Devil's Bargain

She gri

“Right,” he replied. “Take care.”

“You, too.” She hung up. Lucia raised eyebrows at her. “You got any local contacts to do a plate check?”

“Local? No. The sources I have work at, ah, higher levels. And using them might raise a red flag.”

“Kind of what I figured,” Jazz nodded. “Okay, we do it the hard way.”

“Meaning?”

Lucia started the car. She reached down, retrieved the fallen digital camera and handed it to Jazz, who thumbed quickly through the pictures. Too bad they hadn’t gotten a shot of the blue car, but Jazz had a pretty vivid mental image, and she was sure Lucia did, too.

“Meaning,” Jazz said, staring at Pink Cardigan’s picture, “we go see Ma

Lucia groaned softly, and put the car in gear.

Convincing Ma

“I swear,” Jazz groaned as she flipped the cell phone closed, “I’m personally going over there to set up parental controls to keep him from ever watching The X-Files again.”

“Probably wouldn’t do any good,” Lucia said, pokerfaced. “I think I spotted DVD collections.”

“Crap.”

Lucia pulled the car into a space near the apartment stairs, killed the low beams, and reached up to flip the overhead dome light off. When Jazz reached for the door handle, Lucia stopped her. “Wait,” she said.

“For?”

“My eyes to adjust,” Lucia said calmly. “I want to be able to see the shadows before you decide to present another target.”

“You know, I think you and Ma

“Another crack like that, and I catch the next puddle jumper out of here.”

Still, Lucia was right; Jazz would have thought of it herself, been more cautious if she hadn’t been so tired and hurting. She sat in silence, watching the shadows as her eyes adjusted; nothing she could see waiting out there. Parked cars were always a worry, but there wasn’t much she could do about them.

“Okay.” Lucia finally nodded. “No deviations. Straight up the stairs, fast as you can. I’ll be behind you.”

Jazz didn’t waste breath on agreeing, just ducked out, kept her head down and took the steps as quickly as possible. Which was agonizingly slowly, actually, given the crappy state of her body. She was gasping and feeling a little sick by the time she achieved the top landing. Behind her, Lucia, lingering down at the bottom, watching the parking lot, turned and soundlessly came up, three steps at a bound.

Jazz felt tired just watching her.

She slipped her key into the first dead bolt, then the second, and reached for the doorknob.

It didn’t turn in her hands.

Jazz backed up, fast, breath short again. She planted her back squarely against the wall, eyes wide, and nodded Lucia silently back to the far side, out of the line of fire.

What? Lucia mouthed. Her gun was out, fast as a magic trick. Jazz fumbled her own out, but didn’t like the way her hand was shaking. I’ll probably shoot myself. Again.

Jazz pointed at the doorknob. Locked, she mouthed. Shouldn’t be.

Lucia nodded in understanding. Jazz habitually shot dead bolts, but never bothered with the relatively nuisance-value lock on the knob. They could be overcome by a bright ten-year-old with a hairpin, much less anybody serious about breaking and entering. Lucia held out her free hand. Jazz tossed the keys underhand to her, watched as she neatly—and nearly silently—fielded them, and then stepped up to slot the key neatly into the last lock.

No hail of gunfire. Jazz held her breath as the door swung wider onto darkness. Something moved inside, and her heart lurched, but it was only a bushy gray ghost of a cat stepping cautiously over the threshold. Mooch. She resisted the urge to dive over and grab him, and let him prance his slow way past her and down the stairs. He gave her a curious look and a rumble of a purr as he passed, but he was embarked on serious business.

Lucia moved fast and low, and entered the apartment. Jazz waited. She’d be crap as backup right now, and she knew it. Plus, crouching was pretty much out of the question.

Silent moments passed, and then lights blazed on in the hallway and spilled out in a golden syrupy glow over the concrete and Jazz’s shoes. Lucia appeared at the door as she reholstered her gun at her back.

“Come on,” she said, and checked the outside again one more time before she locked the door. “You’ve had company, all right, but they’re gone now.”

“Crap,” Jazz sighed. She stared mournfully at the mess left behind. Mounds of crumpled papers. Drawers pulled open and contents strewn all over the place. Pictures askew on the wall, although truthfully none of that would matter even if they’d slashed every one of them to bits.

The boxes of files, the ones she’d wanted Lucia to look through…they were gone.

She froze, staring at the empty corner. There was an impression in the cheap, ugly carpet where the weight of the stack had rested, but unless the damn boxes had turned invisible, they were gone.

She kicked disconsolately at the papers on the floor, trying to see if they’d left anything behind, but what was abandoned looked like her regular household stuff, correspondence, bills, nothing important.

“What?” Lucia asked, and followed her stare to the empty corner. “Oh, God. They took your case files, right?”

“Right,” Jazz murmured. “All the work I did since Ben’s arrest. All the notes, all the leads. Everything.”

“Anyone in particular come to mind?”

“Besides that asshole Stewart?” She shook her head. Too sick, too tired, too numbed. She sank into a chair and heard papers crackle under her ass, but she didn’t care. “I don’t know. Ask me in the morning.”

Lucia stared at her for a few seconds, then turned and walked into the kitchen. Whatever disaster was there, she returned with a glass of water and a handful of pills. “Take them,” she said. “I mean it.”

And for once, Jasmine Callender did as she was told. She meekly swallowed the pills and sat watching Lucia straighten up papers, making stacks, clearing the floor. Then straightening up fallen chairs, putting drawers back in place, closing open cabinet doors.

Rehanging those god-awful pictures.

Jazz’s eyelids got heavy without warning. She woke up with a start when she felt a hand on her shoulder, and somehow made it on numbed feet back to the bedroom.

Lights out.

She didn’t even have time to worry about why somebody who’d broken in and trashed her house had taken the trouble to lock all of her dead bolts.

Or how.

She’d had better mornings after four-day benders.

Jazz woke up sick, aching, slightly feverish, and wishing she were dead for the first full minute before remembering that it was good to be alive. Mostly. Part of the reason that kicked in was the smell of fresh-brewed coffee wafting through the apartment. Unless Mooch had learned how to program the coffeemaker, she still had company.

Jazz groaned, tried to sit up and stayed flat for a few more minutes, gathering strength. Yep, it hurt. A lot. It hurt like the morning after indulging in some insane exercise orgy and doing a thousand sit-ups. Only worse. She wasn’t sure she could force her abdominal muscles to do even the simple work of getting her out of bed.