Rachel Caine - Devil's Bargain

“Well, I mean that the paper’s consistent with the official letterhead of Gabriel, Pike & Laskins—I had their nice receptionist courier me some pieces—and the fingerprints on the paper are yours, one James R. Borden, and a woman named Pansy Taylor, who is his—”

“Assistant, yeah, I’ve met her.”

“She’s really named Pansy?”

“Apparently. What else?”

Manny shuffled papers noisily on the other end of the phone. She checked the number he was calling from, and saw a caller-ID-blocked message. He was probably phoning from the lab, but with Manny, you could never tell. Even with all of the delicate equipment and lush lifestyle, he’d been known to pull up stakes and move in less than a day. All it takes is money, he’d told her once, with a shrug. She supposed that was true.

“The blood on the note? A positive. Not your type.”

I don’t know about that, she thought, and suppressed it. “Borden’s,” she said. “Did you do a DNA test?”

“You said the full ride, Jazz. Yes. DNA profile. I don’t know what good it will do you, but it’s here. You’ll be pleased to know he’s not your long-lost brother or anything.”

She was, actually. “So there’s nothing you can tell me about this letter? Nothing hinky?”

“Hinky?” Manny was silent for a few seconds. “No. Not about the letter.”

“But…?”

“It’s the envelope.”

The big red Valentine’s Day envelope. “What about it?”

“Two sets of fingerprints on the envelope, besides yours and Borden’s. Not Pansy Taylor’s.”

Jazz tried to remember if either of the truckers had touched it. No, she was pretty sure they hadn’t. “Get any hits?”

“Actually, yeah,” he said. “One of the sets belongs to a guy named Bernard Lozano, he was sent up for assault ten years ago, but he’s been out a couple of years now. I didn’t get anything off of the other set.”

Maybe the trucker twins had touched the envelope, after all. The name Lozano wasn’t ringing any bells with her. “Okay. Anything else?”

“Ink, paper, blood. That’s all you gave me, Jazz. Not a lot to work with here.”

“I get it, Manny. Thanks.”

He grunted. “You’ll get the bill. Oh, and don’t come by for a while. I don’t like the company.”

“Manny!”

“Not you, Jazz. The other guys.”

She felt a sudden chill and clutched the phone tighter. “What other guys?”

“The ones who pulled up in a van and sat surveillance outside my building for two hours after you left,” Manny said. “I had to move. New address is in the usual place.”

He dead-dropped his address and phone numbers into a post office box when he got paranoid. Jazz had been through it before. “I’ll pick them up once I’m sure I’m not being tailed.”

“I thought you were sure the last time.”

I was. She didn’t tell him that. “Sorry, Manny.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a bump in your bill for it.” He hesitated. Static crackled the phone. “The other woman? The one you brought here?”

“Lucia?” Who was, as it happened, coming out of the bathroom and heading her way.

“I liked her,” Manny said. “She can come around if she wants.”

He hung up before she could say another word. She blurted, “You’re kidding me!” but it was lost to the ether.

“What?” Lucia asked, sinking down to the couch beside her.

“Manny likes you,” Jazz said. “You have no idea how deeply weird that is.”

Lucia smiled and shrugged. “People like me. It’s a gift.”

“Manny’s got nothing hinky, except two sets of prints, one belonging to one Bernard Lozano, ex-con, on the outside of the envelope.”

“And the letter?”

“Clean. I’ve also asked him to look into the Cross Society, but it’ll take time.”

Lucia hitched her shoulders wordlessly. She tapped the partnership agreement with one high-gloss fingernail. For someone who’d been living out of a very small suitcase for two days, she looked fresh from the showroom. Jazz, who’d had access to everything in her own apartment, hadn’t managed to achieve much more than comfortable and awake. I need a haircut, she thought, swiping the shag out of her eyes again. Lucia’s hair always stayed where it was told. But then it was that glossy, silky black, and Jazz’s was coarse and blond and not very damn cooperative, in general.

She was thinking of these things to avoid the next step, she realized. Lucia was watching her.

“Look,” Jazz said, “I’m not going to lie to you. I need the money. I need it to pay for Ben’s appeal. I want to sign this thing.”

“Jazz, I’m not judging you. But these people know you need the money. It’s a lever.”

“And you don’t need it, do you?”

Lucia shook her head. “That’s not what they’re offering me.”

“Then what?”

“Independence.”

Jazz had had a bellyful of that. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“It is when you’ve spent half your life trusting your life to pinheads who have no idea how to plan their way out of their offices,” Lucia replied, grim lines around her eyes and mouth. “I don’t mind fighting for the right things. I mind being wasted. I want to set my own priorities for a change.”

There was a passion behind the words that surprised Jazz. A frustration carefully hidden behind Lucia’s glossy, composed surface. She met the other woman’s dark eyes and saw an absolute fury there, quickly damped down.

“Lucia, we either do this thing or we don’t. I don’t have a lot of time to burn.” She was thinking about Ben, sitting in a cell, waiting. When she’d seen him last, he’d been quiet and guarded, but she’d seen the bruises. A cop in general population. He was a target, and there was no question that his enemies would get him. Ben was tough, but he wasn’t a superman, and even the tough had to sleep. “I need this.”

Lucia took a breath deep enough to stretch the pin-striped tailored jacket she was wearing. “I’m sorry.” There was a cold, hard light in her eyes. “I know you do. But I’ve been thinking about it, and it just doesn’t feel right. I did some checking on the Cross Society. You know who first established it? Max Simms.”

“Simms? The serial killer?”

“When he was the head of Eidolon Corporation, he formed the Cross Society as a nonprofit. He was head of it for a year before they started digging up bodies in his basement. The only thing that saved the society from going down the toilet was that he kept his involvement with them strictly low-profile, and somebody else stepped in to run it when he was shipped off to prison. Although my informant says that Simms was mostly a figurehead, anyway. The Cross Society was just a way to funnel money out of Eidolon. Apparently, Simms wasn’t getting along with his board of directors.”

Jazz looked her right in the eyes. “Then this isn’t going to happen,” she said.

“No,” Lucia agreed. “It isn’t going to happen. I’m sorry. I know you wanted it. I wanted it, too. But not if it tangles us up with people like Max Simms.”

Jazz felt it all turn to ash, all the hope she hadn’t even realized she’d been nursing. She’d schooled herself not to feel, not to care, and she’d been suckered in this time, and it damn well hurt. She stared mutely at Lucia, who stood up, retrieved her designer purse, and said, “Can you take me to the airport?”

Jazz nodded silently. She gathered up the partnership agreement, rolled it up and stuffed it into her coat pocket.

That was it. Game over.

Borden was going to be very disappointed.

Jazz kept her head down, thinking, all the way down in the elevator to the parking level. Lucia didn’t speak, either. There was an awkward silence between them, and they couldn’t meet each other’s eyes.