Devil s Bargin Page 0,32

his lab-coat pockets and sauntered out. Stewart - Kenneth Stewart, not that she'd ever called him by his first name or ever intended to - pulled up a chrome-and-plastic chair next to her bed and sat down. He poked the IV bag with a fingertip and didn't look at her as he said, "So. Long time no see."

"Yeah." She didn't want small talk. Her head hurt, and her side was starting to really ache. She suspected the painkillers were more Motrin than morphine. "You already talked to my friend?" She didn't give him the name. If Lucia wanted to go undercover, she wasn't about to blow it for her.

"Friend?" he repeated blankly. Poked the IV bag again, then rang a fingernail off the screen of the heart monitor. "Oh, yeah. Luz something. Hermann's talking to her. Pretty girl. I think I got the short straw."

"Me, too." Not that Stewart's partner Hermann was any great prize, either. "I want another detective. I'm not talking to you."

"Fuck you, Callender." It wasn't a casual, off-the-cuff insult between friends. This was a gut-deep venting of feelings, and she felt the menace behind it.

"Same to you, Stewart." A hot pulse of fury along her spine. Her hand curled into a tight fist, and relaxed. Much as she wanted to kick his punk ass, there was no way she could do it dressed in a backless gown with a through-and-through bullet hole in her side.

"So, did anything happen to you I need to know about?" Stewart asked in a bored tone.

"This is how you conduct an investigation?"

"It is when I know the witness is a lying bitch who wouldn't know the truth if it bit her in the - where were you shot exactly?"

"See my previous fuck you comment. Fine, if we're done, get the hell out. I don't want to look at your ugly face anymore."

Without looking at her, he reached over and put his hand on her side. Over the bandages. "Does it hurt?"

She didn't move. Those twilight-blue eyes - on anybody else they might have been pretty - focused on her face, and his mouth stretched into a vindictive grin. He patted her bullet wound. Not gently. She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from wincing.

"Want to hear my theory?" Stewart wasn't moving his hand. "I think some of McCarthy's drug-dealing asshole buddies decided to send him a message by putting a few caps in his ex-partner. It was a classic drive-by hit, you know. Big dark pimp car, full auto spray. You're just lucky, is all. But then, you get lucky a lot, don't you? I've never seen anybody as lucky as you."

He pressed harder. Jazz knew she was going pale, but she didn't look away from his stare.

"Maybe if you'd tell the truth," Stewart said, "you'd quit being a target. This isn't the first trouble you've gotten into, since you turned in your shield. Is it?"

One attempted firebombing of her apartment, which had failed when the glass bottle full of gasoline hadn't shattered on impact, and she'd been able to scramble over and drag the burning rag out of the mouth of it. She could still smell the bitter tang of the gas, the smoky, oily cloth. No prints on the bottle, according to police forensics. She still wished she'd taken it to Manny. She was pretty sure he'd have come up with something to trace it back to Stewart.

She'd also been jumped coming out of a bar downtown. Two guys with knives. If she hadn't been drunk, she'd have had them, but even so, she'd managed to put them on the run. No good description, though. She'd always wondered if the small one had been Stewart himself.

"I hear that you were just minding your own business and this car rolled up on you. You fired six shots back, your friend fired four, and the car took off. That correct?"

"Don't know. Count the shells."

"Oh, we will." He nodded. "And Jazz? If I catch you in a lie, you're mine."

He squeezed this time. Hard. Fingers digging into her stitched-up side.

She couldn't keep from gasping, but she didn't just lie there for it, which was what he must have expected. She came straight up in bed and stiff-armed the heel of her hand into his nose.

Pop.

Stewart's head snapped back, and he fell off his chair, rolled to his knees and staggered back to his feet. He caught himself with a hand on an IV stand, which rolled, and for a happy