They sat in silence, surrounded by the fallen photographs, wrapped around each other for comfort, until Jazz rapped on the door and asked if everything was okay in there.
Lucia straightened, wiped her face free of moisture, and forced a smile to her lips. McCarthy, bleached of color by the lights, looked awful. She didn't expect she looked any better. "Nobody else needs to know," she said. "You and me. Nobody else."
"Jazz—"
"No. Nobody. Promise me."
"I promise." He gave her a wan, empty smile. "The least I can do."
"No," she said. "The least you can do is think of yourself. Whatever that is. Leave. Stay. Hate me. Love me. Do what's in your heart, Ben. Whatever that is, just do it. Quit making decisions based on what you think I want."
His eyes opened wider, and for a second he didn't move or speak. She wasn't sure if he was thinking or just feeling stunned. And then, without saying a word, he kissed her. A hot, damp, desperate kiss, tasting of tears. Wild, distilled passion. His hands rose to cup the back of her head, urging her closer, and his tongue nudged her lips apart.
She let him in.
Our choice, she thought, with what little conscious thought she had in that moment. One pure thing. Just one.
He broke the kiss with a tearing gasp and buried his face in the hollow of her neck. The moan that came out of him moved through her like a holy visitation.
"What the hell was that?" she asked, shaky.
"What I want."
She wanted to stay there forever, in the safe red light, suspended in the warmth of this moment, but she reached down and scraped the pictures together, and slid them into the envelope. He straightened up and put his hands on her shoulders, then her face. Thumb tracing her damp, swollen lips.
"Make it your choice, Lucia. Let them chew on that." She held the proof of her weakness in her hands, and the proof of her strength in her heart. "We will," she said.
They were all staring when she and McCarthy returned. Jazz opened her mouth to ask, but Lucia stopped her with a look. "Our business," she said. "It's nothing to do with anybody else. Right, Sirnms?"
He cocked his head to one side. "As you wish."
"I want this over. I want us out of your business, the Cross Society's business, Eidolon's business."
"That's never going to happen," Simms said, "as long as the Cross Society and Eidolon are in operation. Especially now." He gave her midsection a fast but significant glance. She sat down at the table and put the envelope in front of her. A silent reminder of just how high the stakes were now.
"Then we shut them down. All of them."
"You can't," Borden argued. "The Cross Society does do good, you know that! Look how many people you've saved because of the leads they gave you. You can't just—"
McCarthy, who hadn't spoken, turned toward him, fists clenched.
"What, now you want to beat on me?" Borden cried. "Fine. Let's go. I'm sick of your macho cop bullshit—"
"James, don't," Jazz said. For her, the response was mild.
"Yeah, James, don't," McCarthy echoed. "Be a good little lawyer and shut the hell up about what doesn't concern you."
"Back off, Ben." Jazz was up, suddenly, standing between them. "You want to take whatever this is out on somebody, hell, bring it on, I'd love to kick somebody's ass today. Might as well be yours. I'm pissed as hell at you, anyway."
"I don't need you to fight for me, Jazz!" Borden spat.
"Against Ben? You're kidding, right?" She held up her hands and backed out of the way. "Fine. You guys arm wrestle for biggest jerk in the room. Let us know who comes out on top. We've got bigger problems than this."
She was deadly serious. The tension in the room cranked steadily higher.
"Now." She turned back to Lucia. "You were saying…?"
Simms, significantly, perhaps, hadn't said a word. He wasn't watching the brewing confrontation. His eyes hadn't left Lucia, but she had a sudden eerie feeling that he was seeing through her, beyond her, into some limitless and terrifying distance.
What did I just change?
"You're a constant," Simms said slowly. "Eidolon would like to kill you, but there's no time line I can see in which you don't survive and—" he caught himself and glanced at the others " — and carry out the task that the Cross Society intended. In other words, unlike the rest of us, your fate is assured, Ms. Garza."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that you are a fulcrum upon which we can move the world." He looked grim suddenly. Tired, and every moment of his age, "You can do anything you want to do. And I hope you understand how grave a responsibility that is. I created Eidolon to help me understand what I was seeing, to right some of the wrongs in this world. And I learned that when you act with knowledge, fate reacts against you. The more good we did, the more evil there was, as if it was being bred specifically to counter us, like antibodies. I wanted to stop. I established the Cross Society to work at cross-purposes to Eidolon, to try to undo some of the terrible consequences." He sagged further in his seat. "The world works on balance. I understand that now. There can be no greater good, because once it is greater, it is no longer good."
They were all silent, watching him.
"There is something you can do," Simms said. "Destroy it. Bring it down. You are the only one who can do that."
Borden shot up again, eyes wide. "You can't."
"She can. She will. More than that, Mr. Borden, she should."
"I can't be part of destroying the Cross Society!"
"Don't have to," Jazz said. "Eidolon's the one who's got the upper hand. We go after them, right, Simms?"
He nodded. "Right."
"Problem solved." Jazz stood up. "L. Ben. Let's get busy."
Borden moved toward her. Intimately close, trying to hold her eyes. "What about me?"
She put a hand flat on his chest. "Your decision," she said. "I love you. I want to be with you. But you have to choose now, because I'm not going to be a cog in somebody else's machine the rest of my life. We're expendable to them, and personally, I don't consider you expendable at all."
He hesitated, and with a heart-stoppingly tender gesture, covered her fingers with his own. Jazz was not a small woman, but his hand dwarfed hers.
"Quit," she said. "Quit the damn Society. Please, Borden."
He bent forward and kissed her. A long, thorough, sweet kiss, as if there was nobody else in the room.
"I have to fight for what I believe in," Borden said.
"Even if the guy who founded it doesn't believe anymore. I can't change my heart that easily. I'm sorry."
Jazz blinked. For a second there were tears in her eyes, and in the next, they were gone, drained away, and something hard and unyielding had replaced them.
"Me, too," she said, and shoved him away with an explosion of force. He staggered back, hit the pillar behind him and rebounded. She sidestepped, added momentum with a straight arm across his shoulder blades, and he sprawled facedown across the table. Jazz stepped in, grabbed his left wrist and twisted it up, then patted her pockets absently. "Dammit. Anybody got handcuffs?"
Any of them might have—Ben, Jazz, Lucia—but instead, it was Pansy Taylor, looking rumpled and fresh from bed, wrapped in a robe, who walked in on bare feet and tossed a gleaming set of police issue on the table.