by Rachel Caine
He started to pull away. She grabbed his collar to hold him in place. "Promise me something first. Promise me that—if something happens to me—you'll look after things. After Jazz. After—even after that bitch who got Omar killed."
Something Susannah had said nagged at Lucia, but she was too tired to make the connections. She was running on instinct, not thought.
"Nothing's going to happen to you."
"Anthrax," she said flatly. "Something's already happened to me. The stuff can be deadly. I could be dead—"
His fingers touched her lips. Light, but unmistakably a hush. "Don't say that."
"Just promise, okay?"
"I promise."
She thought he'd kiss her. She could see he wanted to, could feel it, but he stepped back as she opened the door, and let her go inside.
"Rest," he said. "That's what you need right now."
When she looked back, he was already walking away, elegant in his tawny coat, hands in the pockets. She wanted to call him back. Wanted to sleep in his arms, stretched against his warmth. Wanted the sheer animal comfort to keep the fears and the memories at bay.
Instead, she shut the door, locked it and set the intrusion alarms for instant alert.
She managed to strip off her guns before she fell on the bed and sank into a sleep so deep it seemed eternal.
She couldn't wake up. Couldn't. She tried, because she knew she should; she felt the danger, but her whole body was sluggish and unresponsive. Inert, heavy flesh, weighing her down.
Dreams. Terrible dreams, full of twisted, screaming bodies, and blood, and friends—old friends dying. She wanted to cry out, wanted to scream, wanted to stop this, but there was nothing she could do, nothing but witness and grieve. Endless dark mazes and corridors and cells and run for your life and the shots ringing out over her head…
Gregory Ivanovich, please, help me… I'll make it worth your while.
Flashes of light.
Smeared voices, nightmarishly slow. She didn't understand them. Was this the past? Was it Prague? Had she never really run, her bare feet sliding over cold concrete blocks and leaving footprints of sweat and blood…oh Dios, was she still there? Were they asking…?
She felt the white-hot burn of drugs in her veins. Slow fire, screaming through her body.
Nothing. Sleep. Dreams.
A feeling of cold on her skin. Her body being lifted, moved. More nightmares, hands on her, moving her legs up and out. A sense of cold invasion that made her flinch and want to weep.
More drugs.
Darkness.
Chapter Twelve
Lucia woke up in the hospital, with an IV in her arm and an oxygen mask on her face, and for a panicked moment she thought, I'm dying.
Didn't feel that way, though. In fact, she felt a lot better. Sore and weak, but better. Her mouth was dry as old paper. She cleared her throat and tried to sit up.
"Whoa!"
A face, looming over the bed. Jazz, looking delighted. Behind her was James Borden, all angles and smiles. His hair was creatively mussed, and his clothes looked lived-in. So did Jazz's, but that wasn't remarkable.
"Look who's awake," Jazz said, and reached for her hand, and the warm pressure of her fingers felt nice. Felt real. "How you feeling?"
Lucia nodded slightly and tried to talk. No good. Her voice wasn't even a hoarse croak. She gestured toward the pink pitcher of water on the stand next to the bed, and Borden hurried around to pour some for her.
Water, after such a long thirst, tasted like a revelation of the divine. Lucia whimpered with delight and swallowed until the cup was dry.
"Better?" Borden asked. He refilled it. "You've been out awhile. Couple of days." Some silent conversation between Borden and Jazz passed over her head. "You remember anything?"
"No." That was a word. A small one, and it sounded rough, but it was a recognizable word. Progress. "Pansy. All right?"
"Pansy's fine," Jazz said. "Never even got a sniffle or a fever. No infection at all. No other victims reported, either. Looks like you were the lucky one."
"What happened?"
"What do you remember?" Jazz asked.
"Going to sleep, after—after the hospital. Tired."
"Nothing else? You're sure?"
Lucia swallowed another ball of fire that seemed to be clinging to the back of her throat. "Dreams, maybe. Nightmares."
"But you don't remember leaving your apartment."
The fragile sense of well-being shattered. "I—left?"
Another look passed from Borden to Jazz, Jazz to Borden. Lucia was still fuzzy, the world still indistinct, but even so she didn't care for the way they were avoiding her questions.
"Yeah," Jazz said softly. "You left. At least, that's what the security logs say. You entered the code to disable the alarm, and you just—vanished. No sign of how you got out of the apartment."
This wasn't right. Couldn't be right. She hadn't I
well enough to leave. She remembered setting the alarm for instant alert and stumbling off to bed.
There was, of course, another way out of the apartment that wouldn't appear on the security logs—her own Manny-inspired precautions—but why would she run away? And why wouldn't she remember it? "Where did you find me?"
"We didn't," Borden said. "You were missing for four days. And on the fifth day, you were found sleeping in a supposedly unoccupied room at the Raphael."
"What?"
"Yeah," Jazz said grimly. "I'm not a woo-woo girl, but I'm not ruling out alien abduction."
That was impossible.
Lucia didn't remember anything from the moment she'd fallen asleep on her bed, fully clothed, to waking up here.
Nothing. Just dreams, and those were fading fast.
"Where was I?" she asked. Her voice was faint and weak, and Jazz looked at Borden again, this time for support.
"Honest to God, L. — I wish to hell I knew. The only good thing anybody can tell us is that you were being treated for what was wrong with you. IV antibiotics, just like they would have done here, apparently. You're weak now, but you're on the mend. Fever's gone, no sign of infection from the swabs they took, and you're not even going to want to know about any of that swabbing business, believe me." Jazz blew hair off of her forehead and grinned grimly. "Trust you to end up kidnapped by renegade doctors."
"Renegade doctors whose heads I'm going to mount on my trophy wall."
"Yes, bwana. I'll carry the elephant gun."
Four days. Four missing days. Six, if she'd been unconscious here since they'd found her. Almost a week of her life gone into a black hole.
"What about Susannah?" Omar, dead on the floor, hands open, throat cut. "Do the cops still have her?"
"No. They let her go. McCarthy's watching her," Jazz said. "Although believe me, it's been a challenge keeping him from being here twenty-four-seven. Look, I've been thinking…maybe the Cross Society decided they owed you one. Considering that it was their fake red letter that got you in trouble in the first place."
Eerily possible. Gregory Ivanovich had defeated her security once. He could have done it again. And carried me out? If he'd used her emergency exit, he could have done it?”
"I'll deal with that later," she whispered. "What about Susannah? You said they released her?"
"Forensic evidence proved out her story. Her husband's prints were on the knife, hers overlaid his. So she picked up the knife after he did. So yeah, KCPD released her." Jazz cleared her throat. "Problem is, she's already had one attempt on her life since they let her go. We had to step in again."
McCarthy. Omar's bloody corpse flashed in front of Lucia's eyes again. "Anyone—" McCarthy " — hurt?"
"No, the shooter tried for a sidewalk hit. McCarthy got her behind a car in time. No damage."
"No red envelopes?"
"Evidently, saving her life isn't important." The grim set of Jazz's face told Lucia what she thought about that. "I chewed Laskins a new asshole trying to get Simms to tell u
s what happened to you. No comment from the jailhouse psychic. He'll put himself out for strangers, not for his own. Bastards, all of them. I'm sick of this fucking circus."
Lucia smiled faintly. She could well imagine Jazz on the phone with Borden's boss, reading him the riot act. Laskins wouldn't have been pleased. For all she knew, Jazz might have hopped a plane to California, where Simms was jailed, to try the psychic in person.
Borden was looking elsewhere, deliberately taking himself out of the conversation. She wondered if Jazz had considered the ramifications of having him in the room, and then realized that Jazz nearly always considered the ramifications. That was part of the contradiction of the woman. She was impulsive and rash, and she also saw consequences coming a mile ahead. That didn't mean she allowed them to dictate her course of action.
Lucia cleared her throat again. "She's still with him? With McCarthy?"
"Yeah. He put me in charge of finding you." Jazz shrugged, eyes glittering. "Called him every night to tell him that I hadn't. And every night, he told me that I'd better find you, or it'd be my ass."
"You did find me."
Jazz nodded. "Yeah, tripped over you getting admitted to the hospital. World-class detective, I am. But on the bright side, guess I get to keep my ass."
Lucia drank more water. Borden raised the pitcher inquiringly; she shook her head. "I wish I knew what—what happened." Because anything could have. That was a disturbing void in her life. "When can I get out of here?"
"When you can gnaw through the straps," Jazz said. "I want you here until you can kick ass and take names."
That, Lucia thought, would take nothing more than a decent meal, a walk around the building and a fresh set of clothes.
Because she was so very, very ready to kick ass.
* * *
It took something more than an afternoon—a day and a half, to be exact—for the various doctors to present themselves and sign off on her release. She'd grimly demonstrated her ability to walk, eat, drink and pee in sufficient quantities to get everyone off her back.
Ben McCarthy didn't show. She kept expecting to turn around and see him walking through the door, kept expecting to feel his presence behind her. Didn't happen. But then, she reminded herself, he was working. Doing her job, in fact.
That didn't stop her from feeling irrationally annoyed about it.
She felt weak, but it was the kind of weakness that only movement and exercise would cure. She started off by scorning the wheelchair and taking the stairs, with Jazz and Borden clumping along behind her.
"Did you bring me a gun?" she asked Jazz before they hit the ground floor exit.
For answer, Jazz jumped down to the landing, reached in the inside pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out Lucia's P95 and shoulder holster. Lucia ran through the checklist on the gun, ratcheting the slide, examining the clip, ejecting the bullet in the chamber and reloading. Everything worked smooth as silk.
"She cleaned it for you," Borden said.
Jazz shrugged. "No big deal." Then she grinned and nudged him with her elbow. "Besides, nude girls cleaning guns turn him on."
"More than I needed to know. From both of you." Lucia removed her coat and put the holster on, settling the gun snugly against her ribs. While she was putting the coat on again, Jazz pushed past her to reach the door first.
Protecting her, Lucia realized. She blinked, smiled slightly and followed.
Once again, Manny had given up his Hummer to the cause; Lucia was starting to like the damn thing. It certainly gave one a feeling of security, riding high above traffic. It also presents a fine target, and it's easy to follow.
Jazz wanted to take her straight home, but Lucia wasn't having any of it. "Has Susannah said anything about her husband's business yet?"
"Not a word. Ben's been working on it, but she doesn't seem to trust anybody. Why? You want to take a run at her?"
"Absolutely." Mostly, she had to admit, she wanted to see McCarthy.
"And you don't think you should be, you know, resting…?"
"Apparently, I've been resting for almost a week. The last thing I need is more sleep. I need to think and I need to move. It's time to get into this thing, Jazz. I have a hunch that it's larger than we can see right now."
Jazz took the next right turn. "Far be it from me to get in the way of your hunches." She sounded amused, but not dismissive. Progress, of a sort. "I'm going to keep digging. Somebody had to see you being carried into the Raphael. You damn sure weren't walking on your own."
Borden said nothing. He had a laptop computer open, and he was typing away.
"Counselor," Lucia said. He looked back over his shoulder at her, eyebrows raised. "Shouldn't you be in New York?"
"Actually, GP&L is considering opening a branch office here," he said. "I'm fact-finding. We have seven corporate clients here, not to mention some other vested interests. And the air travel's getting old. They don't even feed you anymore on the plane."
"Tragic," she agreed, straight-faced. "Was this your idea, or your boss's?"
"Mine."
"Sure about that?"
He lost the friendly smile. "Meaning?"
"Meaning, are you sure that you're not doing the Cross Society's work instead of your firm's, setting up here?"
"They're not mutually exclusive."
"I'm not so certain."
He blinked and turned around even farther. The laptop was in danger of sliding to the floor. "So you think we're the villains now? Is that it?"
"We?"
That wasn't Lucia speaking. It was Jazz. Borden looked at her, stricken. "I mean…"
"Yeah," she said. "I get what you mean. Your loyalty's still with the Society. We means people who aren't in this car."
"Jazz—"
It was a lost cause, and Borden knew it. He turned to face the road.
It occurred to her that he'd be updating Laskins about what they were doing, and through Laskins, the Society and Simms. But she couldn't tell Jazz to turf him; she could see how important he was to her, and truthfully, she liked Borden. She liked his off-center smile, his quick intelligence, his wit, the passion in his eyes when he looked at her partner.
But she didn't like what he represented, at the moment. And she wasn't sure she liked him knowing where Susannah Davis was hidden.
They pulled into an apartment complex parking lot-not a complex Lucia was familiar with, more of a cheap, run-down establishment. The paint was peeling, and even the spring flowers in their landscaped beds looked cheap and struggling. It was the sort of place drug dealers rented, and hookers, and people who couldn't afford better. The sort of place where people averted their eyes from their neighbors and hoped that the noise in the apartment next door wasn't a felony being committed.
But Jazz's instincts were, as always, sound. It was also a place where women with bruised faces weren't necessarily worth comment.
"Number 317. Some distant cousin's apartment," Jazz said. "He's in jail. I told you before, my family tree has some funky branches."
"How'd you get the keys?"
"It's a cheap apartment." She shrugged. "Keys aren't all that relevant."
When Jazz and Borden started to exit the Hummer, Lucia reached over the seat and grabbed both of them by the shoulders. "No," she said quietly. "Listen. I want to talk to Susannah alone. I don't want an entourage. I appreciate everything you've done for me, but you have to let me do my job now. And Jazz—you're not supposed to be running around like this, it isn't safe. Borden, you're supposed to be keeping her out of trouble, not getting her deeper into it. Right?"
"No way," Jazz said instantly. "I go with you to the door, at least. Don't start, okay? You get escorted. We protect each other. Hell, it's worked so far."
Before she could form a coherent objection, Jazz was out of the truck. Lucia scrambled to follow. Jazz wasn't wasting time; she moved fast and sure, heading for building three. Lucia fell into step with her. "I let you out of my sight," Jazz said softly, "and yo
u were gone. You seriously think I'm going to let that happen again? Four days. Four fucking days, Lucia, and I thought I was looking for a corpse. Not again. Understand?"
They followed the cracked sidewalk in long, no-nonsense strides. The grass was sparse and dry, the bushes more branches than leaves. Some of the residents were making an effort—cheerful lawn furniture on the patios, wind chimes, bird feeders—but most had abandoned hope and lived with closed, sagging curtains, minding their own business.
The apartment was at the top of two flights of stairs that creaked as Lucia and Jazz jogged up. Even had they wanted to be stealthy, it wouldn't have been possible.
They slowed as they got to the landing, and Jazz unceremoniously pushed Lucia behind her and pulled her gun as she stepped forward. Two apartments, both with closed curtains. There was a faded welcome mat in front of 318, nothing but dried leaves in front of the other.
Jazz raised her hand to knock, but the door swung open, and Ben McCarthy was there. He opened his mouth to speak, and then his eyes focused past Jazz, on Lucia.
The look stopped her breath. His lips shaped a word-not her name. It took her a second to realize that it was God, A prayer, of a kind.
"Delivered to the door. Want me to wait in the car?" Jazz asked.
Ben tore his gaze away from Lucia to her. "No," he said. "I'll get her home. I don't want you hanging out in a goddamn Hummer in this parking lot. Kind of draws attention."
"Ah, hell, half a dozen guys in this complex drive Hummers."
"Drag dealers."
"Exactly."
McCarthy stilled her with a hand on her arm. "Jazz. I'll get her home safe. Count on it."
She shut up and looked at him for long seconds, then nodded.
"Now get the damn truck out of here. Go."
Jazz glanced at Lucia as she turned toward the stairs. "I'll kill you if you up and die on me," she said, and descended quickly, two steps at a time.
"Inside," McCarthy said, and tugged Lucia over the threshold before she could react. He stayed at the door for a long moment, and she watched him, reading the tension in his body. He had his gun out, ready at his side, and she could tell the precise moment when Jazz was safely in the Hummer, because he let out a held breath and shut the door. The place smelled faintly of old cats and stale cigarettes. She blinked, and her eyes adjusted to the dimness. Except for the welcome sight of McCarthy, she wished they hadn't. The furniture was garage sale, most of it broken, and the carpet was an unattractive green shag that she thought at first was stained, but then decided must have been meant to have a mottled effect. Plain white walls had plenty of damage to give the place that special designer touch.
