Devil's Due

McCarthy was even more helpless, trapped behind Jazz on the stairwell. Unarmed.

Lucia didn't see any way out of it.

"Seriously," Susa

Games, and games, and games. She'd even confessed to something, though Lucia hadn't realized it at the time. Omar. I let him in, she'd said, talking about Leonard. And she undoubtedly had. They'd been in it together, from the begi

Then she'd killed her own partner in crime to get a better chance at them.

Which she finally had.

It wasn't about Lucia herself. Susa

"Stay!" Lucia snapped, when Jazz started to move Ma

"You're not going to kill me." She stretched Pansy higher with a tug of her hair. "At least, not before this one bleeds."

"There's no way out of this for you."

"Trust me. There is." Susa

Ma

Lucia risked another look around the pillar. The situation was still the same, except that there was a flicker of movement somewhere in the back.

Borden.

He looked pale and scared half to death, but he was moving. He had his hands clasped in front of him, and for a second Lucia didn't remember why. And then she did, with a vengeance.

Careful, oh God, careful…

Jesus, his hands—he was still handcuffed. Surely Ma

"Susa

"My reputation's worth more than a million," Susa

Borden was two steps away, right behind her.

"No?" Susa

Borden looped his handcuff chain across her throat and yanked. She let go of Pansy and the gun to instinctively grab for the chokehold, and Borden yanked up and back, pulling her into him.

Lucia charged forward, shoved Pansy out of the way to safety, and got there just as Susa

Lucia grabbed hold of Susa

The knife was still in her hand, and from the way she held it, she knew how to use it.

"Back!" Lucia yelled at Borden, and he retreated. He hustled Pansy to the doorway, where she collapsed to her knees beside Ma

Jazz came ru

But Jazz got there first.

Susa

And Jazz jerked out of the way at the last possible second, a move Lucia would never have attempted. She didn't have the strength or the speed…

Susa

"Oh, shit." Susa

A jet of bright arterial blood arced as high as a fountain.

"Shit," she repeated, and laughed. "That just sucks. Somebody call me an ambulance." She jammed fingers into the wound, suddenly clammy and gray-faced. Wobbling.

Lucia picked up the fallen gun, watching her. Jazz deliberately turned her back to go for the phone.

Susa

Lucia fired.

Jazz didn't even turn around as she dialed 911.

Epilogue

It was, the doctors informed them at the hospital, a serious but not life-threatening wound. Some bowel resection, and he'd be uncomfortable for a while, but Ma

And so would Susa

She intended it to be the very last time.

Their offices had been open again for six weeks when she went to the doctor for an examination. McCarthy went with her. There was an ultrasound, and for the first time, she saw the tiny gestational sac, with a flickering heartbeat of life.

She couldn't reconcile that miracle with the cold invasiveness of what had been done to her, but she couldn't not love her child, in that moment.

"Beautiful," she whispered, and caressed her still-flat stomach. "Oh, God, Ben. So beautiful."

He touched the screen, tracing the outline of what would become their baby. He didn't speak, but she could see the love in his face. In that moment, he was luminous.

And when he got her home, McCarthy made slow love to her in ways that told her without words how deep the emotions went in him. To the bone. To the soul.

The next day, Pansy came into her office with an opened FedEx envelope. She was trying to be offhand, but it was obviously a struggle. Lucia, in the middle of a client meeting, immediately asked for a recess and stepped outside, shutting the door behind her. Jazz, sensing trouble, was already there.

"What?" Lucia asked. Pansy mutely tilted the envelope so that they could see inside.

A red envelope.

"The good news is, there's no powder," Pansy said. "The bad news is, it ain't Valentine's Day."

Lucia sucked in a deep breath and took the envelope out. It had JAZZ CALLENDER AND LUCIA GARZA block printed on it. The FedEx label came from a firm she'd never heard of: Black & Foxworth, Attorneys At Law.

"No," Jazz said. Simple and definite.

"No," Pansy confirmed, with a decisive shake of her head. "Not that I get a vote, but…no."

They both looked at Lucia, whose vote did count. She looked at it. Turned it over and studied the invitingly open flap, the cream-colored sheet of paper showing like a tease.