Page 31 of Devil's Bargain

Lucia went down on one knee, nevermind the expensive pantsuit, and put the gun on the ground to flip Jazz over on her back. “Hey!” Jazz protested, but everything felt odd, didn’t it? Strange and liquid and …

Lucia pressed both hands to her side, pushing so hard Jazz couldn’t breathe.

“You’re going to be all right,” Lucia said. “Jazz. You’re going to be all right.”

Oh, shit,Jazz thought numbly, and saw the blood flooding over Lucia’s hands.

She fumbled in her coat pocket, got her cell phone, and dialed 911 to report her own shooting.

Lucia was right, although Jazz didn’t think it had been an actual diagnosis. Sometimes optimism worked out. The bullet had passed through her side and caught a few minor blood vessels, missed her liver and kidneys, and come out the other side. The doctor—way too young to be a surgeon, in Jazz’s painkiller-altered opinion—was cheerful about it. “Seen lots worse,” he told her, patting her hand. “I have three guys downstairs who had an argument in a bar who wish they were you, I promise.”

“How long am I going to be stuck here?” she asked. She hated hospitals. Hated the stiff, starchy sheets, the smell of disinfectant, the clean doctors. Hated the idea that she was lying in a bed that had probably seen more dead people than that kid inThe Sixth Sense.Emergency rooms always smelled like blood and vomit, no matter how carefully they were scrubbed. “If I’m all stitched up …” She eased a leg over the side of the bed. And almost passed out.Ow.He grabbed it and moved it back.

“You’re here overnight,” he said. “And there are some police who want to talk to you. They’re already talking to your friend.”

Jazz had figured that. She could safely guess that what Lucia was saying was the truth, just not the whole truth. The two of them had been to the lawyers’ offices to consult about a partnership agreement. They’d been jumped by persons unknown. Case closed. Jazz figured she could leverage being shot to keep her statement short and sweet. If she had any luck at all, maybe she wouldn’t know the cops, and this would be …

Behind the doctor, the big wood door eased open, and a slightly built guy in a cheap suit looked in. He had roughcut spiked hair and cold dark blue eyes and a rubbery mouth that looked as if it might smile or smirk or scream at a moment’s notice.

He looked at her as if she might be a corpse ready for autopsy, nothing but clinical interest.

Apparently, luck was not on her side. God, she really didn’t feel well enough for this.

“Stewart,” she said with a noticeable lack of warmth. He blinked at her. “You going to skulk or come in?”

“Skulk,” he said. “How you doin’, Jazz?” He had a Bronx accent, usually stressed for effect, and she felt a familiar weary surge of dislike.Poser.She’d known him for nearly five years, and she’d never liked him one minute of that time.

“Shot,” she replied shortly.

“Yeah, so I hear. Doc, can I…?” He gestured from himself to Jazz. The doctor shrugged, stuck his hands in his lab-coat pockets and sauntered out. Stewart—Kenneth Stewart, not that she’d ever called him by his first name or ever intended to—pulled up a chrome-and-plastic chair next to her bed and sat down. He poked the IV bag with a fingertip and didn’t look at her aS he said, “So. Long time no see.”

“Yeah.” She didn’t want small talk. Her head hurt, and her side was starting to really ache. She suspected the painkillers were more Motrin than morphine. “You already talked to my friend?” She didn’t give him the name. If Lucia wanted to go undercover, she wasn’t about to blow it for her.

“Friend?” he repeated blankly. Poked the IV bag again, then rang a fingernail off the screen of the heart monitor. “Oh, yeah. Luz something. Hermann’s talking to her. Pretty girl. I think I got the short straw.”

“Me, too.” Not that Stewart’s partner Hermann was any great prize, either. “I want another detective. I’m not talking to you.”

“Fuck you, Callender.” It wasn’t a casual, off-the-cuff insult between friends. This was a gut-deep venting of feelings, and she felt the menace behind it.

“Same to you, Stewart” A hot pulse of fury along her spine. Her liand curled into a tight fist, and relaxed. Much as she wanted to kick his punk ass, there was no way she could do it dressed in a backless gown with a through-and-through bullet hole in her side.

“So, did anything happen to you I need to know about?” Stewart asked in a bored tone.

“This is how you conduct an investigation?”

“It is when I know the witness is a lying bitch who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit her in the—where were you shot exactly?”

“See my previousfuck youcomment. Fine, if we’re done, get the hell out. I don’t want to look at your ugly face anymore.”

Without looking at her, he reached over and put his hand on her side. Over the bandages. “Does it hurt?”

She didn’t move. Those twilight-blue eyes—on anybody else they might have been pretty—focused on her face, and his mouth stretched into a vindictive grin. He patted her bullet wound. Not gently. She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from wincing.

“Want to hear my theory?” Stewart wasn’t moving his hand. “I think some of McCarthy’s drug-dealing asshole buddies decided to send him a message by putting a few caps in his ex-partner. It was a classic drive-by hit, you know. Big dark pimp car, full auto spray. You’re just lucky, is all. But then, you get lucky a lot, don’t you? I’ve never seen anybody as lucky as you.”

He pressed harder. Jazz knew she was going pale, but she didn’t look away from his stare.

“Maybe if you’d tell the truth,” Stewart said, “you’d quit being a target. This isn’t the first trouble you’ve gotten into, since you turned in your shield. Is it?”

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