by Rachel Caine
"I hope it doesn't involve shooting someone. Again."
"Pros and cons," Jazz said, and tapped the black marble counter with blunt fingernails. "Pro, we make a quick five grand for doing whatever this is, and more than likely, it doesn't even involve us lifting a finger. Most of these don't, right? We just change events by being there on time.
We force other people to make different choices. Like a couple of boulders dumped into a stream."
Lucia blinked. "You understand this better than I do."
"Yeah, I'm frickin' deep that way. Any other pros you can think of? Besides money?"
"It's possible that what we do could help someone. Maybe save a life."
"Or not. I got over the whole idea that we're working for the good guys when they sent me to wait outside while a woman got murdered, just so I could write down an apartment number and testify about it later."
Lucia shrugged. "I said it's possible."
"I'll put that one in the 'maybe' column. Okay, cons. I don't trust these jerks anymore."
Borden cleared his throat. "Standing right here, Jazz."
She reached up without looking and put her hand on the lapel of his coat. Her fingers curled, touching his shirt beneath, unconsciously seeking skin. "Not you," she said. "And we talked about that."
That must have been an interesting conversation, to say the least
"There's something else," Lucia said. "Neither of us wants guilt on our head when people die because we didn't act."
"That's exactly what they want us to think—that it's somehow our fault. But it isn't, L. And it isn't our responsibility, either. We're not superheroes. Well, I'm not, anyway. I don't know what the hell you do in your spare time. Me, I bowl. I don't want to save the world. I just want to work my cases and save my friends and family and people who come to me for help."
Jazz paused and looked down. A cat was prowling around the legs of her bar stool, weaving in and out, purring. Mooch, Lucia recalled. Jazz's cat. Evidently, Manny didn't run a no-pets dorm. Jazz leaned down and dragged her fingers down Mooch's silky-smooth back; he arched into her touch, purring harder, and flicked his high-held tail as he walked away.
"He seems to like it here," Lucia said.
"He's a cat. What does he know?" But Jazz was smiling. "Sorry. Guess I mountaineered up to the soapbox again." Lucia hadn't been confused. She understood very well that this was Jazz venting her frustrations, not Jazz explaining a decision.
"I understand perfectly what you're feeling," Lucia said. "But our choice at the moment is simple. We have a red envelope, and it's from the Cross Society. What do you want to do?"
Jazz sighed. "Let me get my gun."
She slid off the bar stool and walked to another temporary structure, this one an actual room with four walls and a ceiling, about fifteen feet away across the concrete floor. Her bedroom. Borden followed her. She looked back at him as she opened the door. "You going to help me get my gun?" she asked.
Borden said, "No, I'm going to help you put on your body armor."
"Oh. Okay."
The door shut.
Lucia poured herself a cup of coffee, smiled and waited.
Chapter Nine
In the end, they agreed that Jazz and Borden would take his car and head to the location; there were still two hours until the time listed on the Cross Society note, and that was plenty for Lucia to get Susannah Davis settled someplace safe. Someplace not on Manny's property; he again made that clear, in case Lucia had missed any of the first volley of refusals.
The simplest way to hide Susannah was to do so in plain sight. Lucia made use of Omar's credit cards to book a two-room suite at the Raphael Hotel for a week, with the private, if misleading, understanding that the booking was for a movie star recovering from plastic surgery. The star's personal assistant, Mr. Smith, would handle all room service and cleaning requests. No one would be allowed to enter the suite.
The concierge took on a hushed, serious air when he was given the news, and opened a secured entrance on the side of the hotel. Susannah—swathed in a silk scarf and huge sunglasses from a minimart, and one of Omar's jackets— was escorted inside quickly and silently.
Lucia waited in the SUV. Her cell phone, which doubled as a walkie-talkie, finally bleeped, and Omar's voice said, "We're in. Nice room, by the way. And complimentary champagne. I presume I'm being reimbursed for this."
She hoped that Susannah was good on her promise to pay. "Yes, of course. Keep her away from the windows."
"You want me to call a doctor friend to come take a look at her?"
"Be careful about it if you do. You good to go?"
"Let's see—guns, bullets, Kevlar, fruit basket. We're all set."
"Watch your back. I don't like her husband, and I barely met the guy. I'll set up an interview with the FBI for tomorrow. Maybe we can get this over with quickly and make it their problem instead of ours."
One challenge down. She swallowed a sip of water, felt it burn at the back of her throat, and remembered what Manny had said about her fever. She checked her watch. Still about an hour and a half to go. Might as well get checked out while she could, before… before whatever might happen.
She pulled the SUV into traffic and headed for the hospital. She asked for Dr. Kirkland, and was immediately bumped to the top of the waiting list, which told her something about how worried they were. She ended up exactly where she'd been a few hours before, in a stark E.R. examining room, wearing a flimsy cotton gown, getting stuck with needles. The fever, Kirkland said, was a worry, but they were still waiting for the cultures to be completed, and she was already on doxycycline to combat any infection.
"Rest," he told her. "You understand that's what will kill this thing, if it is a thing, right?"
"Yes." She did understand. And just as soon as she took care of whatever waited at the corner of Parallel and Tenth Street, she'd comply.
Lucia pulled into the parking lot at the corner of Parallel and Tenth with fifteen minutes to spare, and saw Jazz and Borden parked in the shadow of a big industrial building. Backed into a space. Watching as much of the street as possible.
Lucia paid the parking attendant, walked over and slid into the back seat of Borden's rental car. It was clean, except for his briefcase and a well-thumbed Grisham novel. "So," she said, and slid on her sunglasses to cut the afternoon glare. "You kids been behaving yourselves?"
"Not especially," Borden said. "This is what you guys do all day? It's boring."
"I'm sure it lacks the pulse-pounding excitement of legal briefs," Lucia said solemnly. "This is what we do all day. Sit in parking lots and wait for a crime to happen, so that we can investigate it. Oddly, our business model doesn't seem to be working out so well."
The clock on his dashboard said 5:08 p.m. Jazz handed her a sealed bottle of water, ice-cold; Lucia uncapped it and took a deep drink. She was terribly thirsty today. Fever, she supposed. The naproxen had taken care of the muscle aches, but the fever seemed persistent. She checked the time and downed another horse pill.
"Did you get her settled in?" Jazz asked.
"Yes, she's at the Raphael. Omar's on watch. I'll contact Rawlins later and set up a meeting for tomorrow. With any luck, we can get paid and get some gratitude from the local field office."
"Nice." Jazz stretched.
"Don't we look suspicious, the three of us just sitting here in the car?" Borden asked.
"We'd look a lot more suspicious if we were all three making out in the car," Jazz said. "What?" she added, when Borden turned and gave her a wide-eyed look.
"You have no idea what kind of happy place you just took me to."
"Shut up."
It was 5:11 p.m.
"Actually," Lucia said absently, "you'd be amazed at what you can get away with doing in a car in the middle of the day. People just don't look. Even when they're parking next to you.1
Borden turned to stare at her. Jazz was too much of a professional to do so, but Lucia could feel her g
rin.
"I'd tell you all about it," she said, "but then I'd have to kill you. National security."
"God, I love my job," he said, and turned back to face the street.
Lucia, at the moment, didn't. She didn't like the fact that there were so many low rooftops offering firing positions. She didn't like the constant flow of traffic on the street in front of them. Work had just let out, and the lot was full of people on their way home.
Not an optimal situation. She could feel Jazz's tension, and knew she felt the same.
Five fifteen.
"Heads up," Jazz muttered.
Five sixteen.
Nothing.
"Come on, come on…" Jazz was chanting it under her breath, probably subconsciously. Lucia kept silent, but she was aware of her increased heart rate, of the sweat trickling down her neck and between her shoulder blades. For all of their banter, this was serious business, and they both knew it. "What the hell are we looking for? Come on, give us something…"
And then, Borden spotted it. "Um, maybe I'm wrong, but isn't that guy getting a shotgun out of his trunk?"
The one in question was a small, thin man dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt, khaki pants, loafers. Business casual. Cell phone clipped to his belt. Thinning brown hair. Gold-rimmed glasses.
A Winchester Model 1300 Black Shadow: Lucia's mind automatically cataloged it. Five shells, if he had one in the chamber, and she had to assume he did. He was getting it out of the trunk casually, as if he were taking out his lunch bag.
"Go," she said, and tapped Jazz on the shoulder. 'Take the back."
"Front."
"Back, Jazz."
Before she could argue about it, Lucia slipped out and walked briskly forward in long strides, and made a sharp turn to bring her parallel with Mr. Shotgun.
He reached into the trunk and took out what looked like a heavy gym bag, black. From the rattle, she guessed it was filled with ammunition.
She swallowed hard and turned toward him. Her gun was out and held unobtrusively next to her side, in line with the seam of her pants. Safety off.
He looked up as he slammed the trunk lid. For a split second she saw his eyes, and they didn't match anything else about his perfectly ordinary exterior. Those eyes were full of nothing. Dark holes, gravity wells that consumed everything around him. The darkness inside this man wanted to kill.
Jazz was behind him.
"Hi," Lucia said. "Going somewhere?"
He started to bring up the shotgun, and for a split second she thought, God, no, he's really going to make it. But then Jazz kicked the bend of his legs from behind, he pitched forward on the asphalt, his mouth opening in shock, and dropped the weapon. It skidded to a stop at Lucia's feet. She put a foot on top of it as Jazz jumped on the man's back, pressed a knee into his spine and twisted his arms behind his back to snap handcuffs on.
It took five seconds. Five seconds of precise, well-coordinated action. Jazz looked up, and her blue eyes were blazing, her face glowing with excitement.
All that changed in one split second.
Lucia didn't hear the shot, only felt the hot burn along her arm, the kinetic force rocking her to the side. She saw the spark of a bullet hitting the metal grille of a car fifteen feet beyond.
And then Jazz was moving, moving fast, and Lucia's body was following suit while her mind was still processing data. She hit the pavement and rolled into the thin cover of another car. Angles…the bullet had come right past her, hit the grille of the car at a flat angle. Someone on the ground.
A second shooter.
All that information passed through her mind in a little under a second as she slid beneath the car and twisted to get her gun out in front. With both hands around the grip, she scanned the street. A few people were starting to react to the single shot, but most had probably assumed it was a backfire, somebody dropping something…
A pair of feet started walking toward the man lying handcuffed on the asphalt. There was something about the body language, which was way too deliberate…predatory. He didn't seem to be in any hurry.
Lucia smelled blood. It hit her in a strange wave, that slightly acrid smell. Had somebody been hit? Jazz? No, Jazz had been well wide of the path of the bullet…
Damn. There was blood dripping steadily from Lucia's right arm, and a hot sensation starting to tingle along her biceps. It wasn't that bad, certainly not an arterial hit. The fact that she could feel it so soon after the strike meant it probably wasn't anything more than a graze, and the associated shock was minor.
She had no doubt that the man prowling between the cars, moving so purposefully, was the second shooter. What the hell was he doing? She didn't dare move to try to get a better look. Either he knew where she was, in which case she'd see him bend down to take the shot, or he didn't, and she'd rather keep it that way. He stopped circling and advanced to the handcuffed man, who turned over on his side, panting, staring up…
And his head jerked as the bullet smashed through his forehead and exited behind, into the asphalt, with a good portion of his brain, and most certainly his life.
And then the shooter's knees bent smoothly, she saw his body tilt sideways, and he was looking right at her, his finger tightening on the trigger…
She fired, but she knew even as she did so, even as her weakened right arm trembled and threw the shot wide, that she'd missed, and she was a dead woman.
Someone hit his blind side, coming over the hood of a car, and she could have been forgiven for naturally assuming that it was Jazz. Because it would be Jazz, wouldn't it?
Only the legs were too long, the body too angular, and in the second heartbeat she realized it was Borden, unarmed, who'd jumped the shooter.
Borden wasn't a fighter. Oh, Christ, no…
She could almost sense Jazz moving. Lucia shoved with her toes and slid out from under cover, rolled on her side, and saw the shooter throwing Borden to the ground, turning to aim his gun at him at point-blank range—
And Jazz fired. Two fast shots to the chest, dead center. Blood misted the air for a second longer than it took him to collapse to his knees, and Lucia squirmed out the rest of the way and kicked his handgun aside as he fell.
Borden was silent, panting. He was lying on the ground on his back, looking stunned and pale, and there was blood spattered in small dots on his skin and shirt. She silently offered him a hand—her left—and pulled him up to his feet.
This time, nobody had mistaken the gunfire for backfires; people were running, screaming and dialing 911. But where Lucia and Jazz and Borden were standing, staring down at the bodies of two completely nondescript gunmen, without a clue in the world as to what they'd been doing here, now, it seemed eerily silent.
Jazz moved to Borden's side and embraced him, hard and fast, her face pale and her breath racing. He couldn't seem to take his eyes from the dead man at his feet. Eventually, she let go, stepped back and tried for a bitter smile. "This," she said, "is a cluster f—"
"Don't say it," Lucia interrupted wearily.
"Well, it is."
Lucia sighed and holstered her gun, or tried to; her right arm didn't seem willing to cooperate at the moment. Jazz looked up and spotted the blood, and her face blanched. "Oh Christ, L., you're hit."
"Grazed," she said. "Not even bleeding much. Don't worry about it." Sirens in the distance. They were going to have considerable explaining to do. "Maybe we should work on a system by which the Cross Society tells us a few more details," she said. She felt unnaturally calm right now, but knew it would pass. "What do you think?"
Borden looked sick. Sick and scared and anxious, and he gazed from one of them to the other with so much emotion that it seemed to make up for the lack of it in the two of them.
"I didn't know," he said. "I didn't know. They didn't…"
"Tell you?" Jazz finished dryly. "No, really? Wake up, James, they don't tell anybody anything. Not even you."
Lucia took the gun from her right hand and awkwardly
holstered it. "Let's get our stories straight."
"You think anyone's going to believe us?"
"Well, at least we have a lawyer present."
Somewhat surprisingly, nobody in the police department seemed inclined to blame them for the shootout. Then again, Lucia noted, Detective Ken Stewart was nowhere to be seen, either. She nursed her soft drink carefully, after downing another aspirin to bring down her again-spiking fever, and wondered what Dr. Kirkland would think of her rest schedule. He wouldn't approve, she imagined.
She, Jazz and Borden were alone in a more upscale interrogation room…one not designed to resemble those on television. This room came equipped with a relatively comfortable sofa in dull green, a television set silently playing CNN, a water cooler, and reinforced safety glass windows and doors. There'd be surveillance, but it would be subtle.
Paramedics had touched up her arm; the passing bullet had ripped a furrow through about a quarter inch of flesh and a bit of muscle. Now that the adrenaline had left, taking its soothing blanket away, Lucia felt cold and exhausted, and she wanted, badly, to sleep.
Jazz poked Borden in the ribs. They were sitting on the couch, but she got his attention and they both moved. Borden wandered over to get a cup of water. Jazz gazed down at Lucia. "Come here and lie down," she said. Lucia was sitting upright in one of the wooden chairs. "On the couch, L. Now."
"I'm—"
"Swear to God, if you say you're fine one more time, I'm going to beat you with a copy of Martyrdom for Dummies."
Lucia mutely went over and sat on the couch, glared at Jazz for a second and then let herself go horizontal with a shameful rush of relief. Borden pulled up another chair, and he and Jazz sat; Borden worked on a palmtop computer and Jazz steadfastly stared at the television screen, watching the news scroll.
Lucia was almost asleep when Jazz announced, "Potential mass murder in Kansas City foiled by private citizens, police say."
"What?"
"It's on CNN." Jazz looked around for a remote control, didn't see one, and got up to change the channel. It didn't change. Only one station. "Great. Sons of bitches have it locked down."
