Page 39 of Devil's Bargain

It pulled away and made a left turn out of sight.

Jazz turned back to the house. Pink Cardigan was standing there, arms folded, staring down at her shoes. Frowning.

Lucia took another picture.

In between one breath and another, everything changed.

An engine growled behind them, and Jazz’s eyes flew to the side mirror. An electric blue car was turning the corner—a big thing, probably dating back to the seventies, square and solid and shining with chrome.

Pink Cardigan looked up, alarmed, saw the car and backed up.

Lucia swore, and dropped the camera to reach for her gun. Jazz was already going for hers, as well. The car glided nearly silently down the street, casual as a shark heading for a plump baby seal.

The car slowed even more. The kids in the yard played on, oblivious … and then, suddenly, it lurched into motion with a squeal of tires. Accelerating fast.

“Down!” Lucia yelled at Jazz and aimed across her. Jazz grabbed the handle that controlled the car seat and yanked it up, gasping as her seat slammed into full recline and she dropped hard with it. Gut-shot abdominal muscles complained with a hot, dizzying flash. She was staring up at Lucia, who was leaning over her, gun extended in firing position and braced with her left hand. Steady as a rock.

She didn’t fire. The muzzle of the gun tracked smoothly in an arc.

Jazz heard a world-shaking rumble, saw a shadow flash over Lucia’s face, and then the blue car was past them and still accelerating. No gunfire.

Jazz grabbed the dashboard and pulled herself back upright, ratcheting the seat to a straight position. Lucia slowly relaxed, both hands still on the gun, staring at Pink Cardigan.

The blue car swerved left at the corner, taking the same route as the black van.

“What the hell was that?” Jazz blurted, and turned to look at Pink Cardigan, who was staring at the car intently, but not as if she recognized it. She turned and went back into her house, slamming the door shut behind her with such violence that it echoed like the gunshots that hadn’t been fired. After a few minutes, the garage door cranked down, as well, and rattled shut with a hollowboom.

“I don’t know,” Lucia admitted. She still looked pale, breathing fast. Jazz related. She was about to pass out from the rush of adrenaline. “I thought they were going to kill her.”

“What stopped them?”

“Us,” Lucia said. “They saw us and kept driving. I think we just saved her life.”

“Without firing a shot? Excellent. I really don’t want to talk to Stewart twice in one day.” Jazz sounded steady and cheerful; she didn’t feel that way. Sweat dripped down the back of her neck, soaked her shirt. She needed to pee. Badly. Straight-up fighting she could take. This battle-of-nerves thing, not so much. “Man. That was …”

“Weird?” Lucia supplied. “Yeah.” She finally realized she was still holding the gun and put it away. “Sorry. I should have gotten the plate number.”

“One-six-fourHCX” Jazz said automatically. “That’s not the weird thing.”

She had Lucia’s full attention.

“The weird thing is that the license plate was black with yellow letters,” she continued. “Missouri plates, all right, but Missouri hasn’t issued that style since 1978.”

Lucia was outright staring at her. Big eyed. “You know the state license-plate colors by year?”

“Yeah.” Jazz shrugged. “Useful knowledge.”

“Just for Missouri, right?”

“If I say no, will you think I’m weird?”

That got an outright blink. Lucia, the calm and Unsurprised, was finally thrown for a loop.

Jazz smiled, reached into the glove compartment, and pulled out a steno pad. She wrote down the plate number and details about the plate itself.

“So what does that mean? About the plate?” Lucia asked finally.

“Means they probably pulled it off a junker at an auto graveyard,” she said. “Although it fits the age of that car.”

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