Page 30 of Devil's Due

“Go,” she said. She didn’t know why, except that she knew he desperately needed her to order him out.

He nodded and left, shutting the door behind him. She walked to the intercom and pressed the button and told Marsh her friend was coming down, and would he please call a cab.

And then she went to the couch, turned on the television and sat numbly watching baseball—which she didn’t even like—well into the night, thinking.

Chapter 7

Morning came ugly and early, with the soundtrack of a ringing phone. Lucia clawed her way out of twisted sheets and found the receiver as she swung her legs out of bed. “Yes?” she said. It came out more abrupt than she intended, but she wasn’t a morning person, and nearly everyone who worked with her knew it. What few friends she had knew it extremely well.

“Jazz.”

Lucia collapsed back against the pillows and threw her arm over her eyes. “Manny has a result.”

“No, not yet, but I figured I’d better ask you what you wanted to do about today’s appointments. We have clients coming in at ten, remember? Santos Engineering? The industrial espionage thing?” Jazz was making notes; Lucia could hear the scratch of pen on paper. She felt as if she had a hangover. Her head felt stuffy.Don’t be stupid. Itcould be anything. You could just be imagining things.“Lucia?”

“I’m thinking,” she said. “Any way we can postpone?”

“Considering the state of our accounts receivable? I’m thinking no. Look, why don’t I take it? Let you rest?”

“I’m fine.” She wasn’t. Didn’t feel fine, and that worried her, but she’d had a crappy night’s sleep. She didn’t have a fever, at least, and that was supposed to be the first sign. “I don’t want you out of Manny’s place for now. Eidolon—”

“In case you missed the memo, Eidolon came afteryou, unless that FedEx was addressed to ‘Whichever Bimbo Opens It First.’”

“Who’re you calling a bimbo,chica?”

“Who’re you callingchica?Ah, hell, get up, would you? Have some coffee. Call me back.”

Click.Jazz and her smooth social skills. Lucia groaned and considered rolling over in the cocoon of pillows, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Shower. She needed a hot, cleansing shower.

On her third cup of coffee, Lucia called Jazz back and rescheduled the Santos meeting for the client’s offices, on the condition that Jazz stay strictly at home.

“You’re joking,” Jazz retorted. “You think I’m letting you roam around by yourself?Somebody tried to poison you.Don’t you get it?”

“I get it,” she said, and checked the headlines on the papers that had been left at her door. “But mail poisoning isn’t exactly the world’s most intimate crime. It’s a leap to go from that to—”

“Excuse me, but these same people—”

“How do we know it’s the same people?”

“These same peopleput a high-powered-rifle bullet through my office window and nearly killed me! That’s pretty intimate, not to mention direct! Unless you’re wearing Dolce & Gabbana’s spring bulletproof line—”

“Oh, Jazz, I’m so proud. A year ago you would have thought Dolce & Gabbana made chocolate bars.”

“Would you let me finish?”

“No. And I’ll tell you why. I’m going to the meeting, and I’m taking Omar with me. You’ve met him. Is he enough of a bodyguard for you?”

Jazz made some halfhearted protests, but it was mainly from being left out, which she hated. But Lucia meant what she said: until Max Simms or the Cross Society sent word that Eidolon’s attention had moved on, and Jazz was no longer a target, Jazz would stay safe in Manny’s home. Bunker. Whatever it was.

“Jazz,” Lucia said, just when she sensed her partner was about to put down the phone. “Listen—when Manny gets the results—”

“You’re the first call,” Jazz said. “FBI second. Pansy’s still here, by the way, and feeling fine. You?”

Lucia swallowed another mouthful of coffee and willed the aches in her muscles to go away. “Fine,” she said. “I feel fine.”

Omar showed up downstairs at promptly 9:00 a.m., looking big and mysterious and sexy as hell in his black slacks, black shirt and designer sunglasses, his glossy black hair carelessly curling almost to his shoulders. “Boss,” he said in greeting, and uncoiled from his lounging position at the guard station, where he’d been shooting the breeze with Messrs. Tarrant and Valencia, the day shift guards. He slid the glasses up to take a good look at her. “I leave you alone for a few hours, and you go and get yourself infected.”

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