Page 50 of Devil's Bargain

“Yeah,” he agreed. His thumb skimmed gently over her bruised, abraded knuckles. He had big, square hands, disfigured now with bruises and cuts where he’d defended himself. “They looked like they’d been in the same fight. “Wild woman.”

She found herself grinning, suddenly. “Saved your ass a few times.”

“More than a few, yeah. But you need to pick your battles. Can’t make war against the world.” He looked somber, as if what he was saying applied to himself as much as her. “You do what I said last time?”

She didn’t answer, because she didn’t want to out-and-out lie to him. The last time she’d been to Ellsworth—the day she’d met James Borden, she realized with a shock, had it really been that long ago?—Ben had told her in no uncertain terms to box up the files she was keeping on his case and send them to his attorney. Not that his attorney had ever done him a damn bit of good that she remembered. Skinny little kid, looked more like an actor than a real lawyer …

She found herself glancing over her shoulder at Borden. He was chatting with a nurse, head bent, smiling.

He didn’t look like a real lawyer, either.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” she said aloud, not quite looking at Ben because it was easier than facing those eyes, that silent whisper of things done and endured she didn’t want to know. “Swear to God, I will.”

“God put me here,” McCarthy said, and shrugged. He put on a false Irish comic-opera lilt. “It’ll take the devil himself to get me out.”

She jerked her attention back to his face. “Then I’ll deal with the devil.”

McCarthy sent that unreadable look again, to Borden, who was still talking to the nurse and well out of earshot. “Believe it or not, sweetheart, I think you already did.”

By the time she left the prison, Jazz felt exhausted, shaky and desperately in need of a nap. She let Borden have the wheel heading back, and fell asleep to the rhythmic hiss of tires on asphalt and the soft wail of the radio. If she dreamed, it was probably unpleasant, but she didn’t remember.

They rolled back into Kansas City in time for rush hour, which Borden negotiated with ease—he would, she supposed, being from the Big Apple—and she realized by the time they’d pulled into her apartment parking lot that she had barely said a word to him since entering the prison.

As he pulled the brake, she looked over at him and said, “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For … not trying to make me believe he’s guilty.”

Borden shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s guilty. And what I think doesn’t matter, it’s whatyouthink. You took on the job to have the resources to find out, right? You should use them.”

“I intend to.”

“Even though he told you not to try?”

She smiled slightly, and tasted bitterness. “Especially since he said that.”

Borden finished the business of unbuckling himself from the seat, turning off the engine, and handing her the keys before he asked, “Are you going to see him again? Even though he told you not to go back?”

“I don’t do everything I’m told,” she shot back, and got out of the car.

She could have sworn he muttered, “I think you meananything,” but when she checked, his face was polite and bland, and he had the good sense not to smirk about having the last word.

Out of habit, she grabbed a paper from the dispenser near the mailboxes, then collected the daily mail carrier’s allotment of bills and circulars. Took the stairs. She had started taking the stairs again as soon as she was sure the sutures wouldn’t tear loose, and now she was nearly back up to strength, able to trot up the six flights at a good clip without elevating her heart rate more than a few beats a minute. Borden loped next to her without breathing hard, too. Like Lucia, he was a runner. She wondered if he was a swimmer, too.

She put the vision of Borden in a Speedo out of her head with a heroic effort.

Inside the apartment she dumped the mail on the kitchen table as she poured herself a tall glass of orange juice, then another for Borden when she remembered her manners. She sorted through things one-handed, absentmindedly, thinking over how McCarthy had looked, how he’d acted …

She stopped in the act of shoving the newspaper aside and pulled it slowly toward her, then unfolded the front page.

“What?” Borden asked.

She held up a finger for silence, reading, and then turned the front page toward him and pointed to the black-and-white photo of a woman on the front. “Her,” she said. “I recognize her.”

“What?”

“I followed her last night.”

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