Devil's Bargain by Rachel Caine Page B

asked. She hated hospitals. Hated the stiff, starchy sheets, the smell of disinfectant, the clean doctors. Hated the idea that she was lying in a bed that had probably seen more dead people than that kid in The Sixth Sense. Emergency rooms always smelled like blood and vomit, no matter how carefully they were scrubbed. “If I’m all stitched up…” She eased a leg over the side of the bed. And almost passed out. Ow. He grabbed it and moved it back.
    “You’re here overnight,” he said. “And there are some police who want to talk to you. They’re already talking to your friend.”
    Jazz had figured that. She could safely guess that what Lucia was saying was the truth, just not the whole truth. The two of them had been to the lawyers’ offices to consult about a partnership agreement. They’d been jumped by persons unknown. Case closed. Jazz figured she could leverage being shot to keep her statement short and sweet. If she had any luck at all, maybe she wouldn’t know the cops, and this would be…
    Behind the doctor, the big wood door eased open, and a slightly built guy in a cheap suit looked in. He had rough-cut spiked hair and cold dark blue eyes and a rubbery mouth that looked as if it might smile or smirk or scream at a moment’s notice.
    He looked at her as if she might be a corpse ready for autopsy, nothing but clinical interest.
    Apparently, luck was not on her side. God, she really didn’t feel well enough for this.
    “Stewart,” she said with a noticeable lack of warmth. He blinked at her. “You going to skulk or come in?”
    “Skulk,” he said. “How you doin’, Jazz?” He had a Bronx accent, usually stressed for effect, and she felt a familiar weary surge of dislike. Poser. She’d known him for nearly five years, and she’d never liked him one minute of that time.
    “Shot,” she replied shortly.
    “Yeah, so I hear. Doc, can I…?” He gestured from himself to Jazz. The doctor shrugged, stuck his hands in his lab-coat pockets and sauntered out. Stewart—Kenneth Stewart, not that she’d ever called him by his first name or ever intended to—pulled up a chrome-and-plastic chair next to her bed and sat down. He poked the IV bag with a fingertip and didn’t look at her as he said, “So. Long time no see.”
    “Yeah.” She didn’t want small talk. Her head hurt, and her side was starting to really ache. She suspected the painkillers were more Motrin than morphine. “You already talked to my friend?” She didn’t give him the name. If Lucia wanted to go undercover, she wasn’t about to blow it for her.
    “Friend?” he repeated blankly. Poked the IV bag again, then rang a fingernail off the screen of the heart monitor. “Oh, yeah. Luz something. Hermann’s talking to her. Pretty girl. I think I got the short straw.”
    “Me, too.” Not that Stewart’s partner Hermann was any great prize, either. “I want another detective. I’m not talking to you.”
    “Fuck you, Callender.” It wasn’t a casual, off-the-cuff insult between friends. This was a gut-deep venting of feelings, and she felt the menace behind it.
    “Same to you, Stewart.” A hot pulse of fury along her spine. Her hand curled into a tight fist, and relaxed. Much as she wanted to kick his punk ass, there was no way she could do it dressed in a backless gown with a through-and-through bullet hole in her side.
    “So, did anything happen to you I need to know about?” Stewart asked in a bored tone.
    “This is how you conduct an investigation?”
    “It is when I know the witness is a lying bitch who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit her in the—where were you shot exactly?”
    “See my previous fuck you comment. Fine, if we’re done, get the hell out. I don’t want to look at your ugly face anymore.”
    Without looking at her, he reached over and put his hand on her side. Over the bandages. “Does it hurt?”
    She didn’t move. Those twilight-blue eyes—on anybody else they might have been