Devil's Due

"Jesus! Drop yours!" she retorted hotly. "You know who I am!"

He cocked the hammer on his gun, an u

"That isn't necessary," Cole said.

"If she's not FBI, she drops the goddamn gun!"

There wasn't much choice. Getting into a pissing contest with Stewart wouldn't do her any good, even if she won. Lucia made the gun safe and put it down on the ground. She took a step back from it, hands still raised, as Stewart gestured.

"You got here fast," Cole said. "Ambulance on the way?"

"I had a tip. Yeah, paramedics and squad cars should be a couple of minutes." Stewart looked around the place, and focused on the banging of the steel door. "Suspects in custody?"

"Custody would be a stretch, but they're contained," Cole said. "One wounded in the back room, one not wounded and hog-tied like a son of a bitch because I don't like him very much. Other than that, we've swept the place and the rest are in there."

"Okay, good." Stewart, after a long moment, holstered his gun.

"Can I pick up my weapon now?" Lucia asked.

"No," Stewart said. "Over there. Sit down and wait." He picked up her gun and shoved it in his coat pocket. "Move it, Garza." Behind him, Cole made an apologetic shrug.

She kept her hands up, walked to the corner and slid down to a sitting position, resting her hands in her lap. Stewart stared at her for a second or two, as if considering handcuffs. She could hear the eerie wail of sirens outside, and wondered wearily how long it would take to untangle this particular mess.

If she looked tired, Stewart looked…sick. Pale, red-eyed, twitching like an addict. Was that possible? Was he, in fact, an addict? No, surely drug tests would show it. She was being uncharitable, purely because of his prejudices against Jazz. He was probably just sick.

Should have shot him, she thought. It came from a part of her that she often denied existed—cold, calculating, the voice of a survivor.

"You received a tip?" she asked Stewart neutrally. "You've never been here before?"

He gave her a glare. "No. Why?"

Anthrax sent to her office.

Ken Stewart, following her from McCarthy's hearing.

"No reason," she said, still neutral, and watched him sweat.

There were, by the last count she heard, enough chemicals in the warehouse to kill tens of thousands, and maybe more if delivered accurately. And she'd been right about the clean room. There was a neat little bottle of white powder. Anthrax. Enough for a dozen lethal mailings, at least. From the envelopes they'd found in the process of being addressed, they'd been intended for the local FBI offices, as well as other government buildings.

If Ken Stewart had contemplated killing her and Cole— and she had no doubt that he had—he lost his chance as the worker bees from KCPD took over. She and Cole were quickly whisked off to a local FBI establishment. It was an improvement over the police headquarters isolation room. The FBI facility came with fresh coffee and more comfortable chairs. She caught a glimpse of Susa

Lucia heard Jazz's voice even through the soundproofing.

"— son of a bitch!" Jazz finished bellowing, just as the door opened again, and Agent Rawlins came in. His ears had turned red, though he was keeping a carefully blank expression. Jazz was right on his heels, as dynamic as he was controlled. She'd been messing with her hair, and it stuck out in unruly spikes. Her face was flushed and vividly animated. When she saw Lucia, she charged forward and dropped into the empty chair next to her.

"Hey," she said, without looking.

"Hey," Lucia replied. She felt a smile tugging at her lips and sternly exiled it back to its waiting room. "So. How's it going?"

"So-so. You were supposed to take it easy, as I recall. Have a talk with Susa

"Change of plans."

Jazz sat back and folded her arms. "You put another guy in the hospital, and that's the best you can come up with? Change of plans?"

Lucia shrugged. "I shot in defense of the life of an agent of the FBI. Which I’m pretty certain is covered under self-defense. Isn't it, Agent Rawlins?"

He pulled up a chair, too, on the opposite side of the table. "Do you want legal counsel, Ms. Garza?"

"You're kidding."

"I don't kid about things like that."

"Am I being charged with something? Bringing a clue to the attention of the FBI, perhaps? Is that criminal these days?"

Rawlins was furious. "From anybody else, I could accept ignorance as an excuse, but you know better. You know better than to come to some agent off the books and put him in a dangerous situation."

"Agent Cole was only trying to establish—"

"He was grandstanding, and you were helping him, and you both nearly got yourselves killed. Which in itself doesn't distress me, but now I've got about twenty people to investigate, the clock's ru

"Agent Cole," Lucia repeated, "was only trying to independently establish the truth of what our witness was saying about the chemicals. And if you've got twenty people to check out, then why are you wasting time with me?"

Jazz didn't bother to suppress a snort. "Wow. Gotcha, Agent Redhead."

He glared at her.

"Rawlins," she amended blandly. "Sorry. Pet name. I find red hair very sexy. It's distracting."

With a mighty effort, he ignored her. "So your information came solely from this witness, Susa

"Yes," Lucia said. "Cole verified that there had been shipments of chemicals to the SubTropolis address. He was just confirming that the operations weren't really doing electroplating before bringing in a full team on the operation."

"Cole can answer for himself. You shot a man."

Lucia raised her eyebrows. "Agent Rawlins, I shot someone who was about to put your agent's ribs through his lungs!"

The door opened again. Agent Rawlins frowned in irritation as a woman—FBI, by the well-scrubbed look of her—stuck her head cautiously inside.

"Attorney's here," she said. "He's demanding to see her."

Rawlins swiveled his eyes back toward Lucia. "I thought you didn't want a lawyer."

"I don't think I ever actually said that."

She expected Borden, but when the female agent disappeared, the door opened wider, and a silver-haired man in an expensive suit walked in. His briefcase cost more than an FBI agent's monthly salary, Lucia felt sure. The suit was European, hand-tailored and impeccably elegant.

Milo Laskins, senior partner at Gabriel, Pike & Laskins, nodded briskly to Agent Rawlins, set his briefcase down on the table and handed over a card. "I represent Ms. Garza and Ms. Callender," he said. "Please explain to me why they're being detained."

"They're not being detained. They're—"

"—assisting you in your inquiries, to coin a British phrase?" Laskins didn't bother to sit. He gave the impression he wouldn't be staying long. His silver hair gleamed in the dim lighting, and so did his diamond stickpin. "Please, sir, I didn't graduate from Harvard yesterday. You're on a fishing expedition, trying to find something to level a charge against my client, who was, by the way, attempting to save the life of one of your own."

"She put him there in the first place. I don't like private investigators using my people to do their dirty work."

Laskins's white eyebrows rose, giving his electric-blue stare even more impact. "And if she hadn't called you in on a potential terrorist threat, I can only imagine how much difficulty she'd be in right now. She received suspicious information, and turned it over to the FBI. She offered to assist the authorities in their investigation. In the course of the investigation, she came to the aid of a federal officer in the performance of his duties and was unfortunately forced to wound one man participating in a suspected terrorist conspiracy. Do I have the facts straight, Agent Rawlins?" Rawlins's ears were red again, his face masklike. "More or less."