Rachel Caine: Devil's Due

"Disappointments," McCarthy said. "They wanted me to stand by and let somebody get killed. I couldn't do it."

Shades of Jazz; she'd been asked to do the same thing, Lucia remembered. Asked to stand by and see an innocent man die. As had Borden. It had been a crisis of faith for him, knowing that his friend was marked for death by Eidolon, and the Cross Society had elected to do nothing about it. He'd turned to Jazz for help and almost gotten her killed for it, but together they'd managed to prevent the murder.

And what's to stop Eidolon from trying again? Lucia had wondered that for a while. Maybe things had changed. She didn't understand how it worked. She suspected nobody outside of the inner circles really did.

She hated the idea that all of this happened somewhere in secret, behind a curtain. Playing God. It reminded her why she'd left the government.

"Yeah?" Jazz challenged. She was still looking wounded and furious and betrayed, and in no mood to believe McCarthy. "Who did they want to kill?" She was demanding proof. Names and dates. Facts and figures she could check. Jazz was nothing if not thorough.

McCarthy hesitated for so long that Lucia thought he wouldn't answer. He was studiously examining the carpeting, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. His hesitation seemed odd, considering the passion he'd already displayed. And then he said, slowly and in a much quieter tone, "Remember that hallway, three years ago? When the guy came out from under the stairs?"

Jazz went pale. Lucia watched her knuckles tighten on the back of the chair, her blue eyes narrow. Her mouth attempted two tries before she was able to ask the question. "Me?"

"Yeah. You." He risked a look at his ex-partner, a startling flash of eyes. Lucia shivered at the expression in them. Pain and resignation.

If Jazz saw it, it didn't make any impression. She was staring past him, stunned, seeing something miles away. "You knew? You knew that guy was there?"

"No. I knew something was going to happen, because they wanted me to wait in the car."

"You did wait in the car."

"For a while," McCarthy said, his voice low and furious. "And then I came in and I shot the son of a bitch who was trying to kill you. Shot him in the back. Twice, if you remember."

Silence. Lucia didn't think even Borden was breathing. Jazz and McCarthy were staring each other down.

Links and circles. That officer-involved shooting had been McCarthy's first and only. That put his service revolver's ballistics information into the database, which had later linked him to murder.

Lucia turned on Borden. "Did you know this?" He mutely shook his head. "Borden. Did you know McCarthy worked for the Cross Society?"

"No!" he snarled, and got up off the couch to stalk to the far comer of the room. "Don't you think I'd have told you if I'd known? Look, it's not—it's not like it's an open book. I don't think even Laskins knows everything. Some of it—maybe a lot of it—happens between Simms and his agents, and we're just—"

"Just what?" Lucia asked. "Protective coloration? What is it the rest of you do for him that he can't do for himself?"

"Maintain the network," Borden said. "Deliver his messages when he needs it. Attend to the money and the business."

Jazz had turned away from McCarthy, and now she was staring at Borden. "Did you know they'd put him in jail?" she asked. Whatever logical path Jazz had followed inside her head, there seemed to be no doubt in her now that McCarthy was telling the truth.

"No," Borden said. He sounded suddenly weary. "I'd have told you."

"We can talk about that later," Lucia said, after a few seconds of painful silence. "McCarthy. The money you were taking, the payoffs. Were they payments from the Cross Society to you?"

He didn't answer. Maybe that was answer enough.

"What were you, stupid? " Jazz yelled. "Didn't you see how easily they could turn you? How deep they had their claws in you?"

"Not until I killed that guy," McCarthy said. "And then it was too late. Simms already had me. The payments used to come through a bank, then they came through some friend of his, then they started making the drops at the Velvet. Then pretty soon it was handovers from Big Sal and his crew, and there was no point in fighting it anymore."

"You could have walked away."

He looked grim. "I tried."

"Oh, so taking that last payoff on camera, that was, what—for the widows and orphans fund?" Jazz demanded. "Don't bullshit me, Ben. Don't you dare."

He shook his head tiredly. "No point in doing that, either," he said. "Look, you believe me or not. This is why I never even tried to explain any of it to you. How do you think this would have gone before you'd seen how it works for yourself?"

She wasn't done yet, Lucia saw. "So what were they paying you to do, Ben? Compromise evidence? Get cases thrown out?"

" Fuck ! Come on, Jazz! You can't believe—"

"I don't believe!"

"I wouldn't do that. I was a cop!"

"Yeah? You thought about letting me die, didn't you?"

He swallowed, and some of the anger drained out of his expression. "No. I just thought—look, I didn't know they were talking about killing you."

"So it was okay if they just messed me up a little? Crippled me? Where's the line, Ben? It's okay for them to put a scare into me, not to touch me? Or okay to throw me a beating, so long as it doesn't scar?"

They settled into mutual glaring, jaws tight, teeth set. Lucia let a few seconds of silence go by, and then cleared her throat. "If I may continue," she said carefully. "Evidently, the Cross Society decided you weren't of use to them any longer. Was that because you moved to save Jazz when you did?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm out. I'm not taking orders from those creepy sons of bitches anymore, and neither should you. Either of you." McCarthy turned a glare toward Borden, who was slumped against the wall by the broad windows. "And you should get rid of him. You're sleeping with the enemy, Jazz. Watch what you say around him."

"Hey!" Borden said sharply, and straightened up. "Watch your mouth."

"Why? You're not sleeping with my partner?" McCarthy showed teeth. "Or do you just not want to admit to it? Ashamed?"

Borden's eyes turned dark and cold. "I mean it, man. Shut up."

"Jazz wants me to shut up, she can say something about it."

Jazz didn't seem inclined to say much about it either way, Lucia noticed. Her mouth was closed, her jawline tight. Her hands were fisted on her thighs, knuckles white.

Borden towered over McCarthy when McCarthy walked toward him, but it seemed obvious to Lucia that it wouldn't matter. McCarthy was the dangerous one here. Borden was tall and rangy and could probably hold his own in most situations, but McCarthy had done two years of hard time, and he'd gone in hard to start with.

And Lucia didn't like the flat look in his eyes.

"Gentlemen," she said, her voice pitched low and calm. Standing up with deliberate grace, she moved to form the third point of a triangle—not between them, but pulling the focus away from each other . Jazz, still seated behind her, would have done it differently; she would have waded in, shoving and shouting. That would work, but it would take time to sort out.

This worked instantly.

McCarthy stepped back. "Sorry," he said. "You're right. Your house. You want to have amoral bastards in it, that's not my business."

"Borden stays," Lucia said. "He's proved himself to us. You haven't, Ben."

"Hey, wait a second!" Jazz snapped.

"Jazz, shut up." Lucia gave her voice an edge of steel.

Jazz pressed her lips together, eyes blazing.

"I'm talking to you, Ben," Lucia continued. "The three of us, we've been through a lot together. You're new to this agency. You don't just walk in here and throw doubt on Borden, do you understand? And you don't try to pull me and Jazz apart by playing on old loyalties. If you do, you can walk out the door and find your own way."