Rachel Caine: Devil's Due

She put a hand flat on his chest. "Your decision," she said. "I love you. I want to be with you. But you have to choose now, because I'm not going to be a cog in somebody else's machine the rest of my life. We're expendable to them, and personally, I don't consider you expendable at all."

He hesitated, and with a heart-stoppingly tender gesture, covered her fingers with his own. Jazz was not a small woman, but his hand dwarfed hers.

"Quit," she said. "Quit the damn Society. Please, Borden."

He bent forward and kissed her. A long, thorough, sweet kiss, as if there was nobody else in the room.

"I have to fight for what I believe in," Borden said.

"Even if the guy who founded it doesn't believe anymore. I can't change my heart that easily. I'm sorry."

Jazz blinked. For a second there were tears in her eyes, and in the next, they were gone, drained away, and something hard and unyielding had replaced them.

"Me, too," she said, and shoved him away with an explosion of force. He staggered back, hit the pillar behind him and rebounded. She sidestepped, added momentum with a straight arm across his shoulder blades, and he sprawled facedown across the table. Jazz stepped in, grabbed his left wrist and twisted it up, then patted her pockets absently. "Dammit. Anybody got handcuffs?"

Any of them might have—Ben, Jazz, Lucia—but instead, it was Pansy Taylor, looking rumpled and fresh from bed, wrapped in a robe, who walked in on bare feet and tossed a gleaming set of police issue on the table.

"I don't think I even want to know," McCarthy said.

"Morning." Pansy yawned, and watched as Jazz snapped handcuffs on her former boss. "What's going on?"

"End of the world," McCarthy said. He was still sitting, head propped on his hand, watching as Borden squirmed and struggled.

"Oh," Pansy said. "Just checking. Coffee, then?"

"Yeah, all around. Better get a straw for Borden."

"Screw you, McCarthy," Borden panted. Jazz grabbed him by the handcuffs and got him upright, then seated. "Dammit, Jazz, you can't keep me here like this."

"Sure, I can," she stated. "And later on, we'll talk about better ways to handle our relationship issues, but for right now? Handcuffs work."

McCarthy laughed. A flush mounted in Borden's face, and Lucia thought that if he'd had superpowers, those handcuffs would be breaking like glass right about now.

But he didn't. You are a fulcrum upon which we can move the world. Lucia had the uncomfortable feeling that only one of them qualified today as a superhero, and she didn't like the thought.

"I have to make a phone call," she said.

Nobody commented. Jazz was too preoccupied with avoiding Borden's glares.

Lucia stood up and walked to an emptier corner of the vast warehouse space, away from the lights. Out on the perimeter, the feeling of loneliness increased. It was like leaving the orbit of the Earth, launching out into a cold and uncaring darkness.

She dialed a number on her cell phone, spoke her name very clearly after the beep and left a callback number. Exactly forty-five seconds after she'd hung up, her cell phone rang, and she flipped it open.

"This is an unexpected pleasure, my love," Gregory Ivanovich said. He did sound gratified.

"Did you take the pictures?"

Silence for a second. She might have actually succeeded in throwing him off.

"I captured them from surveillance, yes." No jokes. Gregory knew it wasn't a joking matter. "You know who is the father? I deeply regret to inform you it was not me."

"I need a favor."

She'd surprised him, again. "Are we so close that you should think I would give another favor, dorogaya? For nothing?"

"Not for nothing. Favor for favor. Yours to be named later, no questions asked."

"You'd put yourself in my debt?"

"Yes."

He considered it. "From anyone else, I would say that you would be lying to me, and that would be most unpleasant for both of us. But from my dear Lushenka I will grant the possibility you will keep your word. Very well. Favor for favor. What do you want?"

"An electromagnetic pulse device." If she'd thought she'd surprised him before, she'd been wrong. This was surprise, this long stretch of humming silence. He was on an airplane, she thought. Probably riding first class, luxuriating in leather seats, eating beluga caviar.

"So we are trading big favors, I see. Very, very big."

"I need it fast."

"In terms of trading, we are in the blue chips, yes? What could you possibly do for me later that would equal this?"

"I don't know. And the point is, neither do you, until you need it But you have my word, and you know what it's worth. It's why you call me dorogaya. You can take it to the bank."

"Hmmmm." He drew it out into a musical thread. She could hear the smile. "Very well. I can secure one for you. It will not be very large and it will not be very portable. There will be only one charge in its circuits, so you must fire it exactly where you want it. The radius is less than a thousand feet. You understand?"

"I do."

"Where shall I have it delivered?" Manny would kill her if she had former Soviet agents drop-shipping weapons to his doorstep. Worse, he would quit. "My apartment. I'll pick it up later."

"You're sure you want such a trail?"

"I trust you can avoid leaving one."

"Always. You will have it tomorrow." He hung up without a goodbye. I'm going to regret that, she thought. It wasn't even a question.

“This," McCarthy said as they sat around the worktable four hours later, eating frozen dinners and staring at computer-printed floor plans, "is a really stupid idea, Jazz. I mean, you've had some stupid ideas before, and God bless you, you've pulled them off, but I don't know about this one. If these guys are as all-knowing as you say—"

"They're not all-knowing," Simms said.

"But you don't know what they do know, or when, right?"

Simms shrugged. "Eidolon has more than twenty psychics feeding them predictions. Some of those may sense what you're about to do. But I think they'd likely discount this because it is so stupidly confrontational."

"Hey!" Jazz cried.

Lucia patted her on the shoulder. "Stupid is good. Clever would get us killed."

McCarthy smiled, briefly. "Not you, apparently."

"Shut up."

He cocked an eyebrow. "You and Borden, wanting a piece of me today. What's that about?"

"I have better reasons."

The color drained out of his face when she said that, and she wished she hadn't; it wasn't like her to rub it in. The shock of those obscene photographs was still vivid. She'd taken them to Manny's shredder and reduced them to a pile of thin crosscut strips, then run them through an acid wash to destroy any chance of reconstruction. Manny's idea, when he'd finally rejoined them, although he hadn't asked what was on the photos. It seemed likely her expression had told him enough.

McCarthy was mutely waiting.

"Work first." She had more than enough to think about. She wondered if she dared ask Manny to run a pregnancy test for her, or if she wanted to wait until later, until this was over and she was free to walk into a store and have nothing but a normal woman's anxieties. "I'm sorry. Cheap shot."

"It's not like I don't deserve it."

"Guys, wallow in whatever you're wallowing in later," Jazz snapped. "Focus, already. This is serious."

Lucia sucked in a deep breath. "We go in through the front door, take the device to the server room and position it. Meanwhile, Manny's guy—" Manny knew guys who could do just about anything " — hacks into the off-site data storage facility and arranges for a system crash there. They may have redundant backup systems—we have to watch out for that. Manny's guy will be monitoring and will kill any off-site systems they try to bring online. Meanwhile, we set off the EMP in their server room. In and out, fast, in the general confusion."