Devil's Due

"Have a good one."

Cole was on the move, heading for the door.

"Hang on a second," said the other voice. "What's your name?"

Lucia slid her gun from its holster and put her hand on the door handle.

"Frank. Frank Scarabelli. Here—here's my ID, okay? I don't want no trouble or nothing. I'm just—"

"Doing your job, yeah, we heard. Listen, hang out a second, okay? I'm go

"Okay," Cole said. He sounded thoroughly disgusted. "You guys get an electrical short, it's no skin off my—"

She was out of the van, gun at her side, before he finished the sentence. Her knees felt weak, her whole body not quite in tune, but it served to get her across the exposed parking lot and behind one of the massive white limestone pillars. She sucked in two deep breaths, then finished the run to the warehouse dock. Up the six concrete steps to the flat staging area. The walk-in door was closed again. All but one of the garage doors were down. The one on the end was clanking shut.

I won't make it, some part of her thought, but she didn't allow that to stop her. It wasn't a matter for thinking. She kicked off her shoes and crossed the distance in long ru

The door was clattering down. There were two feet of clearance left.

Lucia hit the concrete and rolled, tucking elbows and knees, and she felt hard steel and rubber grab her for a heart-stopping second. But then momentum won and she was inside. The door rattled irritably shut with a boom just an inch behind her.

She was panting and shaking, but there was no time for fear now. She was exposed. There were three men at the end of the hall, one smaller, two larger. Cole was the smaller. This end of the dock was in relative shadow, which was in her favor.

Should have called for backup, she thought, but she doubted that wireless signals would make it through the solid limestone roof. She'd need a land line, and by that time… by that time, she'd have gotten another friend killed.

She rolled up to her knee, gun trained steadily on the group at the far end of the hall, and then to her bare feet. The concrete felt ice-cold. She gained the concealment of a big industrial trash bin and risked another look to assess the situation. She was close enough to see faces now, and catch fragments of words.

Cole still looked bland and harassed. "Guys, this is stupid. Look, let me get the hell out, you call whoever you want to fix the damn electrical—"

The biggest one hit him. One quick pop, not telegraphed, and it took Cole full in the face. Blood spattered. He went down, and the man was already moving his right foot in a bone-breaking kick.

She couldn't afford caution. Caution would get Cole disabled or dead, and she couldn't take these men playing by FBI rules. This would have to be done Jazz-style.

Lucia stood, braced her shoulder against the wall and kicked the big rubber trash can at its wheeled base. It screeched indignantly and rolled at an angle across the exposed space to slam into one of the metal doors, then tipped and crashed onto its side.

Both of the suspects spun to look. Both drew guns.

Lucia braced her right hand with her left and sighted.

"Freeze!" she yelled. They moved fast, too fast, and a bullet exploded part of the concrete next to her arm.

She pulled the trigger twice without flinching, and the first shooter sank down on his knees, swaying. The gun slipped from his hand and spun across the concrete. Cole, his face a mask of blood, scrambled after it and kicked the man's side to dump him on his face. The other man dropped his gun and voluntarily went down, hands on the back of his head.

"Dammit!" Cole screamed. "Are you hurt? Lucia?"

"No," she said calmly, and walked forward. "If you call an ambulance, you can probably save this one. I think I missed his heart."

Cole—normally so cool and insouciant—looked shocked. She raised her eyes to his, and saw him flinch a little. Seasoned FBI, and he flinched. But then, he didn't know her, did he?

Nobody did.

"Better call it in," she said. "I'll check the rest of the building. These can't be the only bad guys in the place."

"I'm going to hell for this."

"Yeah," she said grimly. "I'll save you a seat."

Chapter Thirteen

There were, in fact, seventeen other people in the building. She didn't have to shoot any of the others; intimidation worked well enough. She herded them into an unused freezer room and locked them up tight.

She was sitting against the door, listening to them batter at it, when Cole came to find her. He'd wiped some of the blood off his face, but that was a broken nose, no question, and it was begi

"What are you going to say when they get here?" she asked, when he was seated on the concrete with her, back against the door.

"Pla

"Stories," she repeated. She felt tired, liquid, as if her body might just drip away.

"You know."

"I don't."

"Is it true what they say about what happened in Prague?

"What do they say happened?" The door behind them rattled with a particularly violent kick. It felt good, rather like a massage.

"Two dozen terrorists, a cache of nerve gas, and you were the only survivor."

"It's not true." It wasn't. There was Gregory Ivanovich, after all. Turncoat and torturer and savior and traitor. God alone knew what he was now, but she had no doubt he knew where she'd gone during the past week, and what had happened to her.

Cole made a doubtful sound. "You should have declared first, by the way."

"Declared what? I'm not FBI. The government doesn't pay me. And in the kind of work I used to do, declaring yourself was stupid." Which was as close as she intended to get to reliving the past, even with Cole. "If I'd taken the time to chat, they'd have killed me. You also."

He sighed and dabbed at his bleeding nose. "Man. I'll be lucky if I get a posting in Antarctica after this."

"Cheer up," she said. "I think you just averted a major terrorist act. Also, there seems to be a clean room behind that door. Biohazard suits hanging from hooks in the airlock. You might have even found the source of the anthrax."

As the sirens came closer, they sat in silence, surveying the big white room with its drums of chemicals and—most ominously—pressurized tanks marked with Poison labels.

"So," Cole said. "If I get my ass fired over this—"

"Always a place for you at Callender & Garza, my friend. Provided we're still open, since we've shot more people in the past couple of days than the KCPD has shot in a couple of years. It might pose a problem."

He shook his head. "You'll be okay. You're a survivor."

They both froze at a sound outside, from the direction of the door, and without any discussion got to their feet and moved to stand on either side of the single doorway to the room.

A hand holding a gun crossed the threshold.

"Freeze!" Lucia yelled, and spun away from the wall. Cole did the same, bracketing the newcomer from an obtuse angle, taking a low line.

"Police!" the other man screamed at the same instant, and Lucia held off on the trigger just by a split second as she recognized the ragged, unshaved, red-eyed face of… Detective Ken Stewart. "Drop the guns, dammit. Drop them!" he ordered.

"FBI," Cole said calmly, and showed his badge and credentials without wavering his aim. "Detective Stewart, right? KCPD?"

"Yes." Stewart stopped trying to cover both of them, and focused solely on Lucia. "Drop it!"