Rachel Caine - Devil's Bargain

Lucia’s mock surprise was really too funny. “An honest lawyer? Now you really are making me suspicious, Mr. Borden.”

He looked from one of them to the other, brown eyes bright. “You two really were separated at birth, did you know that?” Borden reached into the drawer, pulled out a thick manila folder and slid it across the highly polished surface. He had lovely long fingers, Jazz noticed against her will. Well manicured. No wedding ring, and no sign there’d ever been one.

“I’ll leave you to look it over,” he said. “I’ve got a meeting down the hall. Back in about thirty minutes. Oh, don’t try to walk out with any loose change or files or anything, Pansy’s tougher than she looks.”

He left them without a backward glance. Jazz knew her eyebrows were soaring, and her lips compressed against a laugh. She caught the same glitter in Lucia’s eyes.

“Well,” Lucia said in the silence after the door had clicked shut, “he’s not what I expected.”

“Taller?”

“Smarter.” She edged her chair closer to the desk and reached for the folder. “Oddly, that does not make me feel better about this.”

The folder contained loads of legal paperwork about the partnership. Jazz blurred out after a couple of pages, but she was pretty expert in shaking wheat from chaff, when it came to legal papers, and flipped through the thick sheaf until she found what she was looking for.

“Looks like the money’s coming from a nonprofit organization called the Cross Society,” she said, and scooted over to give Lucia a lean-in on it.

“A religious thing?” Lucia hooked silky black hair back over her ear.

“Um…no idea, actually. Why. Are you a zealot?”

“I’m religious, I’m not actually militant.” Lucia shrugged. “You?”

“Define religious.”

Lucia gave her a warm, quick smile. “And that answers my question. So, what do we know about them?”

“Not a damn thing.” Jazz flipped through the rest of the paperwork. “Address is care of the law firm. I don’t see anything else to go on.”

“Ah.” Lucia nodded, and went around Borden’s desk to test the drawers. Locked. She reached into her neat little designer purse, came out with lock picks in a zippered leather case, and set to work. It took her about ten seconds flat to open up the file drawer and start flipping through. “Hmm, he works for some interesting people—do you want to know about Donald Trump? — never mind, here it is. The Cross Society.”

She pulled out a fairly massive-looking folder and spread it open on the blotter, on top of the partnership paperwork. Jazz came around to take a look as Lucia’s elegant fingers fluttered pages.

“Here. Not religious, apparently. The Cross Society is a nonprofit organization established seven years ago with a mandate to research time, physics and causality.”

“What the hell is causality?” Jazz asked.

“I was hoping you’d tell me. They seem to have given out quite a load of grants and loans over the past couple of years. Take a look at the list. Anything look familiar to you?”

“Nope, but I’ll bet if we did an Internet search, we’d turn up with science stuff.”

“Not all of them,” Lucia murmured, and ran her finger down the list to stop on one name. Gregory Valentin Ivanovich. “I know this one. Definitely not a scientist.”

“Who is he?”

“Spy,” she said absently. “Once upon a time. He’s in security these days. Or that’s the euphemism for it. Actually, I think he more or less works for the highest bidder…. What would you say, there must be a few thousand names listed here, right?”

Jazz felt her eyebrows quirk again. “Seems to be a lot. This Ivanovich guy…you know him from business or pleasure?”

“Both,” Lucia said, and ran her fingertip over the name again, as if it was a bar code she could scan. “Although you mix those together often enough you get something that doesn’t fit the definition of either. Anyway, Gregory isn’t a scientist by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Neither are we,” Jazz pointed out, and pointed at the footnote on the page.

Offers extended to Jasmine Evelyn Callender and Lucia Imelda Losano Garza on March 23…

“Interesting.”

“Yeah, no kidding. I’d call it more like shocking. Imelda? ”

“Shut up, Evelyn. ”

“If they’re researching egghead stuff, why do they need spies, cops and whatever the hell you are, anyway?” Jazz asked, and tapped the paper nervously.

Lucia said, “Let’s find out,” and flipped through the files again.

“What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. Anything out of the ordinary, I suppose.” She flicked the tabs, reading names. “Active cases. Mr. Borden’s a busy young man. He’s defending an insurance company against a class-action suit on denial of claims…a tobacco company…some rich billionaire with tax problems— not The Donald…”

She paused, backed up, and eased a file out of the middle of the drawer.

“What?” Jazz asked.

“Eidolon Corporation.”

“Never heard of it.”

“I have.” Lucia kept staring at the file folder. She pulled it out and opened it on the desk, flipping pages.

“Well?” Jazz prodded.

“I know the name. I just can’t remember—” Lucia shook her head and looped silky dark hair behind her ear as she bent over the folder. “This is nothing. Tax accounting on assets, standard corporate stuff. But I know this name, I know I do.”

They were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. In retrospect, Jazz supposed it would have been a good idea to keep an eye out, even though Borden had said he wouldn’t be back for thirty minutes. Rookie mistake. She controlled the impulse to sweep the folders off the desk and looked at Lucia, who was looking utterly cool and composed and not at all tempted to try to hide what she was doing.

Must have been a spy thing.

“Ah. Eidolon Corporation.” The voice had a hoarse edge that came from a lifetime of close acquaintance with cigarettes or, Jazz amended, maybe Havana cigars. The old man standing framed in the doorway—short, neat, white-haired, with electric blue eyes—looked as if he’d never stoop to anything so pedestrian as cigarettes. Old money. Polish and style and sophistication. His immaculate tailoring made Lucia look dowdy. “I thought you might recognize it. You have an excellent memory, Agent Garza. That’s one of the reasons you came so highly recommended to us.”

Lucia said nothing. She met the newcomer’s stare squarely, chin firm, eyes bright. He came forward and put his hand on the back of Jazz’s chair, and turned his attention to her for a few seconds. “Miss Callender,” he said, and nodded down at her. His eyes were Paul Newman blue, and they looked as if they might require a separate power source. Maybe he recharged them at night, along with his cell phone. “My name is Milo Laskins. I am a senior partner with the firm, and Mr. Borden’s immediate superior. You may address any questions you have about the agreement to me, as Mr. Borden has been temporarily detained.” He nodded toward the file still sitting on the desk under Lucia’s hand. “Although I see your research is going quite well without me.”

“Are you expecting me to apologize?” she asked.

“Hardly. But I do expect you to abandon the attempt to rifle through the firm’s confidential records, if for nothing else than simple courtesy.” Laskins took the desk chair and looked at Lucia expectantly. She shrugged, slotted the files back in place and closed the drawer. “And if you wouldn’t mind locking it…?”

She took out the lock picks again and turned tumblers, then came over and sat in the visitor chair again, legs crossed. Jazz met her eyes for a brief second, and was surprised at the strength of communication between them. Careful, Lucia was warning her, which was the same that she was broadcasting.