“Okay, so what do you figure?” Jackie said, polishing off her ziti and meatballs with famished zeal. Her body had settled enough by midday to realize it had puked out all its nourishment. Laurel, on the other hand, picked mindlessly at a Caesar salad, pushing the leaves of lettuce around and nibbling on a crouton. Her glass of sparkling water had barely been touched.
“About what?” The absent tone indicated how well Laurel was listening.
“The case, girl. The weird vibes, the bloodless boy, freaky fucking ghosts.” She finally caught Laurel’s gaze. “What do you think?”
She stared at Jackie, hard and quiet, until Jackie finally turned away. “Don’t take this case, Jack.”
Jack? Christ, it was serious. The last time Jackie had heard her abbreviated name from Laurel’s lips was on a four AM ride home from a brawl outside a bar. It hadn’t mattered that the asshole had it coming. “You serious? Since when?”
“Yes, since my bad-vibe radar pinged off the map into next week somewhere.” She leaned forward over the table for emphasis. “This is bad news, Jackie. Let Pernetti handle it. He’s been whining to get his hands on leading something big. This case is… It’s all wrong.”
Jackie spit the mouthful of wine back into her glass. “What the hell, Laur? They’re all wrong. It’s our job to make them right again.”
“No,” she said, stern and quiet. “Wrong as in someone is going to get hurt.”
“Oh.” Jackie rolled her eyes, though she could not exactly laugh that one off. The last time that feeling had happened, Jackie’s ankle had been snapped in a high-speed chase gone bad. At least the crash had involved the bad guys, too. “Well, we didn’t sign up for the safety aspect of this job, you know.”
Laurel shook her head. “No. This is not in the same realm, Jackie. This is ‘don’t touch with a ten-foot pole’ sort of bad. It has a big glowing skull and crossbones stamped all over it.”
“Really?”
Laurel frowned at Jackie’s sarcasm, but then, how could she not make light of such things? She wouldn’t leave the case to someone like Pernetti and his super-sized, glow-in-the-dark forehead. Seriously, the man had to polish the damn thing.
“You realize that sort of feeling is exactly the reason not to give it over to some goon like Pernetti?”
“I don’t care. I’d rather see Pernetti get wheeled into the morgue than you, and need I remind you you’re a goon, too? Albeit a much prettier one.”
Jackie studied Laurel’s expression. One didn’t joke about seeing another agent in the morgue. It was bad karma. She knew from the last time a ghost was involved that if the shit really hit the fan, Laurel might actually fight her to get off the case, and that was not a scenario Jackie could win. Fighting Laurel would be like taking a bulldozer to the foundation of her being. The consequences would be too dire.
Jackie grinned at Laurel. “That’s why I always win.”
“Uh-huh. Get over yourself, goon girl, and promise me you will be very careful with this one.”
The cell phone buzzed in Jackie’s pocket, and she pulled it out to see that Denny was calling. She hit the button. “What’s up, Den?”
“Hey, Jack, thought I’d let you know we found an old coin beneath the boy.”
“You mean like something a coin collector would have?”
“Yep, looks that way,” he said. “It’s sealed up in plastic, but it looks to be very old if it’s real. It’s going downtown with the little evidence we have for now.”
“Give it to the geeks when you get there. We’ll be in soon. I want to see those pics you took also.”
“I e-mailed them to you a few minutes ago.”
“Already? How?”
Denny laughed. “Technology, Jack. You know, the cool stuff without triggers attached to them.”
“Ohhh, funny, man. It’s a good thing I like you, otherwise I’d have to inflict some bodily harm.”
“Promise?”
Jackie smiled, clicked off the phone, dipped the last of her bread into the sauce on the plate, and ate it with a wide-eyed smile. “They found an old coin under our boy. So, why don’t we go back to the bureau and see if the geeks can find out anything regarding that penny.”
“Promise me, Jackie. Be very careful with this one.”
Jackie could feel the heat of the finger pointing at her chest. The seriousness of Laurel’s voice tightened her stomach. “Okay,” she said, laughing off the tense moment, but she knew better. Laurel was never wrong about these things. “I promise.”