Devil's Due

"Old," he said. "Your folks still alive?"

She smiled noncommittally. "So I'll forgive you the low turnout among your admirers. Still, it does say something, doesn't it? To have more reporters than supporters?"

She got a thin slice of a smile. "Careful when you cut me like that. You'll have to buy me a new shirt. I'll bleed all over this one."

"I'm tempted to buy you a new one whether you bleed all over it or not."

"That's kindhearted of you."

"Call it fashion charity."

He was studying her again, with lazy interest. "I just can't picture you and Jazz as friends."

"Why?"

"She's just—one of the guys, you know? Not so…" He gestured vaguely, letting her finish the sentence with whatever adjective seemed best. Wise of him. "I was surprised how good she looked, last time I saw her. Your influence, or the counselor's?"

He knew about Borden, then. Yes, of course he did. Lucia shrugged. "Maybe both."

"She's not drinking so much."

"No."

"Not getting into fights."

"Well, we're working on that part."

"Good luck with that." He gri

"Is this popular at parties?"

"A riot on cell block six."

"Then please, enlighten me."

"One, you manipulate people. Sometimes for their own good, but always to your advantage." He sopped a piece of toast in a remaining bit of peach jam and ate it, watching her reaction. She kept her face bland, but felt the barb sink unpleasantly deep. "Two, you use your looks as deception. You look warm and girlie and elegant, but I'll bet you can hand most guys their asses in a fight."

He was right again, of course. She didn't allow herself to blink. "And three?"

"How am I doing so far?"

"We'll see. And three?"

He shrugged. "You're lonely."

She laughed out loud. "Excuse me?"

"You heard."

"Hardly!"

"I didn't say you don't get attention. Every guy in here has checked you out at least once, and half the women, too. I said you were lonely. A woman as beautiful as you is nothing but lonely. Even when you're with somebody, you're wondering if they're into you or the glossy package, and sweetheart, just from the fifteen—no, make that sixteen—hours that we've been talking, I can tell you that you're high on the paranoid scale, anyway. So the point is, you don't let anybody close these days."

It hit hard, under the armor, right in a soft place she didn't know she had. Years of dealing with a string of men who'd professed love and delivered obsession. Years of mistrusting and holding back and staying cool.

For a second, she hated those blue-diamond eyes and their ability to see everything.

"You're wrong. I'm not lonely. Far from it."

He gave her a slow smile. "That tells me something else about you. You think you're a good liar. And hey, for most people, you are."

"Do you make a habit of insulting people who do you good turns?"

"Usually they want something. Speaking of that, what is it you want?"

Once again, he caught her off guard. "Me? I'm only here out of courtesy."

"Courtesy?"

"It has something to do with ma

"Sorry, not exactly popular where I've been." She'd struck a nerve; she could see it in the subtle reactions of his face. "You just came in Jazz's place, is that it? Second string?"

Lucia took the insult without reaction. "I want her to be safe, yes."

"What about you? Aren't you in just as much danger, if the two of you are supposed to be partners?"

It was an excellent question, and one to which she didn't have an answer. They were working for the Cross Society, but she had only the vaguest hints as to who those people were and how they operated; for all she knew, the danger that Jazz had ran into head-on had come from someone inside the Cross organization.

She'd seen cutthroat competition in nonprofit groups, but if true, that might be a new low.

In any case, whether it was the Cross Society or—as their mysterious benefactors insisted—the rival Eidolon Corporation, they hadn't sent soldiers after Lucia specifically; she'd only been in the vicinity. Jazz was the target. Then again, the enemy didn't seem prone to doing gentlemanly things like firing warning shots.

Lucia wondered if McCarthy had deduced why she'd taken a table in a protected corner that had no direct view from the windows.

She'd also stayed vigilant for any hint of trouble. The only problem she'd identified so far was an overdose of cholesterol that was surely going to spell trouble for McCarthy's arteries in the future.

She let him see her confidence, embodied in a slow smile. "I think I'm safe enough," she said. "Why? Are you volunteering as a bodyguard?"

"Well," McCarthy said, "I do need a job. Prospects coming out of the big house aren't good, unless you're into loading trucks, making French fries or beating up people for a living." It was said lightly, but she heard the ring of truth. There was a certain grimness in his eyes, the set of his mouth, as he finished his coffee in a long sip. "Okay, the truth. I've got a hundred dollars in my pocket right now, my apartment's long gone and the KCPD wouldn't have me back even as a janitor. So yeah, I wouldn't kick a little work to the curb. Bodyguard, investigator, whatever. If you need it."

"Your job prospects aren't any worse than for anyone else walking out of jail."

"Since my job used to be a police officer, yeah, I think they kind of are. Look, I never deserved to be there in the first place. I lost two years of my life to this crap." He'd gone intense again, head inclined toward her, voice urgent. "I don't even know where I'm going after breakfast. You know how that feels?"

She did, but it didn't seem the time to tell him so. "You begin your life again. That's what people do, Mr. McCarthy. Start over. Reinvent themselves. Become someone new and, hopefully, better."

"Nothing wrong with who I am right now."

"Isn't there?" She raised her eyebrows slowly. "Are you sure?"

She accepted the leather folio containing the check from the waiter. McCarthy gestured for her to hand it over. "I already said I was paying," she said. "Remember?"

"That was before you pissed me off. Now I'm paying."

"Don't be ridiculous," she retorted, and pulled her wallet from her black leather purse. It was specially reinforced to hold her containers of Mace, clips for her gun, a six-inch collapsible truncheon, handcuffs, and—sometimes, but not today—a Taser. "You'll have a hard enough time without worrying about picking up the check for me."

"Then I'll owe you. And pay you back."

"Without a doubt. This isn't a date. And I'm not some prison groupie." Ouch. She really hadn't meant it to be so harsh.

He was staring at her, hands on the clean white tablecloth. Just…watching. As if he knew that last part had been, in some small measure, a lie. She had found him attractive. And yes, this had been a date, hadn't it? Unorthodox as that might be…

She handed the folio to the waiter, who whisked it off so quickly his apron fluttered. Probably afraid that Ben McCarthy, who was looking more than a little feral in his cheap coat and ragged haircut, might come after him and wrestle him to the ground for it.

As she watched the waiter go, she said, "Allow me to make some insightful comments about you, Mr. McCarthy—"

"Just Ben," he interrupted. "This mister-miss crap is getting old."

"Fine. Ben. You are tough, clever, and you're probably the single best liar I've ever met in all of my life. And I've met almost as many as you have."