by Rachel Caine
"Oh, I know who did it," McCarthy mumbled around a mouthful of eggs and cheese. "Stewart."
"He didn't."
"Crazy enough."
"Jazz checked it out. Stewart had an alibi."
"So did I. Funny how that is."
"Stewart was booking a carjacker downtown at the time of the killings, in front of twenty other cops."
McCarthy studied her with those intense blue eyes as he chewed and swallowed, wiped salsa from his lips, and for a second she thought he was going to argue the point. Instead he said, "So what's your story?"
"Excuse me?"
"Fifteen hours of talking, and I don't think you said boo about yourself. Name, rank and serial number, but you didn't exactly meet me halfway. So tell me how you got mixed up in all this—and why the hell you care about a guy like me."
Lucia was, for an instant, thrown. She disliked talking about herself, especially when faced with someone like McCarthy, who was certainly a damn good investigator. She chose her words carefully. "Did Jazz tell you how we came to be partners?"
"Yeah. A letter to each of you, offering to put up the money to open a detective agency. Some kind of nonprofit agency. I get why Jazz took the deal. Why did you?"
"I didn't," she said, and speared a slice of electric-green honeydew. "I turned it down." She enjoyed the look on his face as he assimilated that. "I was leaving when Jazz got shot in a drive-by attack—you know about that?"
He nodded shortly, face set.
"I had my doubts about her as a partner," Lucia continued. "But I don't like people shooting at me, and I don't like people shooting my friends. Even new ones. So I decided that it might be a good idea to stick around. One thing led to another, cases came up, we solved them. And here we are."
She nibbled the fruit. He watched her, concentrating on her mouth, and she felt a surge of self-consciousness that surprised her. Something about McCarthy threw her off stride. He made her hyperaware of how her clothes fit, of the tiny imperfections in the way the sleeves hugged her arms, the way the lapels didn't quite lay straight.
The way her skin shivered into gooseflesh when he stared at her.
McCarthy tilted his head. "Jazz is a walking disaster, but somehow, she does okay. She's also a pretty good judge of character. Me notwithstanding." He continued to watch as Lucia chewed and swallowed. "I know what you mean about sticking around her, though. I wasn't going to be her partner—I was just saddled with her for a week. But she grows on you. You want to protect her from herself. Doesn't generally work, though. She ends up saving your ass more than you save hers, and before too long you're joined at the hip. And then you realize that's not a bad thing."
"Regarding ass-saving, I believe the score's just about even between us now," Lucia replied.
"That tells me something about you."
"What?"
He surprised her with a wicked grin. "You're damn good at what you do. Whatever it is."
"Obviously, I'm a private investigator."
"And I'm your maiden aunt Sally," he snorted. "I've known a lot of P.I.s over the years, and none of them ever came looking or sounding like you. You avoided the question. What's your story?"
"I'm avoiding the question because I don't want to answer it."
"Because…?"
"Because it's none of your business, Mr. McCarthy," she said evenly, and took another bite. Pineapple, fresh and sweet and pulpy. She savored the juice on her tongue and the look of surprise on his face. "I helped Jazz get you out of prison, that's all. I don't owe you any information, any conversation, or anything else."
"Yeah? So what's this?"
"I said I don't owe it. I can still give it of my own free will."
He'd demolished the omelet, and now he set his fork on the plate with a clink and took a drag of coffee from the heavy white cup. Around them, the well-groomed breakfast crowd in their expensive suits and trendy casual wear chatted and smiled. We're both out of place here, Lucia thought, even though she seemed to fit seamlessly into the crowd. There was something different about McCarthy that spoke to the wildness at her core. It wasn't his prison-roughened image.
McCarthy smiled at her. "Okay, so you don't owe me. I was hoping you liked me enough to want to answer, anyway."
"I don't like anybody that well."
"Harsh."
"Pragmatic," she countered. "I hardly know you, except that you might not be guilty of murder, but you're surely guilty of other things. Add that to the fact that your friends and relatives were hardly crowding the gallery today—"
His face shut down even further, hiding emotion. Lids drifted lower to hood his expressive eyes. "Let's leave them out of it," he said. "I was a cop, and my buddies were all cops. Cops stay away, times like these, until they feel better about the facts. Stewart's not the only one who still, deep down, thinks I pulled the trigger on those people." McCarthy stared at his coffee and took another deep swallow. "My brother would have been here, but he's on a tuna boat this season. My parents—" He shook his head.
She took pity on him. "I doubt they could have made the trip," she said. "Your mother is ill, isn't she?"
"Old," he said. "Your folks still alive?"
She smiled noncommittally. "So I'll forgive you the low turnout among your admirers. Still, it does say something, doesn't it? To have more reporters than supporters?"
She got a thin slice of a smile. "Careful when you cut me like that. You'll have to buy me a new shirt. I'll bleed all over this one."
"I'm tempted to buy you a new one whether you bleed all over it or not."
"That's kindhearted of you."
"Call it fashion charity."
He was studying her again, with lazy interest. "I just can't picture you and Jazz as friends."
"Why?"
"She's just—one of the guys, you know? Not so…" He gestured vaguely, letting her finish the sentence with whatever adjective seemed best. Wise of him. "I was surprised how good she looked, last time I saw her. Your influence, or the counselor's?"
He knew about Borden, then. Yes, of course he did. Lucia shrugged. "Maybe both."
"She's not drinking so much."
"No."
"Not getting into fights."
"Well, we're working on that part."
"Good luck with that." He grinned, and caught the attention of a passing waiter to get a refill on his coffee. He drank it black as the devil's heart. "So, if you're not going to tell me anything, I'll just have to tell you three things about yourself, Miss Garza."
"Is this popular at parties?"
"A riot on cell block six."
"Then please, enlighten me."
"One, you manipulate people. Sometimes for their own good, but always to your advantage." He sopped a piece of toast in a remaining bit of peach jam and ate it, watching her reaction. She kept her face bland, but felt the barb sink unpleasantly deep. "Two, you use your looks as deception. You look warm and girlie and elegant, but I'll bet you can hand most guys their asses in a fight."
He was right again, of course. She didn't allow herself to blink. "And three?"
"How am I doing so far?"
"We'll see. And three?"
He shrugged. "You're lonely."
She laughed out loud. "Excuse me?"
"You heard."
"Hardly!"
"I didn't say you don't get attention. Every guy in here has checked you out at least once, and half the women, too. I said you were lonely. A woman as beautiful as you is nothing but lonely. Even when you're with somebody, you're wondering if they're into you or the glossy package, and sweetheart, just from the fifteen—no, make that sixteen—hours that we've been talking, I can tell you that you're high on the paranoid scale, anyway. So the point is, you don't let anybody close these days."
It hit hard, under the armor, right in a soft place she didn't know she had. Years of dealing with a string of men who'd professed love and delivered obsession. Years of mistrusting and holding back and staying cool.
>
For a second, she hated those blue-diamond eyes and their ability to see everything.
"You're wrong. I'm not lonely. Far from it."
He gave her a slow smile. "That tells me something else about you. You think you're a good liar. And hey, for most people, you are."
"Do you make a habit of insulting people who do you good turns?"
"Usually they want something. Speaking of that, what is it you want?"
Once again, he caught her off guard. "Me? I'm only here out of courtesy."
"Courtesy?"
"It has something to do with manners. Perhaps you've heard of those."
"Sorry, not exactly popular where I've been." She'd struck a nerve; she could see it in the subtle reactions of his face. "You just came in Jazz's place, is that it? Second string?"
Lucia took the insult without reaction. "I want her to be safe, yes."
"What about you? Aren't you in just as much danger, if the two of you are supposed to be partners?"
It was an excellent question, and one to which she didn't have an answer. They were working for the Cross Society, but she had only the vaguest hints as to who those people were and how they operated; for all she knew, the danger that Jazz had ran into head-on had come from someone inside the Cross organization.
She'd seen cutthroat competition in nonprofit groups, but if true, that might be a new low.
In any case, whether it was the Cross Society or—as their mysterious benefactors insisted—the rival Eidolon Corporation, they hadn't sent soldiers after Lucia specifically; she'd only been in the vicinity. Jazz was the target. Then again, the enemy didn't seem prone to doing gentlemanly things like firing warning shots.
Lucia wondered if McCarthy had deduced why she'd taken a table in a protected corner that had no direct view from the windows.
She'd also stayed vigilant for any hint of trouble. The only problem she'd identified so far was an overdose of cholesterol that was surely going to spell trouble for McCarthy's arteries in the future.
She let him see her confidence, embodied in a slow smile. "I think I'm safe enough," she said. "Why? Are you volunteering as a bodyguard?"
"Well," McCarthy said, "I do need a job. Prospects coming out of the big house aren't good, unless you're into loading trucks, making French fries or beating up people for a living." It was said lightly, but she heard the ring of truth. There was a certain grimness in his eyes, the set of his mouth, as he finished his coffee in a long sip. "Okay, the truth. I've got a hundred dollars in my pocket right now, my apartment's long gone and the KCPD wouldn't have me back even as a janitor. So yeah, I wouldn't kick a little work to the curb. Bodyguard, investigator, whatever. If you need it."
"Your job prospects aren't any worse than for anyone else walking out of jail."
"Since my job used to be a police officer, yeah, I think they kind of are. Look, I never deserved to be there in the first place. I lost two years of my life to this crap." He'd gone intense again, head inclined toward her, voice urgent. "I don't even know where I'm going after breakfast. You know how that feels?"
She did, but it didn't seem the time to tell him so. "You begin your life again. That's what people do, Mr. McCarthy. Start over. Reinvent themselves. Become someone new and, hopefully, better."
"Nothing wrong with who I am right now."
"Isn't there?" She raised her eyebrows slowly. "Are you sure?"
She accepted the leather folio containing the check from the waiter. McCarthy gestured for her to hand it over. "I already said I was paying," she said. "Remember?"
"That was before you pissed me off. Now I'm paying."
"Don't be ridiculous," she retorted, and pulled her wallet from her black leather purse. It was specially reinforced to hold her containers of Mace, clips for her gun, a six-inch collapsible truncheon, handcuffs, and—sometimes, but not today—a Taser. "You'll have a hard enough time without worrying about picking up the check for me."
"Then I'll owe you. And pay you back."
"Without a doubt. This isn't a date. And I'm not some prison groupie." Ouch. She really hadn't meant it to be so harsh.
He was staring at her, hands on the clean white tablecloth. Just…watching. As if he knew that last part had been, in some small measure, a lie. She had found him attractive. And yes, this had been a date, hadn't it? Unorthodox as that might be…
She handed the folio to the waiter, who whisked it off so quickly his apron fluttered. Probably afraid that Ben McCarthy, who was looking more than a little feral in his cheap coat and ragged haircut, might come after him and wrestle him to the ground for it.
As she watched the waiter go, she said, "Allow me to make some insightful comments about you, Mr. McCarthy—"
"Just Ben," he interrupted. "This mister-miss crap is getting old."
"Fine. Ben. You are tough, clever, and you're probably the single best liar I've ever met in all of my life. And I've met almost as many as you have."
Her turn to score a hit; she saw him blink, saw the prison-hard Ben McCarthy waver for a second to reveal someone far less armored.
"Why do you say that?" he asked.
"Because Jazz never believed you were guilty of anything," she said, "and you were a dirty cop. She's incredibly sharp, and you had her completely snowed for years. Do you have any idea how much that hurt her, by the way?"
He stared at Lucia for so long that she felt uncomfortable. Whatever was going on in his head, none of it was showing in his face.
"Yeah," he finally said. "I know. And you're right. I'm a son of a bitch."
"Have you changed? Has prison reformed you?"
He gave her a small, cynical smile. "Doesn't it reform everybody?"
Outside, the day was cool and clear, the sky a pale, sun-bleached blue. Lucia took in a deep breath to catch the scent of damp earth and green growing things. She missed that, living in the city. Hadn't been out to hike and climb for too long now, other than on gritty training ranges. She had the credentials to visit Quantico if she wanted to do so; the woods there would help her get her center again, and she could visit the gun range for an excuse… and God knew, the marines would be more than happy to drive her to the edge of endurance in heavy, sweaty field exercises.
The valet arrived in her silver Lexus, parked and stepped out as she came around to the driver's side. She was watching McCarthy over the top of the car, but something caught her eye, something…
Something about the valet. Not right. Something…
McCarthy was talking to her. It was noise. Her world had narrowed to the out-of-focus blur of the valet standing there, holding the door for her.
She started to turn her head toward him, and as she did, she saw his hand emerge from his pocket.
A brilliant glint of silver in the morning light.
Fear bolted through her, there and gone, replaced by a deadly smooth calm. Too late. I'm too late. She brought her elbow in, drove her left forearm out in a stiff arc. It hit squarely against his extended arm, and knocked his hand into the door frame.
"Ow!" The valet stepped back, surprised, and what he'd been holding thumped to the ground. A small metal clipboard, with a receipt stuck under its holder. "Jeez, lady. Chill. I was just getting a signature. New policy."
She felt herself blush as the adrenaline chased out of her system, leaving a thick aftertaste of embarrassment. She apologized as she retrieved the clipboard and signed on the line next to her tag number. She slid a twenty dollar bill under the clip holder. The valet's attitude improved considerably.
In the silence of the car, McCarthy kept studiously quiet about it. She put the car in gear and pulled out, around the circular drive and back onto the street.
"So," he said slowly. "About that bodyguard job."
She glanced at him. At the ill-fitting sport coat, the prison-styled hair, the shirt and shoes so cheap they were the next thing to disposable.
"I've already got a bodyguard," she said. "However, I could use another good investigator.
Under one condition. You let me make you look presentable. I wouldn't want you giving a bad impression to our clients."
"Deducted from my wages. Like a uniform."
"If you insist."
"I do."
"Then yes, deducted from your wages."
"Yeah. Okay." He eyed her mistrustfully. "When?"
"Now." She thought for a few seconds, mentally measuring him. "Thirty-two regular, I think," she murmured. "Italian cut. French collar and cuffs. How do you feel about Magnanni?"
"Am I supposed to know what that is?"
"No. Shoe size?"
'Ten."
"Fine. One other thing."
"I knew you were getting to it."
"I'm taking you for a haircut."
"Do I get to pick the barber?"
"No. It will be a stylist, and there will be a manicure, and, if you're not polite, skin treatments."
He sighed and said, "Pull over. I'm getting out."
"I don't think so. We've made a deal. Believe me, this works better if you just let it happen."
"Great," McCarthy said grimly. "Just like prison, with product."
* * *
His reaction to being marched into Lenora Ellen's Day Spa was, she thought, gratifyingly furious, but she'd left them with strict instructions, and him with enough promises and threats to ensure his cooperation. Besides, she could see that he secretly craved a little relaxation and pampering. So long as he never had to admit it to, say, Jazz.
Ben's fate sealed, Lucia turned to practicalities. Her overreaction with the valet was out of character for her, to say the least, but it told her something of what her subconscious was doing: worrying excessively.
It was time to set up some insurance. As she pulled her car into a parking spot outside one of the most exclusive men's stores in the city, she hit a speed-dial number on her cell phone that she'd once promised never to dial again.