Devil s Due Page 0,18

softball, but it was something of a grenade, really. "Mine?" She smiled. "Deep, dark secrets. The kind that get you killed."

Why in the world had she said that? She hadn't meant to. Her past wasn't a seduction. The last thing she wanted was for him to learn more about Lucia Garza, and what she'd done in the name of causes and country.

"Intriguing." He pushed back his chair and tilted his head, returning the smile. "Come on, I gave you mine earlier. Just tell me one."

She had no business even thinking about it. The silence stretched, and she knew it seemed odd; she was taking it beyond simple idle conversation into a much more serious realm.

"I worked overseas," she said. "For the government."

He raised his eyebrows. "Spy stuff?"

"I'd tell you, but - "

" - you'd have to kill me, yeah, I know the drill." He held out his hand. She gave the file back. "I'll amend the report. Mr. Student Protester gets a free pass."

She nodded. "Do you have a place to stay yet?"

"Figured I'd find a cheap motel. Just temporarily, until I can close on that penthouse with a city view. And please, don't tell me you've got recommendations for a cheap motel. I like to keep my illusions."

"I'll find you a place," she said, refusing to be baited. She was familiar with the process; she'd been through it with cocky, aggressive men in every job she'd ever had. They all felt they had something to prove.

"I didn't think you wanted a paper trail back to the company," he said.

"I don't. It won't trace back to us."

"Aren't you the clever one."

"Allegedly." She paused in the doorway, looking back at him. He'd pulled his tie askew, and his collar was unbuttoned. Sexy. Very sexy. "Are you having dinner with Jazz?"

"Yeah. Indoors, since you don't let her out without body armor and the Popemobile. Want to join us?"

"No, thank you. Somebody's got to catch up on the work."

On her way back to her office, she felt a flash of guilt. That had been a passive-aggressive thing to do, a cheap shot; she'd implied that Jazz wasn't pulling her weight. And it wasn't true. Jazz was more than fulfilling her half of the agreement, even handicapped by the death sentence that they had to assume was still in effect for her. It was hell for Jazz, no question; she was the active one, the one more suited to running over rooftops and wrestling suspects to the ground than having polite conversations over the phone.

Lucia sat down at her desk and picked up the phone. "Omar? Hey, man. Need a favor. Can you book a room for McCarthy? Nothing too cheap, nothing too expensive. Very bland. Safe house quality. You know what to look for."

"For how long?"

She considered that carefully. The spy in her hated to leave him in one place for long; she was unconsciously considering him a compromised source, she realized. If anyone - say, Detective Ken Stewart - had a grudge against him, leaving him booked at just one location under his own name would be asking for trouble.

"Listen, could you book him at four places, a week each? Four names, none of them his? I'll give you cash."

"Some things never change," Omar said, amused. "Yeah. I'll come up."

She counted out bills from a lockbox and wrote out a receipt, put them in a plain white envelope and had it on the corner of her desk when Omar knocked on the open door and strolled in. He was a big man, well-muscled but not bulky. He was also of Arabian descent, and had found himself out of his chosen work in fairly short order after 9-11. Nobody wanted to hire Arabs as freelance security, and Omar stubbornly had refused to give up. He was proud. It was his principal characteristic, and it was something Lucia loved about him. That, and his liquid dark eyes and wicked smile.

He came in and pocketed the envelope. "You know I'm going to get the looks when I do this. The I'm-calling-the-FBI looks. Hell, I'll be lucky if they don't shoot me."

"Try to, you mean," she said. "But I can't hand McCarthy a pile of money. He'd take it personally."

"Yeah, you'd never do that yourself - take anything personally," he said. "Apart from acting like the new guy's travel agent, is there anything I can do other than hang around in your dungeon, guarding cars?"

"It's important work, guarding cars," she said. "You're all that stands