Devil's Bargain

“Take her home, Counselor Borden,” Simms said. He sounded suddenly tired, and not at all happy. “I’ve had quite enough excitement for one day, and I believe Gil is going to attempt another clever move before bedtime. I will need all my concentration to undo the mistakes of today.”

Borden reached across Jazz and punched the button. She knocked his arm away, rose to her feet and leaned both palms flat on the table, staring at Simms’s small, pale face. “I think you’re full of crap,” she said. “We make our own choices, and you’re just a con man and a murderer.”

Simms didn’t smile this time. He looked thoroughly exhausted, as if the life was draining out of him. “Part of that is always true some of the time,” he said. “And part of it is true all of the time. I leave it to you to decide how to divide the statement. It’s been lovely to meet you, Jasmine.”

“It’s not mutual,” she said, and turned toward the door as it opened behind her. Moving into the larger room with its harsh fluorescent glare and empty ringing silence felt like escape, as if she’d been under some threat she hadn’t identified.

She looked back. Borden was still standing there, speaking softly to Simms. As she watched, Simms nodded, stood up and shuffled away with a deputy at his side.

Borden looked grim and angry, and he didn’t say a word as they followed their own deputy back past empty cells and through sally ports. They both spoke in monosyllables as they signed papers and collected their belongings again, then were escorted back into the harsh desert sunshine. The car was still waiting, idling in the falling darkness.

When they were back on the road, Borden clicked open his briefcase, rooted around in it for a second, and then handed her a plane ticket. Flight 802. Los Angeles to Kansas City.

“He didn’t know,” Borden said. “I didn’t tell him we were flying back tonight, and there’s no way he could have known which flight we were on. Think about that.”

She gave him a long, considering look, and said, “And if I were a half-decent con man, I might know how many flights there were to K.C. from LAX in a day, if my mark was heading there. I might make a pretty educated guess as to which one she’d be on, given the time of day. Looks like magic. Smells like crap, Counselor. Sorry. No sale.”

He shook his head and avoided her eyes. She licked her lips and suddenly—shockingly—remembered the warm pressure of his mouth, and felt something in her plummet again, lost and liking it. It’s a long ride back to L.A., some part of her whispered. She tracked it down and throttled it into silence.

Borden said something under his breath that sounded like, “He said you’d be like this,” and they spent the entire ride back in silence.

Not touching.

To Jazz’s well-concealed disappointment.

Chapter 9

J azz had done such a good job of putting Simms out of her mind that it wasn’t until she was queuing up to the ticket line behind a petite blond woman dressed in a fuzzy pink scarf and heard the ticket agent say “Ms. Walters? May I see your ID please?” that the whole thing came rushing back, like ice through her veins. Simms’s cool, precise voice whispered in her head. There will be two survivors, a blond woman named Kelley Walters and a businessman, Lamar Qualls. Kelley will be traveling to visit her sister in Kansas City.

The blond woman moved off. Jazz stared after her for a few seconds, then moved up and handed over ticket and ID. Borden was right behind her. No hitches. They breezed through security and took seats at the gate with twenty minutes before boarding.

If Borden had heard the woman’s name, he didn’t give any indication. He’d stopped along the way to buy a copy of the New York Times and was deep into the business section. He’d stopped looking at her at all. Jazz, for her part, felt ancient and creaky, thanks to the day’s exertions. Her muscles were telling her they badly wanted a rest, and she was pretty sure she looked like she’d gone a few rounds as a punching bag. She told her various aches and pains to shut up, and strolled over to the restroom when she saw the blond woman get up and head that way.

It’s crap, Jazz told herself. She did her business in the stall and came out to find Ms. Walters—Kelley, no doubt—washing her hands. She was a lovely pink rose of a woman, neat and friendly, flashing an immediate smile when Jazz took the sink next to her.

“Late flight,” Jazz said, and yawned as she yanked paper towels from the dispenser. The other woman nodded.

“At least we get to sleep,” she said. “And there’s no traffic at the terminal when you get there. But there’s something really eerie about looking for a cab in the middle of the night, you know?”

“Nobody meeting you?”

Kelley shook her head, causing blunt-cut blond hair to brush her cheeks. “I’m visiting my sister and her family. No sense in getting them out of bed at oh-my-God in the morning. I’ll just take a cab and get a hotel. I was supposed to be on the six-o’clock flight, but I got bumped. What a pain flying is these days.”

Jazz was good at reading people, good at sensing setups and deceptions, and she felt nothing. Heard no false notes.

If Kelley Walters was a plant, working as part of the larger con orchestrated by Max Simms, she was the best damn liar Jazz had ever seen.

Jazz went back to her seat. Borden had finished the business section and moved on to sports. She picked up the paper and sca

Jazz felt a sense of unreality close around her. Walters, she could dismiss as a deliberate setup. Qualls, being part of a group, wasn’t so easy. Still, Simms and the Cross Society could have gotten hold of the passenger list….

Flight 802. She stared at the number and found it suddenly hard to swallow.

“Borden,” she said, and stopped. He looked up. His brown eyes were tired and bleary.

“What?”

“Maybe we should—”

He folded his newspaper. “What?”

“Nothing.”

The boarding call went out for business class. Qualls and the rest of the flock of suits headed for the ramp. Jazz checked her ticket. She and Borden were in business, as well. She shouldered her bag and followed his long-limbed stride past the checkpoint, through the hollow booming tu

She stopped. Just…stopped.

This is stupid, she told herself. Move. Get on the damn plane.

Borden had heard the same things she had. He wasn’t hesitating.

She took a deep breath and edged past the tired smiles of the flight attendants to her seat. Borden eased in next to her with a sigh and buckled in tight.

“Borden,” she said again. “Listen, what he said—”

“About the crash?” He sounded utterly calm. “You weren’t listening, Jazz. There’s an eighty-two-percent chance it won’t happen. Believe me, the longer you’re around Simms, the more you’ll trust his odds.”

“But—” There’s a woman named Kelley Walters back there. And that guy over there, he’s named Qualls.

Borden went back to the sports section. “Just stay buckled in,” he said. “Trust me. You’ll either believe soon, or you won’t. And there’s an eighty-two-percent chance it’ll actually still matter in the end.”