Devil's Due

"Yeah, love it. Baseball, Mom, apple pie, though come to think of it, I always preferred peach…" He was rattled, terribly off balance, and she imagined this was something of a new experience for him. She watched him visibly take control. "You've been really kind to a down-and-out ex-con. Thanks."

It hadn't been kindness. He knew that, and she wasn't willing to humiliate herself by pointing it out. "Any time," she said. Her lips felt numb and cold. "You'll watch your back?"

"Sure. Watch yours. And—" His eyes met hers, blue and limitless and blind with the same yearning she felt. "You take care of yourself. You heard the doc. Any fever…"

"Go," she said. She didn't know why, except that she knew he desperately needed her to order him out.

He nodded and left, shutting the door behind him. She walked to the intercom and pressed the button and told Marsh her friend was coming down, and would he please call a cab.

And then she went to the couch, turned on the television and sat numbly watching baseball—which she didn't even like—well into the night, thinking.

Chapter Seven

Morning came ugly and early, with the soundtrack of a ringing phone. Lucia clawed her way out of twisted sheets and found the receiver as she swung her legs out of bed. "Yes?" she said. It came out more abrupt than she intended, but she wasn't a morning person, and nearly everyone who worked with her knew it. What few friends she had knew it extremely well.

"Jazz."

Lucia collapsed back against the pillows and threw her arm over her eyes. "Ma

"No, not yet, but I figured I'd better ask you what you wanted to do about today's appointments. We have clients coming in at ten, remember? Santos Engineering? The industrial espionage thing?" Jazz was making notes; Lucia could hear the scratch of pen on paper. She felt as if she had a hangover. Her head felt stuffy. Don't be stupid. It could be anything. You could just be imagining things. "Lucia?"

"I'm thinking," she said. "Any way we can postpone?"

"Considering the state of our accounts receivable? I'm thinking no. Look, why don't I take it? Let you rest?"

"I'm fine." She wasn't. Didn't feel fine, and that worried her, but she'd had a crappy night's sleep. She didn't have a fever, at least, and that was supposed to be the first sign. "I don't want you out of Ma

"In case you missed the memo, Eidolon came after you, unless that FedEx was addressed to 'Whichever Bimbo Opens It First.'"

"Who're you calling a bimbo, chica?"

"Who're you calling chica? Ah, hell, get up, would you? Have some coffee. Call me back."

Click. Jazz and her smooth social skills. Lucia groaned and considered rolling over in the cocoon of pillows, but she knew it wouldn't do any good.

Shower. She needed a hot, cleansing shower.

On her third cup of coffee, Lucia called Jazz back and rescheduled the Santos meeting for the client's offices, on the condition that Jazz stay strictly at home.

"You're joking," Jazz retorted. "You think I'm letting you roam around by yourself? Somebody tried to poison you. Don't you get it?"

"I get it," she said, and checked the headlines on the papers that had been left at her door. "But mail poisoning isn't exactly the world's most intimate crime. It's a leap to go from that to—"

"Excuse me, but these same people—"

"How do we know it's the same people?"

"These some people put a high-powered-rifle bullet through my office window and nearly killed me! That's pretty intimate, not to mention direct! Unless you're wearing Dolce & Gabbana's spring bulletproof line—"

"Oh, Jazz, I'm so proud. A year ago you would have thought Dolce & Gabbana made chocolate bars."

"Would you let me finish?"

"No. And I'll tell you why. I'm going to the meeting, and I'm taking Omar with me. You've met him. Is he enough of a bodyguard for you?"

Jazz made some halfhearted protests, but it was mainly from being left out, which she hated. But Lucia meant what she said: until Max Simms or the Cross Society sent word that Eidolon's attention had moved on, and Jazz was no longer a target, Jazz would stay safe in Ma

"Jazz," Lucia said, just when she sensed her partner was about to put down the phone. "Listen—when Ma

"You're the first call," Jazz said. "FBI second. Pansy's still here, by the way, and feeling fine. You?"

Lucia swallowed another mouthful of coffee and willed the aches in her muscles to go away. "Fine," she said. "I feel fine."

Omar showed up downstairs at promptly 9:00 a.m., looking big and mysterious and sexy as hell in his black slacks, black shirt and designer sunglasses, his glossy black hair carelessly curling almost to his shoulders. "Boss," he said in greeting, and uncoiled from his lounging position at the guard station, where he'd been shooting the breeze with Messrs. Tarrant and Valencia, the day shift guards. He slid the glasses up to take a good look at her. "I leave you alone for a few hours, and you go and get yourself infected."

"Yes, Omar, you could have bravely thrown yourself on the FedEx package and prevented all of this." She moved past him to the parking garage elevators. "Cheer up. Maybe you can take a bullet for me today instead."

"Don't get my hopes up," he said.

Downstairs, his gleaming black SUV was parked next to her Lexus. Illegally. "I suppose we're taking your car," she said.

"You hired me for my vast array of skills," Omar said. "Of which guarding parking garages is only one."

"Shut up and get me there."

"Testy! Not enough coffee?"

There wasn't enough coffee in the world right now to banish the headache that was pounding in her temples. She dug two aspirins out of her purse and swallowed them with a mouthful of bottled water, taken from the built-in cooler between the seats. Omar's SUV had all the comforts of first class. She was reasonably sure that should she ask for a hot meal, he'd be able to provide it out of the contents of the secret compartments.

"Headache?" he asked.

"Not enough sleep. And yes, I have antibiotics, and they don't even know what it was in the envelope yet. I’m fine." Speaking of that, she dug the antibiotics out and swallowed the next dose. It tasted bitter. She followed it with plenty of water.

He kept silent, wisely. She closed her eyes as the truck weaved through morning traffic to Overland Park. The sun seemed too bright. She checked the air vents and turned the air conditioning up.

Omar refrained from comment.

The meeting was so dull and ordinary that she coasted through it on autopilot. She smiled at appropriate places and delivered the appropriate endorsements of the ability of the private investigative firm of Callender & Garza to find their security leak. Santos was a small company. The leak wouldn't turn out to be some hard-ass spy; more likely, he or she would be a disgruntled midlevel employee, dissatisfied with his or her prospects and pay.

"The truth is," she told Erin Santos, the firm's chief operating officer, "the target is probably so scared of being caught that he or she will confess immediately, if confronted. I'd suggest some blind interviews this week. Half an hour for each of your employees over the course of two or three days. We'll find your mole." An easy five thousand. Jazz would be pleased.

"Well…" The Santos team exchanged barely concealed eager looks. "Can you do it now? Get started, anyway?"

"Sure," she said. It wouldn't take much. Some guesses, some silence, Omar lounging purposefully in the corner. "Give me the most likely suspects first. We might as well work it as a triage."