Rachel Caine - Devil's Bargain

When they were back on the road, Borden clicked open his briefcase, rooted around in it for a second, and then handed her a plane ticket. Flight 802. Los Angeles to Kansas City.

“He didn’t know,” Borden said. “I didn’t tell him we were flying back tonight, and there’s no way he could have known which flight we were on. Think about that.”

She gave him a long, considering look, and said, “And if I were a half-decent con man, I might know how many flights there were to K.C. from LAX in a day, if my mark was heading there. I might make a pretty educated guess as to which one she’d be on, given the time of day. Looks like magic. Smells like crap, Counselor. Sorry. No sale.”

He shook his head and avoided her eyes. She licked her lips and suddenly—shockingly—remembered the warm pressure of his mouth, and felt something in her plummet again, lost and liking it. It’s a long ride back to L.A., some part of her whispered. She tracked it down and throttled it into silence.

Borden said something under his breath that sounded like, “He said you’d be like this,” and they spent the entire ride back in silence.

Not touching.

To Jazz’s well-concealed disappointment.

Jazz had done such a good job of putting Simms out of her mind that it wasn’t until she was queuing up to the ticket line behind a petite blond woman dressed in a fuzzy pink scarf and heard the ticket agent say “Ms. Walters? May I see your ID please?” that the whole thing came rushing back, like ice through her veins. Simms’s cool, precise voice whispered in her head. There will be two survivors, a blond woman named Kelley Walters and a businessman, Lamar Qualls. Kelley will be traveling to visit her sister in Kansas City.

The blond woman moved off. Jazz stared after her for a few seconds, then moved up and handed over ticket and ID. Borden was right behind her. No hitches. They breezed through security and took seats at the gate with twenty minutes before boarding.

If Borden had heard the woman’s name, he didn’t give any indication. He’d stopped along the way to buy a copy of the New York Times and was deep into the business section. He’d stopped looking at her at all. Jazz, for her part, felt ancient and creaky, thanks to the day’s exertions. Her muscles were telling her they badly wanted a rest, and she was pretty sure she looked like she’d gone a few rounds as a punching bag. She told her various aches and pains to shut up, and strolled over to the restroom when she saw the blond woman get up and head that way.

It’s crap, Jazz told herself. She did her business in the stall and came out to find Ms. Walters—Kelley, no doubt—washing her hands. She was a lovely pink rose of a woman, neat and friendly, flashing an immediate smile when Jazz took the sink next to her.

“Late flight,” Jazz said, and yawned as she yanked paper towels from the dispenser. The other woman nodded.

“At least we get to sleep,” she said. “And there’s no traffic at the terminal when you get there. But there’s something really eerie about looking for a cab in the middle of the night, you know?”

“Nobody meeting you?”

Kelley shook her head, causing blunt-cut blond hair to brush her cheeks. “I’m visiting my sister and her family. No sense in getting them out of bed at oh-my-God in the morning. I’ll just take a cab and get a hotel. I was supposed to be on the six-o’clock flight, but I got bumped. What a pain flying is these days.”

Jazz was good at reading people, good at sensing setups and deceptions, and she felt nothing. Heard no false notes.

If Kelley Walters was a plant, working as part of the larger con orchestrated by Max Simms, she was the best damn liar Jazz had ever seen.

Jazz went back to her seat. Borden had finished the business section and moved on to sports. She picked up the paper and scanned it without really reading, watching the other passengers who were getting ready to board. Not a huge crowd, this time of night—maybe thirty, altogether. A few college-age kids, with the ubiquitous backpacks. A gaggle of businesspeople who must have all worked for the same firm—they had the look of people who’d traveled together so often they no longer had to make conversation. One middle-aged man, overweight and prematurely gray, sat slumped in his chair reading a mystery novel. His battered, much-traveled carry-on roller case had a large tag that read Qualls.

Jazz felt a sense of unreality close around her. Walters, she could dismiss as a deliberate setup. Qualls, being part of a group, wasn’t so easy. Still, Simms and the Cross Society could have gotten hold of the passenger list….

Flight 802. She stared at the number and found it suddenly hard to swallow.

“Borden,” she said, and stopped. He looked up. His brown eyes were tired and bleary.

“What?”

“Maybe we should—”

He folded his newspaper. “What?”

“Nothing.”

The boarding call went out for business class. Qualls and the rest of the flock of suits headed for the ramp. Jazz checked her ticket. She and Borden were in business, as well. She shouldered her bag and followed his long-limbed stride past the checkpoint, through the hollow booming tunnel, up to the accordion end pressed against the smooth skin of the airplane…

She stopped. Just…stopped.

This is stupid, she told herself. Move. Get on the damn plane.

Borden had heard the same things she had. He wasn’t hesitating.

She took a deep breath and edged past the tired smiles of the flight attendants to her seat. Borden eased in next to her with a sigh and buckled in tight.

“Borden,” she said again. “Listen, what he said—”

“About the crash?” He sounded utterly calm. “You weren’t listening, Jazz. There’s an eighty-two-percent chance it won’t happen. Believe me, the longer you’re around Simms, the more you’ll trust his odds.”

“But—” There’s a woman named Kelley Walters back there. And that guy over there, he’s named Qualls.

Borden went back to the sports section. “Just stay buckled in,” he said. “Trust me. You’ll either believe soon, or you won’t. And there’s an eighty-two-percent chance it’ll actually still matter in the end.”

The engine blew out, by Jazz’s watch, at 10:03 p.m., California time. She was next to the window and had a view of the sudden flare of fire. She hadn’t gone to sleep, though the plane was nearly silent and most of her fellow passengers—including Borden—had nodded off.

They all woke up fast when the loud bang shuddered through the aircraft, and the plane lurched sharply to starboard. Jazz gasped and punched fingernails into the armrests, wishing the damn plane came with crash harnesses instead of ridiculously inadequate lap belts; next to her, Borden snapped awake and grabbed for support, too. “Hold on,” he said.

She stared out the window at the whipping fire and smoke pouring from the ruined engine. The plane hit rough air and tilted again, waking screams from the back cabin. The engines growled, shaking the airframe, and Jazz felt her ears pop.

She grabbed for Borden’s hand.

“Eighty-two percent,” he said. It sounded like a prayer, or a chant. “Eighty-two percent. We’ll be okay.”

It didn’t feel like that. It felt like her stomach had dropped somewhere out of the cargo bay and was falling, weightless, to earth. About to crash into a row of sleeping suburban houses. He didn’t say how many of them it would kill, she thought, how many more innocent victims. Maybe, to Simms, nobody was innocent.

She felt her fingers twine tight with Borden’s. His were shaking. A whine built up at the back of her throat, and she felt the plane falling, falling, tilting…