Devil's Due

Jazz would have cursed and thrown a glass across the room and probably gotten drunk out of spite.

Lucia put the cork back in the bottle, replaced it in its holder, and was extraordinarily careful with the glass, just to be sure she didn't give in to her temper. Then she poured herself a large sparkling water, and took a long, hot bath. Careful not to get the bandage wet.

When she came out, dressed in a thick, white, fluffy robe with her small.38 in the pocket, she settled on the couch, sipping water, stealing glances at the red envelope.

Some days she believed. Some she didn't. Today, having been at the right place at the right time to save uncounted numbers of lives, she was just angry at the entire world for having the gall to do this to her. Haven't I been through enough? She had. Beyond any question.

She put the water aside, walked to the counter and dug the UV light that Borden had given her out of her purse. There, on the face of the envelope, was Milo Laskins's bold, flowing signature.

She tore open the envelope to slide the thin sheet of paper out. No powder in it, but that didn't mean it wasn't deadly in its own way.

It read, THANK YOU.

That was all.

She ran the UV flashlight over the note.

The signature wasn't Laskins's. It was a different name, spiky and difficult to read, driven in straight-up-and-down strokes of the pen.

When she finally made it out, she felt a chill bolt down her spine.

Max Simms, psychic and serial killer, had sent her a personal thank-you note.

Chapter Ten

She fell asleep on the couch and woke up to a conviction that there was somebody in her apartment.

And she didn't move. Wait, she told herself. Listen. She heard the steady, near-silent tick of the silver clock on the table, the whisper of the air conditioner, indistinct ghosts of noises from outside the windows…

And there, the scuff of shoes on carpet. The creak of leather as someone shifted weight.

She opened her eyes and stared hard at the window in front of her, focusing on reflections. Something dark moving behind the couch.

Lucia slid the.38 out of her robe pocket with a slow, gentle pull, trying to make it look like the natural movement of a sleeper. He hadn't come closer yet, but she couldn't let him see the gun. If he shot first…

She made her decision and rolled off the couch, gun held flat, aiming up at an angle where she knew his head would be. Her injured arm screamed in pain, and she flinched, nearly dropped the gun.

Nearly.

"Easy, my lovely. I'm not armed."

A male voice, low and faintly accented. Eastern European. She recognized it a split second before the moonlight revealed a pale face, thick dark hair, a goatee and mustache. Gregory Valentin Ivanovich. Madre de Dios…

The last time she'd seen Gregory had been outside a rundown, abandoned factory near Prague, and he'd been shooting over her head to make her escape look good. She'd been barely alive, barely together…and some of that had been his doing, too. She couldn't forget the cold purpose when he'd told her to run for her life Or he'd have no choice but to make his shots count.

"Gregory," she said, and tried to slow down the panicked hammering of her heart. "If you start off with a lie, that just continues the same old cycle of disappointment between us." Her voice shook only a little.

He smiled and leaned on the back of the couch. His hands were empty. Gregory had always favored black, and he was drowning in it today—a black knit shirt under a black leather jacket, black slacks. The only hint of color to him was his hazel eyes, and a thin red scar along one high cheekbone.

She remembered the scar. She remembered giving it to him, a wild and lucky swing with a piece of broken glass in the dark. And he'd looked down at her, chambered a round in his Glock, and said, "Dorogaya, you must still have fight left in you, if you can do that. Good. You will need it."

He smiled at her now, and she remembered that, too.

"Very well," he acknowledged. "I am armed. But, my lovely, we're both always armed. It's understood. It would be impolite to assume anything else."

"Wouldn't want that." Was she having some kind of fever dream? It would make sense. Half of her worst nightmares featured glimpses of Gregory Valentin Ivanovich. The trouble was, so did half of her other dreams. It was…complicated, yes. Very complicated.

His eyes shifted and focused on her right arm. He couldn't have seen the bandage through the robe, but he would have seen the flinch, and the weakness. "Are you injured?"

"Grazed."

"Ah. Yes, I followed the afternoon's heroics. Very stirring." He shrugged. "Very stupid."

"Thanks. So would you care to explain how you come to be in my apartment without an invitation?"

"Would you care to get off the floor while we discuss it?" he asked, raising those thick eyebrows.

No point in keeping the gun on him; Gregory would do as Gregory pleased, consequences be damned. She nodded and stood up, cinching her robe tight again and dropping the gun back in her pocket. "I'm assuming this isn't a social call," she said. "Since social calls don't usually require breaking into a person's apartment in the middle of the night."

"Yes. High-security apartment, very nice. I approve. I have one like it in Chicago, you know, only mine has a better view." No point in asking how he'd defeated that security either; he'd just smile and ignore the question. He'd defeated it the same way she would have, by simple and logical steps, and a terrifying amount of i

"Dorogaya? Are you with me?"

She felt a hot burn of embarrassment that he'd seen the lapse. Damn. It wouldn't do to show him weakness. "Get to the point."

He pushed away from the couch, crossed his arms and walked to the wing chair nearest the windows. He settled in, legs apart, watching her. He nodded to the couch. She sat, knees together, hand still in the pocket of her robe. Just in case.

"You know, of course, who I work for?" he asked.

"That depends."

"On…?"

"What day of the week it is, and your mood."

He laughed. A good, warm chuckle. His eyes never wavered, and the wolf in them remained unamused. "My dear Lushenka, I ca

"Lovely. We're coworkers. What do you want?"

He tapped a finger on the curling edge of his smile. "There is a need for secrecy."

"Meaning what, exactly? You know something I don't?"

"I know many things you don't, zolotaya. Many, many things. For instance, I know that you will get another red envelope tomorrow."

She said nothing to that. He might very well know it to be true.

"I also know that tomorrow, the Cross Society has arranged that someone close to you will die. Possibly you do not care that your new friend—her name is Jasmine, yes? — suffers an accident, but I know you well enough to know that you do care about your own survival. I have seen in the past how hard you will fight for it."

"How do you know what's going to happen tomorrow?"

He shrugged. "How does any of this become known? They tell me. Simms tells them, or they calculate it on their little machines. I don't know which it is and I don't want to know. The process is unimportant. What is important is that their information is rarely wrong."

"And they sent you to tell me this."