Devil s Bargin Page 0,33

second she thought he might go down again. No such luck. He felt his nose with his other hand, sniffed, and glared at her.

No blood. Too bad. She'd been hoping for a broken nose, at least.

"Sorry," she said. "Reflex."

He didn't say anything, just stared at her for a burning second, then turned and walked out of the room. The door slammed hard behind him.

Jazz let out a long breath and closed her eyes. Her forehead felt damp, and now that the crisis was over, she was shaking. And sick to her stomach. She pushed the button for on-demand morphine.

Just what she didn't need. A bullet in her side, no partnership agreement, and a closer acquaintance with Kenneth Stewart.

Lucia came back twenty minutes later, looking not exactly grim but definitely tense. She took the chair that Stewart had dragged close, gave Jazz a long look, and said, "I don't like this."

"Hospitals? Hey, I'm not a fan of them, either. And I think I have more reason to bitch about it."

"No, I don't like that they knew where to find us." She wasn't talking about the hospitals, or even Stewart. "I've been watching for tails. So have you."

"So we missed one. Or they've got some high-tech tracking bug on us." She remembered Borden, walking into Sol's Bar without any reason to be there. That still bothered her.

"No, I've swept us and the car for bugs," Lucia said, and combed sleek silky hair back from her face in a distracted motion. "Nothing. There's no way they've retasked a satellite just to follow us around, so if they're not doing line-of-sight surveillance, then they shouldn't know where we are. And if they were doing line-of-sight, we should have spotted them."

"Unless they're good."

"More than just good. I'm good." Lucia definitely looked stressed, as if she felt responsible for Jazz lying here, leaking fluids. "Those cops - I take it not friends of yours? - aren't investigating, they're filling out paperwork."

"It's Stewart," Jazz said, and stared up at the ceiling. It was blank, white, and noninspirational. "He helped put McCarthy away. He's been gunning for me ever since. No, actually, I take that back. He's never liked me. He's just actively started hating me since the whole thing with Ben."

Lucia paused in the act of tying her hair back with a businesslike black elastic band. No scrunchies or decorations for her. She looked different with her hair back. Harder. Jazz approved. "About McCarthy..." Lucia began.

"No."

"You don't think we should discuss that?"

"No, we're not talking about Ben, or his case, or whether or not he's guilty, or what he has to do with this because I guarantee you, he's got nothing to do with it. He's in prison, Lucia. Let's leave him out of this."

Lucia didn't answer that, just finished wrapping her hair in the elastic with a snap. "I called your sister, told her you'd been in an accident."

"Oh, no." Jazz sighed. "What did Molly say?"

Lucia avoided her eyes. "She was concerned. She said she'd tell your dad."

"I bet. I'll expect a cheap floral arrangement delivered to the wrong address next week."

"She's not that bad."

"Bullshit."

"Manny wanted to visit, but - "

"He's got a thing about hospitals. Manny has a thing about everything."

"He did some good work for us, looking into the Cross Society."

"And?"

Lucia shrugged. "On paper, it's legit. He came up with a few flags - not so much red lights as yellow. Max Simms, for one. He may be in prison, but it's likely he's still got some influence." She fell silent. The moment stretched, long and awkward.

Jazz though longingly of on-demand morphine.

"You should go," Jazz said. "I'm sorry to have kept you hanging around. You've got a life to get back to."

"Planes leave all the time." Lucia shrugged. "I'm not going if it means you end up lying unprotected in a hospital bed and the cops aren't going to put out any effort to find out who shot you. And shot at me, by the way. I take that kind of thing personally."

The look in her eyes was usually accompanied by shooting back, Jazz figured. Or, at the very least, grievous bodily harm.

"So you're sticking around," Jazz said. A tight knot in the area of her chest eased a little.

"For a while. Until you get back on your feet, anyway. Also, I'm going to wake up some sources and see what they can find out for me. I don't like the way any of this is playing out."

She started to get up.