Page 56 of Devil's Due

Lucia’s eyes felt grainy and sore, and her whole body ached. Hard to tell whether it was due to the infection, the antibiotics fighting it, or plain, garden-variety exhaustion.

Welton Brown had not been happy to find two murders in his lap after having pointed Susannah Davis in their direction. That really wasn’t good, since Brown was one of the few detectives with whom Jazz had stayed on good terms. A private investigation firm needed the cooperation of local police.

But Lucia was too sick and too tired to do any fence-mending, and when Brown dismissed them, Lucia was only too glad to go.

“You’re going straight to the hospital,” Jazz said, once the police car had dropped them off in the parking lot of the Raphael. This, Lucia thought mournfully, was one hotel that she wouldn’t get any cooperation from in the future. A pity. She really liked the ambience, and the sense of history.

The hospital visit was exactly what Lucia had anticipated. She had a fever—no surprise—and an elevated white count. They gave her a course of IV antibiotics, which took the better part of two hours.

“I’d like to keep you here for the next few days. We really need to keep an eye on that fever,” Dr. Kirkland informed her earnestly, as they unhooked her from the IV.

“I’ll do it myself.”

“If I send you home, I want you torestthis time, all right? Your partner told me you’ve been working. This isnotoptional, Ms. Garza. Rest, sleep and take your medications. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.” She swallowed and forced a smile. “How bad is it?”

He stared at her for a long few seconds before he said, “It could be very bad. But with rest and medications, you can beat it in about a week. You didn’t have a massive exposure, and your immune system is strong.”

Jazz looked as if she was holding back an “I told you so” with all her strength.

“I’ll drive you home,” she said, and walked Lucia out to the parking lot. The Hummer looked gigantic, like theQueen Maryin a pool full of paddleboats, and Lucia couldn’t imagine how she was going to summon the energy to climb up into the cab.

She paused, one hand on the door, because she felt someone watching her.

There was a boxy blue sedan sitting a few parking spaces down the row, and someone was standing next to it. For a tired, disorienting second she thought it was Omar, and then her mind and her eyes cleared.

Ben McCarthy.

He didn’t move, and he didn’t approach them. He’d either done some shopping or located some of his clothes in storage; he was wearing a knee-length coat against the night’s chilly breeze, something in a warm amber that glowed in a passing car’s headlights.

Lucia nodded toward him. Jazz turned to look, and walked over to join him. Lucia checked the parking lot. You could never be sure anything was completely safe.

McCarthy was listening to Jazz recount the scene inside the hotel room when she joined them, and the look he threw toward Lucia was unreadable. When Jazz stopped—she had a cop’s terse delivery, nothing but the bare facts—he said, “Omar didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to go down without a fight.”

Lucia felt something clench hard inside. She’d been avoiding thinking about Omar. “It had to have been fast. Very fast.”

“Son of a bitch. I liked the guy.”

She felt the guilt like a lead ball in her throat. She kept swallowing, but it didn’t go down. Metallic taste in her mouth. She felt sick and hot and utterly undone.

“So the cops are keeping the widow Davis for a while?”

“A few more hours, anyway,” Jazz said. “They’ll decide whether or not to charge her, depending on her story. But my guess? This Leonard guy, he was a cold-blooded killer. Cold-blooded enough to cut Omar’s throat and decide to rape her afterward. Probably would have done the same for her when he was done. Seemed to me like he had practice at that kind of thing.”

McCarthy folded his arms. He was watching Jazz, but Lucia could feel part of his attention fixed on her, warm as a spotlight. “You guys okay?”

“I need to make arrangements for Omar,” Lucia said dully. “He’s got family back East. I need to call—”

“Let me,” Jazz said. “How many times do I have to tell you?Rest.Take your pills and rest. That’s your job now. You give me the numbers. I do the calls.”

Lucia nodded.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “I should go home.”

“I’ll take her,” McCarthy said. With no particular emphasis, just simple words. He and Jazz exchanged a look—another one that Lucia couldn’t read, whether it was complicated partner-language or just a malfunction of her own normally competent abilities—and he opened the passenger door of his car. “You get home, too, Jazz.”

“Been a busy couple of days for a guy straight out of prison,” she observed.

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