The car felt small and intimate with the two of them inside of it. Borden drove competently, without any hesitation, although she knew he couldn’t possibly know his way around that well. Could he? She concentrated on traffic and taillights, on road noise and the peripheral glow of his face in the wash of headlights. When she looked over, she was struck by how…good he looked. A little rough around the edges, a little tired, a little worried. Human.
“Hey,” she said. He looked over at her, then back at the road. “I’m going to make sure nothing happens to him. You know that, right?”
“Right,” he agreed. “Make sure nothing happens to you, either, would you? As a favor to me?”
She hadn’t really noticed, but clouds had convened overhead while they were in the restaurant, and now big, fat raindrops began to pelt the windshield—a few at first, and then a silver shower. Borden activated the wipers. They were already on the freeway. Ten minutes, she thought to herself. Ten minutes and I’m at the airport, ready to get on a plane. This is not how I wanted today to end.
She drummed her fingers on the armrest nervously, watching the rain-smeared road, and was surprised when his right hand suddenly came down on her agitated left one, stopping her from tapping out a rhythm. He didn’t say anything. His long, tapering fingers wrapped slowly around hers, exploring. More sensual than anything she’d felt in a long time. This wasn’t reassurance, wasn’t a quick impersonal touch of the hand…this was something else.
She looked down, watching as he turned her hand over, palm up, and began to lightly trace fingernails down the center of it. She felt light-headed. Tense. Oddly out of breath.
“Come back safe,” he said softly. “That’s not a request, all right?”
“All right,” she agreed. Her pulse was hammering, and that was stupid, stupid. It was just skin, just a touch, not even a touch anywhere she could call intimate. But she could barely keep her voice level.
Borden reclaimed his right hand for the exit to the airport. She clenched hers into a fist, willing herself to stop feeling so…so…
She had no words for how she felt at the moment, except frustrated.
Borden pulled up at the curb, set his hazard lights and got out to grab her bag from the backseat. She was already out of the car by the time he’d managed it.
As she shouldered the strap, he stepped in closer and looked down at her. She looked up.
“See you,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She thought, for a blinding instant, that he was going to kiss her—the thought was right there, in his eyes, naked—and then something happened, something out of the corner of her eye, and she snapped around to watch…but it was just a car squealing up, a frantic father yelling at kids, people running late.
Normal life.
She turned back to Borden, but the thought was gone. He was behind a polite screen again.
“I should go,” she said, and nodded toward the door. He inclined his head, too. “Right. See you. Um…thanks for the ride.”
He didn’t say a word. When she looked back, he was still standing there, hands in his pockets, looking after her.
After negotiating security again, Jazz got on the phone to Lucia in the waiting area, exchanging information in short, vivid bursts.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Lucia asked as Jazz watched a family of five meander its way into the gate area. Mom, dad, three kids who should have been poster children for their various age groups. Toddler in a stroller, burbling happily. Six-year-old with a neon-pink Barbie backpack, from which Barbie herself peered, battered and well loved. A disaffected preteen who sat with his face buried in his Game Boy screen, kicking the legs of his chair. “Jazz?”
“Remind me never to get married,” she said.
“What brought that on?”
“Kids.”
“Ah. I think you’d surprise yourself.”
“Me? Hardly. Not the motherly type, me.”
“Depends on your definition of motherly.” Lucia sounded amused. “I think of you as a mother wolf, defending her cubs to the death.”
“Yeah, well, I think of myself more as the single wolf, defending myself. Sorry. What were you saying?”
“I was saying this is a nice chat we’re having, but I’ve got work to do. So, you needed something…?”
Jazz hesitated, kicking a foot out rhythmically, watching the shadow move on the floor. “Lucia. Would you do me a big favor?”
“Big?”
“Major.”
“Of course.”
She sucked in a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Pansy scanned some photos for me. Would you put them out on the wires, see if anybody can match the images for me? Not the last one. I know who that is.”
“Oh, yeah? Who?” Lucia sounded interested, not invested.
“Ben McCarthy.”
Silence. Jazz listened to the distant, constant hiss of dead air, and finally said, “You still there?”
“Yeah. What kind of pictures?”
“Potentially exculpatory pictures.”
“Ah.” Nothing in her partner’s voice now, which was something in itself. “After I put them on the wire—”
“No, you don’t need to do anything else,” Jazz hastened to say. “I’ll take care of it.”
“I could ask around.”
Jazz stared hard at her shoe. “I couldn’t—that’s a lot of favor.”
“If I can wrap up this case today, I have free time tomorrow,” Lucia pointed out. “And you’re not coming back for what, three days?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll go nuts.”
“Probably,” Jazz said, smiling. “But seriously, only if you have time, right? This isn’t work. This is—personal.”
“I know,” Lucia said.
“Be careful.”
“You’re the one flying off to L.A. without backup.”
Good point. Jazz looked around. Nobody seemed to be watching. They’d been free of surveillance for months now, after that initial bout of scariness. “I’m good,” she said. “No bullets whizzing as of yet.”
“Speaking of whizzing, I’d better get back to cleaning toilets.”
“Yeah, right. Listen, I’ll call you from L.A., all right? To check in.”
Lucia agreed. Jazz folded the phone just as the flight attendant made the first boarding call.
Chapter 8
S he’d seen the picture of Lowell Santoro, and it was a good thing she had, because otherwise she’d have completely missed him. By the term “film producer,” she’d have been expecting a flashily dressed, heavily bling-blinged guy, probably driving some overmuscled, over-priced convertible.
Lowell Santoro had on walking shorts, a staid-looking Hawaiian shirt and drove a Toyota. His sole concession to Hollywood seemed to be the sunglasses he wore, which were pretty fine, and made Jazz wish she’d thought to pack some, because the morning light was pretty fierce.
From the coffee shop across the street, she watched as Santoro parked in the lot of his office building. She sipped a pretty damn excellent coffee as he locked up his car and plodded up the walk to the front door of the lobby. She noted the time on her PDA, finished her coffee and got another to go. She went back to her rental car—an economy-class Ford, nice and clean, tons more comfortable than most copmobiles she’d ever used for stakeouts. Her small video camera and digital still camera lay on the seat beside her, along with her cell phone and her collapsible baton. Add some CDs, and we’ve got a party, she thought, and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel to the radio, which wasn’t half-bad, really.
She’d parked to be in the shade, with a kitty-corner view of Santoro’s car and a clear shot to pull out in a hurry if necessary. Not that she figured it would be necessary. This was her second day of surveillance, and she’d already gotten the clear sense that Lowell Santoro was a man of rigid habits.