LITMIR.BIZ

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avoiding the question because I don’t want to answer it.”

      “Because …?”

      “Because it’s none of your business, Mr. McCarthy,” she said evenly, and took another bite. Pineapple, fresh and sweet and pulpy. She savored the juice on her tongue and the look of surprise on his face. “I helped Jazz get you out of prison, that’s all. I don’t owe you any information, any conversation, or anything else.”

      “Yeah? So what’s this?”

      “I said I don’t owe it. I can still give it of my own free will.”

      He’d demolished the omelet, and now he set his fork on the plate with a clink and took a drag of coffee from the heavy white cup. Around them, the well-groomed breakfast crowd in their expensive suits and trendy casual wear chatted and smiled. We’re both out of place here, Lucia thought, even though she seemed to fit seamlessly into the crowd. There was something different about McCarthy that spoke to the wildness at her core. It wasn’t his prison-roughened image.

      McCarthy smiled at her. “Okay, so you don’t owe me. I was hoping you liked me enough to want to answer, anyway.”

      “I don’t like anybody that well.”

      “Harsh.”

      “Pragmatic,” she countered. “I hardly know you, except that you might not be guilty of murder, but you’re surely guilty of other things. Add that to the fact that your friends and relatives were hardly crowding the gallery today—”

      His face shut down even further, hiding emotion. Lids drifted lower to hood his expressive eyes. “Let’s leave them out of it,” he said. “I was a cop, and my buddies were all cops. Cops stay away, times like these, until they feel better about the facts. Stewart’s not the only one who still, deep down, thinks I pulled the trigger on those people.” McCarthy stared at his coffee and took another deep swallow. “My brother would have been here, but he’s on a tuna boat this season. My parents—” He shook his head.

      She took pity on him. “I doubt they could have made the trip,” she said. “Your mother is ill, isn’t she?”

      “Old,” he said. “Your folks still alive?”

      She smiled noncommittally. “So I’ll forgive you the low turnout among your admirers. Still, it does say something, doesn’t it? To have more reporters than supporters?”

      She got a thin slice of a smile. “Careful when you cut me like that. You’ll have to buy me a new shirt. I’ll bleed all over this one.”

      “I’m tempted to buy you a new one whether you bleed all over it or not.”

      “That’s kindhearted of you.”

      “Call it fashion charity.”

      He was studying her again, with lazy interest. “I just can’t picture you and Jazz as friends.”

      “Why?”

      “She’s just—one of the guys, you know? Not so …” He gestured vaguely, letting her finish the sentence with whatever adjective seemed best. Wise of him. “I was surprised how good she looked, last time I saw her. Your influence, or the counselor’s?”

      He knew about Borden, then. Yes, of course he did. Lucia shrugged. “Maybe both.”

      “She’s not drinking so much.”

      “No.”

      “Not getting into fights.”

      “Well, we’re working on that part.”

      “Good luck with that.” He grinned, and caught the attention of a passing waiter to get a refill on his coffee. He drank it black as the devil’s heart. “So, if you’re not going to tell me anything, I’ll just have to tell you three things about yourself, Miss Garza.”

      “Is this popular at parties?”

      “A riot on cell block six.”

      “Then please, enlighten me.”

      “One, you manipulate people. Sometimes for their own good, but always to your advantage.” He sopped a piece of toast in a remaining bit of peach jam and ate it, watching her reaction. She kept her face bland, but felt the barb sink unpleasantly deep. “Two, you use your looks as deception. You look warm and girlie and elegant, but I’ll bet you can hand most guys their asses in a fight.”

      He was right again, of course. She didn’t allow herself to blink. “And three?”

      “How am I doing so far?”

      “We’ll see. And three?”

      He shrugged. “You’re lonely.”

      She laughed out loud. “Excuse me?”

      “You heard.”

      “Hardly!”

      “I didn’t say you don’t get attention. Every guy in here has checked you out at least once, and half the women, too. I said you were lonely. A woman as beautiful as you is nothing but lonely. Even when you’re with somebody, you’re wondering if they’re into you or the glossy package, and sweetheart, just from the fifteen—no, make that sixteen—hours that we’ve been talking, I can tell you that you’re high on the paranoid scale, anyway. So the point is, you don’t let anybody close these days.”

      It hit hard, under the armor, right in a soft place she didn’t know she had. Years of dealing with a string of men who’d professed love and delivered obsession. Years of mistrusting and holding back and staying cool.

      For a second, she hated those blue-diamond eyes and their ability to see everything.

      “You’re wrong. I’m not lonely. Far from it.”

      He gave her a slow smile. “That tells me something else about you. You think you’re a good liar. And hey, for most people, you are.”

      “Do you make a habit of insulting people who do you good turns?”

      “Usually they want something. Speaking of that, what is it you want?”

      Once again, he caught her off guard. “Me? I’m only here out of courtesy.”

      “Courtesy?”

      “It has something to do with manners. Perhaps you’ve heard of those.”

      “Sorry, not exactly popular where I’ve been.” She’d struck a nerve; she could see it in the subtle reactions of his face. “You just came in Jazz’s place, is that it? Second string?”

      Lucia took the insult without reaction. “I want her to be safe, yes.”

      “What about you? Aren’t you in just as much danger, if the two of you are supposed to be partners?”

      It was an excellent question, and one to which she didn’t have an answer. They were working for the Cross Society, but she had only the vaguest hints as to who those people were and how they operated; for all she knew, the danger that Jazz had run into head-on had come from someone inside the Cross organization.

      She’d seen cutthroat competition in nonprofit groups, but if true, that might be a new low.

      In any case, whether it was the Cross Society or—as their mysterious benefactors insisted—the rival Eidolon Corporation, they hadn’t sent soldiers after Lucia specifically; she’d only been in the vicinity. Jazz was the target. Then again, the enemy didn’t seem prone to doing gentlemanly things like firing warning shots.

      Lucia wondered if McCarthy had deduced why she’d taken a table in a protected corner that had no direct view from the windows.

      She’d also stayed vigilant for any hint of trouble. The only problem she’d identified so far was an overdose of cholesterol that was surely going to spell trouble for McCarthy’s arteries in the future.

      She

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