Rachel Caine: Devil's Due

She nodded.

"Everything in the bag, understand? Rings, watch, necklace, earrings. Underwear. Everything. Nothing that touched you stays on."

Pansy's eyes filled with tears for a second, and then she blinked and pasted on a grin and said, "You just want to get me out of my panties." Before he could answer, she took the sack and pile of clothes and headed for the bathroom.

"Where is it?" he asked Lucia.

She nodded toward her office.

"I didn't have any clothes for you, but I brought scrubs and booties."

"Thank you," she said gravely. "The FedEx envelope and the red envelope are on my desktop. No other papers there, thankfully."

"Red envelope?" Manny raised his eyebrows.

"I slit it open, but Pansy stopped me before I could do more. I don't suppose there's a way we can take a look…?"

"What if there's something in it to aerosolize the substance? Even a paper clip and a rubber band would be high-tech enough to spread a cloud of powder."

That was a scary thought. She nodded mutely, took the scrubs and ducked into Jazz's office to change. The scrubs—maroon—were far from what she'd think of as couture, but they served. Her clothes went into a plastic Hazmat bag, which McCarthy had prelabeled with GARZA in big block letters.

She hated the booties.

"Cute," McCarthy said when she came out. She gave him an ill-tempered glare. "No, honestly. I've always had this nurse thing."

"Shut it, McCarthy."

"I've got this pain right—"

"You don't want to know where you're going to have a pain if you don't shut up."

He grinned. She perched next to him on the reception desk, bootied feet swinging aimlessly, pulse still driving fast. McCarthy's attempts at humor were soothing, but not soothing enough.

Pansy reappeared from around the corner, Hazmat bag in hand. "Where's Manny?" she asked. McCarthy nodded to the closed office door. "What do we do with these?"

McCarthy checked that the names were clear on each bag, and then bundled both into another, larger one. He labeled that one with both their names and the date. Evidence handling was something he was obviously just as good at as managing in a crisis. Lucia wished he'd let her do it, but could understand why he was keeping her exposures to a minimum. Still, waiting was hard. Her hands—freshly scrubbed—felt cold. She rubbed them on her legs to warm them, saw McCarthy watching, and gave him a quick smile to show that there was nothing wrong, nothing at all; being exposed to a hazardous substance was an everyday occurrence.

The phone rang. It was Jazz.

"The FBI is there," she said breathlessly. "Bastards aren't letting us in the building. We're downstairs."

"I didn't want you to come, Jazz," Lucia said.

"Yeah, well, I came anyway. Borden, too. What do you want us to do?"

"Call Laskins, get him out of bed if you have to. Find out what GP&L sent us. Get them to fax over a copy of the text, if they sent it in the first place. I can't get to the red letter to read it."

"Which might be the point," Jazz said.

"True."

"Still…if the opposition could get to the envelope to doctor it, why not take the message? Why not replace it with one of their own and skip the anthrax scare? They have to know it would draw attention."

"All good questions. I don't know. I don't even know that there was an original message in the first place. All I know is that there's a FedEx envelope that came from GP&L's mailroom."

Jazz made a frustrated sound, like sandpaper rubbing stone. "But you're all okay, right?"

"It takes up to seven days to manifest anthrax symptoms," Lucia said. "Ask me in a week."

Manny came out of the office. He was carrying a square black case that was sealed with more bright yellow tape.

"Hang on," Lucia said to Jazz, and pressed the phone against her chest to muffle it. "Better get moving, Manny. The FBI's downstairs. They know you're here, but if you want to avoid questions…" Which she knew he did. Manny would always choose to avoid questions.

His face was wet with sweat. "Yeah. I'd better get this sample back to the lab. Sooner I get the tests started, the sooner…"

She nodded. Manny paused, gazing at Pansy. She tried for a smile, and he looked as if he badly wanted to touch her, but neither of them managed to pull it off.

"See you," he said, and headed for the stairs. Pansy's gaze followed him. Lucia got back on the phone with Jazz.

"Manny's coming out," she said. "He's got a sample of the powder. Maybe you can ride herd on him…?"

"Done," Jazz said crisply, and hung up. That was Jazz: minimum talk, maximum effort.

"So," McCarthy said. "What do we do now?"

"Anybody want coffee?"

It took hours. Not a surprise; Lucia was well accustomed to the pace of investigations. But it still rankled. She was tired, exhausted from adrenaline, and starving. To her disappointment, the FBI hadn't exactly stormed the building. Agent Rawlins was present and accounted for, but he'd only brought one other agent and two technicians, one of whom was on loan from the Kansas City PD. One Haz-mat suit, which none of them bothered to put on.

"So," Rawlins said, and pulled up a chair next to Lucia as his men got to work. "Who's out to kill you this week?"

"Agent Rawlins, you wound me."

"Can't say as I'd be the first, ma'am."

"Cut the folksy bullshit."

He had a lived-in face, too many lines for his young age, and the bright hair made him look tired. His dark brown eyes didn't give away much except his general intelligence. Rawlins liked to pretend he was a hayseed. Lucia knew better. The man had graduated top of his class from Quantico, had piled up a string of high-profile cases and was in the running to be moved up to D.C. on his next rotation. If ever a man was going to make it out of the FBI bush leagues, it was Agent Rawlins.

He nodded, rubbed his big hands together and looked down at the floor. "Want to tell me how this happened?"

She told him the facts, as briskly as possible.

"I won't ask who has a grudge against you, because I know damn well that the list is about as long as the phone book. Including a couple dozen drug dealers and some very unhappy terrorists from the old days." He looked up, directly into her eyes. "You know who the envelope's from?"

"Gabriel, Pike & Laskins," she said. "Our attorneys."

"I'm the first to believe lawyers are evil, but why would they want to kill off their own clients?"

"I doubt they would. Anybody could have slipped an envelope into their FedEx bin at their offices. Wouldn't be too difficult."

"Good enough." Rawlins nodded. "You get a lot of correspondence from these lawyers?"

She smiled thinly. "A fair amount, yes. Legal matters."

"Mind if I take a look?"

"It's privileged ."

"Miss Garza, you sound like a guilty party."

"I sound like someone who understands how you work. You're on a fishing expedition, Agent Rawlins."

"Am I close to catching anything?"

"Not even a minnow."

He smiled and looked away, toward the office door. His tech was coming out, holding a sealed bag marked EVIDENCE, with the standard biohazard symbol on it. Rawlins gave him a thumbs-up and stood.

"The lab's backed up," he said. "Might take a few days to come back with a result on this. My advice—close down until we get back to you. Take vacation."

"You're checking the air handlers in the building?"

"We're taking swabs. My guys are doing field tests, but just so you know, field tests aren't that reliable. False positives in a lot of cases. The lab's got some kind of growth medium it uses that can give us a determination in twenty-four hours."

"Once they get to us."

"Yeah. Once they get to you." It was unspoken, but he knew Manny would get to them first. Of course.