Page 10 of Devil's Due

Stewart had been following her. Was it possible he was Eidolon? Eminently, she decided. Cross Society? She hadn’t exactly been provided with a full and forthright disclosure of their membership, but somehow she couldn’t see Ken Stewart believing in the things that the Cross Society took for granted: things like premonitions, and psychics, and the ability to alter the future.

Then again, maybe that explained the erosion she sensed in him, the jittery nervousness. The world was fraying around him, and he was unraveling with it.

She could completely sympathize.

Jazz would probably have ditched the note and pelted down the street, collared Stewart and pummeled him until she got what she wanted to know …

Jazz.

Lucia’s smile faded as she flipped open her cell phone and speed-dialed Borden’s number. He picked up on the second ring, sounding lazy and sleep-soaked. He sobered up fast when she identified herself.

“Hey. Um, good morning. What time—crap. It’s late. I overslept.”

“Is Jazz with you?” she asked.

There was a short pause and then the tenor of the call changed; she heard the rustle of sheets, a sleepy murmur, the quiet closing of a door. He’d stepped into the bathroom, or the hall. “She’s asleep,” he said. “I don’t want to wake her up if I don’t have to. Do I? Have to wake her up?”

“Soon,” Lucia said. “A courier just delivered a note to me in a red envelope. Did she get one?”

“No deliveries—shit. Hang on.” The phone rattled, set down on a counter, she guessed. He was back in less than ten seconds. “Yeah. Somebody slid it under the door. Is it a job?”

“Don’t you usually compose the messages?”

“Sometimes,” he said cautiously. Borden was Cross Society, in it up to his neck; Lucia liked him a great deal, but at times like these, she was bitterly aware that trust might be a separate issue. “Look, I can’t go into the way it works, not on the phone,”

“Yes, I get your point. Open it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

There was a rattle, a pause … “It says, ‘One of you has made a mistake.’ On Eidolon Corporation letterhead. Holy shit.” She heard his breathing go faster. “They know where we are. I have to get Jazz up, right now.”

“Wait. Have you ever seen one from Eidolon before?” Lucia realized that she was pacing, a habit when she was nervous. The store clerk was watching her. Not, she was relieved to see, in any way that implied he was a conspirator; no, this was the plain, unvarnished interest she was used to attracting. She gave him a small smile and he found something to be busy with that took him out of her line of sight.

“Lucia,they know where we are.She’s not safe here. Hell, I’m not safe—”

“Have they ever sent you a message before?” she asked again, with strained patience.

His composure broke completely. “Look,Idon’t get messages from anybody. I’m not a goddamn Lead!”

She felt a hot flare of irritation.Leads.According to the Cross Society, she and Jazz were Leads, carrying major roles in the chaotic, enormous play of life and death on Planet Earth. “Actors” influenced certain events at crucial moments, but—again, according to the Cross Society’s rather esoteric theory—Leads operated at a kind of nexus point. Jazz had told her, in a quiet voice that meant she had come to believe it, that the Cross Society psychic, Max Simms, had summed it up: Everything you do matters.

It was a frightening thought. It didn’t get any less frightening the longer it stuck around.

She kept doggedly on the subject. “Have you ever heard of Eidolon contacting anyone in the Cross Society directly?”

He sucked in an angry breath. “No. If you’re done—”

“Almost. Who knew where you were taking her?”

“Nobody.”

“You didn’t make the call from—”

“I booked the reservations at an Internet kiosk using a one-time-only card. Fake name. Believe me, nobody knew we were coming here.”

There were ways, nevertheless, if the opposition was strong enough. And if Eidolon Corporation was what Max Simms had claimed, a major technological entity with ties to the federal government, then retasking a satellite and painting Borden’s car with a laser tag wouldn’t have been very difficult.

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