Devil's Bargain

She pelted across the street the instant traffic paused, bounded over the curb and jogged another block, past the blank side of a long windowless building. Cars were parked at meters on the side. She passed a beat-up Ford, two trucks, a panel van…

The sliding door on the van slapped open when she was even with it, and she darted backward, hands up, as the muzzle of a gun slid out in her direction.

“Against the wall,” a voice barked. She couldn’t see into the van. Too dark. Sun glinted on window glass, blinding her. No markings on the van, dammit, she needed to see something, describe something…. “Do it. Now.”

She backed up until her heels and shoulders pressed against brick, hands still high.

“Where’s the envelope?” The voice sounded different in person than on the phone, but she was still sure she’d never heard it before. “You have two seconds or I start shooting.”

“Here,” she said, and pointed down at her pocket. “Let me get it out.”

“Go. Slowly.”

She reached in with two fingers, showed him the red envelope. Still sealed.

“Pitch it to me.” A gloved hand beckoned from the shadows.

“No,” she said. “Let me see Borden first.”

There was a flurry of movement inside, and the van rocked on its springs. A limp body rolled half out of the door, head knocking on the curb; she winced when she saw it was Borden, pale and unconscious, blood trickling from a cut over his eye. His shirt was ripped along the seam to bare most of his bicep, and was saturated with fresh red blood. There was a wound there, but it was too bloody for her to see what it was.

She concentrated on the pulse in his throat. It was still moving. His chest was still rising and falling, shallowly.

“Time’s up,” the man inside the van said, and she heard the dry metallic sound of the gun preparing to fire.

“Okay!” she shouted, and tugged the envelope out of her pocket, waving it between two fingers. “Okay, here! Take it!”

She pitched it. It fluttered in the wind and fell short, slapping facedown on the pavement next to Borden’s limp, bloody hand. She immediately turned both hands palms out, pleading, and lunged forward to grab it and offer it to him. “Don’t shoot, okay? Sorry! I’m sorry!”

He reached to take the envelope.

She threw it edge-on into his face, and as he flinched, she grabbed the barrel of the gun and forced it aside. It went off, hot and violent in her grasp, and she felt a burn on her leg from cement fragments as the bullet dug into the sidewalk, but then she was lunging inside, throwing herself on the unseen opponent, trying to twist the gun out of his hand.

It was a massive miscalculation. She didn’t have a chance. She’d lunged into the unknown, blindly trusting, and now she had two problems.

One, the guy was about twice her size and three times her upper-body strength, and he easily slammed her to the side, against the steel wall of the van.

Two, there was another man in the van, and he threw an iron-hard forearm across her throat, holding her in place tight enough to make her gag for breath. She instinctively grabbed for his arm, and he pressed harder as she clawed at a smooth nylon windbreaker. She saw spots and stars in the dark.

“Bitch,” the first man said raggedly, and stepped in to plant a fist hard in her stomach. She couldn’t double over, but her knees jerked upward, trying to protect her midriff; that just increased the choke hold on her throat. “We’re done playing with you.”

He reached down and retrieved the red envelope from the floor of the van. In the dim light of the door, it had a boot mark on the back. He ripped it open and slid the contents out—

It was a Hallmark card. Flowers and hearts. Jazz’s eyes were watering; still she couldn’t help but bare her teeth in a bloody grin and mouth, Gotcha.

He turned, threw the card at her, and began ripping at her coat, trying to find the right envelope.

There was a popping sound, and a rapid flicker of blue-white sparks, and he froze in place, head back, muscles trembling, then slumped to the floor.

Lucia stood behind him with a taser the size of a particularly nasty sex toy. She kicked the gun out of his reach and lunged forward to stab the taser hard into the side of the man holding Jazz to the side of the van.

Snap, crackle, pop…down.

Jazz slumped, coughing, gagging, rubbing her throat, and looked up at Lucia, who tasered them both again for good measure, looking grim. She stooped and picked up the red envelope and card from the floor of the van, studied it and extended the open card to Jazz.

It read, in Ma

Jazz barked out a painful laugh and shoved sweaty hair back from her face. “You’ve got the right one?”

Lucia nodded. Jazz moved around her, grabbed Borden under the arms and heaved him out of the van onto the sidewalk. He flopped limply, then groaned and rolled over slowly onto his side and curled in on himself. His bloody arm smeared dark red onto the cement.

“James?” She dropped to her knees next to him, breathless, and pushed aside his torn sleeve to see what the damage was. She felt sick when she saw it—a long strip of flesh cut out of his arm, baring muscle. Still bleeding. She stripped off her coat and jammed it against his arm, saw his eyelids flutter, and brushed her fingers greedily across his forehead, his face, his lips. “James!”

His dark eyes flickered open, pupils too large and too slow to contract. Drugged, maybe. Or concussed. “Jazz?” His tongue came out, pale, to wet his lips. “Turn the light off.”

She let her breath out in a rush and, for no particular reason, kissed him. Hard. Felt his lips curl up under hers, vaguely smiling.

“Jazz!” Lucia was beside her, and the red envelope in her hand was open. A sheet of crisp paper was in her hand. “Jazz, we have to go. Now.”

“I can’t leave him here. He’s bleeding.”

“He’s fine. Jazz, the cops are about a block away. He’ll be okay—we’ve got to go right now!”

Jazz grabbed the sheet of paper and sca

Two words:

Stop Him.

“What the hell?” She looked up at Lucia, who handed her one more thing. A newspaper clipping.

“It was in the envelope,” she said.

Third Victim Found Dead, Killer Still At Large. Black-and-white newsprint photos of three children, two girls and a boy, all smiling eagerly for the camera, their lives ahead of them.

“Oh, God,” Jazz murmured. She looked down at Borden, whose eyes were at least partly comprehending now. “James—”

“I know,” he mumbled. “I’m good. Go.”

Lucia grabbed her by the collar and dragged her upright, pushed her into a stumbling run, heading farther down the block. Jazz tried to stop, to turn back, but Lucia shoved her again.

“The car’s back that way!” Jazz yelled, just as a huge black SUV roared around the corner, taking it on two wheels, and squealed to a stop next to them. Jazz fumbled for her gun, but Lucia lunged for the passenger door.

“In!” she screamed, and clambered up. Jazz, breathless, followed.

As she slammed the door, the SUV took off with a sudden jerk, and she nearly slid off the bench seat before she could brace herself with the panic strap over the door.

Ma

“What the hell…?”

“Bulletproof glass,” Ma

“Ma

“What?” He looked honestly puzzled, staring over at Jazz. She just blinked, unable to think of a single thing to say.