Page 43 of Devil's Due

It was 5:11 p.m.

“Actually,” Lucia said absently, “you’d be amazed at what you can get away with doing in a car in the middle of the day. People just don’t look. Even when they’re parking next to you.”

Borden turned to stare at her. Jazz was too much of a professional to do so, but Lucia could feel her grin.

“I’d tell you all about it,” she said, “but then I’d have to kill you. National security.”

“God, I love my job,” he said, and turned back to face the street.

Lucia, at the moment, didn’t. She didn’t like the fact that there were so many low rooftops offering firing positions. She didn’t like the constant flow of traffic on the street in front of them. Work had just let out, and the lot was full of people on their way home.

Not an optimal situation. She could feel Jazz’s tension, and knew she read the situation the same.

Five fifteen.

“Heads up,” Jazz muttered.

Five sixteen.

Nothing.

“Come on, come on …” Jazz was chanting it under her breath, probably subconsciously. Lucia kept silent, but she was aware of her increased heart rate, of the sweat trickling down her neck and between her shoulder blades. For all of their banter, this was serious business, and they both knew it. “What the hell are we looking for? Come on, give us something …”

And then, Borden spotted it. “Um, maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t that guy getting a shotgun out of his trunk?”

The one in question was a small, thin man dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt, khaki pants, loafers. Business casual. Cell phone clipped to his belt. Thinning brown hair. Gold-rimmed glasses.

A Winchester Model 1300 Black Shadow: Lucia’s mind automatically cataloged it. Five shells, if he had one in the chamber, and she had to assume he did. He was getting it out of the trunk casually, as if he were taking out his lunch bag.

“Go,” she said, and tapped Jazz on the shoulder. “Take the back.”

“Front.”

“Back, Jazz.”

Before she could argue about it, Lucia slipped out and walked briskly forward in long strides, and made a sharp turn to bring her parallel with Mr. Shotgun.

He reached into the trunk and took out what looked like a heavy gym bag, black. From the rattle, she guessed it was filled with ammunition.

She swallowed hard and turned toward him. Her gun was out and held unobtrusively next to her side, in line with the seam of her pants. Safety off.

He looked up as he slammed the trunk lid. For a split second she saw his eyes, and they didn’t match anything else about his perfectly ordinary exterior. Those eyes were full ofnothing.Dark holes, gravity wells that consumed everything around him. The darkness inside this man wanted to kill.

Jazz was behind him.

“Hi,” Lucia said. “Going somewhere?”

He started to bring up the shotgun, and for a split second she thought,God, no, he’s really going to make it.But then Jazz kicked the bend of his legs from behind, he pitched forward on the asphalt, his mouth opening in shock, and dropped the weapon. It skidded to a stop at Lucia’s feet. She put a foot on top of it as Jazz jumped on the man’s back, pressed a knee into his spine and twisted his arms behind his back to snap handcuffs on.

It took five seconds. Five seconds of precise, well-co-ordinated action. Jazz looked up, and her blue eyes were blazing, her face glowing with excitement.

All that changed in one split second.

Lucia didn’t hear the shot, only felt the hot burn along her arm, the kinetic force rocking her to the side. She saw the spark of a bullet hitting the metal grille of a car fifteen feet beyond.

And then Jazz was moving, movingfast, and Lucia’s body was following suit while her mind was still processing data. She hit the pavement and rolled into the thin cover of another car.Angles… the bullet had come right past her, hit the grille of the car at a flat angle. Someone on the ground.

A second shooter.

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