J azz 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...
And then, suddenly, there was a surge of power, and it leveled out. They were saved.
She let out a startled gasp and heard the cries behind her fade out. Borden was still holding her hand, but he wasn't crushing it anymore, and she could hear him breathing again. Deep, deliberately slow breaths.
"See?" he said. His voice sounded an octave higher than normal. "Eighty-two percent. We're going to be fine."
She turned toward him in the dimness as the Fasten Seat Belts sign flashed on with a belated ding, and the captain announced in a businesslike voice that no, they were not going to die.
"He's not bullshit, is he?" she asked. "Simms. He really can do these things."
"Well," Borden answered, "the alternative is that he has enough power sitting in a maximum-security prison to have arranged for a commercial airliner to be sabotaged just to convince you. Which one would you rather believe?"
She managed a pale, shaky smile. His fingers wrapped around hers, warm and comforting, and she let them stay there all the way to the terminal.
It was nearly five in the morning by the time Jazz flipped on the lights in her office and dropped bonelessly onto the couch. She let her head drift back against the cushions and stared at the ceiling, blank and drained, and saw Borden's long, sharp-chinned face bend over her.
"Okay?" he asked. He hadn't ever put his tie back on, she realized. His suit jacket was off and tossed over the arm of a chair, drooping just the way she felt, and his once finely pressed shirt was a mass of wrinkles. Unbuttoned about one too many fastenings to qualify as businesslike.
"Yeah," she said. "For somebody whose head exploded several hours ago."
"Believe me, I understand." He sank down on the couch next to her. "Remember the night I walked into the bar with your letter?"
She wasn't likely to forget it. "You looked like an idiot."
"I felt like one."
"Did Simms tell you what to wear?"
He didn't answer. He reached out and smoothed a stray lock of hair back from her face. She turned toward him, cheek resting on soft cushions, and met his eyes.
They both froze.
His hand was still brushing her skin, fingers light and warm, but there was nothing casual about the look on his face. Dangerous, that look. Especially here, in the dark, after adrenaline and a hard day and the destruction of the universe as she knew it, with a comfortable couch to lie back on.
Really, really dangerous.
Jazz moved away a little. Just enough to put space between his hand and her skin. He took the hint and leaned away, elbow on the back of the couch, staring at her but not quite as nakedly hungering. "I should call Lucia," she said.
"This early?"
He had a point, and the couch felt far too comfortable. "I should go home," she said. "Then again, I should be here in three hours."
"Sleep," he advised her, and pulled her legs into his lap. She couldn't honestly remember when it was she'd allowed him to get that close to her, allowed herself to be touched with that much freedom. His hands felt huge and burning hot through her clothes, points of fire on her skin. She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath and concentrated on the sensation of his palms moving lightly across the backs of her calves, massaging. He stripped off her shoes and let them drop to the floor.
She didn't mean to fall asleep, but there was something so achingly soothing about the warmth of his body near hers that she dropped into a field of black behind her eyelids, and was gone.
Jazz woke up alone, to the blaze of overhead lights. She blinked, coughed and dragged herself upright, wishing for hair-trigger reflexes and managing more like a blunt object.
Lucia was framed in the door, paused in the act of walking into the room, staring at her with an expression of utter surprise.
"Hey," Jazz muttered, and ran both hands through her hair. She didn't even want to think about how she looked. There were bag ladies going through Dumpsters who probably looked better.
"Hey," Lucia said cautiously, and closed the door behind her. "Ah...were you supposed to be back today?"
"No. Change of plans." I'm marked for death, Jazz started to say, and decided to hold that back for later, after coffee. "Where's Borden?"
"Was he here?" Lucia set her purse down and swung dark hair back over her shoulder with a practiced swing of her head, smiling like the Mona Lisa. "And is there something I should know about this?"
"Nothing interesting."
Lucia pulled a chair up and sat down, elbows on her knees in a pose Jazz realized was a mirror of her own. Only, of course, Lucia was dressed in an olive-green pantsuit with a peach silk blouse, flawless makeup, and didn't look as if she'd ever in her life had a black eye, a chipped nail, or a short night's sleep on the office couch.
"What happened?"
Jazz didn't intend to tell her all of it, but that's what came out. All of it. From the saving of Santoro's life - which, if one believed Simms, wasn't the greatest of all possible good deeds - to the creepy prison conversation, to her own newfound status as Eidolon's Most Wanted, which by extension endangered all of them. She dug out the letter and handed it over. There was a lipstick smudge on it that baffled her until she remembered the lip print on the Plexiglas in the visitor's cubicle. She'd forgotten about it when she slapped the paper to the surface. It looked now as if somebody at Eidolon had given her a sloppy, openmouthed kiss as a parting gift.
Lucia took it in without comment or question, until Jazz finished, and then looked up. "Do you believe it? Any of it at all?"
That was a tough question. At five in the morning, she'd believed a hell of a lot more than she did sitting in the office, with morning light streaming in through the blinds and the smell of coffee beginning to percolate through the air-conditioning system.
"Some," she finally said. "Look, one thing's for sure - he didn't arrange that demonstration last night with the plane, and the chances of it being a lucky guess? Zero. Well, probably so close to zero that you couldn't see them without a microscope."
"And the thing about trying to prevent the end of life as we know it?"
"I have no idea," Jazz admitted. "Combine delusions with an actual weird ability, what do you get?"
"Something scary. Something very scary."
"No shit." Jazz mussed her hair again, and saw Lucia grimace. "What? Don't I just look like the hottie of the month?"
"You look like you could use a bath," Lucia said, with brutal honesty. "And another haircut. I've never seen anyone who can grow out of one as quickly as you."
But Jazz could tell that Lucia's mind wasn't on fashion and hair, not anymore. She looked stone-cold serious behind the frivolous words, and her mind was racing a million miles an hour. This was the Lucia Jazz knew and liked.
The one who could shoot the eye out of an ant at a hundred feet.
"Precautions," Lucia said. "First things first, you don't go anywhere without Kevlar. They've taken shots at you before, they will again. Also, we start with standard risk-assessment protocol. You never get into a car without it being checked for explosives or sabotage - "
"Lucia, come on. Seriously."
"I'm being perfectly serious. You never get into a car with anyone you don't know. We upgrade security on your apartment...no, scratch that, we abandon your apartment and move you someplace safe. No forwarding address."
"Safe? Like where?"
Lucia's smile flared impossibly white and gorgeous. Whatever she'd been about to say was interrupted by the arrival of Pansy, who poked her head around the door and waved a good-natured hello, then opened it wider as she said, "Guess who's here?" She looked like a canary-fed cat. A well-satisfied canary-fed cat.
Standing with her, shuffling his feet uncomfortably and looking desperately as if he wanted to be anywhere else on earth, was Manny Glickman.
"Manny?" Jazz got up so fast she felt her throbbing head swim. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah," he mumbled, raised his muddy green eyes to hers for a bare second, and then looked down. "I, um, was just - on my way to - "
"Manny," Lucia said slowly, and got up, too. She took a couple of steps in his direction, and stopped when he backed up a little in alarm. He liked her well enough, Jazz knew, but Manny didn't like anything coming at him that quickly. "Sorry. Listen, maybe you can help. You know something about security."
"Pretty much everything," he agreed, without any arrogance. "Why?"
"Jazz needs secure accommodations."
Manny looked up sharply, and fastened a laser stare on Lucia. "What's going on?"
Careful, Jazz thought, wishing she was telepathic. If she was going to be so god-awful special, she ought to at least have some particular power beyond getting thumped on and kind of enjoying it.
"Jazz has somebody after her," Lucia said. "I don't think she'll be safe in her home as it is right now."
Manny's stare transferred to Jazz. "After you?"
She sighed. "Yeah." Any second now, there would be a cloud of dust and an end to her relationship with Manny Glickman. Danger was something Manny just didn't do. Not that he'd ever been Adventure Man, but his turn under the ground had stripped away whatever bravery he'd once pretended to own. Not that she blamed him. She knew she wouldn't have survived it at all. "Never mind, Manny, don't worry about it. You go on and - "
"You can stay with me," he said. A simple, declarative statement. No shifting, no stuttering, no nervous flutters. He was rock still, his eyes steady and his face set. "There's no place safer in this city than mine."
Oh, God, Jazz thought, and a wave of hilarity cascaded over her. She saw Lucia bite her lip, eyes wide. Manny Glickman as a roommate....
"I won't let you down," he said, and suddenly all of the funny stuff fell away, and she was looking not at the screwed-up Manny she'd known for years, but at an entirely different person. Somebody who might have been able to pass the FBI's stringent tests and personality profiles and background checks. Somebody who had strength and dignity and courage.
Somebody who'd always been there, underneath all of the panic and worry and tics.
"I won't," he repeated, and took a step toward her. "Jazz, let me do this. I want to help you."
She had no idea why he was offering. "Manny, look, you don't understand. People may be trying to hurt me. Kill me. This isn't a game."
He swallowed hard. She saw his Adam's apple bob up and down convulsively, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He was trembling a little, but only a little, and he jammed hands into the pockets of his tan raincoat to hide it. "Fine," he said. "Just, you know, leave it outside. Don't bring it in."
Lucia stepped smoothly into the silence. "You set the time and method for us to move her," she said. "Just let us know."
"Hey!" Jazz said. "Don't I get - "
"No," Lucia answered without looking at her. "It's Manny's call, not yours. Let's face it, Jazz, you gave up the right to make the decisions when you decided to run off to L.A. and get a contract put out on your life. So from now on, you go nowhere without me. You live in Manny's house. And you do not get a vote."
Jazz's temper - never far from the surface - flared into bubbling lava. "I'm not living like a prisoner!"
The window behind her exploded in a shower of bright, sharp-edged glass, and she felt a rush of wind that blew her hair forward violently. Lucia was heading toward her, but she was already diving for the carpet, squirming to get under the desk, twisting on her side to see if anybody else had been hit.
Manny was still standing, staring uncomprehendingly at the shattered window and the clanking, wind-tossed blinds. Pansy screamed something unintelligible at him and tackled him; they tumbled together, off balance, back out into the reception area between the offices. Lucia hadn't gone for cover. She'd hit the carpet, rolled gracefully, and fetched up against the far wall under the windows. By the time she made the last rotation, she had her gun out and in both hands. She shook hair out of her face, panting, and stared at Jazz. "You all right?" she shouted. Jazz made an okay gesture with one hand as she yanked open her desk drawer with the other and felt around in the depths. She found a cold metal box and pulled it out to thump on the carpet next to her head, then punched in the combination with trembling fingers. The lock snapped open.
She took the Sig Sauer and scrambled to join Lucia at the window. They sat there together, backs to the wall, guns ready, and exchanged a look.
"Now," Lucia said, and rolled right, over the broken glass, coming up on one knee and aiming out the open window. Jazz angled to cover her own side. There was a second's tight silence as they searched for targets.
"Clear," Lucia announced.
"Yeah, here, too."
"If he's any good, he's already gone," Lucia said. "Snipers don't hang around waiting for a second chance. They take the shot and go without seeing how it came out. If it doesn't work, they come back for another try."
Jazz nodded jerkily and narrowed her eyes against the glare, still looking. The morning looked bland and bright. Traffic crawled along outside without incident. Nobody seemed to have noticed a thing, so far, though there was a nice glittering spray of glass on the sidewalk below.
"Get out," Lucia said, still maintaining a rigid focus outside the window, gun at the ready. "Stay low."
There wasn't any reason to argue about it. Jazz did a combat-crawl across the floor, keeping close to the wall, and when she was far enough, rose to a crouch and moved fast out into the darker area beyond. Manny and Pansy peered at her from the cover of Pansy's desk.
"Over here!" Pansy whispered, and gestured her urgently on. "Get down!"
"There's no reason to keep your voice down, they're not stalking the halls with Uzis," Jazz said in a normal tone, and straightened up. "Also, there's no way they can see in here from any of the windows. We're fine."
"Thanks, we'll just - stay here," Pansy said. "I called nine-one-one."
"Good idea." Jazz realized her heart was still pounding, and she was breathing too fast, and reached up to run her hand through her hair. Something bit in a sharp hot line on her finger, and she bent over and shook her head. A rain of glass fragments came out and bounced on the carpet. "You both okay? No holes in you?"
"Fine," Pansy said. Manny wasn't speaking, evidently. "Jazz? I'm thinking I might, you know, take a personal day."
Jazz nodded calmly, ejected the clip from the Sig Sauer and checked it before slamming it back in and ratcheting the slide to put one in the chamber. "You know," she said, "I personally think that sounds like an excellent idea. But wait for the police."
"Don't worry," Manny said. Like Jazz, he sounded extremely calm. Unnaturally calm. "I'm not moving until there's three-hundred-sixty degrees of Kevlar."
She had no doubt that was true. She expected the next time she saw Manny, he'd look like the Michelin Man, only in black body armor. "Pansy. You didn't see Borden when you came in this morning?"
"No, was he here?"
"Yes." No need to go into details. "I'm going to check the rest of the offices."
"Um..." Pansy made a vague gesture toward Jazz's legs. "You might want to put on some shoes first."
She'd forgotten, but it came back to her in a weirdly warm rush of feeling, Borden sliding her shoes off her feet and dropping them to the floor...they must have landed next to the couch. She turned back to the office but met Lucia at the door coming out. Lucia had holstered her gun and was holding Jazz's shoes in her left hand. She thrust them out without a word and slammed the door behind her.
"Off-limits," she said flatly. "You said Borden was here somewhere?" As Jazz bent to slide on the shoes, she turned her attention to Manny and Pansy. "Wait there. I don't care what you hear, don't come running, all right?"
Two nods. Jazz straightened up, and Lucia performed that magic trick again, the one where she started empty-handed and ended up with that gleaming little gun in her hand. Only this one, Jazz noticed, wasn't so little. It was at least a.38. Still elegant looking, though.
"Do you match your guns to your outfits?" she asked. Lucia threw her an exasperated look. "Kidding."
"Go left," Lucia sighed. "No heroics."
Borden was nowhere in their offices. Nowhere, as it turned out, in the building. Police arrived within five minutes and turned the entire place inside out, coming up empty. They also turned up nothing on the sniper. Jazz wasn't shocked. As she and Lucia finished giving statements, she felt her cell phone buzz against her hip, and stepped away to answer.
"Borden?" she asked. It was his number lighting up on the panel. "Where the hell are you?"
It wasn't his voice that answered. "Go to your secretary's desk. Right now."
She froze for a second, mind racing. She didn't know the voice, had never heard it before, but it had a ring of authority. She turned away from the cops and Lucia, trying to look casual about it, plugged a finger in her left ear and tried to make it look as if she was seeking a quiet place. Pansy and Manny were still behind the desk, watching the cops move around. Jazz stopped at the low counter on the other side of the barrier from them.
"I'm here," she said. "Where's Borden?"
"Shut up and listen. Look through the mail. There will be a FedEx envelope."
There were three, in fact. Jazz spread them out quickly on the counter, looking at addresses.
One was from Gabriel, Pike & Laskins.
"Open it," the voice said.
She picked up the GPL envelope, jammed the phone between her shoulder and ear, and ripped the tab. When she turned the stiff cardboard upside down, a familiar red envelope fell out.
"You have the envelope?" said the voice.
"I'm holding it," she said. "Want me to open it?"
"If you break the seal on it, your lawyer friend dies. I want you to turn and walk with it to the stairs. Proceed down to the lobby, go outside and turn right. Walk exactly two blocks, then turn left and go one block. No cops."
She tapped the red envelope on the counter, staring at Pansy's frown, Manny's worried expression.
"Any particular reason I need to take this stroll? Other than for my health?"
A shockingly loud scream burst out of the phone, wild and full of agony, a full-throated bellow. She flinched, nearly lost the phone and slowly straightened up. She felt the blood drain from her face.
"You know what I call a half-dead lawyer?" the voice asked. "A good start. Move your ass, bitch, or he gets something else cut off. Maybe something that he can't live without."
The phone went dead in her hand. She closed her eyes for a second, felt a hot bead of sweat trickle down her back. She turned slowly, keeping the phone to her ear as an excuse to stay where she was, and looked at the cops and Lucia.
Lucia, who was talking, glanced over at her, away, back again to stare. She paused for a breath, smiled at the cop and murmured something that sounded like a graceful apology. Then she walked over to where Jazz stood, red envelope in hand.
"What?" she asked softly.
"Borden," Jazz replied. "They have him. They want this." She moved the envelope slightly, drawing Lucia's attention to it. "They sound real serious."
Lucia nodded. Something sparked bright in her eyes, and her expression smoothed into an unmoving mask. "You want to get real serious?"
"I do." She was still vibrating from the force of the scream. Maybe that wasn't him, she thought, but she knew that was a stupid wishful lie. She'd felt that scream go deep. She'd known it. "I want to get real fucking serious, right now."
"We have visitors." Lucia crossed her arms and tilted her head toward the cops.
"I go first. You back me up." Jazz fixed a hard stare on her. "I need you on this."
"I know. I'll be there."
Jazz nodded once, took the envelope and shoved it into her coat pocket, then walked, in no great hurry, around the corner.
"Where's she going?" one of the cops asked behind her.
"Bathroom," Lucia said. "Do you think we should get away from the windows? In case he's not really gone?" She suddenly sounded vulnerable and scared.
"Sure. No problem."
Jazz heard them moving away, and grinned without humor. She was just moving for the stairs when someone hurried around the corner and almost collided with her. She jumped away, ready to punch, and Pansy staggered back to catch herself against the wall, hand flat against her chest and an expression of shock all over her face. She straightened her glasses and fanned herself.
"What?" Jazz demanded.
"Here!" Pansy pressed something into her hands. "Manny gave it to me. Give me this one. Go!"
She hurried off, back the way she'd come. Jazz, mystified, looked down at what she was holding in her hands, and felt a sudden surge of wild, strange glee.
She shoved it into her pocket and hit the stairwell door at as much of a run as she dared to keep noise to a minimum. Rocketing downstairs on tiptoe was a trick, but she managed, checking her momentum with an outstretched hand raking the walls at the turns. At the lobby door she paused and risked a look outside. More cops down there, but they were all on the street by the patrol cars. She eased open the stairwell door, hurried across the lobby and made it to the service entrance.
Loading dock. Deserted. She left at a flat-out run, breathing deep, feeling a burn in her knee where bruises hadn't begun to heal from her fight the day before. It was easy enough to dodge the cops on the street, and then she kept running, moving as fast as she dared to cover the two blocks. As she waited for the light to cross to the left-hand side, she looked behind her. No sign of Lucia. No sign of cops looking for her, either. She supposed that was a wash.
She pelted across the street the instant traffic paused, bounded over the curb and jogged another block, past the blank side of a long windowless building. Cars were parked at meters on the side. She passed a beat-up Ford, two trucks, a panel van...
The sliding door on the van slapped open when she was even with it, and she darted backward, hands up, as the muzzle of a gun slid out in her direction.
"Against the wall," a voice barked. She couldn't see into the van. Too dark. Sun glinted on window glass, blinding her. No markings on the van, dammit, she needed to see something, describe something.... "Do it. Now."
She backed up until her heels and shoulders pressed against brick, hands still high.
"Where's the envelope?" The voice sounded different in person than on the phone, but she was still sure she'd never heard it before. "You have two seconds or I start shooting."
"Here," she said, and pointed down at her pocket. "Let me get it out."
"Go. Slowly."
She reached in with two fingers, showed him the red envelope. Still sealed.
"Pitch it to me." A gloved hand beckoned from the shadows.
"No," she said. "Let me see Borden first."
There was a flurry of movement inside, and the van rocked on its springs. A limp body rolled half out of the door, head knocking on the curb; she winced when she saw it was Borden, pale and unconscious, blood trickling from a cut over his eye. His shirt was ripped along the seam to bare most of his bicep, and was saturated with fresh red blood. There was a wound there, but it was too bloody for her to see what it was.
She concentrated on the pulse in his throat. It was still moving. His chest was still rising and falling, shallowly.
"Time's up," the man inside the van said, and she heard the dry metallic sound of the gun preparing to fire.
"Okay!" she shouted, and tugged the envelope out of her pocket, waving it between two fingers. "Okay, here! Take it!"
She pitched it. It fluttered in the wind and fell short, slapping facedown on the pavement next to Borden's limp, bloody hand. She immediately turned both hands palms out, pleading, and lunged forward to grab it and offer it to him. "Don't shoot, okay? Sorry! I'm sorry!"
He reached to take the envelope.
She threw it edge-on into his face, and as he flinched, she grabbed the barrel of the gun and forced it aside. It went off, hot and violent in her grasp, and she felt a burn on her leg from cement fragments as the bullet dug into the sidewalk, but then she was lunging inside, throwing herself on the unseen opponent, trying to twist the gun out of his hand.
It was a massive miscalculation. She didn't have a chance. She'd lunged into the unknown, blindly trusting, and now she had two problems.
One, the guy was about twice her size and three times her upper-body strength, and he easily slammed her to the side, against the steel wall of the van.
Two, there was another man in the van, and he threw an iron-hard forearm across her throat, holding her in place tight enough to make her gag for breath. She instinctively grabbed for his arm, and he pressed harder as she clawed at a smooth nylon windbreaker. She saw spots and stars in the dark.
"Bitch," the first man said raggedly, and stepped in to plant a fist hard in her stomach. She couldn't double over, but her knees jerked upward, trying to protect her midriff; that just increased the choke hold on her throat. "We're done playing with you."
He reached down and retrieved the red envelope from the floor of the van. In the dim light of the door, it had a boot mark on the back. He ripped it open and slid the contents out -
It was a Hallmark card. Flowers and hearts. Jazz's eyes were watering; still she couldn't help but bare her teeth in a bloody grin and mouth, Gotcha.
He turned, threw the card at her, and began ripping at her coat, trying to find the right envelope.
There was a popping sound, and a rapid flicker of blue-white sparks, and he froze in place, head back, muscles trembling, then slumped to the floor.
Lucia stood behind him with a taser the size of a particularly nasty sex toy. She kicked the gun out of his reach and lunged forward to stab the taser hard into the side of the man holding Jazz to the side of the van.
Snap, crackle, pop...down.
Jazz slumped, coughing, gagging, rubbing her throat, and looked up at Lucia, who tasered them both again for good measure, looking grim. She stooped and picked up the red envelope and card from the floor of the van, studied it and extended the open card to Jazz.
It read, in Manny's neat, almost calligraphic handwriting, Thanks for not hating me.
Jazz barked out a painful laugh and shoved sweaty hair back from her face. "You've got the right one?"
Lucia nodded. Jazz moved around her, grabbed Borden under the arms and heaved him out of the van onto the sidewalk. He flopped limply, then groaned and rolled over slowly onto his side and curled in on himself. His bloody arm smeared dark red onto the cement.
"James?" She dropped to her knees next to him, breathless, and pushed aside his torn sleeve to see what the damage was. She felt sick when she saw it - a long strip of flesh cut out of his arm, baring muscle. Still bleeding. She stripped off her coat and jammed it against his arm, saw his eyelids flutter, and brushed her fingers greedily across his forehead, his face, his lips. "James!"
His dark eyes flickered open, pupils too large and too slow to contract. Drugged, maybe. Or concussed. "Jazz?" His tongue came out, pale, to wet his lips. "Turn the light off."
She let her breath out in a rush and, for no particular reason, kissed him. Hard. Felt his lips curl up under hers, vaguely smiling.
"Jazz!" Lucia was beside her, and the red envelope in her hand was open. A sheet of crisp paper was in her hand. "Jazz, we have to go. Now."
"I can't leave him here. He's bleeding."
"He's fine. Jazz, the cops are about a block away. He'll be okay - we've got to go right now!"
Jazz grabbed the sheet of paper and scanned it. Directions to an address and a time - ten minutes away. Two Polaroid photographs, one of a girl about ten years old, one of a nondescript-looking young man, maybe twenty, twenty-five.
Two words:
Stop Him.
"What the hell?" She looked up at Lucia, who handed her one more thing. A newspaper clipping.
"It was in the envelope," she said.
Third Victim Found Dead, Killer Still At Large. Black-and-white newsprint photos of three children, two girls and a boy, all smiling eagerly for the camera, their lives ahead of them.
"Oh, God," Jazz murmured. She looked down at Borden, whose eyes were at least partly comprehending now. "James - "
"I know," he mumbled. "I'm good. Go."
Lucia grabbed her by the collar and dragged her upright, pushed her into a stumbling run, heading farther down the block. Jazz tried to stop, to turn back, but Lucia shoved her again.
"The car's back that way!" Jazz yelled, just as a huge black SUV roared around the corner, taking it on two wheels, and squealed to a stop next to them. Jazz fumbled for her gun, but Lucia lunged for the passenger door.
"In!" she screamed, and clambered up. Jazz, breathless, followed.
As she slammed the door, the SUV took off with a sudden jerk, and she nearly slid off the bench seat before she could brace herself with the panic strap over the door.
Manny Glickman was driving. Manny.
"What the hell...?"
"Bulletproof glass," Manny said, and reached out to tap a knuckle against the thick surface of the side window. "Reinforced steel. The ride's custom, but I think the President has one like it."
"Manny!"
"What?" He looked honestly puzzled, staring over at Jazz. She just blinked, unable to think of a single thing to say.
Lucia, ever practical, unfolded the paper and read off the address. Manny reached over and pushed a recessed spot on the wood-grained dash; a section of it glided out, revealing a keyboard and a small plasma screen. "Put it in," he said. "We have GPS navigation."
Even Lucia paused at that, then nodded and began typing. The SUV felt smooth and comfortable, after the initial jerk; Jazz let herself relax a little. Enough to gulp in some air-conditioned breaths, and say, "'Thank you for not hating me?' Jesus, Manny, is that really the best you could do?"
The GPS navigator's smooth female voice said, "Right turn at the next traffic signal."
"Well," Manny said, and glanced down at his speed, "I figure having a woman not actually hate me is a pretty big accomplishment. All things considered."
He whipped the wheel. The SUV raced around the corner, straightened out, and smoothly avoided two lumbering trucks, a taxi, and two sedans before the navigator read off another turn.
Lucia had her eyes on the clock. "We're not going to make it in time," she said. "Dammit. Why didn't we know about this? Why didn't Simms tell you?"
"I don't know," Jazz admitted. "Maybe he thought we already knew."
Lucia cursed under her breath, a steady stream of Spanish. The computer recited another fast set of directions. Jazz clung to the panic strap, swallowing, glad that they'd left Borden behind; she couldn't imagine this kind of thrashing around could be good for a head injury. It wasn't doing much for her sense of claustrophobic panic, either.
"Where's Pansy?" she asked. Lucia checked the directions on the paper against what was appearing on screen, then tossed the paper aside and pulled the gun from its holster behind her back.
"Distracting the cops," Lucia said. "Did you know she has a cousin in uniform? His name is Ryan. Kind of cute. We're almost there. You good to go? No broken bones?"
Jazz nodded. "I'm fine."
Lucia shot her a distrustful look. Jazz supposed, on balance, her croaky, damaged voice wasn't exactly the traditional definition of fine.
Manny made the final turn onto a suburban street and cut his speed to something less than enough to break the sound barrier.
"There!" Lucia yelled, and pointed. A car was just pulling away from the curb ahead, an electric blue boat of a car with black-and-yellow plates. It was the same car. Jazz remembered it, remembered seeing it accelerate down a street just like this one, the day they'd done the surveillance on the woman loading boxes.
There had been kids playing, she remembered. Kids playing two yards down.
"Oh, my God," she whispered. "They were wrong. They were wrong about who to watch."
They'd managed to disrupt an abduction by accident, rather than design.
She threw a desperate look over at Lucia, then at the house where the car had been parked. The front gate was open, still swinging. A neon-pink backpack lay abandoned on the sidewalk, books spilling out of it.
"He's got her," Jazz shouted. "Manny, go! Follow him!"
He applied the gas, and they rocketed after the disappearing taillights of the Pontiac.
The idea that Manny Glickman, of all people, was some kind of stunt-car driver was so weird that Jazz couldn't get her head around it.
Luckily, her belief - or lack thereof - didn't seem to matter much. Manny drove like a maniac, keeping them within sight of the Pontiac as it dodged and danced in and out of traffic. Lucia got on the phone to the cops and fed them directions and information. Jazz just kept wishing she'd paid more attention to what Simms had been telling her in the prison. If everything we do makes a difference, is this right? Are we doing the right thing? Should Manny be here? Should I have left Borden back there?
You could make yourself crazy, thinking these things.
A turn slid Lucia down the bench seat to collide with her. Lucia muttered an apology and put one hand on the dashboard to anchor herself in place. Jazz belted herself in, not willing to risk it any further. Sure, maybe it was a matter of fate that they wouldn't wreck and die, but there was no sense tempting it.
Manny rounded a corner with a squeal of rubber, and they all scanned the road ahead. "Not there," Manny said, slowing. "I think he lost us."
"Dammit, he turned." Lucia scanned side streets on the left, while Jazz took the right. "Anything? See anything?"
"Nothing," Manny said grimly. "There's no sign of him up there. He must be down one of these side streets."
It seemed to take forever.
"We've lost him," Manny finally said. "He's a ghost."
"No, he's here, he's got to be here," Lucia said. "Back up."
Manny hit the brakes, shifted gears, and glided the giant SUV backward into shade. A narrow alley stretched on the left. At the end of it was a dilapidated tin shed, some forgotten warehouse that had clearly missed a demolition notice or two.
Jazz saw it first. "Paint." She pointed to the corner of the alley. There was a fresh-looking scrape on the brick there, and a glitter of electric blue.
"I can't fit the Hummer down there," Manny said.
Jazz released her seat belt, popped the door and jumped down, drawing her gun before her feet hit the ground. "Stay here," she said. Lucia slid out after her.
"Wait!" Manny looked scared out of his mind again, the cool, calm stunt driver entirely gone. "Look in the back. Get whatever you need."
Lucia sent a questioning look at Jazz, who shrugged and led the way around to the rear of the vehicle. She swung open the gate, and...
Wow.
"Manny," she said slowly, "someday, we've really got to talk about how that therapy thing is going."
She reached over the racked shotgun, the assault rifle, and the assorted handguns to grab two flak vests, standard black. She handed one to Lucia, who looked it over, eyebrows climbing higher.
"FBI standard issue," she said. "Only these don't have insignia. I'm guessing Manny's friends with the supplier."
They got into the body armor quickly, sealing the Velcro as they went. Behind them, Jazz heard the snap of locks engaging on the SUV. Manny probably had some kind of stunning electrical field on the damn thing, too. She didn't put much past him, at this point.
Lucia had taken the shotgun. Jazz stuck with her pistol. Together, they moved slowly down the alley, covering each other, keeping focused on the closed double doors on the tin shack at the end of the alley.
"Careful," Lucia murmured.
"Screw careful. This guy knows he's been popped, and he'll kill her as soon as he has the chance." Jazz moved faster, reached the end of the alley and paused, looking both ways around the corner.
It was deserted. If the cops were on the way, they'd be late. She remembered what Simms and the Society had said about Actors and Leads. Most of the cops clearly didn't qualify. They wouldn't affect events, whatever transpired.
It was up to the two of them, and the guy in the shed.
And just maybe, the little girl.
She ran across the open space, light-footed, and put her back against the tin wall, careful not to make any noise. Lucia followed and mimed walking around back. Jazz nodded.
She counted to ten, took a deep breath and used one foot to kick the sliding door on her right. It slid open easily, rattling like a tin can full of marbles; if he hadn't heard that, he had to be deaf or dead. She waited for any gunfire, heard nothing, and ducked low and around the corner, darted immediately into shadow.
The inside of the place was dark, cool and apparently deserted. No sign of Lucia, either. Jazz held her breath, listening, moving silently across the open concrete floor and constantly checking the shadows for anything that might give her a warning.
She was starting to think that they'd been wrong when she caught a glint of chrome in the far shadows, and heard the ticking of a cooling engine.
And then, very faintly, the muffled whisper of a child's sob.
She froze, listening, trying to locate the source, but the place was an echo chamber, a terrifying trap of a place, and she just knew that she was looking the wrong way, that he was behind her, creeping up...
She spun, unable to resist the feeling, and brought the gun up. Saw a shape move and nearly fired before she saw a gleam of highlights on long, dark hair and knew she'd nearly shot Lucia.
Lucia put a finger to her lips, half in shadow, and motioned Jazz to the right. She disappeared into the left-hand shadows.
Jazz had only gone three steps when she heard a man's curse, a child's full-throated scream and the patter of feet, all coming from off to the left on the other side of the parked car. Something lunged out of the dark, small and ferocious; Jazz reached out, got a handful of sweater and swung the kid around into her arms. She picked her up and backed up fast. She felt the girl's breath hot against her face, tears dripping onto her skin, got a mouthful of curly brown hair and jerked her head out of the way to try to see what was going on.
Just in time to see a muzzle flash. Not a shotgun, a handgun.
She heard a body hit the floor and metal clatter.
Lucia. Lucia was down.
Get the kid out. Get the kid out first.
Jazz ran backward, gasping for breath, keeping her gun trained on the spot where the muzzle flash had briefly lit up the shadows, nearly tripped over a pipe, and managed to somehow get her balance back without falling full-length. At the door, she set the girl down and crouched next to her.
"What's your name, honey?" she asked. She spared one second to glance into her face, into honey-colored eyes and a heart-shaped face, tanned golden by summer.
"Marla," the girl said. "He - he tried to hurt me."
"I know, Marla, but he's not going to do it again. Now, you see that big black truck at the end of the alley? My friend Manny's in it. When I let go, you run as fast as you can straight for Manny and get into the truck, all right? I'll be behind you in a minute."
Marla nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. Jazz reached up and wiped some away, managed a fast smile, and pushed her gently out the door.
"Run," she said.
The kid pelted for the SUV.
Jazz was just turning back to the darkness when she heard a man's voice whisper, "You can't do this. Nobody can stop me. They told me, nobody can stop me."
And then her chest exploded in pain.
She fell back, unable to breathe, waves of red-hot agony sliding over her, trying to pull her down into the dark, and she couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything.
He came out of the dark, a dull shadow, gray, colorless. Too small a man to be making so much of a difference in the world.
She couldn't breathe.
He raised the gun, sighted on her, then shook his head and whipped it up, taking aim at Marla, who was running down the alley.
I told her to run. I told her to do that. She remembered Simms saying, Everything you do matters.
She couldn't fucking breathe. Her whole body felt numbed, destroyed by the impact in her chest.
Kevlar. He shot you in the vest. You're fine, you're just fine.
Something was very wrong.
Her heart.
She couldn't feel her heartbeat.
Everything was going dark.
She saw a blinding flash of blue-white light, like a spotlight. An intense glare bright enough to make her want to close her eyes, but she had no control over that anymore, no control over anything, and there was so much silence inside of her.
Simms. Simms was staring at her, and he was saying, Everything you do matters, Jasmine.
She couldn't breathe.
The light got brighter. Brighter. Overwhelming and burning, like lightning, like lightning racing along her nerves.
Listen.
Everything you do...
A single hard jerk in her chest. A thud.
Everything you do, Jasmine...
Her heart beat a second time. A third. She raised the gun. She didn't even know how she managed it, because she couldn't feel her arm, couldn't feel anything but disorientation and pain and fear, but then her gun was up and she was looking into the face of a killer as his eyes widened.
Everything you do matters.
I know that, she told Simms.
And she fired.
