Devil's Bargain

This feeling…it had more of a feeling of sticking around.

He was watching her. She realized she’d been staring back, felt a rush of blood heat up her face and turned back to the cheesecake she was not really eating.

“How’s Lucia?” he asked. Which was completely the wrong thing to ask at that moment.

“Don’t you know? I mean, don’t you guys know everything?” She heard the edge in her voice.

“Yeah, sorry, I don’t actually sit around and monitor your lives on a daily basis.”

“Who does?”

He changed the subject. “I take it that she’s okay.”

“She’s fine. Better than fine, actually. She’s happy as a clam. That girl really likes undercover work. It’s a little scary, how good she is at it, for somebody who wears a lot of—you know—designer clothes.”

“What’s she doing now?” he asked around a mouthful of brandy-soaked ladyfingers.

“Right now? Probably emptying trash from the sixth-floor restrooms.” Jazz glanced at her watch. “Actually, I take it back. She’s on her break, sitting in the lunchroom, watching Spanish-language soap operas.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I told you. She likes undercover work. You’re not going to do anything stupid like follow me to L.A., are you?” she asked, without any transition, and watched him scramble to keep up with the conversational left turn.

“Do you need me to?” he asked. Not, she noticed, Do you want me to.

“No,” she said. “I don’t need you there. And it would probably be easier if you stayed out of my hair. Having somebody around with a personal stake in things is distracting.”

“It’s just that he’s—like family.” Borden shrugged, but it didn’t look casual. “I don’t have a lot of that.”

“Family? Hell, sometimes I have too much. Want a sister?”

She’d said something wrong. She saw the flinch. Unless he already knew Molly.

“I had one,” he finally said, and met her eyes.

She knew that look, had seen it on the faces of too many families. Lost. Baffled. Wounded. She hadn’t just made a mistake, she’d opened a vein. “What happened?”

“The usual. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” His smile cut like glass. “Not everybody’s a Lead. She never even got to be an Actor.”

Not a good time to express her skepticism on the whole theory. “Any other family?”

“My mother lives in Canada. Father—” He shrugged again. “I don’t really know. So, Lowell means a lot to me. He was there when I needed him.”

She studied him. “Then I’ll do everything I can.”

He nodded, sipped wine and fiddled with his fork. “Want me to drive you to the airport?”

“Sure.” She shrugged and then frowned. “You don’t have a car.”

“Rental. I need to take it back to the airport and catch the red-eye back to New York.”

“So you weren’t pla

“No, I was pla

There was something underneath that, something like a cliff she could easily fall from, and she backed up fast. “Okay, then. If you could give me a ride, that would be great.”

Borden called for the check. They argued over who was going to pay it, but in the end, she let him put it on the GPL tab. They exited into a rush of late commuters and a cool whisper of wind, and walked together like a couple along the sidewalk back toward the office. Borden silently took her shoulder bag; she just as silently let him. Her gun wasn’t in it, anyway.

“Is somebody going to start taking potshots at me again?” she asked him. He missed a step, stumbled and lengthened his stride as if trying to leave that awkwardness behind him.

“I doubt it,” he said. “Generally, once Leads are inside the Society, it’s not in the best interest of the opposition to try to get rid of them unless they really present a problem. Their best chance of success is before you’re fully informed, before there are others watching your back. Or to get to you first and put you on their side.”

“Huh,” she said. “So that’s why they tried to kill us in the parking garage. Because we hadn’t actually joined up yet, but we knew enough not to join them.”

“Yes. It was their last opportunity to stop you without directly coming after the Cross Society.”

“This thing—this L.A. thing—this isn’t just to get me out of the way, right? Because something’s going down here?”

He jammed his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders, looking lost in thought. “Interesting thought,” he said, “but I don’t think so. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be possible, but…”

“You don’t know?”

“Do I seem like the secret master of the world to you? No, I’m not sure. But I don’t think they’d do that.” Still, he was frowning, concentrating on his feet. She wished she hadn’t brought it up. “I suppose we’d better get you to the airport.”

“Yeah,” she agreed softly.

They walked in silence for another few hundred feet, and then Borden unlocked a dark red rental car and handed her inside—literally, offered a hand, as if she was a lady in big skirts getting into a carriage. She was taken aback by that, but she had to admit, the warm touch of his fingers on hers was nice. And he hadn’t done it to be showy; it was, she sensed, just something he did. She remembered him doing it for Lucia, at the limo door…but not her. She supposed her body posture at the time had been in the language of touch me and die.

The car felt small and intimate with the two of them inside of it. Borden drove competently, without any hesitation, although she knew he couldn’t possibly know his way around that well. Could he? She concentrated on traffic and taillights, on road noise and the peripheral glow of his face in the wash of headlights. When she looked over, she was struck by how…good he looked. A little rough around the edges, a little tired, a little worried. Human.

“Hey,” she said. He looked over at her, then back at the road. “I’m going to make sure nothing happens to him. You know that, right?”

“Right,” he agreed. “Make sure nothing happens to you, either, would you? As a favor to me?”

She hadn’t really noticed, but clouds had convened overhead while they were in the restaurant, and now big, fat raindrops began to pelt the windshield—a few at first, and then a silver shower. Borden activated the wipers. They were already on the freeway. Ten minutes, she thought to herself. Ten minutes and I’m at the airport, ready to get on a plane. This is not how I wanted today to end.

She drummed her fingers on the armrest nervously, watching the rain-smeared road, and was surprised when his right hand suddenly came down on her agitated left one, stopping her from tapping out a rhythm. He didn’t say anything. His long, tapering fingers wrapped slowly around hers, exploring. More sensual than anything she’d felt in a long time. This wasn’t reassurance, wasn’t a quick impersonal touch of the hand…this was something else.

She looked down, watching as he turned her hand over, palm up, and began to lightly trace fingernails down the center of it. She felt light-headed. Tense. Oddly out of breath.

“Come back safe,” he said softly. “That’s not a request, all right?”

“All right,” she agreed. Her pulse was hammering, and that was stupid, stupid. It was just skin, just a touch, not even a touch anywhere she could call intimate. But she could barely keep her voice level.

Borden reclaimed his right hand for the exit to the airport. She clenched hers into a fist, willing herself to stop feeling so…so…

She had no words for how she felt at the moment, except frustrated.

Borden pulled up at the curb, set his hazard lights and got out to grab her bag from the backseat. She was already out of the car by the time he’d managed it.

As she shouldered the strap, he stepped in closer and looked down at her. She looked up.

“See you,” she said.

“Yeah.”