Rachel Caine - Chill Factor

"Sucks," I agreed tightly. "We're not going to chat, right?"

"Long damn trip if we don't."

"Longer if we do."

He sighed and settled back. Lel bobbed her head in time with a beat I couldn't hear, and I watched the miles start to spin away.

There was a huge, gaping empty space inside me. I couldn't feel David anymore, and that was the worst part. Not knowing where he was, what they were doing with him. How could they believe Kevin? Were they really that stupid, or just that desperate? Kevin wasn't exactly a brilliant strategist, but he had a certain criminal cunning… and you could count on the fact that if he had the chance to double cross you, he would. He was greedy, he was selfish, and he'd never been treated fairly in his life. He'd believe you were going to screw him anyway, so why wait?

As a survival strategy, not half-bad. As a way to live, it was a tragedy.

I kept half my attention up on the aetheric as I drove, looking for trouble and hoping for a sign. There was a huge roiling disturbance centered behind me, in the direction of Las Vegas, but it was like an impenetrable wall of confusion.

David had told me that this had to happen. I didn't understand why, but all I could do was trust him, trust Lewis, trust in the goodwill of the universe.

Not really in my nature.

We'd gone about fifteen miles out into the big nowhere when Lel took the headphones off, looked over the backseat at Carl, and said, "This about right?"

"Yeah," he said. "Looks right."

"For what?" I asked, and that was when Carl took a gun out from under his tan windbreaker and pointed it to my head.

"Pull over," he said.

I felt a cold-hot bolt of shock. "You're kidding."

I heard a metallic snap, cold and harsh, right next to my ear. "The next sound you hear kills you. Pull the car over."

Lel was watching me with a little half smile, satisfied as a cat in a cream factory.

I drifted the car to a stop at the side of the road and stood on the brakes unnecessarily hard. My legs were shaking. I've been on the wrong end of a lot of situations, but the wrong end of a gun was a different story. God, I hadn't seen this coming…

"Out," Carl said, and handed the gun to Lel. "Cover her."

The woman was good at it; I never felt there was a split second to take advantage of, and besides, there were two Wardens on me, and it wasn't like I could overpower them, not without David. Not without a huge, costly fight. The memory of being shot in the back overwhelmed me. I'd survived it, but not without cost, and not without pain; I didn't have any wish to try a rematch of me versus Smith amp; Wesson. I opened the car door and stepped out, keeping my hands up and in a helpless position.

"You understand that if I feel so much as a light breeze, you're dead," Lel said conversationally. I nodded. Strange feeling, to be so cold when the sun was so hot; my hands were clammy. I wanted to wipe them on my skirt and didn't dare.

"Look," I said, "if you want the car-"

"Shut up. Walk," Lel said, and jerked her chin out in the direction of the desert. It looked pretty much like every other part of the desert. Nothing out here but sand, cactus, and the occasional vulture. Somebody had used the road sign for target practice. The aged buckshot dings were rusted rich orange.

As we struggled through hot sand, heading over the nearest hill, I wished for some more sensible shoes to die in-crazy, the things that go through your head. I wished desperately for David's warm, comforting presence, not to mention his ability to kill these two roaches really, really dead. I wished for a lot of things that I couldn't have. Stupid! Should've seen this coming. Except the idea that someone might have ordered me killed had never so much as entered my mind. Who the hell were these guys working for?

The sun beat down like a yellow hammer on the top of my head. I remembered what sunlight had felt like as a Djinn-that incredible sense of pure power soaking into me. As a human, it just made me feel overheated and exhausted.

"Okay, hold it," Lel said.

"I can keep walking; I'm not really tired," I offered; my voice sounded squeaky, full of bravado. Hiking was not my fave, but it was better than… well, a hole in the head.

Lel ignored me. She glanced over at Carl, who was on his cell phone, turned away from us, talking softly. The wind was staying still, thankfully; I didn't doubt that she was paying attention to that. Or that she'd shoot me if she suspected I was trying something tricky.

We waited. I shifted nervously from one foot to the other, watching the clear skies, feeling exposed and all too defenseless. "Look," I said. "I don't know what's going on, but if it's a matter of money…" Not that I had it, but I'd figure something out.

She gave me a beatific smile, waking dimples in her cheeks, and smoothed her perfectly behaved hair as a very slight breeze drifted by us, trailing the sharp, hot smell of mesquite. Carl finished his phone call and turned back to us. Lel handed him the gun. No words between them; they were obviously a tightly rehearsed act.

"Um… what now?" I asked.

"Now we wait."

"For…?"

No answer. The sun got hotter. Despite the chill that continued to pebble my skin into gooseflesh, I was sweating buckets, and I didn't dare wipe my face. My arms were getting tired from their half-mast position of surrender.

We heard the faint growl of an engine. Lel's eyes turned toward the direction of the highway as it revved and died away.

It appeared the criminal mastermind had arrived. I waited, sweating and worrying, until a tall, lanky form limped slowly toward us from the maze of dunes and spiked thornbushes.

"Lewis!" I blurted, and felt a spurt of relief like ice water… just as I realized that neither Lel nor Carl looked surprised to see him.

Oh, fuck.

"You look bad," Lel said to him-clinical analysis, not concern. "You sure you're up for this?"

"Yes," Lewis said. He had his cane again, and he was gripping it in a white-knuckled hand as he leaned his weight on it. His color was an unhealthy yellow-gray, and there were hard lines of pain around his eyes and mouth. Pale lips that nearly vanished, they were so colorless. "Just don't take long."

My hands had come down. A jerk from the gun made them go back up again, grabbing sky. "Lewis?" I asked it very softly, watching his face. He looked at me for a few long seconds, then down at the sand.

"It's the way it has to be, Jo."

"Wait-"

He nodded to the Terror Twins. Lel removed a test tube-shaped bottle from her coat pocket. Now there was a bottle I wouldn't have put a Djinn into, under any circumstances. One roll off of a table, and poof… unfortunately, I was all out of tables, and Carl was holding the gun like he seriously meant to use it.

"Lewis! Just tell me what the hell's going on! Look, I can help -"

"You are helping," he said without looking up. "Lel. Do it."

She popped the cork, and a Djinn misted into being next to her. Tall, dark-haired, kind of a business-class version of Raquel Welch. The Djinn's eyes had a distinct reddish tinge to them, which was unsettlingly demonic, and the red-painted nails on her flawless hands had definite talon potential. She was wearing a suit that damn sure looked like Prada to me, sleek and dark and elegant.

No shoes, disappointingly. Her legs misted down around calf level, in the traditional Djinn way. She didn't waste her energy on anything as human as feet.

I waited for Lewis to say something. Anything. To goddamn well look at me.

He moved the cane in front of him and braced himself with both hands, staring down. Absolving himself of responsibility.

"I swear to God, Lewis, I won't forget this," I said. "Whatever you're doing-"