Devil's Bargain (22 page)

“It’s not your fault,” she said to him.

“No?” He sounded so damn
neutral.
“How do you figure that?”

“If somebody above me had said, no, you need to lay back and let your friend get horribly murdered? Guess what. I would’ve been forging documents and persuading you to help me, too. And I don’t think you were wrong to do it. It’s never wrong to save a life.”

“No?” he repeated. “You’d pull, say, John Wayne Gacy out of a river and start chest compressions.”

“It’d be easier if I didn’t know he was a crazy murdering bastard, but yeah, that’s pretty much the size of it.”

“You’d do it even if you knew. Even if you knew he was killing people.”

“If I knew that, I’d revive him and slap handcuffs on him before he could figure out what I was doing,” she said. “I’m—I was a cop, Borden. I never tried to make myself judge, jury and executioner. That’s a responsibility I don’t want, and nobody should have unless they have checks and balances. That’s what scares me about your dear friends in the Society. How do you know what they’re doing is right? How can you really tell? Save that guy, let that guy die—” She shook her head. “I don’t care what they
think
they know, I can’t really believe they’re ready to play God.”

He shook his head. “I’m not feeling guilty about saving Lowell,” he said finally. “I’m angry at myself that you had to put yourself in danger to do it, and I’m scared that this saving one life is going to cost me another, and I—I’m not ready to play God, either, Jazz. And if you die because of what I’ve done—”

“Hey,” she murmured, and reached over to rest her hand on top of his. His fingers twitched, but didn’t move to caress hers like they had in the car on the way to the airport in Kansas City. She missed it. “I’m a big girl. Even if I’d known it would paint a target on my butt, I’d have done it. You understand that, right?”

He shook his head and didn’t answer at all. But he didn’t move his hand from under hers for a long moment, either. When he finally did, when he folded his arms into a touch-me-not kind of defensiveness, she settled back in the opposite comfy corner and watched scenery flash by in silence. Desert. Lots of desert.

She wanted to sleep, but something wouldn’t let her. Borden didn’t doze, either. She shot him looks from time to time, but his eyes were on the horizon, his face utterly blank and composed. Nothing to see here, move along.

She saw a road sign flash by as the limo exited the freeway, and turned back in a futile attempt to be sure she’d gotten that glimpse correct. “Borden? We’re going to a prison?”

“Yes.”

“Federal or state?”

“Federal.”

“Do I have to do the animal, mineral, or vegetable part of this quiz, too, or can we jump to the part where you tell me where the hell we’re going and who we’re going to see?”

Borden looked at the blank screen dividing them from the driver, evidently decided it was okay to talk, and said, “We’re going to see Max Simms.”

“Simms?” she echoed. “Max Simms, the serial killer?”

“No, Max Simms, the interior decorator. Why the hell do you think he’s in prison? Yes, he was convicted of being a serial killer.” Borden looked angry and ever so slightly sick. “I helped defend him, remember? He’s not guilty. I know he’s not.”

She had a flash of sitting across from Ben McCarthy, separated by scarred Plexiglas, staring at his weary face and saying,
It’s okay, it’s going to be okay,
and knowing that it wouldn’t be, knowing that every day he was behind bars was another day he’d risk his life, his body, his mind. She felt responsible for that, and it hadn’t been remotely her fault that he was imprisoned. If Borden felt the same, if he really believed Simms was innocent, that was a kind of slow, endless torture that she couldn’t quite imagine.

“Do you think you lost the case? That it was really all your fault?”

“No. Anyway, I was second chair. Laskins lost the case, if anybody did.” Borden’s tiny shrug went for casual and missed by a mile. “Truth is, I don’t think anybody could have gotten him acquitted. The evidence was too good.”

“But you still think he’s innocent.”

“I didn’t then,” he admitted. “I do now.”

“Because…?”

“I’ve seen things,” he said. “I know things. I know how easy it is for events to be manipulated to someone else’s gain, and I’ve seen how ruthless Eidolon Corporation is. Simms was involved in a power struggle for control of the company. And he lost.”

She frowned, watching him, but he didn’t have any more light to shed. The limo glided on until it braked to a smooth stop, and the door opened on golden sunset.

The air held a tang of bitter sage and dry air, and as Jazz stepped out, dazzled, she had to shade her eyes from the glare. Everything looked bleached here—the sand, the pale uniforms on the guards, the buildings. Unlike some of the older prisons, no attempt had been made to make this one look like anything more than what it was: a big, solid concrete block to hold people inside. The exercise yard—a big flat paved expanse radiating waves of heat—was deserted, and a basketball roamed aimlessly around the tarmac, pushed here and there by swirling winds. The fences were chain-link topped with at least two feet of razor wire, with guard towers at regular intervals manned by snipers. Jazz hoped they had air-conditioning up there. The heat down here on the ground was murderous.

“This way,” Borden said, and led the way to a gate manned by two armed deputies. They viewed her impersonally and checked a list for names, then buzzed her and Borden into a claustrophobic walkway. More chain-link and razor wire. Even McCarthy’s prison didn’t seem this daunting, but then, he was a state inmate, not federal.

Two more checkpoints, and they were inside a dim, cool room that smelled of industrial cleaner and sweat. Three more deputies on duty, one a petite black woman who gestured Jazz over to one side. Jazz, without being asked, emptied out her pockets. The deputy lifted an eyebrow at the baton but said nothing. The pat-down was fast and professional. Jazz risked a glance over her shoulder to see Borden receiving the same treatment from a guy big enough to qualify for a Russian weightlifting team; he didn’t look as if he was enjoying it much. His briefcase didn’t make it. Neither did the contents of his pockets, or his cell phone.

They joined up on the other side of a gate, where another deputy led them along rows of silent, darkened cells.

“What’s with all the empty space?” Jazz asked. “Or are you telling me crime’s actually down in California?”

The deputy—his name tag read Manning—gave her an unreadable look. “Most prisoners have already been moved out to another facility,” he said. “Upstate. We’ve only got two active pods right now. Your guy is in the second one.”

They weren’t heading to the cells, though. The deputy turned them to the right, through an open iron-reinforced door, into a visiting room.

Jazz felt a definite creep along her back. The place was deserted. It even
smelled
deserted. A soft-drink machine glowed and hummed at the far wall, but the lights were at half power, and the kids’ area at the far side of the room with all its grimy, battered plastic toys lay silent and abandoned. The deputy grunted softly and flicked on a switch; fluorescents snapped on overhead, blindingly white.

“Where?” Borden asked. He looked informal. She couldn’t figure it out for a second, then realized that his tie was missing. Were they expecting him to hang himself? Or her to strangle him with it? Granted, the second part of that wasn’t out of the question.…

The deputy gestured widely toward the cubicles. There were six of them, all doors gaping open. All empty. “Whichever,” he said. “Go on in. Press the button when you want out.”

Meaning that once they were inside, the door locked behind them. Jazz forced a smile and headed for cubicle number one. It didn’t feel too bad until Borden crowded in with her, and then it was instantly too small, his heat too vivid against her skin. Their knees bumped as they tried to jostle their cheap plastic chairs for position. He muttered an apology as he elbowed her. She glared back.

They both froze for a second as the lock snapped shut behind them, and their eyes darted into a shared gaze. In his, Jazz read the same undertone of panic and frustration she felt. She deliberately forced herself to relax, nodded at him and folded her hands in her lap.

They sat in silence, waiting. The Plexiglas was scratched and warped, muddy with fingerprints. Some woman had kissed it at some point and left a smudged hooker-red imprint; Jazz itched to clean it.
And if
I
want to clean it,
she thought,
this place really must be filthy.

“Jazz,” Borden said.

“What?”

He was looking down at his right hand, which was curled into a loose fist on his knee. The top two buttons of his shirt were open, cotton hanging loose and limp around his long throat, and the skin there looked exposed and sleek and vulnerable. “I got angry with you, before. I’m sorry.”

Her lips parted, but nothing came out. She just stared at him.

“You need to quit doing this to yourself,” he said. There was a strange tension in his voice. “Hurting yourself. Jazz, you keep putting yourself in danger, and there’s no reason for it. You throw yourself in the way of every speeding truck hoping to get run over, and sooner or later, you’re going to—”

“You think I’m suicidal?” she asked, astonished. His loose fist tightened.

“I think you blame yourself,” he replied. “For McCarthy either being innocent in prison, or being guilty in prison, and that’s a no-win scenario. I think you don’t see a way it isn’t your fault, and that’s bullshit. You need to quit assigning yourself the blame.”

She felt anger fill her up like boiling water. “Look,
Counselor,
you don’t know me, and I don’t need your Psych One-oh-one crap about what I do or don’t feel. You don’t know Ben McCarthy, you don’t know anything about—”

“What makes you think I don’t know Ben McCarthy?” he interrupted, and met her eyes. Held them. “What makes you think I don’t know you?”

She had no defense for that. She resorted to pure fury, to reaching out and grabbing a handful of his jacket lapel and pulling him closer, but then the heat from his body washed over her and the smell of that warm, edible cologne, and the gentleness in his eyes…

“Jazz,” he said, and she’d never heard anyone say her name like that, with such infinite tenderness. “If you hurt me again I’m going to have to hurt you back. So please. Don’t punch me, okay?”

She felt herself flush. “I’m not—I wasn’t going to—” She let go of his jacket, but they were still too close together, alarmingly close, and her heart was racing so fast she could barely feel individual beats. “Back off, Counselor.”

“You use that like a shield,” he said. Still low and calm. “My title. You can use my name, you know.”

“Borden—”

“I’ve got another one.”

“Fine,
James.
Back the hell off.” But it didn’t sound right, even to her ears. It sounded weak and fragile and oddly uncertain. “Don’t do this to me. Not now.”

He was so close his breath was stirring the hair around her face. His eyes were tired and bloodshot, his freshly shaved face pale with exhaustion.

His smile, when it came, looked wounded. “Do what? Worry about you? Care what happens to you?”

“James—” It slipped out before she could stop herself.
Counselor
and
Borden,
those were things she flung at him to keep him at bay.
James
was a name that felt intimate on her lips, and from the sudden flash in his eyes, he knew it. “I don’t need your help.”

“I know,” he said, and it was almost a whisper this time. “You never need anybody’s help.”

It was utterly insane, but she couldn’t stop herself. She moved forward, a bare three-inch lunge, and kissed him. She felt him tense in surprise, then deliberately relax, and those lips she’d been staring at for the past long minutes were warm and baby soft and damp against hers, and the heat she’d been feeling that she thought was anger was turning into something else, a white-hot flare that burned down her spine and melted bone along the way. She started to pull back, but then Borden’s lovely manicured hands slid up her arms and ruffled her hair and cupped the back of her head and,
oh, my Lord,
his mouth opened and his tongue,
his tongue
like hot velvet stroking her lips, then sliding inside…

Somewhere on the other side of the Plexiglas came the harsh clang of a metal door slamming open.

Jazz gasped and jumped back, shaking, tingling all over, staring at Borden, who looked just as stunned and ruffled as she felt. His lips were damp, still parted, a little swollen and red. She wanted to touch them. No, she wanted to devour them. Again.

She swallowed hard, looked away and moved as far from him as it was possible to get in the narrow confines of the tiny cubicle. She heard him pulling in deep breaths, and out of her peripheral vision making fussy, nervous movements, smoothing his jacket, his shirt.

I can’t believe I did that.

It already seemed like a strange daydream, and she might have convinced herself it hadn’t happened at all, except that she could still taste him, still smell him on her skin and, oh, that felt so…good.

“Later,” he said quietly.

“In your dreams,” she shot back. Unsteadily.

“Yeah, I’m almost certain that will happen, too.”

On the other side of the barrier, she heard jingling metal. Shuffling shoes. And then saw a shocking orange blaze of a jumpsuit—Jazz thought irrelevantly that Ben McCarthy was wearing the same color, right now—sidle awkwardly into the frame of the window.

The legendary Max Simms had arrived.

Where McCarthy filled out his prison garb in flat planes and intimidating angles, Simms was entirely different. Slender, lost inside the ill-fitting outfit, with giant blue eyes and wispy white hair and a face that looked gentle and sensitive and old before its time. He stood maybe five foot five, at most, and his shoulders were stooped like an arthritic ninety-year-old. It looked like his restraints weighed more than he did.