Devil's Due

Jazz was at the bar, Borden close beside her. Lucia hopped up on a stool next to her. "Are we finished with the love talk?" she asked. "If so, there's work to be done."

Jazz rolled her eyes and gestured for the red letter, which Borden handed to her. She read it quickly. "We sure it's genuine?"

"He says so." Lucia demonstrated the new UV toy.

"Who's downstairs?" Jazz tucked a stray lock of blond hair behind her ear, and read the note again. "In the truck?"

"Omar and a new client."

"The wife."

"Yes."

"No sign of the husband?"

"Omar lost him."

Jazz glanced up at Ma

"Omar lost him," Lucia said firmly. "I'm going to find a place to stash her, and put Omar on bodyguard duty until we can get her in touch with the FBI. She claims she's got incriminating information about her husband, but she doesn't want to deal with the local cops. Not even Welton Brown could convince her. The way she talks, it's probably organized crime. I expect Agent Rawlins will do us another favor, so long as it also looks good on his resume."

Jazz snorted. "That's Rawlins, all over. Okay, so this thing. Another typical piece of Cross Society bullshit. Go here, wait here, blah blah. You'll know what to do? What the hell does that mean?"

"I hope it doesn't involve shooting someone. Again."

"Pros and cons," Jazz said, and tapped the black marble counter with blunt fingernails. "Pro, we make a quick five grand for doing whatever this is, and more than likely, it doesn't even involve us lifting a finger. Most of these don't, right? We just change events by being there on time.

We force other people to make different choices. Like a couple of boulders dumped into a stream."

Lucia blinked. "You understand this better than I do."

"Yeah, I'm frickin' deep that way. Any other pros you can think of? Besides money?"

"It's possible that what we do could help someone. Maybe save a life."

"Or not. I got over the whole idea that we're working for the good guys when they sent me to wait outside while a woman got murdered, just so I could write down an apartment number and testify about it later."

Lucia shrugged. "I said it's possible."

"I'll put that one in the 'maybe' column. Okay, cons. I don't trust these jerks anymore."

Borden cleared his throat. "Standing right here, Jazz."

She reached up without looking and put her hand on the lapel of his coat. Her fingers curled, touching his shirt beneath, unconsciously seeking skin. "Not you," she said. "And we talked about that."

That must have been an interesting conversation, to say the least

"There's something else," Lucia said. "Neither of us wants guilt on our head when people die because we didn't act."

"That's exactly what they want us to think—that it's somehow our fault. But it isn't, L. And it isn't our responsibility, either. We're not superheroes. Well, I'm not, anyway. I don't know what the hell you do in your spare time. Me, I bowl. I don't want to save the world. I just want to work my cases and save my friends and family and people who come to me for help."

Jazz paused and looked down. A cat was prowling around the legs of her bar stool, weaving in and out, purring. Mooch, Lucia recalled. Jazz's cat. Evidently, Ma

"He seems to like it here," Lucia said.

"He's a cat. What does he know?" But Jazz was smiling. "Sorry. Guess I mountaineered up to the soapbox again." Lucia hadn't been confused. She understood very well that this was Jazz venting her frustrations, not Jazz explaining a decision.

"I understand perfectly what you're feeling," Lucia said. "But our choice at the moment is simple. We have a red envelope, and it's from the Cross Society. What do you want to do?"

Jazz sighed. "Let me get my gun."

She slid off the bar stool and walked to another temporary structure, this one an actual room with four walls and a ceiling, about fifteen feet away across the concrete floor. Her bedroom. Borden followed her. She looked back at him as she opened the door. "You going to help me get my gun?" she asked.

Borden said, "No, I'm going to help you put on your body armor."

"Oh. Okay."

The door shut.

Lucia poured herself a cup of coffee, smiled and waited.

Chapter Nine

In the end, they agreed that Jazz and Borden would take his car and head to the location; there were still two hours until the time listed on the Cross Society note, and that was plenty for Lucia to get Susa

The simplest way to hide Susa

The concierge took on a hushed, serious air when he was given the news, and opened a secured entrance on the side of the hotel. Susa

Lucia waited in the SUV. Her cell phone, which doubled as a walkie-talkie, finally bleeped, and Omar's voice said, "We're in. Nice room, by the way. And complimentary champagne. I presume I'm being reimbursed for this."

She hoped that Susa

"You want me to call a doctor friend to come take a look at her?"

"Be careful about it if you do. You good to go?"

"Let's see—guns, bullets, Kevlar, fruit basket. We're all set."

"Watch your back. I don't like her husband, and I barely met the guy. I'll set up an interview with the FBI for tomorrow. Maybe we can get this over with quickly and make it their problem instead of ours."

One challenge down. She swallowed a sip of water, felt it burn at the back of her throat, and remembered what Ma

She pulled the SUV into traffic and headed for the hospital. She asked for Dr. Kirkland, and was immediately bumped to the top of the waiting list, which told her something about how worried they were. She ended up exactly where she'd been a few hours before, in a stark E.R. examining room, wearing a flimsy cotton gown, getting stuck with needles. The fever, Kirkland said, was a worry, but they were still waiting for the cultures to be completed, and she was already on doxycycline to combat any infection.

"Rest," he told her. "You understand that's what will kill this thing, if it is a thing, right?"

"Yes." She did understand. And just as soon as she took care of whatever waited at the corner of Parallel and Tenth Street, she'd comply.

Lucia pulled into the parking lot at the corner of Parallel and Tenth with fifteen minutes to spare, and saw Jazz and Borden parked in the shadow of a big industrial building. Backed into a space. Watching as much of the street as possible.

Lucia paid the parking attendant, walked over and slid into the back seat of Borden's rental car. It was clean, except for his briefcase and a well-thumbed Grisham novel. "So," she said, and slid on her sunglasses to cut the afternoon glare. "You kids been behaving yourselves?"