Rachel Caine - Devil's Bargain

She got a full-on stare from his brown eyes, and remembered how he’d been in the bar—off base, off balance, awkward. Out of his element but determined enough to tough it out. She’d liked that Borden. This one—slick, sophisticated and in control—was less easy to trust.

“Your choice,” he said neutrally. “But just remember, I picked out the cookies personally.”

Lucia snorted.

Jazz took a second one and ate it contemplatively, watching him.

He suddenly rolled his leather chair back and said, “Jazz, can I have a minute? Just one minute.”

She looked at Lucia, who raised her eyebrows in an eloquent whatever. Jazz stood up and fisted her hands in her jacket pockets. “Sure, Counselor.”

He led her out into the hallway. Instead of turning toward his office, which was two doors down, he took her to the right, to the big indoor garden with its quietly tinkling fountain and elaborately raked Zen sand. He walked her down the path to a blind corner shielded by a broad-leafed palm. There was a stone bench, but he made no move to sit down. He was staring at the tops of his shoes.

“Well?” she asked finally. “Nice plants. What else?”

“I know you don’t trust us,” he said. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, and the awkwardness made her remember how he’d been back in K.C., at the bar. Standing up to two men when it was a foregone conclusion he was in for an ass-kicking. For a lawyer, he sure didn’t lack spine. “But…please believe me when I say that you need to try to believe me. Things are coming. Bad things. And I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She felt a sudden chill and stepped closer, trying to get his eyes. He avoided her. “Borden?”

“Look, I can’t tell you anything. But things are going to happen, and I’d rather you were inside than out. Right? For your sake as well as ours.”

“Are you trying to threaten me?”

That got her a stare, a big wide one, shocked. “No! Of course not. Besides…hell, I’ve seen you kick ass, Jazz. Threatening you is the last thing on my mind, believe me. I’m just…worried.”

“What have you heard?”

“That there were men after you in the airport,” he said. “Jazz, you were in danger from the minute I walked into that bar and handed you that envelope, just like Lucia was in danger the moment hers was delivered. I wish I could make this easy for you. I can’t. It isn’t just…money and opportunity. This is about something else.”

The Cross Society. And Eidolon Corporation?

“About what?” she asked, instinctively. Keeping her voice down. He was almost whispering. “Borden? About what?”

“Time,” he said. “We’re almost out of it.”

He was wearing the same aftershave as he had at the bar, she realized suddenly. It radiated off him in warm waves, and she had to fight an impulse to breathe in deeply. She’d stepped closer again without realizing it. Inches from him. He was stooped, looking down into her eyes. She’d always considered herself pretty stocky, but he made her feel delicate, somehow.

She felt his fingers brush hers, then slowly enfold her hand in warmth.

“Watch yourself,” he said softly. “Even if you don’t do this thing, you need to be careful. You’re on their radar now.”

“They, who?”

He shook his head but never looked away from her face. The gaze was getting deeper. More intense. She felt her breath coming faster and struggled to slow it down. Warmth was creeping up her arm, and her hand felt unnaturally sensitized, as if she could feel every whorl in his fingerprints on her skin.

“Counselor,” she said slowly, “are you trying to come on to me?”

That got a sudden, brilliant grin. “Why, would it work?”

“I don’t do lawyers.”

“We’re even. I don’t do cops.”

“Ex-cop.”

“Too bad I’m a current lawyer.”

“So where does that leave us?”

He didn’t answer. Silence fell, deep as the Zen pool. Mist drifted through the garden and brushed the back of her neck with damp fingers, and she shivered.

“Nowhere,” she finally murmured, and pulled away. He let her do it without a fight. “Also? One more thing. If I find out you’re behind those assholes at the airport, your ass is mine.”

She was executing a perfect Hollywood exit when he murmured plaintively, “But that was my plan! The ass thing, not the other part.”

She didn’t give him the satisfaction of turning around. She walked away down the stone path, back to the conference room. Lucia was finishing her salad.

Jazz picked up her purse and the partnership agreement, and said, “I need some air.”

Lucia neatly speared the last cherry tomato, forked it into her mouth, and nodded. “Time to go, anyway. I expect we’ve worn out our welcome.”

Borden, still standing in the garden, nodded to them as they left, but never said another word. Jazz wasn’t sure whether to be angry or hurt by that, but really, when it came down to it, there was only one logical choice.

Anger at least kept you sharp.

“Well?”

They were somewhere over Illinois, heading toward Missouri, when Lucia asked the single-word question. Jazz, who’d been drifting steadily toward nap land, came awake with a hard jolt. The drone of the airplane filled her ears, and she glanced out the window to make sure they were still flying, not falling. So far, so good.

Lucia was nursing a drink. It fizzed, so it was probably sparkling water, something suave and European. Jazz flagged down the flight attendant and got a Sprite, which she figured was the Americanized version.

“Am I in favor?” Jazz asked. Lucia inclined her head. “Honestly? I don’t know. But, presuming it checks out…”

“And if your friend Manny doesn’t turn up anything unusual…”

“Then I’d say maybe we should seriously consider it.” The money. The thought of that crisp, cashable check in her wallet made Jazz’s mouth go dry.

Lucia closed the partnership agreement and stared down at the cover, which was embossed with the logo of Gabriel, Pike & Laskins, LLP. She rubbed a finger over it, silently, and then nodded. Just a bare inch of agreement. “Maybe,” she said. “Where would we have the office?”

“What?”

“The office,” Lucia repeated. “Garza & Callender Investigations. Where do we hang the shingle?”

Against all reason, Jazz found herself grinning. “K.C.’s a nice town,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s not bad.”

“But it’d be Callender & Garza. Alphabetical order.”

“Age before beauty.”

“Pearls before—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t if I were you.” Lucia took a sip of her water. The flight attendant arrived with a small plastic cup of fizzing Sprite on the rocks, and passed it across to Jazz.

They looked at each other mutely for a few seconds, and then Jazz held up the Sprite. Lucia held up the sparkling water.

They clinked plastic.

“Deal,” Lucia said.

“ If there’s nothing hinky that turns up.”

“Obviously. Goes without saying.”

The Sprite tasted cool and refreshing, like champagne. That’s it, Jazz thought with a sudden surge of mingled dread and euphoria, as the plane started its descent for Kansas City. Something just changed.

She hoped it was for the better.

Two independent attorneys had reviewed and signed off on the partnership agreement—and one of them called it a “work of art”—by the time Manny got back to them with the forensic results. “I was thorough,” he explained to Jazz on the cell phone. “I got nothing off the letter.”

“Nothing?” she repeated, startled. She was standing in the lobby of the second law firm, one selected at random from the phone book, and Lucia was in the restroom. The partnership agreement, well thumbed, was lying in front of her on the coffee table, decorated with grubby yellow sticky notes. “What do you mean, nothing?”