t fly out to deliver an assignment from Laskins. That’s you. You decided to produce the paperwork and bring it to me in a red envelope, just like the rest of them. And they told you not to do it.”
He didn’t answer. He was pale to the lips.
“Did they fire you?”
“Not yet,” he said, and she saw some of the stiffness leave his shoulders. He slumped against the window and closed his eyes. “Santoro—he’s a good guy. He does good things. His wife and kids—”
“So we saved him,” she said. “I’m not upset about that, believe me. I don’t believe all this fortune-telling horse-shit anyway.”
He reached out and touched the unfolded Eidolon Corporation letter still in her hand. “No? Then why does that have your name on it, when you took it off a guy you’d never met who was trying to kill you?”
“People try to kill me all the time,” she said. “Not like it’s new.”
He hit an intercom switch and said, “Let’s go,” and the limo glided into motion. “There’s somebody I need you to meet.”
She groaned. “Not more of this crap. Look, Borden, just let me go home, okay? I have things to do.” The photos. McCarthy, waiting for freedom. Every day he sat behind bars now was another day that she couldn’t take back, and could only regret. If anything happened to him…
“If I let you go home, you’re dead,” Borden said. “I realize that might not mean much to you, because you think you can win any fight, but I’m not as brave. Not with your life.”
He looked tired. As well he should, she realized; he’d come all the way from New York, and for all she knew he’d done it on little or no sleep.
“Borden,” she said. He opened his eyes, which had drifted nearly shut. She wasn’t sure if he was even aware of it. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said, and there was a gray leaden weight to his words. “I did this. I made the decisions. I changed the rules, and now you’re a target. I need—I need to find out how to fix it.”
“So we are going to see somebody from the Cross Society.”
“Not exactly.” He turned away and looked out of the smoked-glass window. “Not exactly.”
She realized, belatedly, that he hadn’t even asked if she was okay. That pissed her off to an unreasonable extent. She glared at him and read the letter again, silently. It was dated for today. She’d pulled the envelope out of Surfer Killer’s jacket herself, and had hardly let it out of her sight since. It was dimly possible—dimly—that one of the cops might have switched it while they’d been holding it, but she didn’t think so.
She rubbed her aching forehead, folded up the letter and jammed it back into the envelope. Too late to worry about fingerprints or any other useful forensics.
It has my name on it.
That was a whole new level of creepy. The Cross Society was way creepy enough for her tastes; she felt out of her depth in dealing with them. This was…
This was crazy.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Borden didn’t answer. After a few seconds, she looked over and saw that his eyes were shut, his breathing light and even. He couldn’t be asleep, could he? No, he was just trying to piss her off.
He was succeeding brilliantly.
It was a long, long drive, and L.A. traffic was everything everyone had always said it would be. Being in a limo made it palatable but boring. Jazz stared out at the unmoving traffic. People in other cars were checking out the limousine’s tinted windows, trying to imagine what celebrity was hiding within. She’d have been right there with them, imagining George Clooney or Meryl Streep.
Borden actually was asleep. Ridiculous as that seemed. She’d been on the verge of shaking him awake to shout questions at him, but the truth was, she didn’t think it would do any good, and she had an odd little soft spot for watching him this way. He had a lock of hair falling over his forehead, and her fingers itched to do something with it. Yank it by the roots, maybe. Or move it gently aside, light as a feather. The jury was still out and deadlocked.
She was off balance, leaning forward to see what was available in the minibar—because, what the hell, how often was she actually going to be in a limousine and have unrestricted access?—when the limo moved forward, then jerked to a sudden stop. She ended up being pitched forward across Borden’s knees.
Well, that was embarrassing.
She slowly straightened up without looking at him, although she could feel the sudden tension in the legs under her hands, which meant he was wide-awake.
“Something you wanted?” he asked neutrally. His voice sounded rough and tight.
“Yeah,” she said. “Soft drink.” She straightened up without actually looking at his face.
They negotiated over brand names. He clinked ice into a crystal glass better suited to holding Scotch or bourbon and poured her a short little can of cola. He handed it over without comment. She drank, grateful for the syrupy rush, the liquid on her dry throat, and for something to do with her mouth other than get herself in even more trouble.
Borden, awake, was much less readable than Borden, asleep. He looked at her from time to time as she drank, and stared out the windows. They hit smooth sailing after about fifteen more minutes, and Jazz made her drink last as long as possible before passing him the empty glass and last few melting cubes. He stowed it away without comment.
“It’s not your fault,” she said to him.
“No?” He sounded so damn neutral. “How do you figure that?”
“If somebody above me had said, no, you need to lay back and let your friend get horribly murdered? Guess what. I would’ve been forging documents and persuading you to help me, too. And I don’t think you were wrong to do it. It’s never wrong to save a life.”
“No?” he repeated. “You’d pull, s
ay, John Wayne Gacy out of a river and start chest compressions.”
“It’d be easier if I didn’t know he was a crazy murdering bastard, but yeah, that’s pretty much the size of it.”
“You’d do it even if you knew. Even if you knew he was killing people.”
“If I knew that, I’d revive him and slap handcuffs on him before he could figure out what I was doing,” she said. “I’m—I was a cop, Borden. I never tried to make myself judge, jury and executioner. That’s a responsibility I don’t want, and nobody should have unless they have checks and balances. That’s what scares me about your dear friends in the Society. How do you know what they’re doing is right? How can you really tell? Save that guy, let that guy die—” She shook her head. “I don’t care what they think they know, I can’t really believe they’re ready to play God.”
He shook his head. “I’m not feeling guilty about saving Lowell,” he said finally. “I’m angry at myself that you had to put yourself in danger to do it, and I’m scared that this saving one life is going to cost me another, and I—I’m not ready to play God, either, Jazz. And if you die because of what I’ve done—”
“Hey,” she murmured, and reached over to rest her hand on top of his. His fingers twitched, but didn’t move to caress hers like they had in the car on the way to the airport in Kansas City. She missed it. “I’m a big girl. Even if I’d known it would paint a target on my butt, I’d have done it. You understand that, right?”
He shook his head and didn’t answer at all. But he didn’t move his hand from under hers for a long moment, either. When he finally did, when he folded his arms into a touch-me-not kind of defensiveness, she settled back in the opposite comfy corner and watched scenery flash by in silence. Desert. Lots of desert.
She wanted to sleep, but something wouldn’t let her. Borden didn’t doze, either. She shot him looks from time to time, but his eyes were on the horizon, his face utterly blank and composed. Nothing to see here, move along.
She saw a road sign flash by as the limo exited the freeway, and turned back in a futile attempt to be sure she’d gotten that glimpse correct. “Borden? We’re going to a prison?”
