by Rachel Caine
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Laskins grunted in reply. “Pawns don’t rate this explanation. And although Wendy Blankenship had the potential to become important, she wasn’t a castle.”
“If you’re any good at chess,” Lucia continued, “then you know there are a limited number of outcomes when you have three pieces interacting—especially if the point is to take one of the pieces off the board. Why didn’t you warn Jazz and let her save Wendy?”
“None of this is an exact science, Ms. Garza. Every action, by any of the Actors at the moment, can turn events. We can’t warn against specifics, because we only are sure of generalities. We knew Ms. Blankenship was marked for death, and indeed, we couldn’t find an outcome in which she didn’t die. But we chose the moment most likely to make a difference. If events had gone a bit differently, if their Actor had made an error, Jazz would have saved her. But sometimes it isn’t possible.” To his credit, Laskins sounded almost as if he gave a damn. “Chess is my specialty. And the focus is not upon pieces that will inevitably be lost, but on making that sacrifice meaningful.”
“You used Jazz to take out the killer, after the fact.”
“We put her in a position where she could provide the police with a vital lead, yes, without placing her in danger. She’s already taken far too many risks.”
Jazz parted her lips to fire off a response, but nothing came to mind.
“As I said,” Laskins continued, “chess is my specialty. And while this isn’t the outcome we’d hoped for, it’s far from a lost cause. Jazz can safely come forward with her information, and we achieve our goal in a different way. We stopped a serial killer, who will shortly leave the chess-board himself, and we did it with only inevitable losses. It isn’t always about bullets and bombs, you know, Ms. Garza. Or lying.”
There must have been a hidden message in that. Jazz saw a flicker in Lucia’s eyes, a downright flinch in her body language. “If you’re playing chess,” Lucia asked, “who do you play against? And don’t tell me God. I don’t believe you’re quite that good.”
The privacy screen between them and the driver suddenly eased down with a whir, and their ex-Marine chauffeur turned to look back at them. “Excuse me,” he said, “but you wanted to know when the other car left. It’s leaving now.”
“Thank you, Charles,” Laskins said, and checked his expensive watch. “Right on time. I’m sorry, Ms. Garza, but we’ll have to cut this meeting short. Some things simply won’t be postponed, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”
“Answer my question first,” she said.
“No.” Laskins nodded toward the door. “Charles, if you please—”
Lucia, without seeming to be in a big hurry or doing anything important, reached around and pulled out her gun. She pointed it directly at Laskins. “Nothing personal,” she said, with a hint of a smile, “but I’d really like an answer to my question first. And Charles, don’t do anything foolish, please, because two of us shooting in here really won’t help the situation.”
Laskins threw out a warning hand to the Marine. “Interesting. There was only a very small chance that you would do that, you know.”
“Unless you’re wearing bulletproof armor under that Hugo Boss suit, I don’t think that means much,” Lucia replied. They exchanged cool little smiles. “How is it done?”
“How is what done?”
Jazz jumped in. “The fortune-telling. What do you have? Tarot cards? A crystal ball? Twelve thousand monkeys with calculators?” She knew she sounded sarcastic, and didn’t give a damn. This was scary. The fact that Lucia was buying it downright terrified her.
Laskins gave her a narrow, sour smile. “No. We have a few people who do these things—freaks of nature, if you will. But the rest of us apply science, not superstition. It might surprise you to know there are solid, scientific methods that can be applied to the problem of alternative realities. String theory, for instance.”
“You have a psychic,” Lucia cut in. “Right?”
“Yes. You could say that.”
“Then why all the chess?”
“This is what happens,” Laskins said irritably, “when you have two psychics who both want to win.”
Lucia glanced aside at Jazz, who hadn’t quite figured out a move, either. At least, nothing that wouldn’t compromise Lucia’s. “You believing anything he’s told us?” she asked.
“I believe that I’m going to report seeing Wendy Blankenship buzz herself into that apartment,” Jazz said. “I would have done that, anyway.”
“You’ll need a cover story. Some reason you were on the street and saw her,” Lucia replied. “I can handle that part, back-engineer an assignment you were on. It’ll check out.” She transferred attention back to the two facing them—not, Jazz suspected, that it had ever really wandered. “Mr. Laskins, you have ten seconds to answer me before my partner and I exit this vehicle and your plans, forever. If you know anything at all about me, you know that I mean what I’m saying.”
“Yes,” Laskins said sourly. “I know you mean it, Garza. But use your common sense. The Cross Society is giving you information, and you’re acting upon it. Do you really think you can just walk away?”
“Oh, yes, I think I can. And should.”
“From the moment our psychic—”
“Max Simms?” Jazz asked. Laskins cut his steely Paul Newman stare her way.
“Yes, fine, Max Simms. From the moment you appeared in his visions, you became important. We got to you first. That made you targets—low-priority, at present—for the opposition. You will be targets for as long as you continue to be Actors.”
“How do we quit?”
It was a perfectly good question, but Laskins’s smile got wider. “You can’t, Ms. Callender. Not of your own accord. For as long as the greater forces of the universe—God, the devil, or chance—deem you an Actor, you will remain one. But don’t worry. Eventually, it will be over.”
“Yeah,” Jazz snapped. “Eventually we all die.”
Laskins didn’t bother to deny it.
Laskins said, “We’ve reached a hard stop, Ms. Garza. You can either shoot me, which would have a less than pleasant outcome for both you and your partner, or you can exit the limousine and refuse to take any further support or information from us. But if you do that, you cut yourselves off. You’ve been marked as Leads, both of you. What you do matters. Everything you do matters, one way or another. You’re targets, as surely as Wendy Blankenship, and you’ll end up just the same if we don’t help you.”
“I don’t like threats.” Lucia almost purred it.
“That isn’t a threat,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be. You’ve become part of what we are. Our enemies know that.”
Lucia smiled and looked at Jazz. It was crazy, weird, exhilarating, the way the two of them communicated. The way things hummed at moments like this.
“Well,” Jazz said, “I suck at chess, but I love contact sports.”
On some unseen signal, Charles pulled the limo in at the curb again. Lucia reached over and opened her door. “The thing about hiring what you call Leads? We aren’t going to always do what you tell us.”
“If you don’t, people will die,” Laskins said.
“I did what you asked. Blankenship’s still dead,” Jazz said. Lucia slid smoothly out of the limousine. She scooted over to follow. “Don’t call us. Oh, and those red letters? Stuff them.”
She looked back, one last time, at James Borden. He was staring at her as if he was trying to memorize everything about her in the last second.
“See you, Counselor,” she said, and shut the door.
The limo pulled away, accelerating fast.
She and Lucia stood on the empty street in front of the apartment building, staring after it. Lucia absently holstered her gun.
“Well,” she said. “That was…unusual.”
“Which is so unusual for us, these days,” Jazz agreed blandly. She didn’t feel bland. She felt wired, juiced, jittery,
more alive than she had in months. As if she’d finally found…
What?
Something.
Lucia turned toward her. “Do you want to stop?”
“Stop?”
“Quit. Dissolve the partnership. Go separate ways.” Lucia nodded after the limo’s taillights. “Clearly, these people are insane. It’s probably far better that we get out now, before the damage is permanent.”
“Yeah,” Jazz agreed softly. “They’re crazy.”
“Then you want to quit?”
Silence. There were cars coming. Jazz glanced at the distant oncoming headlights, then met Lucia’s eyes and held them. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to quit. Not the partnership, anyway.”
Lucia’s smile was warm, wicked and utterly crazy. “Neither do I. This is just about to get…interesting.”
Chapter 7
Four months later
“P ansy, where the hell is the DeMontis file?”
“Under D.”
“It’s not under—oh. There it is.” Jazz grabbed it and slammed the lateral filing cabinet shut, then used a corner of her assistant’s desk to support the folder as she flipped the massive thing open. “Dammit. Has Lucia not filed her latest surveillance report yet?”
Pansy, for answer, clicked keys on her computer and a sheet of paper was spit out of her printer. She chunked a couple of holes in the top and handed it to Jazz. “E-mailed ten minutes ago.”
Jazz read the text, frowning, pacing, and reached across Pansy for the desk phone. Pansy glided her chair out of the way and sorted mail. No suits for Pansy these days; she had on a flower-patterned top, black pants, cat-eye glasses, and red streaks through her dark hair. The real Pansy, Jazz was sure. She’d told her to wear whatever she liked, but it had taken a good two weeks, in the beginning, for Pansy to slowly give up the formal wear.
Jazz continued to set a bad example by modeling the latest in fleece pullovers, blue jeans, and—on special occasions—loose-fitting shirts over colored T-shirts. And by failing to practice political correctness in the workplace.
The past few months had been tense at first. They’d kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the attack, for…something. But the Cross Society had been mysteriously quiet. And despite Laskins’s scare tactics, the world hadn’t come to an end. Evil psychic ninjas hadn’t shown up to kill them, and the Cross Society hadn’t even demanded their hundred thousand dollars back. And so, they’d settled into business as usual.
Jazz read as Pansy sorted mail, flipping junk into the trash, catalogs into a to-be-reviewed pile, personal mail for Jazz and Lucia into a third. Pansy hesitated over one envelope and ripped it open with a sharp little steel opener and pulled out a check. The printing was familiar. Their favorite client, DeMontis, had come through with another payment. Pansy waved it at Jazz, who nodded as she dialed the phone.
Lucia picked it up on the second ring. “Holá,” she said.
“Can you talk?”
“For now. I’m busy cleaning toilets.”
“I hope you’re using hands-free on the cell, because, you know, ugh.”
“Very funny. What?”
“The report,” Jazz said. “You still haven’t seen them make the drop?”
“I think that’s what it says in my last report, why, yes. And let me ask again why I’m the one wearing a sloppy green apron and emptying trash cans and scrubbing toilets? Is this a commentary on my national heritage?”
“It’s a commentary on the fact that you agreed to take this crappy industrial espionage case, not me,” Jazz replied. “I like the background checks.”
“You like the divorce cases,” Lucia said gloomily.
“I like easy work where I don’t get shot. So, are these guys just smarter than you, or what?”
“You know, if you’re trying to piss me off, that’s not very difficult when my eyes are burning from cleaning products, and I’m contemplating how men always miss the urinals.”
“I like you better pissed off.”
“Love you, too,” Lucia said. “Two more days and I’m out of here, and then you can come and show them how to scrub a bathroom while I call you and make taunting remarks about your detective skills.”
Jazz hung up without a response.
“We’re losing money on that one, boss,” Pansy said. “Two weeks of her time? Unless she brings in the whole pig, not just the bacon—”
“I know.” Jazz nodded at the check in Pansy’s hand. “Covers expenses, right?”
“Yeah, but I’ve got a bonus coming. Oh, and boss?” Pansy hesitated, then blurted out, “He called again.”
“He?” Like Jazz didn’t know.
“Ex-boss.”
Ex-boss meant James Borden, of course. “Did you hang up on him? Insult him using lots of short Anglo-Saxon words?”
“I like him,” Pansy said mournfully. “Do you, you know, have to—”
“Make him suffer? Yes, Pansy, I do. It’s my job. And it gives me such a nice, warm glow of satisfaction, too.” Jazz piled mail on top of the heavy DeMontis folder and headed toward her office. “If he calls again, tell him—”
“He’s coming.”
She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to look at Pansy, who had the grace to seem embarrassed. “Repeat that.”
“He’s on a plane,” Pansy explained. “He’s going to be here in a couple of hours, tops.”
“You told him I wouldn’t talk to him?”
“Boss, I’ve told him a thousand times. Which is, you know, how many times he’s actually called, and you’d think somebody at GPL would start tracking those phone charges, wouldn’t you?”
“If he shows up, call Security,” Jazz said grimly, and walked into her office.
Pansy called, “Want me to make reservations? Someplace nice?”
Jazz slammed the door with a kick, and heard a muffled “Okay, guess not,” through the wood. She snorted back a laugh.
Borden, coming here. Jazz dropped folder and mail onto her desk, and sank down in her chair. She picked up a catalog and flipped through it. She stared blankly at the latest in tasers and rubber bullets for crowd control.
Pansy opened the door without knocking, sailed in and slammed a cup of coffee down on Jazz’s desktop. Jazz looked up, surprised.
“I know, you told me I’d never have to get coffee,” Pansy said, “but honestly, don’t you think you should at least talk to him?”
“I don’t want coffee, and why the hell would I do that?” Jazz asked. She tried to go back to her law-enforcement catalog.
“Because he’s a total hottie who’s obviously crazy in love with you?” Pansy took the catalog out of her hands and handed her a copy of Elle. “Here. Try to find something that looks like it didn’t come out of the gang-banger collection.”
“I’m not dressing up for Borden.”
“He dresses up for you.”
“Does not.”
“Does—” Pansy was interrupted by the phone, switched in midstream and snatched the receiver out of the cradle. “Jasmine Callender’s office, this is Pansy, how can I—oh, hey, Manny. Yeah, she’s right here. Tell her to buy some new clothes, would you?”
She extended the phone without looking at Jazz, who tossed Elle unopened back on the desk and took the receiver. Pansy, like Lucia, had a nice manicure. Jazz studied the short, stubby nails on her right hand as she held the phone to her left ear and said, “Manny?”
“Is this line—”
“Secure? Yeah, Manny, it’s secure.” She rolled her eyes at Pansy, who shook her head. “What’s up?”
“I have something you might be interested in. A private client brought it in.”
He was being careful. With Manny, private client usually meant a cop who was working off the books, for various reasons—maybe because the department had shut down the investigation, maybe because the budget was too tight to run the tests he or she wanted done. Manny usually threw them a discount, and sometimes an outright freebie.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll drop by. You still in the same place?”
“I’ll bring it to you,” he said.
She blinked. “Excuse me…?”
“I’ll bring it to you. To the office.”
“You’re leaving your lab.”
“Yes.”
“By yourself.”
“Yes.” Manny—Manny!—was starting to sound irritated. “I do get out, you know. Sometimes.”
“If you say so,” she said, and gave Pansy a pantomime of a wide-eyed what the hell? “Today?”
“An hour.”
“Are you going to be wearing a disguise, or—”
“Shut up, Jazz.” He hung up on her. She took the phone away from her ear and stared at it, then replaced it in the cradle.
“You know,” she said to Pansy, “there are some days when the world is just too strange for words, and this is one of them.”
Pansy patted her on the hand and handed her Elle.
She put it back and picked up Guns & Ammo and, without even thinking, reached for the coffee and sipped it. Pansy grinned in triumph and left, shutting the door after herself.
Borden was coming, after a four-month absence. That made her feel warm and odd, and impatient with herself for it. She’d cut the cord with him. With Gabriel, Pike & Laskins in general. She and Lucia—she presumed—hadn’t had contact with them since the last red envelope had arrived, via FedEx, and that had consisted of taking the envelope, unopened, sticking it in another FedEx envelope and sending it right back with a sticky note reading Not playing the game.
Maybe Borden was coming to deliver a last-ditch personal appeal. Maybe GPL—or the Cross Society—was desperate enough to try to whore him out.
Like we’re that important. She didn’t believe it. She didn’t think Lucia believed it, either.
Maybe Borden was just…coming to see her. Someplace nice for dinner. She hadn’t even thought about dinner with him, not since Arthur Bryant’s, when everything had gone to hell with one phone call.