Rachel Caine - Devil's Due

"Take a seat, Borden." Simms's voice snapped with command, and for a second there was nothing soft about him, nothing at all. Lucia remembered Jazz's description of him. Creepy. "The rest of you. Sit down. I don't have time for your histrionics."

"What about mine?" Ben McCarthy's voice was soft, and somehow even more intense than Simms's. Lucia looked over at him, but he was turned away, showing her only a hard profile, an angular shoulder, a fist clenched at his side. "You got time for mine?"

Simms met his eyes. "I'm sorry. That was not my choice, Ben. That was never my choice."

"It served your purposes."

"Yes. It did. It does. It will. What you're referring to had to happen. How it happened was your doing, by the decisions you made. You knew what the Society wanted from you. You chose to do otherwise." Simms studied him for a few seconds in silence. "How long have you known?"

'They told me, earlier today. Indirectly." McCarthy's lips stretched, baring his teeth, but it wasn't a smile. "They said I'd served my purpose. And we both know what that purpose was, from the very beginning."

"All right, I'm calling bullshit," Jazz said flatly, and slid into a chair next to McCarthy. She leaned on her elbows, staring at Simms. "What the hell are you two talking about?"

Nobody answered her. Borden pantomimed I have no idea with a helpless lift of his shoulders.

"About what happened to me when I was missing," Lucia said. "Am I correct? Gregory Ivanovich was behind that, at least."

"He did his part." Simms's yellowed teeth flashed in a smile. "Don't worry. Mr. Ivanovich left and isn't looking back."

"Something happened to me while I was missing."

"You were treated for your illness."

"Something else."

Simms, for answer, removed a sealed manila envelope from his jacket pocket, unfolded it and slid it across the table. Not to her. To McCarthy.

McCarthy didn't touch it. "What is it?"

"Proof. I was hoping we might be able to avoid the unpleasantries, but you seem determined."

"You son of a bitch. You cold-blooded—"

"In private," Simms said. "As you said, it is a personal matter."

McCarthy shoved back from the table and stared down for a few seconds.

"I need someplace quiet," he said. "No surveillance. No cameras."

Jazz looked around and said, "Darkroom. Second door along the wall."

The darkroom was equipped with red lights—bright enough, but unsettlingly bloody. McCarthy ushered Lucia inside and closed the door, flicked the interior dead bolt and put his back against it. The manila envelope was clutched tight in his hand.

It was close quarters in the room, and even though it was well ventilated, the chemical soup of developer burned her nose and throat. Empty developing trays were laid out, and there was a clothesline of drying prints at the far end of the room, above the table.

"What in the hell is this about?" Lucia demanded. Her head was aching from the secrecy. "Why am I the only one who's safe? Ben, you have to explain this."

He didn't open the envelope. Instead, he said, "I was approached in prison after I got the beating, the one that put me in the hospital. I knew I was a goner in there, you understand? No way was I going to survive if the Cross Society decided I needed to go."

"You made a deal with them to get out of prison. I know that."

"You have to understand, Lucia. I didn't know you. I didn't know anything about you, except that the Cross Society had picked you. You were a name on a piece of paper to me."

There was a table at her back. The edge of it dug into her spine, low and cold. "Ben—"

"I would have agreed to anything to get the hell out of there. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of much in my life, but that was a low point." He tried for a smile, and it came out wrong.

She felt it coming, the way wild animals seemed to sense earthquakes on the way. "Ben, are you saying your alibi was a fake? Did you—"

"Kill them?" His blue eyes were utterly unreadable in this red light. They didn't look blue at all, just empty. "Couple of drug dealers who were responsible for at least half a dozen bodies, and those were just the ones they'd personally whacked? Who'd sold crack to ten-year-old kids and seventy-year-old grandmothers? Who raped when they wanted, stole when they wanted, and ran their block like some kind of prison camp? Or do you mean the girlfriend, who was so high she once sold her own two-year-old daughter to a pedophile to pay off a loan? Who couldn't even sober up enough to call the cops when her kid fell down the stairs and broke her neck, so she put her out with the garbage instead? God, Lucia. What do you think?"

There were tears in his eyes. Tears on his cheeks. She couldn't tell if they were from fury, pain or regret.

Or loss, the loss of what they'd nearly had, the loss of possibilities.

She didn't answer.

Eventually, he gave her the truth himself. "No. I didn't kill them, but God, I should have. The pictures exonerating me were legit. Still, the Cross Society would have let me rot in prison for something I didn't do. I figure they arranged the whole thing the first time so that I was in cold storage, so they could have me when they needed me."

He wiped his cheeks distractedly with the palm of his hand. Now that he'd started looking directly at her, he didn't seem to be able to stop. As if he was hungry for the sight of her, and knew this was going to be his last chance. "They wanted me to meet you," he said. "And they wanted me to get you in bed as soon as I possibly could." It hit her as funny, because she'd been braced for so I much worse. She laughed out loud, involuntarily, and covered her mouth with her hand. "That's it?" she asked, and swallowed lunatic giggles. 'That's their big master plan? Get us laid? You didn't even—"

She stopped. All of the humor fell away, down a black hole that didn't seem to have any bottom to it at all. "I was going to say you didn't even try," she said slowly. "But that's not true, is it? That first night. The apartment. You thought about it."

"No," he said hoarsely. "I wanted it. I needed you. I mean, I would have done it if it had just been sex, but dammit, you were —do you understand? I looked at you and I wanted you. Not a lie. I wanted something real, not just—"

She remembered him pulling away and stalking to the window. Drinking his beer in convulsive gulps. Do they call cabs, your guys downstairs?

His choice. And again, the second time. She'd asked him back to the apartment. He'd—turned her down. She'd even been surprised by it. Hurt by it.

"I thought that this one time, at least, I could make a decision for myself. But I couldn't. They took it away from me."

"Oh, God. Ben, what's in the envelope?"

"Proof that I'm no longer necessary in all this."

"Show me."

He opened the envelope. There were pictures inside. She saw him look down at them, and he made a sound, an animal groan of pain, and slid down the door to a crouch. Staring at the photos. Shuffling through them. "You bastards," he whispered. "They made these for me. Just to show me how little I matter. How they can take everything away." She couldn't stand it. She lunged forward and grabbed for them. He moved, lightning-quick, and took hold of her forearms, pulling her down to her knees.

The photos spilled over the concrete floor between them, glowing in the lurid red light. Black-and-white photos, taken from above. Grainy, as if ripped from a surveillance feed.

A woman lying on a white hospital-style bed, wearing a loose gown.

Knees up. Feet in stirrups. Some kind of medical procedure. Some kind of…

Lucia cried out and buried her face in McCarthy's shoulder. In his warmth and strength. He kissed the top of her head and rocked her, and she twisted to stare at the photos again, silent now.