by Rachel Caine
"That's so we don't have people surfing the porn channels," said a new voice. "The cops, I mean. We did that after you left the department, Jazz. Hey, I brought in a friend-that all right?"
Lucia opened her eyes and saw that a big, gray-haired plainclothes detective had entered the room. Ben McCarthy was right behind him. McCarthy crossed the room, trailed his fingers over Jazz's shoulder and exchanged a quick look with her, and then crouched down next to the couch as Lucia struggled to sit up. "No," he murmured, and those fingers moved lightly over the thick bandages wrapping her arm, then up to skim over her hair. "Stay down, okay? Nothing to get up for right now."
"Lew," Jazz said, and stood to shake his hand. "Good to see you, sir."
"How you been, Jazz?"
"Good, sir. Real good." Jazz looked like a bashful schoolgirl meeting the principal. "Lieutenant Prince, this is Lucia Garza, my partner. We own—"
"I know all about your new business," he said. "Ben's been keeping me up to date. You saw the bit on CNN— it's playing on the local channels, too. Those men you took down, they left notes. They were on their way to the building across the street to take out their coworkers when you stopped them. Apparently, they figured it would be easier around quitting time—lots of confusion with people coming and going. Their firm works until six." He gave Lucia a long look, then Jazz. "We're saying you two were there investigating a separate matter. Now, understand, with you mixed up in a couple of other events the last few months, some people have got their noses in the air. So you need to go low-profile awhile, got it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Detectives took your statements?"
"Yes, sir."
“Confiscated your weapons?"
"Just the one used in the shooting," Jazz said. "I've got another one. Registered."
He nodded. "Good girl. You're free to go. I'd avoid the media if I were you. They're chumming the waters. It's bound to get worse. Your offices are shut down?"
"Yes."
"Hope you've both got unlisted numbers. You're free to leave, all of you. Take the back way out of here, and if you want my advice, consider a few days off. We have any questions, we know where to find you."
McCarthy hadn't moved. He was still crouched next to Lucia, one hand resting lightly on the arm of the sofa. He wasn't watching her, but she could somehow feel his attention focused her way. "Thanks, Lieutenant," he said.
The older man nodded briskly. "It's Captain now, actually. Keep your ass out of the wringer, Ben. Plenty of people gunning for you out there. Ken Stewart's one of them."
"I know, Captain."
"Then all of you, get the hell out of my house. I have to go give a statement on the front steps, that should give you time to go out the back."
He turned and walked away, a big man, physically imposing, with a heavily jowled face and lugubrious eyes. The kind of old-school cop who showed up all too rarely these days.
Lucia let Ben help steady her. The world dipped and swirled a little.
"Let me take you home," he said.
She smiled faintly. "I was hoping you'd ask, actually."
No media waited at McCarthy's ear, or lurked under the bumpers of Borden's rental vehicle. Apparently, they were all out front, listening to Captain Prince give his statement. Ben guided Lucia to the passenger side of his car before she had time to contemplate what she was getting into.
Either the car or the situation.
When he entered the driver's side and slammed the door, she turned her head toward him and said, "You drive a Thunderbird?"
"Yeah, why?" He started it up, and the engine sounded remarkably smooth for something that had been sitting in storage for a couple of years.
"It's just…such a cop car."
"And I'm such a cop."
There was something to be said for that, she supposed, but she'd have guessed that he'd drive something more upscale. Imported. A BMW, a Lexus, even a Volvo. A boxy Thunderbird well past its prime style era wasn't quite what she'd expected.
It was, however, a smooth ride, and she found herself leaning against the window, eyes shut. Fading. McCarthy's warm hand touched her cheek, and she roused enough to say, "I'm okay."
"Yeah, sure you are. Did you hear from Manny yet?"
"No."
He flipped open his cell phone—how had he gotten one so quickly? Or was it one of those disposable kinds? — and dialed. "Manny," he said, as he took the turn onto her street. She blinked and looked up at the streetlights. Everything seemed surreal in the harsh light. "Pick up, man, it's Ben."
After a few seconds, he glanced at her, shook his head and hung up. "He's there, he's just focused on something else. With you and Jazz gone, hey, maybe he and Pansy—"
"Let's leave that thought right there, shall we?" She closed her eyes again, then opened them as he approached the parking garage. "You need a key card." She dug in her purse and found it. Ben fed it into the slot and the metal gate rolled up to allow the big T-bird entry.
The parking elevators delivered them to the lobby. The lobby procedures seemed endless, from the checking of Ben's ID to the walk back to the upstairs banks of doors. Lucia's knees were ready to fold. She refused to let him see it.
They rode the elevator in silence, watching numbers light up, and as the fourth one took on a frosted white glow, McCarthy turned toward her, backed her up against the wall of the elevator and kissed her.
She was so surprised that for a second she didn't react, too overwhelmed by the sudden heat against her skin. Stunned by the damp, urgent pressure of his soft lips sliding on hers.
And then there was a red-hot flash of lightning through her body, a surge of something so primal that she couldn't name it, didn't think it had a name, and she made a sound that wasn't a protest and wasn't agreement and wasn't in the least part of the controlled, cultured exterior she'd created for herself…
… and before she could reach up and grab him, McCarthy was gone. He'd backed off, all the way across the elevator, hands behind him like a guilty schoolboy. Looking shocked.
She didn't say anything. Her lips parted, damp and tingling; her heart pounded deep and fast, like a Taiko drum. He hadn't disarranged her clothes, but they felt undone— odd, too tight and too warm.
McCarthy didn't say anything either. He looked like a man on the thin edge of control.
The elevator announced arrival, and she felt the upward movement glide to a graceful halt. The doors rumbled open.
Neither of them moved.
Are you coming? seemed like a double-edged entendre, at best. She took in a deep breath, saw him look at the swell of her breasts as she did, and said, "You should probably go."
He swallowed. She found herself wondering what the skin of his throat tasted like, what sound he would make if she scraped her teeth and tongue lightly over that bobbing Adam's apple. "You're sure?" he asked. His voice was rough-edged and deep, like uncut velvet.
"Yes."
She didn't dare invite him to the apartment. God only knew what would happen if he walked in the door just now. It's the fever. I'm ill. I'm injured. This wouldn't happen if I weren't already impaired.
Maybe that was what he'd come for. Wild, unrestrained sex, and she'd been half a second from doing it in the elevator, and God, it was insane how much she would have liked for it to have happened.
McCarthy smiled slightly, as if he knew what she was thinking—and maybe he did, maybe she was really that transparent—and slid his hand inside his jacket. It reappeared holding a red envelope.
"You have to be kidding me," she said. "Two in one day? Are they insane?"
"It could be argued." He held it out to her. When she didn't take it, he gave it an impatient little shake, then sighed. "Look, take the damn thing, shred it, use it for a coaster…I don't want it anywhere near me, believe me."
She stepped forward, took it and stayed where she was. Close. Close enough to see the hunger in his eyes when they met hers. He was crazy with it; she could feel it coming
off of him in waves, and she'd be insane to—
"Come with me," she said, aware that it was most likely that mistake Eidolon had been jeering about in the first place, the one she couldn't help but make because she simply needed it as much as Ben did.
She stepped off the elevator and walked a few steps away before she heard his footfalls behind her. "I'm just making sure you get in bed," he said, and then, a beat later, "To rest. I meant, to rest."
"Of course," she murmured. Her whole body was on fire, jittering with tension, pulling itself apart with need and denial and caution and wild, ungovernable desire. She couldn't keep a grip on her keys. They fell to the floor, and McCarthy was there ahead of her, reaching down to scoop them up, one hand on her arm to steady her. Even through her clothes, she could feel the slightest nuances of his touch, the firm way his fingertips pressed, the heat of his palm.
She looked at him. He stared straight ahead, his face gone blank again. She couldn't see what he was feeling or thinking, but he didn't let go of her arm. It wasn't a possessive grip, just a light touch. Caring. Distant, almost.
"Ben?" she asked in a low voice. They were at her door. He slid the keys into the first lock and turned it, then the second. He pulled them out and handed them back to her, and looked straight into her eyes.
"You can get the alarm?" he asked.
"Of course. But—"
"Promise me you're going to bed. Promise me."
She reached out, grabbed him by the lapel of his jacket and dragged him one step forward, and then he was kissing her. It was a long, feverish dream of a kiss, and she was against the hallway wall, his body pressed tight against her, his hands doing things inappropriate in a public space, and she didn't care, didn't care…
He pulled back from her with a gasp, and those blue eyes were wild and even more alarmed than they'd been in the elevator.
"Come inside," she said, and opened the door.
He didn't follow her. She could see how much he wanted to, needed to, but he put one hand on the wood of the doorway and braced himself, as if there was some invisible force pulling him toward her. He shook his head. "Get the alarm," he told her in a hoarse, low voice. "Go to bed, Lucia. Please."
He reached in, grasped the doorknob and pulled the door shut with a quiet snick.
She felt it like a physical shock, and a healthy component of disbelief came with it. He turned me down? Twice? Lucia Garza had never in her life been turned down by a man she really wanted, not once. Not even the one who'd later turned out to be latently gay.
That bothered her a great deal.
She muttered imprecations in Spanish under her breath, and heard the accelerated beeping of the alarm. In thirty seconds it would sound, and for all she knew, the National Guard would be mobilized. She punched in the code with vicious precision, went to the door and stepped out into the hall.
The elevator doors were closing, and he was gone.
Slamming the door helped. So did violently kicking off her shoes. She felt hot and giddy, and terribly sore, and anger only intensified the feeling of disconnection. She tossed the red envelope—yes, it was neatly lettered with her name—onto the kitchen counter and went around to pour herself a drink.
She paused with the bottle of wine over the fine belled glass, and remembered McCarthy's hand on hers, holding her back from the beer. Antibiotics.
Jazz would have cursed and thrown a glass across the room and probably gotten drunk out of spite.
Lucia put the cork back in the bottle, replaced it in its holder, and was extraordinarily careful with the glass, just to be sure she didn't give in to her temper. Then she poured herself a large sparkling water, and took a long, hot bath. Careful not to get the bandage wet.
When she came out, dressed in a thick, white, fluffy robe with her small.38 in the pocket, she settled on the couch, sipping water, stealing glances at the red envelope.
Some days she believed. Some she didn't. Today, having been at the right place at the right time to save uncounted numbers of lives, she was just angry at the entire world for having the gall to do this to her. Haven't I been through enough? She had. Beyond any question.
She put the water aside, walked to the counter and dug the UV light that Borden had given her out of her purse. There, on the face of the envelope, was Milo Laskins's bold, flowing signature.
She tore open the envelope to slide the thin sheet of paper out. No powder in it, but that didn't mean it wasn't deadly in its own way.
It read, THANK YOU.
That was all.
She ran the UV flashlight over the note.
The signature wasn't Laskins's. It was a different name, spiky and difficult to read, driven in straight-up-and-down strokes of the pen.
When she finally made it out, she felt a chill bolt down her spine.
Max Simms, psychic and serial killer, had sent her a personal thank-you note.
Chapter Ten
She fell asleep on the couch and woke up to a conviction that there was somebody in her apartment.
And she didn't move. Wait, she told herself. Listen. She heard the steady, near-silent tick of the silver clock on the table, the whisper of the air conditioner, indistinct ghosts of noises from outside the windows…
And there, the scuff of shoes on carpet. The creak of leather as someone shifted weight.
She opened her eyes and stared hard at the window in front of her, focusing on reflections. Something dark moving behind the couch.
Lucia slid the.38 out of her robe pocket with a slow, gentle pull, trying to make it look like the natural movement of a sleeper. He hadn't come closer yet, but she couldn't let him see the gun. If he shot first…
She made her decision and rolled off the couch, gun held flat, aiming up at an angle where she knew his head would be. Her injured arm screamed in pain, and she flinched, nearly dropped the gun.
Nearly.
"Easy, my lovely. I'm not armed."
A male voice, low and faintly accented. Eastern European. She recognized it a split second before the moonlight revealed a pale face, thick dark hair, a goatee and mustache. Gregory Valentin Ivanovich. Madre de Dios…
The last time she'd seen Gregory had been outside a rundown, abandoned factory near Prague, and he'd been shooting over her head to make her escape look good. She'd been barely alive, barely together…and some of that had been his doing, too. She couldn't forget the cold purpose when he'd told her to run for her life Or he'd have no choice but to make his shots count.
"Gregory," she said, and tried to slow down the panicked hammering of her heart. "If you start off with a lie, that just continues the same old cycle of disappointment between us." Her voice shook only a little.
He smiled and leaned on the back of the couch. His hands were empty. Gregory had always favored black, and he was drowning in it today—a black knit shirt under a black leather jacket, black slacks. The only hint of color to him was his hazel eyes, and a thin red scar along one high cheekbone.
She remembered the scar. She remembered giving it to him, a wild and lucky swing with a piece of broken glass in the dark. And he'd looked down at her, chambered a round in his Glock, and said, "Dorogaya, you must still have fight left in you, if you can do that. Good. You will need it."
He smiled at her now, and she remembered that, too.
"Very well," he acknowledged. "I am armed. But, my lovely, we're both always armed. It's understood. It would be impolite to assume anything else."
"Wouldn't want that." Was she having some kind of fever dream? It would make sense. Half of her worst nightmares featured glimpses of Gregory Valentin Ivanovich. The trouble was, so did half of her other dreams. It was…complicated, yes. Very complicated.
His eyes shifted and focused on her right arm. He couldn't have seen the bandage through the robe, but he would have seen the flinch, and the weakness. "Are you injured?"
"Grazed."
"Ah. Yes, I followed the afternoon's heroics. Very stirring." He shrugged. "Very
stupid."
"Thanks. So would you care to explain how you come to be in my apartment without an invitation?"
"Would you care to get off the floor while we discuss it?" he asked, raising those thick eyebrows.
No point in keeping the gun on him; Gregory would do as Gregory pleased, consequences be damned. She nodded and stood up, cinching her robe tight again and dropping the gun back in her pocket. "I'm assuming this isn't a social call," she said. "Since social calls don't usually require breaking into a person's apartment in the middle of the night."
"Yes. High-security apartment, very nice. I approve. I have one like it in Chicago, you know, only mine has a better view." No point in asking how he'd defeated that security either; he'd just smile and ignore the question. He'd defeated it the same way she would have, by simple and logical steps, and a terrifying amount of innate ability. She'd have to go over it later, trace back his modes of entry, see how he'd bypassed the systems…
"Dorogaya? Are you with me?"
She felt a hot burn of embarrassment that he'd seen the lapse. Damn. It wouldn't do to show him weakness. "Get to the point."
He pushed away from the couch, crossed his arms and walked to the wing chair nearest the windows. He settled in, legs apart, watching her. He nodded to the couch. She sat, knees together, hand still in the pocket of her robe. Just in case.
"You know, of course, who I work for?" he asked.
"That depends."
"On…?"
"What day of the week it is, and your mood."
He laughed. A good, warm chuckle. His eyes never wavered, and the wolf in them remained unamused. "My dear Lushenka, I cannot believe they let you quit the business. What an asset you were. So amusing. But yes, you are right, of course, I have been known to be…less than consistent, since Mother Russia turned me out as a whore. To answer your question, today I work for the Cross Society."
"Lovely. We're coworkers. What do you want?"
He tapped a finger on the curling edge of his smile. "There is a need for secrecy."