Devil's Bargain (24 page)

She felt the guard’s shrug. “Not going anywhere,” he said, and the door clicked and locked again behind her.

Bad decision,
she thought instantly, and wondered from Simms’s crazy point of view what kind of futures had just imploded or expanded. What factors had shifted.

Which was just…nuts, wasn’t it? To believe in a thing like that?

“You think you’re playing Eidolon Corporation. Right?”

Simms glanced at Borden, who leaned elbows on the narrow table beside her and said, “When Simms started trying to change the course of futures that he thought were dangerous, some people at Eidolon disagreed. Some of them for idealistic reasons, some for practical economic reasons. Eidolon is an inside-trader’s dream. When you know the course of events, imagine how much profit there is to be made…but Simms didn’t agree. So when push came to shove, Eidolon needed to lose Simms but decided that Simms’s abilities were too valuable to let go. They found somebody as backup. Somebody with similar, ah, abilities.”

“His name is Gilbert Kavanaugh,” Simms said. “Gil for short. You’d like him, he’s actually very amusing, for a psychopath.”

“And let me get this straight. You claim to be able to see the future, and you didn’t see it coming when he, what, framed you for murder?”

Simms nodded, a neat, economical motion.

“I told you. Certain people—”

“Yeah, blank slates, yadda, yadda. You can’t read his future?”

“No.”

“Or your own, I’m guessing.”

Simms’s smile was thin and discomforting. “No.”

“Or mine.”

“Not at present. There are times yours is clear, and at others, not. Like Mr. Borden’s. Like Lucia Garza’s.”

“Explain to me why you want to hire people whose actions you
can’t
predict. Assuming this isn’t a giant steaming pile of crap, of course.”

“Of course. Because,” Simms said very calmly, “the ones I
can
predict cannot change anything. Their fates are set, for better or worse, unless one of the random pieces acts. I have gone to considerable trouble to hire all that I can, but of course Eidolon has deep pockets, as well.”

“You’re delusional.”

“No.” Simms shrugged. “But I do think it is a wonder I’m not insane, don’t you?”

“Five bodies buried in your backyard say different.”

Simms stared at her for a long, long moment, and she had that sensation again, as if a floodlight had swept over her and illuminated every cell in her body, every dark thought, every secret. It made her dangerously angry.

“Take her home, Counselor Borden,” Simms said. He sounded suddenly tired, and not at all happy. “I’ve had quite enough excitement for one day, and I believe Gil is going to attempt another clever move before bedtime. I will need all my concentration to undo the mistakes of today.”

Borden reached across Jazz and punched the button. She knocked his arm away, rose to her feet and leaned both palms flat on the table, staring at Simms’s small, pale face. “I think you’re full of crap,” she said. “We make our own choices, and you’re just a con man and a murderer.”

Simms didn’t smile this time. He looked thoroughly exhausted, as if the life was draining out of him. “Part of that is always true some of the time,” he said. “And part of it is true all of the time. I leave it to you to decide how to divide the statement. It’s been lovely to meet you, Jasmine.”

“It’s not mutual,” she said, and turned toward the door as it opened behind her. Moving into the larger room with its harsh fluorescent glare and empty ringing silence felt like escape, as if she’d been under some threat she hadn’t identified.

She looked back. Borden was still standing there, speaking softly to Simms. As she watched, Simms nodded, stood up and shuffled away with a deputy at his side.

Borden looked grim and angry, and he didn’t say a word as they followed their own deputy back past empty cells and through sally ports. They both spoke in monosyllables as they signed papers and collected their belongings again, then were escorted back into the harsh desert sunshine. The car was still waiting, idling in the falling darkness.

When they were back on the road, Borden clicked open his briefcase, rooted around in it for a second, and then handed her a plane ticket. Flight 802. Los Angeles to Kansas City.

“He didn’t know,” Borden said. “I didn’t tell him we were flying back tonight, and there’s no way he could have known which flight we were on. Think about that.”

She gave him a long, considering look, and said, “And if I were a half-decent con man, I might know how many flights there were to K.C. from LAX in a day, if my mark was heading there. I might make a pretty educated guess as to which one she’d be on, given the time of day. Looks like magic. Smells like crap, Counselor. Sorry. No sale.”

He shook his head and avoided her eyes. She licked her lips and suddenly—shockingly—remembered the warm pressure of his mouth, and felt something in her plummet again, lost and liking it.
It’s a long ride back to L.A.,
some part of her whispered. She tracked it down and throttled it into silence.

Borden said something under his breath that sounded like, “He said you’d be like this,” and they spent the entire ride back in silence.

Not touching.

To Jazz’s well-concealed disappointment.

J
azz had done such a good job of putting Simms out of her mind that it wasn’t until she was queuing up to the ticket line behind a petite blond woman dressed in a fuzzy pink scarf and heard the ticket agent say “Ms. Walters? May I see your ID please?” that the whole thing came rushing back, like ice through her veins. Simms’s cool, precise voice whispered in her head.
There will be two survivors, a blond woman named Kelley Walters and a businessman, Lamar Qualls. Kelley will be traveling to visit her sister in Kansas City.

The blond woman moved off. Jazz stared after her for a few seconds, then moved up and handed over ticket and ID. Borden was right behind her. No hitches. They breezed through security and took seats at the gate with twenty minutes before boarding.

If Borden had heard the woman’s name, he didn’t give any indication. He’d stopped along the way to buy a copy of the
New York Times
and was deep into the business section. He’d stopped looking at her at all. Jazz, for her part, felt ancient and creaky, thanks to the day’s exertions. Her muscles were telling her they badly wanted a rest, and she was pretty sure she looked like she’d gone a few rounds as a punching bag. She told her various aches and pains to shut up, and strolled over to the restroom when she saw the blond woman get up and head that way.

It’s crap,
Jazz told herself. She did her business in the stall and came out to find Ms. Walters—Kelley, no doubt—washing her hands. She was a lovely pink rose of a woman, neat and friendly, flashing an immediate smile when Jazz took the sink next to her.

“Late flight,” Jazz said, and yawned as she yanked paper towels from the dispenser. The other woman nodded.

“At least we get to sleep,” she said. “And there’s no traffic at the terminal when you get there. But there’s something really eerie about looking for a cab in the middle of the night, you know?”

“Nobody meeting you?”

Kelley shook her head, causing blunt-cut blond hair to brush her cheeks. “I’m visiting my sister and her family. No sense in getting them out of bed at oh-my-God in the morning. I’ll just take a cab and get a hotel. I was supposed to be on the six-o’clock flight, but I got bumped. What a pain flying is these days.”

Jazz was good at reading people, good at sensing setups and deceptions, and she felt nothing. Heard no false notes.

If Kelley Walters was a plant, working as part of the larger con orchestrated by Max Simms, she was the best damn liar Jazz had ever seen.

Jazz went back to her seat. Borden had finished the business section and moved on to sports. She picked up the paper and scanned it without really reading, watching the other passengers who were getting ready to board. Not a huge crowd, this time of night—maybe thirty, altogether. A few college-age kids, with the ubiquitous backpacks. A gaggle of businesspeople who must have all worked for the same firm—they had the look of people who’d traveled together so often they no longer had to make conversation. One middle-aged man, overweight and prematurely gray, sat slumped in his chair reading a mystery novel. His battered, much-traveled carry-on roller case had a large tag that read Qualls.

Jazz felt a sense of unreality close around her. Walters, she could dismiss as a deliberate setup. Qualls, being part of a group, wasn’t so easy. Still, Simms and the Cross Society
could
have gotten hold of the passenger list….

Flight 802.
She stared at the number and found it suddenly hard to swallow.

“Borden,” she said, and stopped. He looked up. His brown eyes were tired and bleary.

“What?”

“Maybe we should—”

He folded his newspaper. “What?”

“Nothing.”

The boarding call went out for business class. Qualls and the rest of the flock of suits headed for the ramp. Jazz checked her ticket. She and Borden were in business, as well. She shouldered her bag and followed his long-limbed stride past the checkpoint, through the hollow booming tunnel, up to the accordion end pressed against the smooth skin of the airplane…

She stopped. Just…stopped.

This is stupid,
she told herself.
Move. Get on the damn plane.

Borden had heard the same things she had. He wasn’t hesitating.

She took a deep breath and edged past the tired smiles of the flight attendants to her seat. Borden eased in next to her with a sigh and buckled in tight.

“Borden,” she said again. “Listen, what he said—”

“About the crash?” He sounded utterly calm. “You weren’t listening, Jazz. There’s an eighty-two-percent chance it won’t happen. Believe me, the longer you’re around Simms, the more you’ll trust his odds.”

“But—”
There’s a woman named Kelley Walters back there. And that guy over there, he’s named Qualls.

Borden went back to the sports section. “Just stay buckled in,” he said. “Trust me. You’ll either believe soon, or you won’t. And there’s an eighty-two-percent chance it’ll actually still matter in the end.”

The engine blew out, by Jazz’s watch, at 10:03 p.m., California time. She was next to the window and had a view of the sudden flare of fire. She hadn’t gone to sleep, though the plane was nearly silent and most of her fellow passengers—including Borden—had nodded off.

They all woke up fast when the loud
bang
shuddered through the aircraft, and the plane lurched sharply to starboard. Jazz gasped and punched fingernails into the armrests, wishing the damn plane came with crash harnesses instead of ridiculously inadequate lap belts; next to her, Borden snapped awake and grabbed for support, too. “Hold on,” he said.

She stared out the window at the whipping fire and smoke pouring from the ruined engine. The plane hit rough air and tilted again, waking screams from the back cabin. The engines growled, shaking the airframe, and Jazz felt her ears pop.

She grabbed for Borden’s hand.

“Eighty-two percent,” he said. It sounded like a prayer, or a chant. “Eighty-two percent. We’ll be okay.”

It didn’t feel like that. It felt like her stomach had dropped somewhere out of the cargo bay and was falling, weightless, to earth. About to crash into a row of sleeping suburban houses.
He didn’t say how many of them it would kill,
she thought,
how many more innocent victims.
Maybe, to Simms, nobody was innocent.

She felt her fingers twine tight with Borden’s. His were shaking. A whine built up at the back of her throat, and she felt the plane falling, falling, tilting…

And then, suddenly, there was a surge of power, and it leveled out. They were saved.

She let out a startled gasp and heard the cries behind her fade out. Borden was still holding her hand, but he wasn’t crushing it anymore, and she could hear him breathing again. Deep, deliberately slow breaths.

“See?” he said. His voice sounded an octave higher than normal. “Eighty-two percent. We’re going to be fine.”

She turned toward him in the dimness as the Fasten Seat Belts sign flashed on with a belated
ding,
and the captain announced in a businesslike voice that no, they were not going to die.

“He’s not bullshit, is he?” she asked. “Simms. He really can do these things.”

“Well,” Borden answered, “the alternative is that he has enough power sitting in a maximum-security prison to have arranged for a commercial airliner to be sabotaged just to convince you. Which one would you rather believe?”

She managed a pale, shaky smile. His fingers wrapped around hers, warm and comforting, and she let them stay there all the way to the terminal.

It was nearly five in the morning by the time Jazz flipped on the lights in her office and dropped bonelessly onto the couch. She let her head drift back against the cushions and stared at the ceiling, blank and drained, and saw Borden’s long, sharp-chinned face bend over her.

“Okay?” he asked. He hadn’t ever put his tie back on, she realized. His suit jacket was off and tossed over the arm of a chair, drooping just the way she felt, and his once finely pressed shirt was a mass of wrinkles. Unbuttoned about one too many fastenings to qualify as businesslike.

“Yeah,” she said. “For somebody whose head exploded several hours ago.”

“Believe me, I understand.” He sank down on the couch next to her. “Remember the night I walked into the bar with your letter?”

She wasn’t likely to forget it. “You looked like an idiot.”

“I felt like one.”

“Did Simms tell you what to wear?”

He didn’t answer. He reached out and smoothed a stray lock of hair back from her face. She turned toward him, cheek resting on soft cushions, and met his eyes.

They both froze.

His hand was still brushing her skin, fingers light and warm, but there was nothing casual about the look on his face. Dangerous, that look. Especially here, in the dark, after adrenaline and a hard day and the destruction of the universe as she knew it, with a comfortable couch to lie back on.

Really, really dangerous.

Jazz moved away a little. Just enough to put space between his hand and her skin. He took the hint and leaned away, elbow on the back of the couch, staring at her but not quite as nakedly hungering. “I should call Lucia,” she said.

“This early?”

He had a point, and the couch felt far too comfortable. “I should go home,” she said. “Then again, I should be here in three hours.”

“Sleep,” he advised her, and pulled her legs into his lap. She couldn’t honestly remember when it was she’d allowed him to get that close to her, allowed herself to be touched with that much freedom. His hands felt huge and burning hot through her clothes, points of fire on her skin. She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath and concentrated on the sensation of his palms moving lightly across the backs of her calves, massaging. He stripped off her shoes and let them drop to the floor.

She didn’t mean to fall asleep, but there was something so achingly soothing about the warmth of his body near hers that she dropped into a field of black behind her eyelids, and was gone.

Jazz woke up alone, to the blaze of overhead lights. She blinked, coughed and dragged herself upright, wishing for hair-trigger reflexes and managing more like a blunt object.

Lucia was framed in the door, paused in the act of walking into the room, staring at her with an expression of utter surprise.

“Hey,” Jazz muttered, and ran both hands through her hair. She didn’t even want to think about how she looked. There were bag ladies going through Dumpsters who probably looked better.

“Hey,” Lucia said cautiously, and closed the door behind her. “Ah…were you supposed to be back today?”

“No. Change of plans.”
I’m marked for death,
Jazz started to say, and decided to hold that back for later, after coffee. “Where’s Borden?”

“Was he here?” Lucia set her purse down and swung dark hair back over her shoulder with a practiced swing of her head, smiling like the Mona Lisa. “And is there something I should know about this?”

“Nothing interesting.”

Lucia pulled a chair up and sat down, elbows on her knees in a pose Jazz realized was a mirror of her own. Only, of course, Lucia was dressed in an olive-green pantsuit with a peach silk blouse, flawless makeup, and didn’t look as if she’d ever in her life had a black eye, a chipped nail, or a short night’s sleep on the office couch.

“What happened?”

Jazz didn’t intend to tell her all of it, but that’s what came out. All of it. From the saving of Santoro’s life—which, if one believed Simms, wasn’t the greatest of all possible good deeds—to the creepy prison conversation, to her own newfound status as Eidolon’s Most Wanted, which by extension endangered all of them. She dug out the letter and handed it over. There was a lipstick smudge on it that baffled her until she remembered the lip print on the Plexiglas in the visitor’s cubicle. She’d forgotten about it when she slapped the paper to the surface. It looked now as if somebody at Eidolon had given her a sloppy, openmouthed kiss as a parting gift.

Lucia took it in without comment or question, until Jazz finished, and then looked up. “Do you believe it? Any of it at all?”

That was a tough question. At five in the morning, she’d believed a hell of a lot more than she did sitting in the office, with morning light streaming in through the blinds and the smell of coffee beginning to percolate through the air-conditioning system.

“Some,” she finally said. “Look, one thing’s for sure—he didn’t arrange that demonstration last night with the plane, and the chances of it being a lucky guess? Zero. Well, probably so close to zero that you couldn’t see them without a microscope.”

“And the thing about trying to prevent the end of life as we know it?”

“I have no idea,” Jazz admitted. “Combine delusions with an actual weird ability, what do you get?”

“Something scary. Something very scary.”

“No shit.” Jazz mussed her hair again, and saw Lucia grimace. “What? Don’t I just look like the hottie of the month?”

“You look like you could use a bath,” Lucia said, with brutal honesty. “And another haircut. I’ve never seen anyone who can grow out of one as quickly as you.”

But Jazz could tell that Lucia’s mind wasn’t on fashion and hair, not anymore. She looked stone-cold serious behind the frivolous words, and her mind was racing a million miles an hour. This was the Lucia Jazz knew and liked.

The one who could shoot the eye out of an ant at a hundred feet.

“Precautions,” Lucia said. “First things first, you don’t go anywhere without Kevlar. They’ve taken shots at you before, they will again. Also, we start with standard risk-assessment protocol. You never get into a car without it being checked for explosives or sabotage—”

“Lucia, come on. Seriously.”

“I’m being perfectly serious. You never get into a car with anyone you don’t know. We upgrade security on your apartment…no, scratch that, we abandon your apartment and move you someplace safe. No forwarding address.”