Devil's Due

In the blaze, the blood looked very, very bright.

Omar lay on the floor, sprawled and lifeless, next to an overturned armchair.

His throat had been cut. Lucia gasped in a breath, felt her body constrict with the shock. A wave of unreality swept over her.

"Focus," Jazz said softly. "Stay with me, L."

Omar was dead. The cut was deep, one slice, right to left. The standard for a right-handed killer facing him. She wanted to reach over, press her fingers to his neck, even though she knew it was illogical to feel for a pulse. This had been done at least a couple of hours ago. Omar's lovely dark eyes were open, and dry. Gregory? It could have been, but even Gregory might find it in bad taste to come visiting a few minutes before killing her friend. No, she didn't think so. Gregory wouldn't have made this much of a mess.

"Lucia!"

She blinked and focused on Jazz's stark, pale, set face. "I'm here," she said. "Take the next room." Her voice sounded far away, but normal.

Jazz nodded and went into the bedroom. Lucia averted her eyes from Omar's body and sca

"Susa

It couldn't be that easy. She couldn't be hiding behind the curtains. Not even kids did that anymore, did they?

And then she spotted it. It was tough to see, and designed to be that way, no doubt. A privacy screen of the same material as the wallpaper, blending seamlessly into the fabric of the wall.

Lucia moved around, giving it a wide berth, and came face-to-face with Susa

"Got her!" she called, and reached out to touch Susa

She had just enough reflexes to jump back out of range as the knife slashed wildly at her. Don't shoot her, some part of Lucia's mind screamed, in time to stop her finger from tightening on the trigger. She danced backward, holstered the gun as she went, and executed a perfect roundhouse kick that sent the knife flying out of Susa

Instead, she kicked the backs of Susa

"Jazz!" she yelled, and snapped handcuffs around one of Susa

Jazz reappeared at the door, gazed down at Susa

"Now?"

"Now. Bring her."

Lucia removed her knee from the center of Susa

The lights were on in the bedroom, and there was more blood. Not Susa

Leonard Davis, Susa

"What happened?" she asked, and looked at Susa

"I don't know how he got into the room," Jazz said, "but I can walk you through forensics. He got the drop on Omar, probably by threatening to kill Susa

She looked at Susa

"Omar misjudged him, got too close—maybe he was trying to get her out of the way. One fast slash, straight through both carotid arteries. From the arterial spray in there, I'd guess Omar was standing when he was cut. He must have gone down immediately, and was dead in about thirty seconds. Meanwhile, Leonard dragged Susa

They both stared at her in silence for a few seconds, and then Jazz cast a pointed look down at Leonard's body. "He took Omar out, but not you? How's that work?"

"He put the knife down when he was unzipping his pants," she said. "He didn't think I had the guts. I never have before."

Lucia raised her eyebrows in silent question to Jazz.

"Yeah," Jazz answered quietly. "That's more or less the way I read it. Omar died first. There's a trail of blood drops from the other room into here. Hubby died with his pants unzipped. There's a void in the blood spray on the bed. That's where she was, on the bed. Which confirms the story, pretty much."

Lucia swallowed hard and resisted an urge to kick Leonard Davis's unresisting corpse.

"Better call Welton Brown," she said to Jazz. "We're going to be here for a while."

"So much for our low profile." Jazz sighed. "Susa

Lucia nodded, led Susa

It was going to be another long day, no doubt about it, and the hospital was—once again—going to have to wait.

The police took Susa

And if it had been Ben and Jazz going into that room? Jazz would have been the one to find Susa

Lucia's eyes felt grainy and sore, and her whole body ached. Hard to tell whether it was due to the infection, the antibiotics fighting it, or plain, garden-variety exhaustion.

Welton Brown had not been happy to find two murders in his lap after having pointed Susa

But Lucia was too sick and too tired to do any fence-mending, and when Brown dismissed them, Lucia was only too glad to go.

"You're going straight to the hospital," Jazz said, once the police car had dropped them off in the parking lot of the Raphael. This, Lucia thought mournfully, was one hotel that she wouldn't get any cooperation from in the future. A pity. She really liked the ambience, and the sense of history.

The hospital visit was exactly what Lucia had anticipated. She had a fever—no surprise—and an elevated white count. They gave her a course of IV antibiotics, which took the better part of two hours.

"I'd like to keep you here for the next few days. We need to keep an eye on that fever," Dr. Kirkland informed her earnestly, as they unhooked her from the IV.

"I'll do it myself."