LITMIR.BIZ

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tempted. That’s a hundred grand you’re talking about, not to mention the time and resources to devote to clearing my partner’s name. And an actual job would be a good thing, for the sake of my apartment rent, not to mention the gas-burning you’re so concerned about.” Jazz blew out her breath in an irritated sigh. “But you’re probably not into this thing, are you?”

      “What makes you say that?”

      “Oh, come on. You fly in from some supersecret mission looking like you dressed out of a Bond girl’s closet. You’re so hooked up that you can score a gun without leaving the airport, for God’s sake. Why would you tie yourself down with a partner? Particularly one that isn’t, you know, all spy-worthy?”

      Lucia blinked slowly. “When you put it that way,” she murmured, “it’s a very good question.”

      “Yeah. Well.” Somehow, this didn’t feel like a victory.

      “You don’t know anything about me,” the other woman said. “Yes, I have a job. I have a decent wardrobe. I have resources. That doesn’t mean—” She shook her head, frowning. “That doesn’t mean I’m not trapped, Jazz. Or that I don’t want out of the place I’m in.”

      She didn’t say anything else. Unsure how to take it, Jazz didn’t push things.

      She rolled up to her apartment building, cruising at a normal speed, and said, “See anything interesting?”

      “No.”

      “Yeah, me neither. Don’t you think that’s interesting, in itself?”

      No sounds or movement, all the way to her apartment. Jazz motioned Lucia away and took the lock-and-handle side of the door. She slotted the key into the dead bolt at arm’s length, staying well out of range if anybody decided to put a bullet through the door itself.

      Nothing. Lucia watched as the door swung open, then snapped her gun up into an effortlessly graceful firing position and flowed forward, shouldering the door flat against the wall with a soft bump. The speed with which she checked and dismissed blind corners was incredible. Jazz shut the door and dead-bolted it again, then went to the gun safe in the corner and keyed it open.

      The familiar weight of her H & K nine-millimeter pistol felt cool and heavy, weighing her down, grounding her against that feeling of having been blown off course by the day’s events.

      Lucia stopped appraising the room from a tactical point of view long enough to say, “I like your taste in colors.”

      “You’d be the only one, then,” Jazz smiled. The rug was olive green, the furniture a throwback to the worst of the seventies—dull oranges and duller golds, a truly obnoxious plaid that somehow captured all three colors plus a muddy brown for variety. She’d finished it off with a kitschy velvet painting of a matador and a print of one of Dali’s lesser works from his conquistador period.

      “I was being polite,” Lucia said, and ran her fingers over the gold armchair’s back. “Possibly even sarcastic. Tell me the place came furnished.”

      “Nope, it’s all mine. However, in self-defense, I did have to match the carpet. This was the best I could manage.”

      “Plus,” Lucia said thoughtfully, “it makes people think you have no sophistication. Which is all part of your persona, isn’t it?”

      That came as a shock. Not a pleasant one. “What?”

      “You, Jazz, are a lie. A subtle one. It probably works very well for you. Under all that ragged hair and frumpy clothes, you’re good-looking. You could make this place look sophisticated—you deliberately choose not to. I think you like having people underestimate you.”

      Jazz blinked, nonplussed. “That’s a load of crap.”

      “Yeah?” Lucia’s carefully shaped eyebrows rose and fell. “My specialty is in controlling perceptions. I do it consciously. I have to take command in a psychological way when I enter a situation. I have to make people believe that I’m capable of anything and everything to avoid a fight.”

      “You don’t strike me as the kind to avoid a fight.”

      “My point exactly,” Lucia said, and smiled. “I’m not nearly as strong as you are, Jazz. It’s better for me if I can avoid the fight instead of taking things head-on. Not that I can’t win if I’m pushed, but I can’t do it fairly, like you can. I fight dirty, and I try not to fight at all. Like most women, actually.”

      Jazz cocked her head, trying to get all that through her head; she knew, intellectually, what Lucia was saying, but she’d grown up fighting just as hard as her brother, and the idea that most women weren’t wired that way…it had always thrown her off. She’d blamed it on wussy girl attitudes about not mussing their hair or breaking a nail, but she had to admit, there was nothing wussy about Lucia. And she didn’t strike Jazz as somebody who admitted to shortcomings just for the hell of it, either.

      “Okay.” Jazz shrugged. “So maybe I like to sucker people in. You like to intimidate them into avoiding a fight. We can agree to disagree.”

      “Actually,” Lucia said, and picked up a particularly hideous ceramic bull getting ready to gore a gaudily gilded matador, “looking at this, for the first time, I believe we have something we can use to form a solid partnership.”

      “Because of my amazingly bad taste?”

      “Strengths and weaknesses,” Lucia said, and put the bull back in its place. “We complement each other. Also, I like your sense of humor.”

      “How do you know I have one?”

      “The bull.” Lucia smiled. “It’s anatomically correct.”

      “You should see the matador in the bedroom.”

      “It’ll be twenty-four hours before Manny gets back to us,” Jazz said about a half hour later. “You want to stay?”

      Lucia, who was sipping coffee from a plain black mug and watching low-playing CNN on the TV, said, “Why?”

      “Why not? I’d say you might have cats to feed back home, but women like you don’t have cats,” Jazz said, and made kissy noises at Mooch, who was peeking around the corner of the bedroom door. He froze, slitted green eyes wide in his smushed-in fluffy face, and darted back out of sight. “Women like you have, oh, fish. Colorful ones.”

      “I might be a dog person.”

      “The only animal you’d keep on a leash is a boyfriend.”

      Lucia laughed. It had a nice sound, easy and unselfconscious, and Jazz found herself smiling in return. “Mira, have you been through my closet? I thought I’d put all the leather away where nobody else could find it.”

      “Am I right?”

      “About the boyfriend?” Lucia still sounded on the verge of laughter.

      “About the pets.”

      She nodded. “Too much trouble. I travel.”

      “So, you can stay another day.”

      “Actually, I was thinking that the two of us might want to use the waiting time productively,” Lucia said, and finished her coffee in three gulps. “How do you feel about taking a flight this afternoon to New York?”

      “To see Borden.”

      “Yes.”

      She had to admit, she felt a little tug in her guts at the thought. Good tug? Bad? Not sure. But then she felt a wave of frustration roll over her. “Not possible.”

      “Why not?”

      God, she was going to hate admitting this. “I’m tapped. I’ve got no cash, and I’m already on the hook with Manny for three grand. I’d better not. You can go on, if you want to, and let me know what you think of the setup.”

      “I

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