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.”
“Safe? Like where?”
Lucia’s smile flared impossibly white and gorgeous. Whatever she’d been about to say was interrupted by the arrival of Pansy, who poked her head around the door and waved a good-natured hello, then opened it wider as she said, “Guess who’s here?” She looked like a canary-fed cat. A well-satisfied canary-fed cat.
Standing with her, shuffling his feet uncomfortably and looking desperately as if he wanted to be anywhere else on earth, was Manny Glickman.
“Manny?” Jazz got up so fast she felt her throbbing head swim. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, raised his muddy green eyes to hers for a bare second, and then looked down. “I, um, was just—on my way to—”
“Manny,” Lucia said slowly, and got up, too. She took a couple of steps in his direction, and stopped when he backed up a little in alarm. He liked her well enough, Jazz knew, but Manny didn’t like anything coming at him that quickly. “Sorry. Listen, maybe you can help. You know something about security.”
“Pretty much everything,” he agreed, without any arrogance. “Why?”
“Jazz needs secure accommodations.”
Manny looked up sharply, and fastened a laser stare on Lucia. “What’s going on?”
Careful, Jazz thought, wishing she was telepathic. If she was going to be so god-awful special, she ought to at least have some particular power beyond getting thumped on and kind of enjoying it.
“Jazz has somebody after her,” Lucia said. “I don’t think she’ll be safe in her home as it is right now.”
Manny’s stare transferred to Jazz. “After you?”
She sighed. “Yeah.” Any second now, there would be a cloud of dust and an end to her relationship with Manny Glickman. Danger was something Manny just didn’t do. Not that he’d ever been Adventure Man, but his turn under the ground had stripped away whatever bravery he’d once pretended to own. Not that she blamed him. She knew she wouldn’t have survived it at all. “Never mind, Manny, don’t worry about it. You go on and—”
“You can stay with me,” he said. A simple, declarative statement. No shifting, no stuttering, no nervous flutters. He was rock still, his eyes steady and his face set. “There’s no place safer in this city than mine.”
Oh, God, Jazz thought, and a wave of hilarity cascaded over her. She saw Lucia bite her lip, eyes wide. Manny Glickman as a roommate….
“I won’t let you down,” he said, and suddenly all of the funny stuff fell away, and she was looking not at the screwed-up Manny she’d known for years, but at an entirely different person. Somebody who might have been able to pass the FBI’s stringent tests and personality profiles and background checks. Somebody who had strength and dignity and courage.
Somebody who’d always been there, underneath all of the panic and worry and tics.
“I won’t,” he repeated, and took a step toward her. “Jazz, let me do this. I want to help you.”
She had no idea why he was offering. “Manny, look, you don’t understand. People may be trying to hurt me. Kill me. This isn’t a game.”
He swallowed hard. She saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down convulsively, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He was trembling a little, but only a little, and he jammed hands into the pockets of his tan raincoat to hide it. “Fine,” he said. “Just, you know, leave it outside. Don’t bring it in.”
Lucia stepped smoothly into the silence. “You set the time and method for us to move her,” she said. “Just let us know.”
“Hey!” Jazz said. “Don’t I get—”
“No,” Lucia answered without looking at her. “It’s Manny’s call, not yours. Let’s face it, Jazz, you gave up the right to make the decisions when you decided to run off to L.A. and get a contract put out on your life. So from now on, you go nowhere without me. You live in Manny’s house. And you do not get a vote.”