Page 71 of Devil's Bargain

That was it. No hearts and flowers, not even a fruit basket, just a quick disconnection. She stared at the cell phone for a second, then shrugged and handed it back to the hard-eyed detective, who—from the way he was watching her—must have talked to somebody back in K.C. with a less-than-glowing opinion of her. Probably Stewart. Somebody who’d filled his head full of crap about corruption and murder and drug running, probably. And cited Ben’s trial to back it up.

“Who was that?” the cop asked, weighing the phone in his hand.

“Wrong number,” she said, and smiled as brilliantly as she could, under the circumstances.

It didn’t get more pleasant as the day went on. She got another phone call, this one from Lucia, who was coldly furious and torn between kicking LAPD ass or Cross Society hiney. That felt oddly bracing. Jazz had quite a time convincing Lucia not to come flying to the coast, and in the end had only succeeded because Borden was already on his way and Lucia was convinced she was about to break the industrial espionage case within the day.

Toward the end of the day the cops finally informed her that Lowell Santoro was resting comfortably. He wouldn’t be giving any speeches soon, but he’d narrowly avoided a fractured hyoid bone and a nasty death. His trachea was seriously bruised but intact.

She’d saved someone. She’d actually, finally, saved someone.

Not that you’d know it from the continuing barrage of questions from two increasingly unfriendly LAPD detectives named Weston and Cammarata. Weston was thin and dressed in old, unfashionable suits; Cammarata was more the dress-slacks, snappy-tie, crisp-white-shirt type. He could have walked the halls of corporate zombiedom and looked utterly in place, if he’d taken off that clip-on badge from his belt and stuck a business ID in its place.

Of the two, she found she preferred Weston, who was at least honest in his dislike. Cammarata kept trying to make her think he liked her. She kept reiterating facts to them, stubbornly refused to reveal who’d hired her, and finally reverted to the old standard, “I’ll wait until my lawyer gets here.”

Borden arrived looking, well, like a lawyer. A damn fine one, too. Navy blue tailored suit, crisp off-white shirt, power tie, shiny shoes, a briefcase that looked expensive and was probably worth twice whatever she would guess. He looked L.A. spiffy, in a New York kind of way.

And he had her out of the police station in forty-five minutes, which she figured had to be a new world record for intimidation in a town that had more or less invented the fast-talking lawyer.

“So,” she said as he walked her down the steps to a waiting black chauffeured car, “you don’t do criminal cases. Because you seemed to do that all right, Counselor.”

“Shut up,” he said darkly. She could already tell he was in a towering bad mood, which was weird, because after all, she’d saved his friend. Weird, starting on annoying.

“Is that legal advice?”

He firmly directed her into the car—backseat—and walked around to climb in the other side. He’d gotten another limo for a reason, she saw—better leg room. Not so critical for her, but his knees were an absurdly long distance from his hips.

He flicked the locks, engaged the privacy screen between them and the driver—evidentlynota Cross Society insider—and without looking at her said, “You could have called the police instead of going in.”

“Oh, please, what’s the nine-one-one response time in L.A. when you call and say, hey, I’m on stakeout and my subject hasn’t come out of the building yet? I’m guessing it’s twenty-four to forty-eight hours, if they don’t laugh you off the phone.”

“You could have called them when you knew something was happening.”

“By that time, your friend was about ten seconds away from choking to death on a broken throat. Look, what do you think you sent me here to do? Knit doilies? Run and hide when the going gets tough?” She shrugged. “Borden, you know me better than that. If there’s a fight, I’m in it. That’s who I am.”

“I didn’t send you here to stage the first annual Stair-well Smack-down and nearly get yourself killed. Again.” His voice sounded tight and grim, and as she stared at him, she saw the tension in his shoulders. In the hard line of his jaw. “You like this, don’t you? The adrenaline rush. Kicking ass at every possible opportunity.”

“You think I did this for fun?” she asked, and felt her hands trying to make fists.

“Tell me what was going through your head, then.”

“The subject went out of the range of electronic surveillance,” she said. “The subject didn’t reappear on schedule. I went in to check it out, which was exactly what you knew I was going to do. And if you think maybe I should have checked on him, discovered him being choked to death and gone back to the car, well, maybe you don’t know me very well.”

Borden raised his head, finally, and looked straight at her. “I know you better than you think,” he said. There was something odd in his eyes. “I’m not the only one. Take out the envelope.”

She didn’t. She looked at him, frowning, and then reached into her windbreaker and pulled it free.

“Open it,” he said.

She slit it with a fingernail and pulled out the letter folded neatly inside.

“Read it.”

She didn’t want to, suddenly. It felt as if something was wrong, something wasverywrong, indeed, and if she just slid this letter back in the envelope … put the genie back in his bottle … then maybe things would be different.

Instead, she unfolded the crisp paper, and saw the letterhead of Eidolon Corporation. It was a bold red logo, a world in an hourglass. It read in neat typewritten lines:

To Jasmine Callender,

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