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…