A commotion at the end of the block caught her attention, and she heard, “Let me through! I need to get through.”
Then a deep male voice gave a shout of surprise, a splash of pale pink amidst the dark blue uniforms ß ashed into view, and Mitchell took off running.
“Lemme go!” Sandy yanked her arm from the viselike grip of the ofÞ cer who tried to restrain her and rocketed down the sidewalk.
“Sandy!” Mitchell caught her around the waist and engulfed her in a near-suffocating embrace. “Jesus. Sandy. Sandy. God.”
“Whoa, rookie.” Sandy tried to squirm free, but failed. Then something about the vehemence of Mitchell’s reaction penetrated her haze of anger and fear, and she stopped struggling. Instead, she slipped a hand around the back of Mitchell’s neck and caressed her. “Take it easy, baby. What’s the matter? Dell? You’re shaking all over.”
Mitchell buried her face in Sandy’s neck, afraid for anyone to see her face.
Shocked, Sandy rocked back. In a low, gentle voice, she asked,
“Baby, what? Why are you crying?”
“She’s wearing your jacket.” With one arm around Sandy’s shoulder, Mitchell turned her back to the group of curious cops and swiped her sleeve across her face. “Come on,” she said, walking Sandy further down the sidewalk out of earshot. “Are you hurt? Did he touch you?”
“Who? No. Trudy never came back, and I…What about my jacket?” Sandy’s eyes widened. “Trudy has my jacket. I went straight to the diner from Chen’s, but she said she had something to do Þ rst. It
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was so cold, and she didn’t have a coat. I waited an extra hour, but she never came.”
“You split up?”
Sandy nodded. “Trudy was supposed to meet someone. Some private deal, she said, but she wanted to talk after that. I said I’d wait for her at the diner.” Sandy searched Mitchell’s face, her own a mask of apprehension. “What about my jacket, Dell?”
Mitchell stroked Sandy’s cheek with her free hand, still holding her too tightly, still unable to believe she was real. “Trudy’s dead, honey.”
Sandy sucked in air as if she’d been punched in the stomach and clutched Mitchell’s hand. “How?”
“Shot. Did you see someone following you last night?”
“No, but Trudy got hinky in the restaurant and wanted to leave right away. I knew something was wrong, but she wouldn’t tell me what.” Sandy stared at the yellow crime scene tape at the mouth of the alley. “Is that where she is?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, baby.” Sandy turned into Mitchell and clutched the front of her jacket with both hands. “You thought it was me. Oh, I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”
Mitchell shook her head and kissed Sandy’s forehead. “It’s okay.
You’re all right.” Taking several deep breaths, Mitchell forced what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I gotta go back to work, honey. But I think the lieutenant will need to talk to you as soon as possible.”
“Okay. Sure.” Stunned, Sandy still clung to Mitchell.
“Here,” Mitchell said, slipping out of her jacket and carefully placing it around Sandy’s shoulders. “It’s freezing out here and you’re…well, you’re not wearing enough.”
Reß exively, Sandy slid her arms into the sleeves and then pulled the too-large garment closed with both hands. “Where should I go?”
“Take a cab to Sloan’s,” Mitchell said immediately, pulling her wallet from her back pocket and extracting some bills. “Stay with Michael until I come for you, okay?”
Fisting the cash, Sandy nodded, glancing toward the alley. “Are you sure it’s her?”
Tenderly, Mitchell kissed Sandy’s forehead again. “Yes. I’m sorry, honey.”
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“Be careful, rookie. You be real careful.” Sandy placed her open palm against Mitchell’s chest and fanned her Þ ngers back and forth slowly. “I love you.”
Mitchell covered Sandy’s small hand with hers and squeezed gently. “I love you too.”
v
Catherine arrived twenty minutes after Sandy. When she stepped off the elevator into the loft living room, Michael was waiting. Catherine leaned forward and kissed Michael’s cheek. “Hello. How are you?”
Michael smiled. “Much better. Thank you.” She extended a hand to take Catherine’s coat. “Sandy’s in the kitchen.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No,” Michael said with a careful shake of her head. “I’m Þ ne.
Sloan is downstairs with Jason already, waiting for Rebecca and the others to return. Thanks for coming. I thought…” She stopped, smiling faintly. “Is it all right that I called?”
“Perfectly,” Catherine said reassuringly, slipping her arm through Michael’s. “There’s been altogether too much violence for everyone lately. Let’s go talk.”
Sandy sat at the breakfast bar, her hands laced around a white porcelain mug from which steam tendriled into the air. She glanced up at the sound of Catherine and Michael’s approach, but said nothing.
“Hello,” Catherine murmured as she passed behind Sandy to take the stool on her far side. “Michael told me what happened. I’m so very sorry.”
“I think it might be my fault,” Sandy said in a voice so low Catherine almost couldn’t hear.
“Why do you think that?” Catherine nodded her thanks to Michael, who set a matching mug in front of her. The smell of jasmine and oranges drifted to her on a plume of steam.
“Someone probably got suspicious after the bust last week, and Trudy is the one who brought me there. Whenever the cops show up, they always blame us.”
Catherine thought of the fact that both her lover and Sandy’s were cops. At the moment, however, Sandy was viewing everyone in law enforcement as being on the opposite side of whatever divide
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had existed in her life, and her allegiance to the other young women who shared her desperate struggle was clear. “Do you think there’s a possibility that Trudy’s death could be unrelated to what happened at the Þ lm studio?”
Sandy shrugged and pushed her mug back and forth in a slow semicircle on the gleaming granite countertop. “I suppose. There are always plenty of people who might want to make a point by coming down on one of us. Pimps, dealers, johns. You name it.” She made a deprecating sound. “And nothing makes a statement quite like a body.”
“What about Trudy?” Catherine might not have questioned Sandy, except for the fact that the girl appeared to be ready to shoulder so much of the blame for Trudy’s death. Even without knowing all the circumstances, Catherine doubted it could be as simple as that. And she cared for both Sandy and Mitchell too much to let Sandy accept the burden of guilt all by herself. She tried not to think about the fact that her own lover was very likely going through the same agony of self-recrimination at that moment. “Was she in trouble with anyone that you know of?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. She was weird about something.”
“I can imagine how it must feel to you right now,” Catherine said gently, patting Sandy brieß y on the back. “But try to remember that the guilty person here is the depraved individual who killed her. No one else.”
Sandy angled her body slightly and Þ nally met Catherine’s eyes.
“Frye will make them pay.”
“Yes, she will,” Catherine said with certainty. “She’ll see that justice is done.”
v
“Let’s go over it again,” Rebecca prompted gently.
The entire team was seated around the conference table, everyone in their usual seats, except this time, Catherine and Sandy joined them as well. Mitchell, at Rebecca’s direction, moved to the far end of the table, out of Sandy’s line of vision. Mitchell had hesitated only a second before tossing Sandy an encouraging smile and changing chairs.
Catherine sat beside Sandy, a comforting presence.
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Sandy drew a breath and repeated what she had already said numerous times. “We met at Chen’s a little after two. We’d just gotten our food when Trudy started acting…Þ dgety, like something was wrong. I asked her, but she just said ‘nothing.’”
“What did you tell her was the reason you were meeting?” Rebecca asked.
“I didn’t have a chance to tell her anything. We set up the meeting through the phone tree, so I could only leave her a vague message. I didn’t know who else might get it before it got to her. I said I wanted to talk to her about the extra work.” She shrugged. “I Þ gured she’d know I was talking about the porn shoot, because that’s the only thing we ever did together.”
“Did she say if she told anyone about the meeting?” Watts inquired.
“No, and I don’t think she would. She’s been pretty careful about keeping her location quiet—that’s why we were using the message tree.
She was freaked by what happened.”
“And you didn’t see anything unusual in the restaurant?”
“It was crowded. At that time of night, down there, there’s always a lot of weirdos around. I didn’t notice anyone who was more creepy than usual.”
“So maybe,” Watts said, turning his attention to Rebecca, “Trudy recognized the guy from somewhere else. From one of the video shoots or maybe the clubs where she danced.”
“That might explain why she wanted to leave so quickly, and also why he followed her and not Sandy,” Rebecca agreed.
“Trudy was the target,” Mitchell said quietly.
Rebecca nodded. “I’d say so.”
“Then why not take her out on the way to the restaurant before anyone had a chance to see him? Why risk someone remembering his face?” Sloan put out to the group at large.
“Because maybe,” Watts offered, “he wanted to see who she was meeting.”
Sandy stiffened and Mitchell cursed.
“That’s possible,” Rebecca said quietly. “It’s also possible that this was the Þ rst time she’d come out of hiding since the raid last weekend, and he was Þ nally able to pick her up. It might have been coincidence that she was with Sandy.”
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Watts grunted. Every cop in the room knew that there were no coincidences.
“So the question is,” Rebecca continued, “what did Trudy know that was important enough to get her killed?” She stood abruptly and looked around the table at each person. “We’re missing the key, and we’ve been missing it since the beginning. What did Trudy know that someone was afraid she would tell us? Sandy?”
Frowning in concentration, Sandy stared at the tabletop, her words coming slowly. “Well, she knew about the sex shoots, but she already told us that.”
“She knew the guy who set up the shoots,” Mitchell offered.
Rebecca shook her head. “No good. The feds have him in custody, and the porn ring is already compromised. There wouldn’t be any point to eliminating her now if that’s all she knew.”
“Payback,” Sandy said ß atly.
Rebecca’s expression didn’t change. “Maybe. What else?”
“She knew the location of the Þ lm studio,” Watts noted. For a moment he looked pleased, and then his grin faded. “Except it’s the same deal. We already know that too.”
“All right,” Rebecca said. “Let’s look at what we know—
everything revolves around Trudy and those Þ lms. If it’s not who, and it’s not where, then what else is there?”
The room was silent until Catherine said quietly, “When?”
Rebecca narrowed her eyes. Watts hummed under his breath.
Mitchell shifted forward in her seat. Both Jason and Sloan reached for pads of paper and began jotting notes.
“Let’s assume that’s it,” Rebecca eventually said. “Let’s say when the porn Þ lms were made is important. We know that Trudy got other girls to do some of them.” She focused on Sandy again. “What did she say about those times?”
“She said…she said sometimes the regular girls couldn’t do them, and then this guy would ask around for some of us.”
“‘Us’ meaning prostitutes?”
Sandy’s chin came up. “Yes.”
“And who exactly are the regular girls?”
“I’m not really sure,” Sandy said. “There’ve been a lot of new girls in places like Ziggie’s in the last year or so. Dancers. Prostitutes.
Both.”
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“All right. Let’s put that aside for the moment and just say that the regular girls were busy. Busy doing what?” Rebecca made an impatient sound when no one answered. “Come on, people. Give me something here.” She’d just spent the last two hours looking at the brutalized body of a dead girl, a dead girl she’d help to put in that alley, and for a few minutes, she’d thought it had been Sandy. The shock of that had rocked her, and the frustration and pain had her strung tight as piano wire.
“Sex party?” Watts suggested.
“Could be. I wouldn’t think anyone would worry about hiding that information, unless there were high-proÞ le clients. Judges. DAs.
Cops.”
“We haven’t found anything suggestive of that in Beecher’s records,” Jason interjected. “And it seems that that would be the kind of thing he’d be into. Nothing in his calendar stands out.”
“Keep looking,” Rebecca instructed. “Some kind of drug transfer, perhaps. Maybe the girls were muling and weren’t available to do the videos those particular nights.” She made a note in her small black notepad. “Sloan? Can you run a computer check on the narcotics busts for the last twelve months—cross-reference with organized crime, prostitution, anything that might tie this together.”
“On it.”
“Jason,” Rebecca continued, suddenly energized. “Comb through Beecher’s computer and the computers conÞ scated during the raid.
Find out the dates of all the live video broadcasts. Let’s look for some kind of pattern there.” Then she focused on Sandy. “What exactly did Trudy say about the nights that she Þ lled in for the video shoots?”
“Just what I said earlier,” Sandy said, weariness and stress edging her voice with impatience. “Every few months, is what she told me. I didn’t ask for dates.”
“I need speciÞ c dates.”
“I’ll ask arou—”
“No,” Mitchell said forcefully. “Whoever shot Trudy saw you with her. You’ve been made. It’s not safe.”
“I’ll be careful.”
This time, it was Rebecca who spoke. “No. Mitchell’s right. I want you off the streets.”
“Wait a minute,” Sandy protested. “You can’t—”
“I’ve got an idea,” Jason interrupted. “I can pull the videos from
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the conÞ scated computers, at least all the ones that were downloaded and saved. And these guys save everything. Sandy can screen them for me. She ought to be able to tell the ones that have street girls in them.”
“Perfect,” Rebecca said with satisfaction. “In the meantime, I want Mitch back in Ziggie’s tonight. Watts, you and I will be backup.”
Watts snorted. “Great. I get to watch the door again while he gets the T&A.”
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Saturday Afternoon
How are you holding up, Detective?” Catherine asked as Mitchell slumped into the chair opposite her desk with a sigh.
“Not bad.” Mitchell resisted the strong urge to lean her head back and close her eyes. She’d slept very little the night before, especially after awakening at three and realizing that Sandy had not returned to the apartment. She’d paced until daybreak, when she’d Þ nally given in and called Rebecca for help.
Catherine regarded her with a compassionate smile. “Sure?”
“I’ll make it. I need to be sure that all my paperwork is in order.”
“It is Saturday, and—”
Uncharacteristically, Mitchell interrupted. “I know, but the lieutenant is a stickler about these kinds of…” She trailed off, casting Catherine an apologetic look.
“And?” Catherine prodded with the barest of smiles.
“And as long as I tell her I’m cleared for duty, she won’t care about getting the forms Þ led.”
“This is so you can work tonight? The surveillance Lieutenant Frye was talking about this morning?”
“Yes,” Mitchell said, her voice gaining strength as she sat up straighter. “I’m ready.”
“You’ve had a rather momentous few days.”
Mitchell huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. Actually, it’s been a really momentous week. I get stabbed, my sister shows up unexpectedly after two years, and then I Þ nd a body I think is my girlfriend.”
“And despite all of that, you want to undertake this assignment tonight?”
“Of course.” Mitchell looked confused. “This is it. This is when it
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all starts coming together, and after this morning…” Her voice caught unexpectedly, and she blinked in surprise.
“Tell me about this morning,” Catherine urged.
For a moment, Mitchell remained silent, her eyes distant, remembering. Then she twitched as if awakening from a dream and focused on Catherine’s face. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
Catherine nodded wordlessly.
“She’s got this stupid short, red, fake-leather jacket.” Mitchell laughed, the sound undercut with pain. “She looks really hot in it, but the damn thing is worthless as far as keeping her warm is concerned.”
Mitchell stared at her lap, her hands curled over the tops of her knees.
“Trudy was wearing it, but I didn’t know that. I saw the body, the blood, the red jacket.”
Mitchell fell silent again, the agony of the memory written across her face. Catherine had a sudden ß ash of Rebecca lying in a pool of blood, her skin white, her chest unmoving. She experienced the terror again, the empty desolation. Her heart aching for the young woman across from her, she murmured, “You thought it was Sandy.”
“Yeah,” Mitchell said, her voice hoarse, her Þ ngers white. “I thought she was dead, and I felt something inside of me…freeze. Like all the life was leaving my body and there was nothing left behind.”
She shook her head, then met Catherine’s eyes, her own bleak. “It hurt so much.”
“I know,” Catherine said softly. “Does it still hurt?”
Mitchell took a shaky breath and nodded. “Some. I mean, I know she’s all right. But I still…feel it.”
“Your head knows she’s all right, but your heart will take a little while longer to believe it.”
“I almost didn’t come this afternoon because I didn’t want to let her out of my sight.” Mitchell smiled crookedly. “She’s starting to complain that she’s suffocating.”
Catherine laughed. “Do you think she means it?”
“Probably a little. She’s pretty independent.”
“I noticed. How do you feel about that?”
“Most of the time I think it’s pretty great,” Mitchell conceded.
“But when she insists on getting in the middle of things where she might get hurt, I’m not too keen on it.”
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“And have you talked about it?”
Mitchell grinned. “Uh…maybe more like shouted about it.”
“But you’re handling it?”
“We’re okay. I drive her crazy, but she knows I’m doing it because I love her.”
“Good.” Catherine regarded Mitchell intently for moment. “Is there some other reason, besides not wanting to leave Sandy, that you didn’t want to come today?”
Mitchell looked down at her heavy black motorcycle boots, considering, then shrugged one shoulder. “I thought you might tell me I can’t go back to work.”
“Why did you think I would say that?”
“Because of this morning. I didn’t handle it so well.”
“Oh? I didn’t notice that anything was wrong at the conference.”
Other than the fact that you looked like you’d been through the wringer.
“Was there some kind of procedural problem in the Þ eld?”
Swiftly, Mitchell shook her head in denial. “Not that kind of screwup. I mean, I think I handled everything okay. Followed protocol.
But…”
“But?”
Mitchell sighed heavily. “I pretty much fell apart when I thought it was Sandy. I kind of couldn’t think. Then…well, then I heaved in the gutter.” She grimaced, remembering, still chagrined. “Jesus. I can’t believe I did that.”
“Don’t you think it’s natural for someone to have an extreme reaction when they believe someone they love has been killed?”
“I’m a cop,” Mitchell said immediately. “I’m supposed to be able to handle it.”
“Handle that kind of loss? How?”
“By doing the job. By just…doing what has to be done.”
Catherine struggled to be objective. Mitchell sounded eerily like Rebecca, so certain of what must be done and so very certain she could trade her humanity for her duty over and over without slowly dying.
God, what makes them do this?
Wishing desperately that she understood, Catherine knew with a sinking heart that she might never Þ nd the answer to what made her lover who she was, what made this young woman believe that it was possible to bury that much pain for the good of a…a job. Not a job. The
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job. Suddenly, she realized that she had never asked the right question.
The answer wasn’t to be found in understanding why they did what they did. It was all about how the work was an extension of who they were. “What does being a cop mean to you?”
Mitchell’s brows drew down sharply at the unexpected question.
Taking her time, she formed her answer. “It means taking all the things that are important to me, about who I am and what I believe, and bringing them together in one place. When I’m a cop I’m me, more than any other time in my life except…” She smiled. “Except when Sandy and I are making love.”
“When you’re being a cop and when you’re with the woman you love,” Catherine said quietly. “That’s when you’re you?”
“Yes,” Mitchell replied solemnly.
Catherine considered the idea, considered all she knew of her lover, all she had learned from Dellon and from other police ofÞ cers over the years. She believed it. She still didn’t entirely understand it, but she accepted that the essence of their being, their self-deÞ nition, was intimately shaped by their responsibility, dedication, and pride in being police ofÞ cers. Her responsibility at the moment was determining if this one police ofÞ cer could safely function, regardless of how critical it might be to Mitchell to fulÞ ll her role on the team.
“You seem to like being undercover. Is it stressful?”
“No,” Mitchell admitted. “Not when I’m Mitch. Mitch is…”
Struggling, she met Catherine’s eyes and found only acceptance. “Mitch is me. Part of me, anyways. I just let that part come to the surface, and it’s not work.”
“I’ve wondered,” Catherine said. “Do you have to think about behaving like a man, or…how does that happen for you?”
Mitchell grinned. “It comes pretty easy. It’s not just clothes or the co—other stuff. When I’m Mitch, and people relate to me like I’m a guy, it’s easy to stay in character. Sure, it helps to look the part, to have the right equipment in my jeans, but a lot of it is about how other people see me. Sandy helps a lot.”
“How?” Catherine watched Mitchell’s face come to life, saw the energy return to her eyes, saw her body straighten with renewed strength. She wasn’t entirely certain whether it was the mention of Sandy or Mitch, but something had infused Mitchell with excitement and purpose.
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“She digs Mitch. She makes it work for me. She never lets me forget who I am when I’m him.” Mitchell made a wry face, considering her words. “Did that just make any sense?”
Catherine laughed. “I think so. Having Sandy believe in Mitch, and relate to him with consistency and sincerity, makes it easier for you to project his personality.”
“Yes.” Mitchell grinned. “Having her have the hots for Mitch helps me be him.”
“I think that’s what I just said,” Catherine murmured, and Mitchell laughed.
“I can see that the undercover portion of the assignment is not a problem for you. What about the rest of it?” Catherine asked, suddenly serious. “Are you concerned about the danger?”
“Concerned?” Mitchell pondered the idea. “No. It takes some getting used to, never knowing exactly what’s going to happen, but I feel prepared. Being a cop is just like being a soldier. You train, you know you’re ready, and whatever happens, you deal with it.”
“Speaking of soldiers,” Catherine remarked evenly, “Erica was a bit of a surprise.”
“Yeah, well, she hasn’t been part of my life for quite a while, so I never thought to mention her.”
Catherine made a sound of assent, watching Mitchell’s face.
“Okay,” Mitchell conceded. “I don’t like to talk about her.”
After a moment, Catherine asked, “Has seeing her yesterday changed how you feel at all?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s going to be a lot harder to put her out of my mind now.”
“It must take a lot of work to keep your twin out of your mind.”
For the merest instant, Mitchell closed her eyes. Then with a sigh, she said, “It’s impossible. Most of the time I don’t think about her, but then at odd moments, I remember something we did or something she said, or I’ll want to tell her something…and she’s not there.” She took a deep breath and sighed again. “Then it’s really tough.”
“Now…with all that’s going on with this investigation, is probably not the best time to explore your feelings concerning the estrangement with your sister, but at some point, I think you should.”
Slowly, Mitchell nodded. “So…you and I, we could do that?”
“Yes, we could.”
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“Okay,” Mitchell said as if that settled the matter. Then she leaned forward, her gaze intent. “So, will you clear me to get back to work?”
Catherine didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
v
Mitch sat on the edge of the bed, leaning forward to pull on his right motorcycle boot. Sandy scooted around behind him and threaded her arms around his neck, running her hands back and forth over his chest.
“Remember, Ali said you couldn’t ride the bike.” Sandy kissed the back of his neck.
“I won’t,” he replied, reaching for the other boot. His leg ached when he stood too long or stretched too far. But basically, it didn’t bother him. The stitches hadn’t yet been removed, but the incision was healing Þ ne, and he rarely thought about it. “Jasmine will pick me up in her car.”
“I could come with you to the Troc,” Sandy suggested. “I am supposed to be your girlfriend, you know.”
“You are my girlfriend.”
“So, I’ll come.”
“I’m going to Ziggie’s after the Kings Þ nish their show.”
“I know. I’ll catch a ride home with someone.”
Mitch angled around on the bed until he could see Sandy’s face.
He grinned. “Uh-huh. Anybody who sees us together will really believe that I’m going to leave you to go out clubbing with the guys.”
Sandy ran her Þ ngertips along his jaw. “You look good. The shading is just right. Clubbing with the guys, huh. That’s what you call it? Watching a bunch of girls dance naked?”
“I’m not watching the girls. You know that.”
“Oh yeah, sure. I bet you keep your eyes closed the whole time you’re in Ziggie’s. I’ve seen the way those tables are placed. You’re practically at eye level with their—”
“Come on, San,” Mitch protested, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her sideways into his lap. Her arms automatically came around his neck, and he nuzzled her throat. “I’ll be working, and even if I wasn’t, the only girl I ever think about is you.” He kissed her
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neck, then rubbed his cheek against her breast. “All the time. I think about this all the time.”
Sandy smoothed her Þ ngers over the short hair at the back of his neck before guiding his mouth to the peak of her breast, murmuring her pleasure when he took her nipple into his mouth. The thin material of her camisole molded to her breast from the moisture of his lips, heightening the sensation as it tightened around her ß esh. “I know how you get,” she whispered, shifting her hips against his crotch, “when you’re geared up like this.”
Mitch groaned. “How? How do I get, huh, honey?”
“Horny.” Sandy leaned back, caught the bottom of her camisole in her Þ ngers, and lifted it to expose her breasts. Watching Mitch’s face, she cupped one small, Þ rm breast and ß icked the nipple with her Þ nger.
“Just remember, I’ll be waiting…” She lost her breath as Mitch’s mouth closed Þ rmly on her again.
Back arched, both hands clasped behind Mitch’s neck, Sandy rocked in his lap while he moved from one breast to the other, torturing her nipples with kisses interspersed with tiny bites. Within minutes, they were both gasping.
“You know what you’re doing to me, right?” Mitch groaned, both hands circling her breasts, squeezing rhythmically. He lifted his hips to meet Sandy’s as she ground down against him. “You know how bad I need you right now, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Sandy gasped, her head thrown back, eyes closed, her hips rolling over the prominence between his thighs.
“You trying to make me come in my jeans?”
A slow smile curved over Sandy’s face as she opened her eyes partway, her expression dreamy and soft. “Can you?”
“Keep riding me like that, you’ll Þ nd out,” Mitch growled.
Sandy shifted with one ß uid movement, reseating herself so that she faced him, her legs wrapped behind his hips as she sat in his lap. The thin barrier of her silk panties rested over the bulge in his crotch. Breath coming fast, she rubbed herself on him in short, fast circles, bearing down harder with each rotation. “I might…beat you to it, baby.”
Captivated by the ß ickering images of pleasure racing across her face, Mitch cradled her hips in his palms and pulled her to him, increasing the friction between them. “Do it, honey. Let me see you come on me.”
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“I’m going to,” she said in wonder, clutching his shoulders, rocking now in sharp, erratic jerks.
His own need forgotten, he tore his gaze away from her face long enough to look down, his stomach tightening at the sight of her passion soaking the denim stretched over his cock. The sight was enough to make him come, but he held back, concentrating on her—timing his thrusts to the lift and fall of her hips. “That’s it, honey,” he whispered.
“That’s it.”
She gave one startled cry and stiffened in his embrace, pressing down so hard against him he thought he’d burst. Then she collapsed into his arms, soft and warm, making small, broken sounds of contentment.
“Oh yeah,” Mitch muttered, pressing his face to her damp hair.
“I’m gonna look at some other girl after this.”
“Okay,” Sandy replied drowsily. “But no touching.”
“Not ’til I get home,” Mitch promised. “But then, I’m gonna do a lot of touching.”
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sunday, Early Hours
You doing okay?” Jasmine asked as she sidled close to Mitch in the semicircular booth that faced the stage.
“Great.” He tried not to stare at the performers, young women Sandy’s age, most of them built like her—Þ rm and sleek and limber—
and barely postadolescent. He couldn’t think about Sandy and the years she had been available for the titillation and arousal of strangers, not and do the job he had to do. Between him and the bodies gyrating a few feet away, the air hung in a blue-gray cloud of smoke and dust ß ecks that drifted in desultory waves, stirred by the motion of the dancers. Two dozen rapt voyeurs were gathered around at tables or booths, their faces cast in deathly pallor by slanting beams of light from the recessed spots focused in three glaring columns on the raised central platform. Generic strip music blared, and Mitch had to lean close to make himself heard.
Jasmine smelled of some exotic spice and a hint of something darker.
Despite the dim lighting, her slender form, made sleeker by painted-on black slacks and a plunging vee-neck top, was inÞ nitely more alluring than the naked bodies on display. “You see anyone interesting?”
In the last week, they’d assembled photos of dozens of suspected midlevel Mob members from police Þ les and surveillance images—the crew captains, their lieutenants, and the street soldiers who did the dirty work—but Mitch hadn’t seen anyone he recognized.
“No,” Jasmine said. “They’re here, somewhere. Probably in a back ofÞ ce. Chances are the lieutenants are all keeping a low proÞ le because of the arrests last week. They usually send their soldiers to do the real work anyhow.”
Ken Dewar slid into the black leather-covered booth next to Mitch and handed out bottles of beer.
“Thanks,” Mitch said. “Find anybody worth checking out on your travels?”
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“Not yet, but the night is young,” Ken replied, sipping his beer.
“It’s the usual crowd—same bartender as last week too. I don’t recognize the dancers tonight, but in this kind of work, they turn over pretty fast.
Some john beats them up, they get sick, they get addicted. They don’t last long.”
Mitch’s stomach twisted as he remembered the bright promise in Sandy’s eyes and the sleek, smooth lines of her body. He swore to himself that she was never coming back to this life. “Have you ever…
dated any of these girls?”
“For more than one night?”
From the other side of the table, Phil snickered.
“Doesn’t matter,” Mitch answered. “I was wondering if you ever went home with one of them.”
Ken, bulkier than Mitch in his chest and shoulders, the barest suggestion of a beard darkening his angular jaw, shook his head. “They don’t take you home. They do you in the back hall or the john. These girls don’t date.”
“They don’t date or you don’t ask them out?”
“Why would we?” Ken asked with no suggestion of censure in his voice. “They’re all working girls. If that’s your pleasure, a Þ fty will get you anything you want.”
A muscle on the edge of Mitch’s jaw twitched, and he carefully kept his voice even. This wasn’t about Sandy. It wasn’t about him. This was about the job. “I don’t know—you guys don’t strike me as the hit-and-run types, and it wouldn’t be the Þ rst time some guy tried to rescue one of them.”
He intentionally took a swallow of his beer and let his gaze drift over the woman who danced closest to them. She was nude, bathed in an unforgiving light that revealed the faint sheen of sweat covering her body, which was slightly thinner than was healthy, but attractive nonetheless. Her breasts were high and Þ rm, her belly long and sensuous, her legs suggestively sinuous. As the music pulsed, she squatted with her hands on her knees—legs spread, hips rolling—opening herself for their inspection. He wasn’t aroused, but he couldn’t help but look at her. When he did, she smiled and extended a hand with a come-hither motion. He feigned interest, letting his eyes follow her hand as it dropped down between her thighs. “She’s hot.”
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“Yeah,” Ken said dismissively, “but she’s not going to have your babies. These girls don’t settle down. It’s too late for that.”
“So you don’t know where they live, who they really are?”
“Never thought about it,” Ken acknowledged. “Besides, like I said, they’re not here that long.”
They’re not here that long.
There’ve been a lot of new girls in the clubs the last eighteen months.
“How long?”
“Huh?” Ken asked, angling his body and craning his neck as he followed the particularly acrobatic maneuverings of a tall blond working out on a pole.
“How long are they usually here?”
Ken seemed to pick up on the urgency in Mitch’s voice and Þ nally gave him his full attention. “Somebody catch your eye?”
“Maybe.”
“With that little hottie you have at home?” Ken’s tone was incredulous.
“I didn’t give her a ring yet.”
Ken looked skeptical, and Mitch Þ gured the Kings’ leader wasn’t buying his story. He wouldn’t either, not after getting one look at Sandy.
“I’m…looking for someone I saw last week. Maybe she’ll be back.”
“It’s not like I actually counted,” Ken said.
“But you noticed.” And if you noticed, there must be a pattern.
“Yeah,” Ken agreed thoughtfully, turning to the other members of his troupe. “Hey, guys, listen up.”
Mitch waited impatiently while the other guys talked.
“What’s going on?” Jasmine asked.
“Remember what the lieutenant has always said—it has to do with the girls?”
“Yes, why? You have an idea?”
“Maybe.”
Ken turned back. “Okay, we think two months, no more than three.”
What exactly did Trudy say about the nights that she Þ lled in for the video shoots? Lieutenant Frye had asked Sandy.
Every few months, is what she told me.
“I need to hit the head,” Mitch said abruptly. He looked around
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the table at the other kings and Jasmine. “Anybody need a beer or anything?”
As the group chorused no, he slipped from the booth and headed back to the bar.
“Back again, huh?” the bartender from the previous weekend asked in a bored tone as he wiped down the bar.
“Best show in town,” Mitch replied. He pulled a folded twenty from his front pocket and slid it across the bar. “Let me have a Bud.”
The bartender took his time squeezing out the rag and folding it carefully before reaching into the cooler under the bar and extracting a dripping bottle of beer. As he took the bill and turned toward the register on the narrow counter underneath the mirror opposite the bar, Mitch said, “Keep the change.”
After ringing up the sale, extracting the change from the cash drawer, and whisking it into his pocket, he swung back around to face Mitch. “Something you want?”
“Irina,” Mitch said. “She here tonight?”
The bartender smirked. “Setting your sights pretty high, aren’t you, stud?”
Mitch lifted a shoulder. “She liked it pretty well the other night.”
“You’d have better luck with one of her girls.”
“She’s like, what, their keeper or something?”
The bartender’s face hardened. “You ask a lot of questions.” He leaned his elbows on the bar and peered over it, his gaze sliding down to Mitch’s crotch. “I can think of one or two who might go for what you got in there.”
“How much?” Mitch asked, his heart pounding but his voice steady.
“Depends on what you’re after.”
“Just some company.”
The bartender laughed. “Yeah, and my dick don’t get hard watching those girls up there either. You gotta spell it out, or no deal.”
“All right, I want to fuck, but not back there in some corner. I want to take my time.”
“It’s here or nowhere.”
“I’ll pay for a room. There’s plenty of rent-by-the-hour places around here.”
“No deal. The girls don’t leave this place.”
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Mitch watched the guy’s eyes, trying to judge how far to push.
“Five hundred for an hour.”
The bartender shook his head. “You get a room in the back. Take it or leave it.”
“I want Irina.” Mitch hadn’t seen her so far that night, but somehow he sensed that she was the key. She was the constant. He was praying that she would remember him and still be interested.
“You must have a lot in those jeans, boy.”
“It’s not how much you got, it’s how much you do with it.”
The bartender stared at Mitch impassively for a long moment, then cracked a smile and Þ nally laughed out loud. “Yeah, and you got the balls too. I’ll see what I can do, but it’s not gonna be tonight.”
He tilted his chin toward the stage. “Those are new girls. Irina always keeps close tabs on them when they Þ rst start working. She won’t hang around tonight.”
“Let me talk to her. Maybe tomorrow night.”
“You must have a hard-on that won’t quit.” The bartender laughed again. “But then, yours never does, does it.”
Surprisingly, he sounded just a bit jealous.
“Working around here, I’m surprised yours ever lets up either,”
Mitch said.
“Ah, you get used to it after a while.” He sighed. “Look, I’ll see what I can do, okay? But you’re gonna have to keep it in your pants for tonight.”
Mitch dropped his hand between his thighs and squeezed. “It’ll be a challenge.”
“Big balls, boy, big balls,” the bartender muttered as he walked away.
v
Mitch stopped with the bottle halfway to his lips as a hand came around his middle from behind and dropped into his crotch.
He registered the unmistakable press of breasts against his back and the brush of warm lips over his right ear. Unprepared for the sudden onslaught of sensation, he forced himself not to shudder.
“Greg said you wanted to talk to me,” the silky, accented voice he remembered murmured.
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“Not just talk,” Mitch replied, covering the hand that cupped him and squeezing her Þ ngers around the fullness in his jeans. The Þ rst time she’d touched him like this, he’d been just as unprepared and far less used to the sensation of packing. She’d made him hot, made him hard, and he’d been frightened by his inability to control his arousal. This time, he was aware of the undeniable pleasure of the pressure, but it was manageable. “Did Greg tell you about that?”
She kissed his neck, twining her other arm around his middle, keeping up the subtle rhythmic, rocking motion of her hand between his legs. “He mentioned you might have something for me.”
“You know I do,” Mitch said, shifting her hand away and spinning on the stool until he faced her. He spread his legs, cupped her rear in his hands, and pulled her into the vee of his crotch. Her pelvis bumped against his cock, and his stomach tightened. He ignored the thrum of pleasure in his belly. “Hi.”
“What is it that you want, new boy?”
Mitch shook his head. “It’s all about what you want.”
She curled one arm around his neck, her breasts against his chest.
“That is not how men treat sex.”
“I’m an unusual guy.”
She smiled, a smile of true pleasure, and trailed her Þ ngers over his jaw. “You are not like the others. I like that.”
He judged her to be in her early twenties, dark-haired, blue-eyed, pale pale skin. Eastern European, Russian perhaps. Her accent placed her somewhere there. Her body was lush where Sandy’s was slender, her breasts fuller and heavier beneath a strapless top that came to just above her nipples. Her buttocks tightened beneath his palms as she rubbed herself back and forth over him.
“But you are still a guy.” She laughed. “I can tell.”
“Can we go somewhere?” he asked, surprised to hear himself sound breathless.
“You are ready so soon?” Smiling, she looked down at his jeans and pressed her hand over the bulge in his crotch. “But you’re always ready, no?”
“Sometimes a lot more than others.” He grinned and edged back as subtly as he could, because the stimulation was starting to cloud his mind. “Right now would be one of those times. Please, can we go somewhere…private?”
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She appeared thoughtful, as if considering his words, then surprised him by leaning forward and kissing him softly on the lips.
“Anyone else, I would make them wait. Perhaps forever. You let me decide, and I like that too. I think I might like to see just how different you are.” She kissed him again, a slow slide of lips, her Þ ngers stroking his neck. “But not tonight.”
“When?” Mitch knew he sounded eager, and he didn’t mind. He wanted her to think he couldn’t wait.
“Tomorrow. Come tomorrow, and we’ll see.”
She started to move away, and Mitch caught her hand. He turned her back into him, not forcefully, but hard enough that she ended up pressed to his groin again. He circled his hand in the hollow at the base of her spine, moving her against him. “Let me take you somewhere alone. You shouldn’t be doing guys up against a wall in the dark. I want to see your face when you come.”
Her lips parted in surprise, and he saw her nipples harden beneath the skintight top. He held his breath as she ran her Þ ngertip over his mouth.
“What makes you think you can make me come?”
Mitch smiled. “I see what you need in your eyes.”
“We’ll see, new boy,” she murmured, stepping free of his embrace.
“We’ll see.”
v
“Do you want to tell me what that was about?” Jasmine hissed as Mitch settled beside her.
“I think I’m onto something.”
“I thought she was going to be onto something in a second. Are you crazy? The guys who run these girls aren’t going to like you fooling around with their merchandise.”
“She’s not merchandise,” Mitch said in a low, Þ erce whisper.
“She’s their caretaker.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s in charge of all these girls, and I think there’s a lot more to it than just what tricks they might turn.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“I think I know how it all ties together.”
• 229 •
• 230 •
Justice Served
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sunday, Dawn
Sandy, honey,” Mitch whispered, sliding under the thin blanket and curving an arm around his sleeping girlfriend’s waist as he settled behind her in bed. He was still dressed, having kicked off his boots and shed his motorcycle jacket at the door. She just looked so soft and warm, her arms curled around the pillow, her face so innocent, that he couldn’t resist holding her for a second. “Gotta wake up, San.”
“Mmm,” Sandy sighed, scooting her butt back into the curve of Mitch’s groin.
“Honey, there’s going to be a meeting at seven. Wake up, honey.”
Mitch nuzzled the back of her neck and kissed the smooth skin along the angle of her shoulder. She smelled of sleep and cinnamon, a distinctly Sandy smell that always turned him on. Without even thinking, he slipped his hand beneath the camisole she’d worn to bed and Þ ngered the silver stud in her navel, twisting and tugging it lightly.
This time, Sandy’s sigh ended on a moan.
Mitch abandoned her belly for her breast, fondling her softly. He felt her breathing escalate and knew she was awakening. “Hi, honey.”
“Hi, baby.” Sandy reached behind her and wrapped an arm around Mitch’s hips, pulling him closer as she backed harder against his body.
The sudden pressure against the hardness in his jeans made Mitch’s head light.
“Oh man, you feel so good,” Mitch muttered, his voice as thick and tight as the growing weight in his belly. He’d been a little bit hard, a little bit wet, all night. He’d kept the lid Þ rmly on his arousal, even when Irina had played with him, but he had no defenses against Sandy.
Any time she looked at him, any time she touched him, he was gone.
He smoothed his hand down her belly and beneath the ß imsy material between her thighs, cupping her sex as he rubbed his cock against her slowly undulating ass.
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“You need something, baby?” Sandy whispered, her voice sounding as urgent as Mitch’s.
“Oh yeah.” She was wet beneath his Þ ngertips, and he slicked her arousal back and forth over her clitoris, the stroke of his hand matching the slow thrust of his hips. He wasn’t going to be able to take too much more of the constant friction on the screaming nerve endings between his thighs. His stomach was so tight it threatened to cramp, and his legs trembled as the muscles twitched and spasmed. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face against Sandy’s hair, his mouth hot against her ear. “I wanna come so bad.”
“Mmm, I know you do,” Sandy panted, writhing in his arms as he worked her faster. “Stop that, baby. You’ll make me come.” She covered his hand, pressing his palm onto her clitoris and his Þ ngertips just inside her. Holding him there, she ordered breathlessly, “Take your cock out, baby. Let me feel it between my legs.”
Mitch ripped at his jeans with his free hand, the blood roaring through his head, his nerve endings on Þ re. He dragged the cock out of his pants, catching the length of it in his ß y, jerking it free. Groaning desperately as the manipulation threatened to send him over the edge.
He’d never felt anything like it in his life. “Fuck, I think I’m gonna come.”
Sandy laughed wildly, rocking on his palm. “Just take a breath.
Just hold on, baby. It gets better.”
“Trying,” Mitch nearly whimpered. He pressed his forehead to her shoulder and concentrated on his breathing and not on that terrible sweet ache between his thighs.
“You okay, baby?” Sandy stroked his arm as it lay across her belly.
“Better. Yeah, I’m okay. Okay.”
She turned partway away, drawing one leg up to open herself. “Let me feel you, Dell.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Mitchell confessed, quivering against Sandy’s back. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
“Just ease it between my legs,” Sandy murmured. “You won’t hurt me. I want you, Dell.”
Mitchell Þ sted her cock and eased the head along the cleft between Sandy’s thighs. Suddenly, everything was about Sandy, and the urgency in Mitchell’s depths subsided even as excitement pierced her core like
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the shaft of an arrow. She felt Sandy reach beneath her body and back between her thighs, guiding Mitchell’s cock against her clitoris.
“Oh yeah,” Sandy crooned. “Just right there, Dell. Just rock it there, baby.”
“Turn all the way over,” Mitchell said hoarsely. As Sandy complied, she got onto her knees behind her and guided Sandy’s hips back against her crotch, her cock coming to rest once more between Sandy’s thighs.
“Is it good? Can you feel me?”
Sandy clutched the sheets and pushed her hips back and forth along the length of Mitchell’s cock. “I’m so wet. Oh, baby, you feel so good.”
Mitchell held Sandy’s hips to steady her while Sandy rode her cock, knowing that Sandy was rubbing her clitoris against the Þ rm head at the end of each stroke.
Feeling Sandy tremble, hearing her soft moans, all the while looking down to see the length of her cock moving in and out between Sandy’s thighs, Mitchell sensed her own orgasm rebuilding. Groaning, she picked up speed, unable to stop the escalating tendrils of release slipping down her thighs. “Sandy, honey, I’m not gonna last.”
Breathless, Sandy pulled away and turned onto her back. Her face was ß ushed, her belly heaving. “Do you boys carry safes?”
“Oh Jesus,” Mitchell groaned, stricken. She was so close to exploding, she could hardly think. “Do I need one?”
“No, but you might like it.” Sandy laughed and reached for the bedside dresser, fumbled inside, and came up with a foil package.
Rising on her knees, she extracted the condom. “Hold still.”
Through hazy eyes, Mitchell watched her roll the thin latex over the head of her cock. Sandy’s hand curled around the shaft while she guided the condom, the faint motion rocking the base dangerously over her clitoris. “Sandy. Sandy…be careful…I’m really close to losing it.”
Sandy glanced up, her expression hungry. “You’d better wait to come inside of me.”
Then there was no thought, no worry, no uncertainty, because with one arm around Mitchell’s waist and the other hand on her cock, Sandy guided her down and inside of her. Sandy cried out and Mitchell followed with a hoarse shout, and then they were rising and falling, entering and receiving, giving and taking—hands clasped, Þ ngers entwined, eyes locked.
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“Hold on, hold on…” Sandy urged, her hips pistoning, taking Mitchell deeper with each stroke. “Almost, baby, almost. Oh, there I’m there…”
“You’re making me come,” Mitchell cried, and then there was no holding back. Her clitoris burst against the base of the cock at the same instant as Sandy arched her back and screamed with the Þ rst pulse of release.
Mitchell managed to keep most of her weight off Sandy as she collapsed with the force of her orgasm, curled over Sandy’s body, shuddering. Sandy’s Þ ngers dug into her buttocks, holding her inside as she too shivered with aftershocks.
“Just stay there, baby,” Sandy gasped when Mitchell started to withdraw. “Just stay still.”
Regaining some of her strength, Mitchell braced herself with her elbows on either side of Sandy’s slender chest and lowered her face to Sandy’s breast, Þ nding the nipple beneath the thin silk with her mouth.
She could feel Sandy slowly circling her hips beneath her, stimulating herself on Mitchell’s cock.
“Is it good?” Mitchell whispered.
“Such a guy.” Sandy laughed shakily, running one hand up Mitchell’s back into her hair. She was breathless, trembling again. She whimpered softly. “I’m gonna come again, baby.”
That did it. Groaning, Mitchell pumped once and came. When she next opened her eyes, she was lying on her side with Sandy facing her, her features soft with satisfaction.
“I think having that cock makes me as useless as a guy,” Mitchell muttered. “I fell asleep, didn’t I?” Her eyes widened and she stiffened.
“Oh fuck, the meeting—”
“It’s okay, baby,” Sandy said immediately. “You’ve only been out a couple of minutes. And you’ve only been home about Þ fteen.”
“Jeez, I didn’t mean to climb all over you like that when you were still asleep.”
“Didn’t you?” Sandy stroked her face. “I’ve been wondering when you were gonna do something with all that action in your pants.”
Mitchell grinned. “Did you like?”
Sandy lifted a shoulder. “Not bad, rookie. Not bad at all.”
“Did you like it better than when I—”
Sandy stopped Mitchell’s words with her mouth, sliding her
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tongue inside, kissing her deeply. Then she drew back and scraped her Þ ngernails lightly down the center of Mitchell’s stomach until she reached the cock, still in the harness inside Mitchell’s jeans, which were halfway down her hips. She gave it a gentle shake.
“I like it. I liked feeling you inside me that way when I came.” She slipped her hand beneath the leather, against Mitchell’s still-swollen ß esh, and squeezed. “But this, I love. ”
Mitchell thought her eyes were going to roll back into her skull.
Her clitoris sprang to attention, and every nerve ending from her toes to the top of her head vibrated. “You gotta stop. I’m so wasted already, and we have to get to Sloan’s.”
“What’s happening?” Sandy asked as she carefully withdrew her hand and worked the straps free of the buckles holding the harness.
“I think I might have Þ gured something out,” Mitchell answered as she lifted her hips and helped Sandy remove her pants and gear. “We should shower and get dressed.”
“Why do you need me?”
“We have to go through the videos, and you know the regular girls.”
“Hours of looking at fat guys getting blow jobs?” Sandy gave a look of distaste. “Great.”
Mitchell shook her head. “I don’t think it will take that long. If I’m right, we’ll only need to look at a dozen or so.”
“You picked up on something at Ziggie’s, didn’t you?”
“Maybe. I hope so, because that’s what I told the lieutenant. That’s why she called the meeting.”
“Let’s get ready, then, and get this meeting over with.” Sandy swung a leg over Dell’s body and shifted on top of her. “Because I think I want to spend the rest of the day right here.”
Mitchell sat up and wrapped her arms around Sandy’s body, answering her with a kiss. Even as she held her, she had the feeling they wouldn’t be coming back for a lot longer than either of them would like.
v
“This better be good, kid,” Watts grunted, cradling a coffee mug in his huge hands. “I’ve been up all night, sitting in a bucket seat too
• 235 •
RADCLY fFE
small for a midget, freezing my balls off. And the Loo wouldn’t let me smoke.”
“Leave her alone,” Sandy said sharply on her way to the small refrigerator tucked under the counter. She pulled out a Black & Tan when she noticed Mitchell’s look of surprise. “What? This is dinnertime for me.”
“What’s got your panties in a twist?” Watts asked.
“Maybe I’d like to be doing something else right now too,” Sandy grumped and put the beer back, exchanging it for a soda.
Watts looked from Sandy to Mitchell, who blushed furiously, and slowly grinned. “Well ain’t you the lucky one.”
Mitchell shoved her hands into her jeans. “Yeah.”
Watts clapped Mitchell on a shoulder. “You break this case, kid, and that gold shield of yours is really gonna shine.”
Before Mitchell could protest that she didn’t expect to break the case, Rebecca walked in with Sloan and Jason. Immediately, everyone sobered up and hurriedly took their usual places at the conference table.
“Okay, Mitchell,” Rebecca said. “Let’s hear it.”
“I think Jason and Sandy should go through the porn downloads and chart the dates when the girls that Sandy knows were doing the shoots.”
Rebecca frowned. “That’s on the agenda. We’ll be doing that over the next couple of days. We’ve got months’ worth of videos to screen.”
Mitchell shook her head. “No. I think we can narrow it down to a couple of days.”
Everyone’s attention was riveted on her, and Mitchell felt a trickle of sweat between her shoulder blades. If she was wrong, she’d look like an idiot. Worse, she’d disappoint Rebecca Frye, which was the last thing she ever wanted to do. After Sandy, there was no one whose opinion of her mattered more. She kept her hands on her thighs under the table so that nobody could see them shaking. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Sandy’s smile. And more important than her smile was the encouragement and faith in her eyes.
“I think we should look at the videos that were shot right around the time those ships came in—the ones that Jimmy Hogan was checking out with Port Authority.”
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There was a moment of silence, and then everyone began to speak at once.
• 237 •
• 238 •
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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sunday, Midmorning
Wait a minute—”
“Why do you think—”
“Who would’ve—”
“How do—”
“All right—keep it down.” Rebecca’s voice rang out. As the din subsided, she motioned to Mitchell. “Go ahead. Lay it out for us, Detective.”
Mitchell cleared her throat. “Okay, I need to start at the beginning—
at least I think it’s the beginning.”
“Take your time, kid,” Watts said in a surprisingly quiet tone. “We ain’t in a hurry. My buns are just getting warm anyhow.”
“I think it all starts with Clark,” Mitchell said.
Sloan snarled an oath.
“What I mean,” Mitchell clariÞ ed, “is I think it starts with Justice and Jimmy Hogan. The feds were interested enough in something going on in this city to put a federal agent undercover.” She looked toward Rebecca, who gave her a barely perceptible nod. “I don’t think that an Internet pornography ring or garden-variety prostitution is really big enough to register on Justice’s radar. Sure, they’ve got people working on those kinds of investigations, but usually they leave them to the locals. And they sure don’t spare undercover agents. So I’m thinking something bigger than the usual Mob activity.”
“The feds have run some pretty big pornography stings,” Sloan pointed out. “I hate to say it, but Clark’s being here could have just been part of a broader interstate operation, especially considering the Internet angle. Just like he said.”
“True,” Rebecca interjected, “but it doesn’t really explain why Jimmy Hogan was undercover. Clark was up-front with us—well, as
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RADCLY fFE
up-front as the feds ever are—about his interest in the pornography operation. He wouldn’t have needed someone undercover if he were going to investigate it through channels.” Rebecca turned her attention back to Mitchell. “Keep talking—give us your theory.”
“With Jimmy undercover as an undercover narco detective, Jimmy—and by extension Clark—had access to any Þ les that came through the police department. He could keep an eye out for the kind of activity he was really interested in. At the same time, he was assigned to do exactly what he came here to do, which was inÞ ltrate the underworld organization. He was working all the angles and probably passing everything right back to Clark.”
The others at the table nodded and made sounds of agreement.
“Where does Jeff Þ t in?” Rebecca asked solemnly.
“I think while Jimmy was investigating his real interest, occasionally he’d come across illegal activity that he didn’t have time to do anything about, so he’d tip off you and Cruz.” Mitchell shrugged.
“He was a cop, after all.”
“Like the kiddie prostitution circuit he clued us into last year,”
Rebecca said. “Okay. So far, so good. And then, he got close to what he was really after, and someone found out.” Her face went hard, her voice cold. “And took out him and Jeff, who probably just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Mitchell nodded. “Yes, ma’am. That’s what I think happened.”
Watts shifted in his seat. “Okay. Time to end the suspense, kid.
What the hell was Hogan interested in?”
“Smuggling.”
Watts looked blank.
“That’s usually a U.S. Customs gig,” Jason observed neutrally.
“Not Justice.”
“I know,” Mitchell said emphatically, “and that’s why I didn’t think of it at Þ rst. Why none of us thought of it.”
“You think Hogan got wind of something they were bringing in on those ships—the ones he had Carla looking into, right?” Watts leaned forward, drumming his Þ ngers on the tabletop, his eyes narrowed and intent. “That’s why he was trying to track the cargo.”
“Yeah, I think he was trying to get a line on who picked up the cargo and where it was going.”
“I’ve been over those cargo manifests, kid,” Watts said, shaking
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his head. “I didn’t see any similarities between the stuff those ships were bringing in. Usually, if you’re smuggling something, you use the same carrier vehicle each time. Bags of cocaine stuffed inside coffee barrels, diamonds packed inside fake objects of art, heroin sewn into the lining of clothes from Asia. There was nothing like that. I looked.”
Mitchell shook her head. “All the ships originated from ports in the same region of the world, right?”
“Yeah, but that could just be a coincidence.”
“I don’t think so. They came from the same region because they were carrying the same smuggled cargo.”
“What? ” Watts asked impatiently.
“The girls. The ships were bringing in the girls.”
There were a few seconds of silence, and then Watts muttered,
“Shit.”
“What’s the common denominator between the sex videos, the clubs, the prostitution…all of it,” Rebecca said. “The girls. None of it works without them.”
“And,” Sloan mused, “if those girls are your business, think how good it would be to have an inside person at the DA’s ofÞ ce. Someone who would hear about any local investigation that started getting close.
Beecher.”
“Not to mention,” Jason said, “using him to hack into law enforcement’s entire computer network. All bases covered.” He turned in his seat and looked at Sloan. “What do you want to bet that the Port Authority computer system is compromised too. This organization is sophisticated, and they’re going to want to monitor everything they can. If they can Þ nd an assistant district attorney to squeeze, they can Þ nd somebody at the port.”
Sloan nodded, her eyes shining. “We’ll need to get at that system.”
“The problem with that,” Rebecca said, “is if we go for warrants now, we’ll have to bring Clark into it.”
“No fucking way,” Watts snapped. “The last time we did that, he stole the case out from under us.”
“Then let’s Þ nd some other way to break this open,” Rebecca said, her voice like ß int. She looked at Mitchell. “How did Jimmy trip to those ships? Watts couldn’t Þ nd a connection between them. Different captains, different crews, different cargos.”
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“The timing,” Mitchell said.
“No way,” Watts objected. “I looked at that with Captain Reiser.
Different days of the week, different weeks of the month. There wasn’t a pattern.”
“But they were at about the same intervals, right?” Mitchell knew that everything hung on this, and sweat broke out between her shoulder blades and trickled down her back. She didn’t have a damn bit of proof.
Only a feeling. I must be crazy. She took a breath. “Every two to three months.”
“Yeah,” Watts said warily, as if he expected a trap. Still, he eyed her with lively curiosity. “So?”
“Those are the same intervals when the regular girls weren’t available to do the sex videos. That’s when Trudy and her friends Þ lled in. Trudy knew those dates. The exact dates.”
“And if we got those dates from her,” Rebecca said pensively,
“we’d eventually match them to those ships. That could have worried someone enough to eliminate Trudy, especially with her right in the middle of that bust last week on the Þ lm set.”
It ate at Rebecca to know that the sting operation she’d set up had inadvertently led to a young woman’s death. No matter that she couldn’t have foreseen the risk to Trudy, who just happened to know more than anyone realized at the time. Hindsight didn’t change the fact that Trudy was dead. Rebecca swallowed back the bitter bile of self-recrimination and forced herself to focus. “We need to nail down those dates.”
“All we have to do is check the videos right around the times those ships arrived and see if we Þ nd Trudy or any of her friends in them,”
Jason said, looking at Sandy. “You’d recognize most of Trudy’s crowd, right?”
Sandy nodded. “I’d for sure be able to tell the working girls from the pole dancers.”
Sloan looked up from the tablet where she had been jotting notes and turned to Mitchell. “According to your theory, the girls who were smuggled into the country on those ships were the regular girls—the ones who usually performed in the sex videos, right?”
“Yes. And probably danced in the clubs, were hired out to sex parties, and eventually ended up being sold off as sex slaves.” Mitchell’s tone dripped with revulsion. “A sweet little pipeline in human ß esh direct to the marketplace. Bastards.”
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“What’s your explanation for why the girls weren’t available around the time the ships came in to do the sex videos? Why was it then that Trudy and her friends had to Þ ll in?”
Rebecca spoke before Mitchell could answer. “Because they were being rotated. New girls were arriving, the old ones had to be moved.
Probably sent out to other cities. I bet there’s a network all across the country merchandising in these girls. And the new girls would need to be broken in before they could be trusted to perform in the Þ lms.”
“It hangs together,” Watts said with an approving glance at Mitchell. “Nice.”
“We’ve got to Þ ll in all the blanks,” Rebecca said. She stood abruptly and paced. “Jason, how far back do you have the video downloads?”
“I’ve got a couple of computers from guys who stored everything.
At least a year, maybe more.”
“Sandy,” Rebecca said, spinning in her direction. “You work with Jason and map out the timelines. I want all the dates where it looks like local girls were Þ lling in.”
“Okay,” Sandy said, with no hint of her previous distaste at the task.
“Watts, you’ll need to get with Captain Reiser as soon as Sandy and Jason narrow down those dates. Try to isolate those ships. The network supplying these girls has to be relatively close-knit, so I’m betting you’ll Þ nd that all of them originated in one or two ports. We’ll need to nail them down.” She frowned, looked around the table. “What else?”
“Presumably the girls are coming into port in containers,” Sloan said. “Someone has to know which ships, which containers, and where they go on the docks. Otherwise it would be impossible to free the girls and secret them out of the port.”
“Unless the container got loaded directly onto a truck and went out that way,” Watts offered.
“Maybe,” Sloan said. “But if they’re staying local—and we are hypothesizing that they are, at least for a while—all they need is a couple of vans to move them from the port to their stash houses. That’s a lot less complicated than arranging for a semi.”
Watts nodded in agreement. “They’ve got to have an inside man
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at the port, maybe even a couple. Don’t they track all those containers by computer or something?”
Sloan’s grin spread. “They do indeed. Give me some dates, and I’ll tell you which container they arrived in.”
“This is all very pretty,” Rebecca reminded the group. “But we don’t have any proof.” She looked at Mitchell. “We need the girls. In operations like these, the girls are supervised twenty-four hours a day.
They don’t go outside the house. They don’t talk to anyone. They don’t move from one location to another without guards. We need to know where they’re being kept.”
“I might have a way of Þ nding out.”
The room became very still.
“There’s a girl…a woman…at Ziggie’s. Her name is Irina.”
Mitchell was aware of Sandy going very still beside her. “I think she’s some kind of keeper. I think she watches out for them, supervises them maybe.”
“That Þ ts,” Rebecca said. “It’s easier to use women to indoctrinate the girls—less threatening. These supervisors teach them how to behave. Teach them how to turn tricks. Teach them that if they try to run, they’ll be caught and deported.”
“And you think this Irina is gonna tell you where she lives?” Watts asked disbelievingly.
“No,” Mitchell said quietly. “But I think she might take me there.”
“Why?”
Mitchell was careful to keep her expression neutral and her voice bland. She was also very careful not to look at Sandy. “We’ve talked a few times. We sort of…hit it off.”
Watts stared, his brows knit. Remarkably, he said nothing.
“The girls at Ziggie’s have always been friendly with the kings,”
Jason said, jumping into the breach. “Since Mitch is new, it makes sense that he would get noticed.”
“When are you seeing her again?” Rebecca asked calmly.
“Maybe tonight,” Mitchell answered.
“That doesn’t give us much time to set up.” Rebecca glanced at Watts. “Two-car tail? Put a wire on Mitchell?”
Watts grunted and drummed his Þ ngers again. “We’re going to
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need more help. Crap. That means Clark, because the second we go to Henry with this, he’s going to cover his ass and call the feds.”
“I can ride backup with Rebecca and monitor the wire,” Sloan said quickly.
“I’ll be inside Ziggie’s with Mitch,” Jason said. “If he’s going to leave with Irina, he can give me a sign, and I’ll leave Þ rst.” He looked at Watts. “I can ride with you.”
“You’re gonna ride backup in a dress and those come-fuck-me shoes again?”
Jason smiled, a soft, sensuous smile that ß ickered and was gone.
“As I recall, you liked those shoes.”
Watts blushed beet red and muttered under his breath, “Fuck me.”
“It sounds like we can coordinate the tail and the bust, if we need to,” Sloan asserted.
Rebecca shook her head. “Uh-uh. It’s too soon. We need to tie this up a little neater before we put Mitchell inside the operation. I want as much corroboration as we can get before we go for the warrant—I want enough to make the arrests stick. That means the timeline, the ships, analyzing the computer system at Port Authority, identifying the inside people moving the containers. We need video surveillance on the docks. We need a few more days.” She looked at Mitchell. “You’re going to have to string her along.”
Mitchell nodded. “I think it will take some doing to get her to take me home anyhow.” She hesitated. “That’s not the way they usually do things.”
“What do you mean?” Sloan asked.
“What she means,” Sandy said brittlely, “is they usually fuck their johns in a dark corner in the back.” She angled in her seat until she could see Mitchell’s face. “They don’t usually take their tricks home.
Not unless there’s something special going on.”
Mitchell didn’t know what to say in front of everyone else. She didn’t know what to say, period. There wasn’t anything special going on; there wasn’t anything going on at all. Except, of course, the fact that Irina expected Mitch to fuck her, and Mitchell wasn’t exactly sure how to avoid that without blowing Mitch’s cover. From the sound of Sandy’s voice and the hot, hard fury in her eyes, Mitchell knew she
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was in trouble. Remembering Irina’s mouth, the full, lush curves of her body, the practiced touch of her hand, she realized that so was Mitch.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Sunday, Evening
At the sound of the front door opening, Catherine looked up from the couch where she sat reading the Sunday papers.
Rebecca walked in, wearing the same clothes she’d left the house in nearly twenty-four hours before. Always pale, her skin now appeared nearly translucent, with a faint tinge of bluish gray shadowing her high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Catherine had seen her fatigued many times before. She’d seen her Þ ght for life in a hospital bed. She knew what her lover looked like when she was nearing the end of her reserves, but this time, in addition to weariness, there was something else in Rebecca’s eyes. Some pain that Catherine was surprised Rebecca allowed to surface within sight of anyone else. She patted the sofa next to her.
“Come sit down. You look tired.”
Grimacing, Rebecca shrugged out of her blazer and dropped it on a nearby chair. With one hand she released the buckle on the strap beneath her right arm that secured her holstered weapon beneath her left breast. This, too, she shed with a practiced motion and let it settle atop the rumpled jacket. With a sigh, she sank down beside Catherine, where she leaned her head back and stretched her long legs out in front of her. With one hand, she groped for Catherine’s, and Þ nding it, closed her Þ ngers around her lover’s. “Hi.”
“Hello.” Catherine angled her body and drew Rebecca’s head down against her shoulder. “Are you in for the night?”
“I wish,” Rebecca mumbled, closing her eyes.
Catherine stroked Rebecca’s hair, then the back of her neck, eliciting a soft groan. These were the moments that were hardest for her, when what she wanted most was to hold Rebecca for hours, keeping her close, restoring them both as only this quiet connection could. Instead, she needed to prepare herself for Rebecca leaving once
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again on the most dangerous kind of assignment she could undertake.
Undercover operations, as Catherine had come to learn, were notoriously unpredictable. The last one had ended with Dellon nearly bleeding to death from a stab wound. And now another night loomed when she would not know where her lover was, what danger she might be in, or what harm might already have befallen her. The ringing of the phone in the middle of those dark, lonely nights was like a death knell. She tightened her hold on Rebecca and rested her cheek against the top of the blond head.
“What’s wrong?” Rebecca murmured.
For an instant, Catherine hesitated, then realized that she could not expect Rebecca to share her uncertainties if she herself did not.
“Missing you, a little bit.”
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca said immediately, starting to straighten.
“No.” Catherine held her fast. “I don’t want you to be sorry. It’s not something for you to Þ x, darling. It’s just the way I feel.” She looked down to see Rebecca searching her face with worried eyes. She slanted her mouth across Rebecca’s, kissing her hard. She felt the instant when Rebecca’s tired body came to life, the faint tightening of her limbs, the sudden quivering of the muscles beneath her hands. Easing away from the kiss, she laughed softly. “That wasn’t exactly what I meant I was missing, but that’s part of it.”
“I’ve got six or seven hours, at least,” Rebecca responded, her voice already rough with desire.
“When you should be sleeping.”
“It’s not sleep I need. It’s just you. Just you.”
Catherine’s lips parted in soft surprise as her heart melted. “Why, when I know that you love me, does hearing you say it always make me weak with wanting?”
Rebecca grinned, her eyes alive again. “I pick my moments.”
“Your timing always has been excellent,” Catherine murmured.
There were things she wanted to say, things she wanted to ask, but those things could wait until they both took what they needed from one another. She smoothed her hand down the front of Rebecca’s shirt until she reached the slender belt that encircled her waist. As she found Rebecca’s mouth again, she slipped the thin leather through the small silver buckle and then moved on to the clasp and zipper beneath. As she licked her way into Rebecca’s mouth, her hand followed a similar path
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into the secret pleasures between Rebecca’s thighs. Rebecca moaned and sucked on her tongue, the unexpected sensation igniting the inferno that lay in wait deep inside. Waiting only for this one woman’s touch.
“Oh God,” Catherine breathed, breaking the kiss. “Here. Right here. Right now. Take your clothes off, darling.”
Rebecca leapt to her feet, already pulling loose the buttons on her shirt as Catherine wrenched off her own top, exposing her bare breasts.
Trousers followed shirt, underwear fell into the heap, and in another second, Rebecca lay between Catherine’s legs. She brought her mouth down hard on Catherine’s, sliding inside, slicking her way through the heat, probing deeply before she pushed herself up on her arms and stared desperately into Catherine’s eyes. “Don’t tell me you want to go slow. Please.”
Catherine braced both hands on Rebecca’s shoulders and pushed downward. “No. No. Hurry.”
Then Rebecca was between her thighs and Catherine arched as hot mouth met hot ß esh and she felt herself drawn into the cauldron of Rebecca’s desire. Blindly, she sought an anchor, Þ nding Rebecca’s shoulder and digging her Þ ngers into muscles tight as steel when teeth closed around the stiff, aching prominence of her clitoris. Her eyes went blind and her throat closed on a scream as passion erupted deep inside. She fought against the Þ rst wave of orgasm, wanting the urgency to build, delirious with the exquisite pleasure. When Rebecca’s tongue swept the length of her, then beat against her clitoris with a steady insistent rhythm, she lost the battle. Her breasts swelled, her belly spasmed, and sweet release eclipsed will. She found the back of Rebecca’s head with one hand and held Rebecca’s mouth against her as the climax poured forth.
“Don’t make yourself come,” Catherine gasped, still coming herself. “I want you in my mouth.”
Rebecca shuddered, desperate to come, but loath to separate from Catherine’s still-pulsing sex. She held off another few seconds until need overpowered all else, and then she reared up to straddle Catherine’s body. She gave a hoarse cry as Catherine’s hands clenched on her buttocks and Catherine’s mouth drove against her clitoris. Too close to orgasm to control her muscles, she fell forward and barely managed to brace herself with one arm against the sofa. Still, Catherine’s mouth never left her, sucking and tugging on her, driving her mad.
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“Oh Jesus, you’re going to make me come,” Rebecca groaned.
Nearly deaf with the roar of blood in her head, she barely registered Catherine’s exultant cries. She was coming, bucking and thrusting and shouting out her inÞ nite gratitude. Then she was falling, helpless and weak, and Catherine was there to catch her.
“I love you, oh, I love you,” Catherine murmured over and over, curled around Rebecca’s trembling form. “You’re in my blood, right down to the heart of me.”
“Love you too,” Rebecca muttered, struggling for breath.
Catherine laughed softly, searching on the back of the sofa for the light throw she kept there for when the evenings turned cool. She pulled it down over them and settled more comfortably on her back with Rebecca’s head nestled against her shoulder. It wasn’t their usual position, and she liked being the one to offer shelter. “Okay?”
“Oh yeah,” Rebecca sighed. “DeÞ nitely okay.”
After waiting another few moments for Rebecca’s heartbeat to slowly settle, Catherine asked quietly, “Why do you have to go out later?”
“Mitchell’s going back to Ziggie’s. Watts and I will back up again.”
Remembering the haunted look in Rebecca’s eyes when she’d Þ rst returned home, Catherine knew there was more. “You’ve learned something.”
Rebecca shifted slightly and opened her eyes to stare up at the ceiling. “Mitchell did, really. She thinks, and I agree with her, that most of the girls involved in the sex videos—and probably working a fair number of the strip clubs in the city—have been smuggled in on ships from Russia.”
“Oh my God.” Catherine turned on her side so that she was facing Rebecca, wanting to see her face. “Is that what this is all about?”
Rebecca nodded and gave her a quick summary of Mitchell’s theories. As Rebecca spoke, Catherine listened and watched. She saw the faint ß icker of Rebecca’s pupils when she talked about Trudy, heard the barest deepening of her voice that only hinted at the depth of her pain. Oh, you are so very good at hiding your sorrow.
She waited until Rebecca fell silent, until the story had been told.
Then she pressed her Þ ngertips to Rebecca’s mouth, brushing over her lips, cupping her jaw. “I’m so very sorry about Trudy, darling.”
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“Out of all of that,” Rebecca said quietly, “that’s the thing you found to talk about.”
Catherine smiled gently. “That’s the thing that hurts you most.”
Rebecca rested her forehead against Catherine’s and closed her eyes. “If she hadn’t taken Sandy to that meeting, if she hadn’t gone to that building to shoot that Þ lm, if she hadn’t been unknowingly part of my operation, she’d still be alive.”
“I’m not telling you not to care, darling. I’m not even telling you not to accept responsibility, although I don’t believe it’s all yours to bear.” Catherine stroked down Rebecca’s arm and clasped her Þ ngers.
“But you made the best decision you could with what you knew at the time, and you never would’ve put Sandy or Trudy in lethal danger if you’d thought that was likely. You cannot carry all the burden, Rebecca, or it will destroy you.”
Rebecca’s eyes ß ickered opened. “And us?”
“No,” Catherine answered immediately. “I will Þ ght you on this before I will let that happen. I will stand in front of that door over there and prevent you from going out if I have to. I will not let this job take you from me.”
“You sound pretty set on that.”
“I am.” Catherine leaned forward and kissed Rebecca lightly.
“Still ready to move in?”
“Oh yeah.” Rebecca curved an arm around Catherine’s back and pulled her tight against the length of her body. She kissed her, hard and deep. “Consider me moved in.”
Catherine laughed shakily. “I’d forgotten how quickly cops make decisions.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t think there’s anything about loving you that I’ll ever get used to,” Catherine whispered, pillowing her cheek against Rebecca’s chest. “And that’s just Þ ne.”
“I don’t expect anything to happen tonight. You don’t have to worry.”
Catherine saw no need to tell her that whenever she worked, Catherine would worry. It was part of their life now, and it could not be changed. “Do you really think these girls were ferried across the ocean in huge metal containers?”
“I do. It all Þ ts.” Rebecca’s voice had taken on a grim tone.
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“And this kind of thing is really happening on a large scale?”
Catherine could only imagine the horror of girls being crowded together in a dark, poorly ventilated twenty-by-thirty-foot space for days, even weeks. How much these young women must long for their dream of America to endure such torture, only to Þ nd another kind of hell at the end of their nightmare journey. “God, it’s inhuman.”
“We’re just beginning to get an idea of exactly how big this business is. The recent reports I’ve read say there are dozens of active stash houses in all of the major metropolitan cities—way stations where these underage girls and young women from dozens of countries are held captive and eventually trafÞ cked.”
“They’re just—merchandise.”
Rebecca nodded. “In the worst-case scenario, they may be rented out for sex for as little as Þ fteen minutes at a time, dozens of times a day. It doesn’t take much to Þ gure out that each girl could bring in thousands every week. Christ, the CIA estimates that every year there are twenty thousand new sex slaves imported into this country alone.”
Catherine had seen and heard the worst of human behavior in her line of work, but this blatant trade in human misery was almost too horriÞ c for her to absorb. The words were out before she even realized what they meant. “You have to stop them.”
“I will.”
“Rebecca,” Catherine sighed softly, her cheek to Rebecca’s heart.
“Loving you is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Rebecca’s swift intake of breath cut through the silence in the room.
“I don’t want you in danger,” Catherine went on, lifting her head and holding Rebecca’s gaze. “I don’t want to lose you, not even the tiniest part of you, to this work—this crusade—that you’ve undertaken.
I couldn’t bear for you to die doing this.”
“Catherine,” Rebecca protested.
“No, listen,” Catherine said softly. “And as much as I fear those things happening, I want you to end this horror. I trust you to do it. I’m proud beyond description that you can.” She laughed unsteadily. “And that, my darling, is one hell of a conundrum.”
“Is there something I should do to make it better?” Rebecca asked seriously.
“Oh yes.”
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“What?” Rebecca carried Catherine’s hand to her lips and kissed her palm. “What?”
“Promise me to always come home.”
Rebecca never hesitated. “I promise.”
Catherine closed her eyes and settled her head back against Rebecca’s breast, as comforted as it was possible for her to be. Because Rebecca Frye always kept her promises.
v
Mitchell found Sandy in the conference room viewing video clips with Jason. They each had a lined yellow notepad covered with dates and diagrams in front of them. “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Slow,” Jason admitted, rubbing his eyes. “But we’ve got two for sure from almost a year ago.”
Sandy did not look away from the monitor, and Mitchell followed her gaze. The sound was off, making the image of a naked young woman rocking furiously astride the hips of a much older man, who lay on his back, seem nearly surreal.
“Can I talk to you for a minute, San?” Mitchell asked quietly.
“Kinda busy right now.”
Jason stood. “I could use a break. Let’s call it a night. I need to go home and catch a few hours’ sleep before we go out again.” He glanced toward Mitchell. “I’ll pick you up again, say midnight?”
Silently, Mitchell nodded, her eyes still on Sandy’s glacial countenance. She waited until Jason was gone, then rested her hand on Sandy’s shoulder. “Honey.”
Sandy swiveled on her chair and looked up, her face closed, her eyes shielded. “Did you kiss her?”
Fuck. Mitchell took a breath. “Is there a difference between me kissing her and her kissing me?”
“Not even a little.”
“Is there any room to talk about the job, and how I needed to convince her I was for real?”
Sandy folded her arms beneath her breasts, her jaws clenched tight. Mitchell’s stomach tied itself into a knot. What she hated more than the anger in Sandy’s eyes was the glimmer of hurt she couldn’t hide. That was far, far worse.
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“It didn’t mean anything,” Mitchell whispered. “It was a couple of kisses. That’s all.”
“Did she touch you?”
“Sandy, come on,” Mitchell pleaded.
“Did she?”
“Not in any way that mattered.” Mitchell’s voice was steady, solid.
“Nobody does except you.”
Mitchell waited for the eruption, expecting to be scalded, willing to be, if it would put them right. What she didn’t expect were the tears, and the sight literally brought her to her knees. “Oh fuck.” Kneeling in front of the chair, she put her arms around Sandy and pulled her against her chest. She stroked her back, kissed her forehead, brushed at the tears on her damp cheeks. “Honey, come on. Honey, don’t cry. You’re killing me.”
Sandy twisted the back of Mitchell’s T-shirt in her hands, pressing her face hard to Mitchell’s shoulder, struggling to stop the wash of emotion pouring through her. “You’re mine,” she whispered in a voice so quiet Mitchell struggled to hear. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever had that was mine.”
“Oh jeez,” Mitchell choked, lifting Sandy’s face, swiping her thumbs across Sandy’s cheeks. She kissed her mouth, her eyes, her cheeks. “I’ve never wanted to belong to anybody the way I belong to you. I am yours.”
Sandy was quiet for a long moment, her bruised blue eyes boring into Mitchell’s. Mitchell looked back, letting her search, hiding nothing.
“Yeah?” Sandy asked tremulously.
“Yeah.”
“I know about sex for money, Dell. I know about sex to stay alive.
I know about feeling nothing when somebody touches you.”
“That’s never gonna happen to you again,” Mitchell said Þ ercely.
Sandy smiled and touched Mitchell’s cheek. “And I know you, Dell. You don’t turn off so easy.”
“It’s just a job, honey. I’m just doing what I need to do for the job.
It’s an act.”
“Mitch is no act.”
Mitchell couldn’t argue. It was true. “Mitch knows the difference between sex and love. So do I.”
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“I don’t want you getting hurt. I don’t give a fuck about Frye’s operation, but I don’t want your cover getting blown and you getting hurt again.”
“Sandy, I’m not gonna get—”
“So you can fuck her if you have to,” Sandy said quietly. “I don’t even care if she gets off on it.”
“Oh jeez, honey—”
“But if she makes you come, I’ll kill her.”
Mitchell couldn’t be entirely certain, but she thought Sandy just might be serious. “That won’t happen. I swear.”
Sandy brushed her palm back and forth across Mitchell’s chest.
“You’re so sexy, Dell. I love how hot you are. I love how sexy you make me feel.” She caught Mitchell’s bottom lip in her teeth and tugged, then licked her way inside Mitchell’s mouth and kissed her until Mitchell couldn’t breathe. “I can’t help it if I want you all to myself.”
“You got me, honey,” Mitchell gasped, too stunned by the onslaught of sensation to make much sense of anything. Whenever she expected one thing from Sandy, she got just the opposite, and she couldn’t keep up. That was one of the things that she loved most about her. That, and her raw honesty. “I love you so much…it’s like this constant hunger needing to be fed.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry, rookie.” Sandy moved her hand from the center of Mitchell’s chest to her breast and teased her nipple into erection. “I don’t intend to ever let you go hungry.”
Mitchell knew if they stayed there much longer she’d be too turned on to walk. She was already so swollen and hard she ached. “We gotta get out of here. You’re making me crazy.”
“I know just what you need, baby.” Sandy smiled a slow, satisÞ ed smile and dropped her hand between Mitchell’s thighs, squeezing gently until Mitchell’s eyes blurred and she moaned quietly. “Let’s go home and I’ll show you.”
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CHAPTER THIRTY
Sunday, 11:00 p.m.
Michael stood in the doorway of the spare bedroom and watched Sloan remove a small walnut chest from the top shelf of the closet. The expression on her lover’s face as she keyed the lock was one that Michael did not think she had ever seen before.
Fierce concentration, which was not at all unusual, was underlain with what appeared to be grim determination. That hardness in Sloan’s rigid proÞ le produced a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Sloan looked dangerous, and cold.
Remaining silent, she saw Sloan remove Þ rst a soft, brown leather holster and then an enormous automatic handgun. At least to Michael the gun appeared enormous, because of what it signiÞ ed.
“Sloan?” Michael asked quietly.
Turning, the weapon in her hand, Sloan met Michael’s inquiring gaze. “It’s okay.”
“I don’t see how it can be, if you’re doing something that requires that.”
“It’s just a precaution. I’m going to ride backup with Rebecca later tonight, and I ought to be armed. I won’t be much use to her in an emergency if I’m not.” Sloan smiled and clipped the holster to the back of her belt, then slipped the automatic into it and out of sight.
“I’m licensed to carry it.” She slipped a slim leather folder from her rear pocket and ß ipped it open to display the laminated photo ID badge that Clark had provided her when she’d Þ rst agreed to investigate the Internet pornography ring. “And I’ve got my federal credentials to prove it. Just procedure. Nothing to worry about.”
The logic was faultless, as Sloan’s logic always was, but Michael knew that beneath that unassailable rationality seethed a host of volatile emotions that had yet to be assuaged. She could feel the cold hand of
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Sloan’s icy fury from across the room. “If he is there somewhere, you have to promise me you won’t do anything. Nothing at all.”
There was no need to deÞ ne who he was, because they both knew. Sloan had related some of the smuggling story to Michael, and it seemed only reasonable to her that the man who had nearly killed her in the misdirected murder attempt on Sloan might be one of the bodyguards who ferried the young smuggling victims from destination to destination. And if that were the case, Sloan was likely to come across him in the course of the surveillance or subsequent arrests.
Michael did not want her lover anywhere near that man when she was carrying a gun.
“Not a problem,” Sloan assured smoothly. But the hard edge in her eyes remained.
Shaking her head, Michael crossed the room and settled her arms around Sloan’s neck. She was close enough to kiss her, but she did not. Instead, she studied the depths of Sloan’s violet eyes, assessing their ever-changing emotional landscape. “Even if you were able to get away with taking revenge on whoever’s responsible for putting me in the hospital, you’re not that kind of person at heart. It would take something from you. Destroy something in you.” As Sloan began to protest, Michael shook her head again. “I need all of you. I need you.”
Sloan made a strangled sound in her throat and buried her face in Michael’s hair, holding her close, swaying as she stood with Michael in her arms. “If you knew how it felt when I thought I’d lost you…oh Jesus…”
“You didn’t and you won’t.” Michael thrust her hands into Sloan’s hair and tilted her head back, forcing Sloan to accept the truth in her eyes. “I love you and I will not leave you. You have to promise me the same. You have to take care of yourself.” She touched her Þ ngertips to a spot above Sloan’s breast, over her heart. “Here. Here where I need you so.”
“I promise,” Sloan said, her voice hoarse. “I promised you before, and I’ll keep my promise. I won’t do anything to hurt you.”
“Be sure that you don’t let anyone else hurt you either,” Michael whispered, her Þ ngers still buried in Sloan’s hair. She brought her mouth down on her lover’s, tasting her, taking her time and kissing her thoroughly until she was sure that she was all Sloan could feel. Then, reluctantly, she relinquished Sloan’s mouth. “I love you.”
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Sloan closed her eyes and rested her cheek against Michael’s. The anger had dulled, muted by the much more powerful force of what they shared. “Don’t worry. I won’t let anything touch what we have.”
“Nothing ever could, darling,” Michael murmured, and kissed her again. “Take good care of yourself tonight. I’ll see you when you come home.”
v
Sandy answered the knock at the door and opened it wide to admit Rebecca.
“Hiya, Sandy,” Rebecca said, casting a quick glance around the small studio apartment. It was as neat as she remembered it from the one time she had been there before. The small sofa bed, closed and covered with colorful throw pillows, the slightly scratched coffee table in front of it, and the sparkling clean kitchenette off to one side.
“Hi,” Sandy replied with no hint of warmth.
“Mitchell ready?”
Sandy crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head toward the bathroom. “Just about.”
Rebecca walked to the coffee table and deposited the small canvas gym bag she carried in one hand. Squatting, she unzipped it and removed the contents, lining up the equipment she would need in a neat row. She looked up to the sound of the bathroom door opening.
Mitchell—Mitch—approached in tight, faded blue jeans and a torso-hugging black T-shirt. His chest was ß at, his face long and square jawed, his crotch obviously but not ostentatiously full. Had she not known differently, Rebecca would’ve thought him to be a young man of twenty. “The transmitter’s about the size of a deck of playing cards, a little bit thinner. Do you have room for it anywhere?”
“Where’s the best spot?” Mitch inquired, sliding his hands into his front pockets.
“Most guys will wear it down the back of their pants, maybe on their back, or occasionally in their crotch.”
Mitch’s lips twitched, and he unconsciously brushed the bulge beneath his ß y. “No room there.”
“I gathered,” Rebecca said dryly. She stood, the transmitter in her
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right hand with the attached wires dangling. “Where’s Irina least likely to touch you?”
“Uh…” Mitch sidled a glance at Sandy, who remained motionless, her face set and her eyes Þ rmly on his face. “Probably my back.”
Sandy snorted. Rebecca seemed not to notice.
“Okay, then, pull your shirt out and turn around,” Rebecca instructed. When Mitch hiked up his T-shirt, Rebecca saw the thin wrap encircling his torso. “I think if I tape it under the lower edge of the chest wrap, that’ll camouß age the shape enough to hide it, especially with the T-shirt over it.”
“Okay,” Mitch said, holding still as Rebecca worked. “What’ll I do if she wants to take me back to her place tonight?”
“Stall her.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You’ll have to Þ gure out a way. We’re not prepared for a takedown tonight, and I don’t want you getting into a situation where I can’t extract you quickly.”
“Yeah, but…”
“If she keeps after you,” Sandy said quietly, “make her come right there in the bar, but don’t fuck her. Tell her you’re saving that for special.”
Mitch blushed, and sweat broke out over his entire body.
“Jesus,” Rebecca complained. “I can’t get the tape to stick to you like this.” She turned to Sandy. “Can you get me a towel?”
“Sure.”
“She’s going to kill me before this is over,” Mitch said when Sandy disappeared into the bathroom.
“She’ll be okay,” Rebecca replied. “Just remember who you are and why you’re there. Do what you need to do, and then you leave it there.”
Sandy held out the towel, giving no indication that she’d heard Rebecca’s words, but her angry expression had softened. “It would be kinda nice if you all made sure that Mitch’s ass doesn’t get hung out to dry.”
“Sandy—” Mitch started to protest.
“He’ll be Þ ne. We’ll be monitoring everything that happens from now on.” Rebecca pressed the last strip of adhesive into place and rearranged the chest wrap over it, smoothing out the wrinkles with
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her hand. “Tuck your shirt in.” She waited until Mitch complied and then walked around him, eyeing his back critically. “In dim lighting, that’s not going to show. Just make sure she doesn’t get her hands back there.”
“That’s not where she’s going to be putting her hands,” Sandy commented.
Mitch groaned softly and gave Sandy a beseeching look.
A ß icker of amusement passed over Rebecca’s face as she clapped Mitch on the shoulder. “Sloan’s downstairs in the car. I’m going down to test the audio feed with her. It’s a one-way transmission, so you’re not going to know that we’re on the line. But we’ll be there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mitch said with absolute certainty. “By the way, I’m wearing an ankle holster.”
Rebecca nodded as she repacked the duffel bag. “Good. That’s something a guy like Mitch might do, so if anyone notices it at all, just say you’ve had some trouble and want to be prepared.”
At the door, she added, “If I don’t call up, it means we’re reading you with no problem. Remember, all we want tonight is for you to reestablish contact with Irina and convince her that you want to spend time alone with her where she lives. Following her to the stash house won’t be enough—we need you inside to give us some idea of the occupancy, the layout, and the number and position of the guards. We deÞ nitely don’t need a hostage situation when we get ready to take the place, so we’re going to want to go for the guards Þ rst.” She Þ xed Mitch with a Þ rm stare. “Your job is intelligence. You’re our eyes, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
v
Mitch had the sense that someone was watching him. He set his bottle on the bar top and eased off the stool. Taking his time, he made his way to the back hallway that led to the restrooms and whatever else lay hidden in the bowels of the building. She was there, in the shadows.
“Hi,” Mitch said, leaning a shoulder against the wall. At the far end of the corridor he could see a ß ickering neon sign that said Exit.
He knew there were other rooms opening onto the hallway, but for the moment, they seemed to be alone.
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“Hello, new boy,” Irina purred, placing her palm in the center of his chest as she leaned close to kiss him lightly on the mouth. “Back again.”
Mitch slipped one arm around her waist and drew her against him.
Tonight she wore some kind of dark red satiny slacks that hugged her voluptuous Þ gure and a blouse that was more of a hint than a reality.
It was so sheer he could see the lace of the ß imsy cups that barely contained her breasts and the dark hue of nipple beneath. As she moved into him, she parted her thighs and settled into his crotch with his denim-encased cock neatly nestled between her legs. This time, he was prepared for the sudden surge of pressure, and when he bumped his pelvis into her, it was Irina who gasped. “I told you I would be here. I was afraid you weren’t.”
She stroked a Þ ngertip along his jaw. “I am always here.”
For a second, Mitch considered questioning her, trying to get some information about the girls, but then he realized she would be on the lookout for that kind of questioning, no matter how subtle. He couldn’t afford to make her suspicious of him now. Instead, he nuzzled her neck and brushed his mouth over her ear. “You must go home sometime.”
Laughing, she tilted her head back and allowed him her neck.
“Not until all the little boys have gone home happy.”
While he sucked the pale ß esh of her throat, Mitch dropped his hand from her waist to her buttocks and kneaded the Þ rm ß esh. He circled his crotch against hers and moved his mouth back to her ear.
“What about the big boys?”
“You are very…smooth, new boy.” She was breathing a little faster as she kissed him again, teasing her tongue along the inner surface of his lips, darting into his mouth and out again. Just as she drew away she nipped at his lower lip. “Mitch. You taste good, Mitch.”
“You feel good.” As they spoke, Mitch was aware of the transmitter on his back and tried not to think about his lieutenant and Sloan listening to this conversation. He had a ß eeting instant of gratitude that it wasn’t Watts monitoring the wire. “I want to make you feel a whole lot better.”
“I don’t know why,” Irina mused as she edged a hand between them and cupped the swelling tucked in Mitch’s jeans. “But I believe you.”
“Maybe,” Mitch said, ignoring the practiced stimulation that she
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so effortlessly delivered, “because the other guys are just thinking about getting off.” He lightly teased an erect nipple through the ß imsy layers of material, ß icking it with a Þ ngertip as he kept his eyes on her face.
When he saw her lids ß utter, he caught the hard peak in his Þ ngers and squeezed. She moaned, and he squeezed again. “But remember what I said last night. I want to make you come.”
“Do the other one,” she whispered, her voice tight and urgent.
Her eyes were nearly closed, her hips rolling rhythmically against him.
When he started on her other nipple, working them both to the same rhythm, she forced her lids open and gazed at him through a haze of pleasure. “Did you make yourself come last night, thinking of me?”
Despite the icy control he kept over his own physical responses, he tightened deep inside at the words. Beneath the cock, his hard sex ached. Hoarsely, he said, “Oh yeah. All night long.”
“I imagined you fucking me, new boy.” Irina smiled, her lips swollen and moist. “Until I came, screaming.”
Mitch kissed her, one hand on her ass, the other tangled in her hair.
He held her head while he plundered her mouth, until she was shaking in his arms and he knew she was his for the taking. He pulled his head away, breathing hard. “I want to fuck you ’til you scream. But not here.
Take me home.”
She shook her head.
He spun her to the wall and pinned both of her arms against it with his hands around her wrists. He pushed his cock hard between her thighs, his lean hips between her spread legs, and he pumped into her while he took her mouth again. He worked his cock against her until she whimpered and writhed beneath him, then he pulled back, his own chest heaving. “Take me home so I can give you what you want. What I want.”
“I…” Her eyes were glazed, her mouth bruised, her breasts swollen—hard nipples exposed beneath the see-through material. “I…”
She took a long shuddering breath and her eyes Þ nally focused. “There are others there. I cannot.”
“Then I’ll take you somewhere else. A hotel.”
“No. I must stay there. I…cannot leave.”
He jerked one of her hands down the wall and thrust it between his legs, squeezing her Þ ngers around his cock. “Feel me. You know
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you want this.” He dropped his forehead to hers, shivering as she automatically started to jack him off. “Please, Irina. Please. Please.”
“After,” she whispered urgently. “You come after they are asleep.”
“When? Where?” Mitch knew he sounded desperate, because he was. He had to get her hands off him, because there was only so much stimulation he could take.
“I will tell you when.” Then she pushed him abruptly away. “You just be here, new boy.”
Mitch sagged against the wall and watched her disappear into the darkness at the end of the hall. Tilting his head back, he closed his eyes and worked on quieting the storm she had stirred. When he thought he could walk without stumbling, he returned to the bar and signaled to Jasmine that he was leaving.
Five minutes later, Jasmine met him at the car, and they drove six blocks in silence before pulling to the curb. A dark Ford Escort pulled in behind them, and Rebecca walked up to the driver’s side. She peered through the open window at Jasmine and Mitch.
“Everything okay?” Rebecca asked, her gaze Þ xed on Mitch.
Mitch nodded wordlessly.
“All right. Good job.” To Jasmine, Rebecca said, “Take him home.”
v
Mitch let himself into the apartment, made his way carefully in the dark to the bathroom, and closed the door behind him before turning on the light. He stripped and tossed his clothes into a pile, then removed the chest wrap and his drag gear, laying everything on top of the toilet tank. With one arm, he reached awkwardly behind his back and jerked the tape from his skin, mindless of the quick rush of pain.
Then Mitchell stepped into the shower and turned both dials on full. The Þ rst blast to hit her was icy cold, but she never ß inched. Eyes closed, she washed the smell of smoke and beer and dark secrets from her skin. Eventually she felt clean, at least on the outside. She toweled off, brushed her teeth, and turned out the light before opening the door.
Moving by memory, she made her way to the sofa bed, carefully lifted the sheet, and slid in. Then she lay on her back, her eyes on the ceiling,
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wide awake. She could feel the heat of Sandy’s body only inches away, but she did not touch her. She lay there, remembering the stroke of Irina’s tongue inside her mouth, the crush of Irina’s breasts against her chest, the tease of Irina’s sure hand between her thighs, making her swell and ache and long for more. She thought of the lies and wondered what part was real and what had only been an act. Her mind and body were alive with confusion and, worse, simmering desire, but she dared not touch Sandy. Not now. It would be wrong.
She didn’t notice the tears until Sandy’s Þ ngertips brushed over her cheeks.
“C’mere, baby,” Sandy said softly as she drew Mitchell’s head down to her breast.
“Sandy, honey, I…” Mitchell had no idea what she should say.
“Tonight—”
“Shh. It’s okay.” Sandy kissed her forehead. “I don’t need to know what you did. You’re here. That’s what matters.”
Mitchell turned on her side and wrapped her arms around Sandy, drawing up one thigh onto Sandy’s, trying to get as close as she could.
She closed her eyes and held on tightly. “I love you.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
• 265 •
• 266 •
Justice Served
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Monday, 7:20 a.m., Sloan Security OfÞ ces
Rebecca handed Mitchell a cup of coffee. “You did good work last night, Detective.”
They were alone in the conference room, waiting for Jason and Sloan to gather the preliminary data from Sandy’s review of the videotapes. Mitchell rested her hips against the counter and stared into her coffee.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“Undercover work is one of the most difÞ cult things a police ofÞ cer can do,” Rebecca said conversationally as she leaned next to Mitchell.
She sipped her coffee and gazed through the windows opposite them at the crisp blue sky. “A good undercover ofÞ cer is an invaluable asset to a team like this.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Never doubted it.” Rebecca angled her body and studied Mitchell’s face. “Mitch is unique. He gets us in places that no one else could. I also appreciate that his assignments, especially this one, put added pressure on you.”
“It’s all so new,” Mitchell admitted quietly. “Mitch, the work, how it all Þ ts together. Me and Sandy.”
Rebecca nodded. “It’s a lot to handle, and you’re doing just Þ ne.
I wouldn’t put you out there if I didn’t trust you to deal with whatever comes up. No arrest is worth one of my people.”
“I just don’t want to let you down.”
“You won’t. Not if you keep your head on straight.” Rebecca took a sip of coffee. “How’s Sandy doing?”
Mitchell colored. “She’s good. Okay.” She turned the coffee cup in her hands and Þ nally tasted the contents. It was hot, and that was about all she could tell. “I think she understands what I’m doing. On the job, I mean.”
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“Then you’re luckier than you know.”
“No,” Mitchell said softly. “I know how lucky I am.”
“You have a problem—on the job, at home—you come to me.
We’ll work it out.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Rebecca straightened as Sloan and Jason came in. “Okay. Let’s get to work.” She took her seat and the others followed suit. “Tell me you have something for me.”
Jason passed copies of a printout to both Rebecca and Mitchell.
“Not everything, not yet. But we’ve got a start.”
Rebecca perused the list of dates, mentally counting off the intervals between them. “It’s a loose pattern, but it’s a pattern.” She looked from Jason to Sloan. “Can we get the rest of this today?”
“Sandy’s on her way,” Jason afÞ rmed. “I think we’ll have the rest of the dates for you in a couple of hours.”
“I want to get a look at the central computers at Port Authority,”
Sloan said.
“I’ll make some calls,” Rebecca replied. “The captain down there is a good ofÞ cer. I think she’ll be willing to let us work outside channels a little bit. Watts is meeting with her this morning, so the two of you can coordinate at that end.”
Sloan nodded.
“When are we going to bring Captain Henry in on this?” Mitchell inquired.
Rebecca shrugged. “When I can bring him a solid package of evidence and enough of a plan to convince him that we don’t need the feds to run this operation.”
“Fucking-A,” Sloan muttered.
“At some point,” Rebecca advised, her eyes on Sloan, “Clark is going to get involved. The international human smuggling, trafÞ cking these girls across state lines, the Internet angle—it’s all federal. But before they grab up the perps like they did last time, I want the guy who did Hogan and Cruz. And I know he’s part of this.”
“Got to be,” Mitchell said. “He’s probably the enforcer for this arm of the organized crime network. I’m willing to bet he oversees the transfer of the girls from the port to the stash houses and probably runs all the guys who guard them too. That means he’s got rank in the organization.”
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“I agree.” Rebecca appeared pleased with Mitchell’s assessment.
“Which means he’s just the kind of guy that Clark is going to want to try to turn—someone high enough up in the organization to name names. And I want him Þ rst for the murder of two cops, a bent ADA, and an innocent young girl.”
“Then let’s move fast,” Sloan said, eyes gleaming. “I need to stop by Police Plaza to see how my new guys are doing with the work on retooling the computer system. Then I’ll head down to Port Authority.”
“I expect that Irina will move on Mitch tonight,” Rebecca said.
“We’ve got Þ fteen hours to put this together.”
Sloan grinned. “Plenty of time.”
Monday, 8:45 a.m., Port of Philadelphia
Captain Carla Reiser passed Watts a pastry on a paper plate as she sat down next to him on the worn plaid sofa in one corner of her ofÞ ce.
She gestured with her coffee cup to the stack of printouts in front of him. “These are the most likely ships to Þ t the proÞ le and dates you’ve given me so far.”
Watts riß ed through the stack, softly humming a refrain that approximated “We’re in the money.” “Can we get duty rosters for the shifts when these ships came into port and also for the time they were being off-loaded?”
“I’ve already got the computers working on that.”
“That so?” Watts gave her an appreciative glance as he took a huge bite from the cheese Danish. He chewed, swallowed, and shook his head approvingly. “It’s nice you’re not busting my balls over sharing this info.”
Carla took a healthy bite of her own Danish and regarded him thoughtfully. “Why should I?”
Watts lifted one beefy shoulder. “Interagency cooperation is more of a pipe dream than a reality.”
“This is a big port, Detective. Tons of merchandise move through here annually. I could tell you that no one could keep track of it all, and
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that would be the truth.” She lifted the stack of papers and let it fall to the table in front of them with a thump. “If there’s evidence in here that large-scale—no, scratch that—if any kind of smuggling is going on at this port under my watch, I want to know about it. And if it is, it’s not happening without inside help.” Her chocolate eyes grew even darker with fury. “I want to see the son of a bitch who’s been using my turf like his own personal playground strung up by his balls.”
“Now that’s my kind of police,” Watts said with a happy smile.
“The shift lists will need to be cross-referenced, drivers checked, a lot of background info run—Lieutenant Frye says she’s sending over a computer expert to sort through it and nail down how the transfers are being made.”
“That would be Sloan,” Watts said. “If anyone can put it together, she can. She’ll need a secure place to work because we don’t want to tip our hand.”
“She can use my ofÞ ce.” Carla stood. “Let me take a quick tour around the docks before she arrives. Assuming we get a chance for lunch, I’m buying.”
“Nah, let me get it.” Watts cleared his throat. “I, uh…like working with you.”
“Good. Same here.” As she reached the door, she looked back.
“But lunch is off the clock. And on me this time.”
Watts stared after her, grinning, and was still grinning when Sloan walked in a few minutes later.
“Please tell me what there is to be happy about,” Sloan said by way of greeting.
“I Þ nally ran into a woman on this job who likes guys with real dicks.”
“Yeah?” Sloan’s attention was already riveted on the computer on Reiser’s desk, and she headed for it. As she settled into the captain’s swivel chair, she muttered offhandedly, “Rumor has it there’s one or two of them still left around.”
Watts picked up the shipping manifests and schedules, his smile still in place. “It only takes one.”
Thinking of Michael, Sloan nodded, her Þ ngers already racing over the keyboard. “As long as it’s the right one.”
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Monday, 1:00 p.m., Sloan Security OfÞ ces
Mitchell rested her hands lightly on Sandy’s shoulders and bent down to kiss her cheek. “How’s it going?”
Sandy tilted her head back and sighed. “We’re almost done.”
“We picked up the Þ rst one that Trudy did,” Jason informed her.
“You should take a look at the one right before it.”
“Why?”
Wordlessly, Jason scanned the disk and, Þ nding the Þ le he wanted, played the image. Mitchell hunkered down next to Sandy, resting her hand on her girlfriend’s knee as she stared at the monitor. The setting was generic—a nondescript bedroom, very little in the way of decoration, harsh studio lighting. Two naked women and a man lay tangled together on rumpled sheets. As she watched, Mitchell saw the two women get to their knees and then straddle the man. While facing each other, one lowered herself onto his erect penis and the other settled over his face. Then, they leaned toward one another and kissed. The woman who rocked rhythmically above his mouth was Irina.
“Fuck,” Mitchell said.
“Looks like she came up through the ranks,” Jason remarked.
“Probably supervising the girls looks like a lot better job to her than this did.”
“Is that her?” Sandy asked quietly. She looked at Mitchell. “The one you’re hooked up with?”
Mitchell didn’t see any point in correcting her terminology. “Yeah.
That’s her.”
Sandy narrowed her eyes and studied the images. “Nice body.”
“Turn it off, Jason, will you,” Mitchell said curtly. She took a breath, struggling to clear her head, but the anger kept pushing back.
“Can we use this somehow?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “Maybe. It’s more circumstantial evidence to tie the girls at Ziggie’s to the porn ring. By itself, it probably doesn’t mean much. But it’s one more piece of the puzzle.”
“Yeah.” Mitchell stood and tried to shake the tension from her shoulders. “What about the ones Trudy and her friends did? Do they fall out at the times Hogan was investigating those ships?”
“Yep. Right on target.”
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“You think this will be enough for the lieutenant to go to Captain Henry?”
“If Watts and Sloan come up with something for us at Port Authority, I think so.”
A muscle in Mitchell’s jaw jumped. “Good. ’Cause I’m ready to end this.” She turned and stalked the length of the building to the windows that overlooked the river. She braced both hands against the steel frame and stared out, but she wasn’t seeing the water or the ships or the arch of bridge that dwarfed it all. She was remembering the vacant look on the women’s faces as the cameras captured their pantomime of passion. She barely moved when she felt Sandy’s arms come around her from behind. She knew her lover’s touch so well that no words of recognition were necessary.
“What you thinkin’?” Sandy asked, resting her cheek between Mitchell’s shoulder blades.
“I was thinking that I’m no better than that guy in the video.
Just using her—only because I’m doing it in the name of justice, it’s somehow supposed to be better.” Her tone was bitter, her body stiff and unyielding.
“Somehow I don’t see that guy feeling guilty about getting off,”
Sandy said. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed the back of Mitchell’s neck, her arms crossed around Mitchell’s middle. “And because he never gave it a thought and you’re standing here feeling bad about giving her what I’m willing to bet she wants, that shoots your argument full of holes, rookie.”
“The lieutenant said this morning that it takes somebody special to be undercover.” Mitchell’s voice wavered. “I don’t think I can do it.”
Sandy angled her hips and spun Mitchell around to face her, then planted her palms ß at against Mitchell’s chest. “Let’s just get clear on what’s really going on, okay? Do you feel bad because you’re lying to Irina or lying to yourself?”
Mitchell frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What do you feel worse about?” Sandy said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “That Irina doesn’t know you’re a cop, or because deep down inside, you really want to fuck her?”
“What I feel bad about,” Mitchell said quietly, “is that deep down inside, I really don’t.”
Sandy cupped her Þ ngers around the edge of Mitchell’s jaw and
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kissed her sweetly on the mouth. “I knew it had to be something twisted like that, because only you could get yourself all worked up over not wanting something.”
Despite herself, Mitchell grinned. “You think you’ve got me all Þ gured out, don’t you.”
Solemnly, Sandy shook her head. “Uh-uh.” She moved her hand over Mitchell’s heart. “The only thing I know for sure is that you’re good. Really good, inside. I love that about you.”
Mitchell swept her up into a hug, lifting her off her feet with the force of the embrace. She kissed her, holding her off the ground, lost inside her. Only Sandy’s Þ st in her hair tugging her head back brought her back to awareness.
“Jesus, baby, cut it out,” Sandy ordered. “We’re supposed to be working here.”
Chest heaving, Mitchell set her down but kept her arms loosely around Sandy’s waist. “I love you. You make everything inside of me feel right.”
Sandy smiled. “Ditto, rookie. Ditto.”
Monday, 5:20 p.m., Police Plaza
“You think we’ll be able to get this by Clark?” Watts asked as he and Rebecca stepped off the elevators.
“Not indeÞ nitely, but maybe just long enough.”
“You think maybe we should wait on telling Henry, then?”
Rebecca shook her head as they approached the Vice Squad room. “We need to put Mitch back in Ziggie’s tonight, or else Irina will wonder why he’s not there. And I don’t think she’s going to wait another night to get him alone somewhere. We have to alert Henry that we may need backup if the bust goes down. We can’t risk Mitch out there by himself.”
“When are you going to let me listen to that tape from last night?”
Watts asked for the tenth time.
“You’re starting to piss me off, Watts,” Rebecca warned.
“If I’d been with you instead of riding hind tit in the second car on
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the surveillance last night, I woulda got to hear Mitch in action instead of Sloan.” His tone turned wistful. “I bet that boy is smooth.”
Rebecca stopped short just outside Henry’s ofÞ ce. “Watts, are you trying to tell me you think you can learn something from Mitchell about the ladies?”
“Have you happened to see the way Sandy looks at her? Like she’s been starving for a month, and Mitchell’s USDA prime.”
“We’re not going there.” Rebecca shook her head and knocked on Captain Henry’s door. “End of conversation.”
“All the same,” Watts muttered as he followed her inside. “I shoulda been listening.”
Then the rumble of Henry’s deep voice commanded their attention as the door swung closed behind them. Showtime.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Monday, 6:40 p.m., University Hospital
Well,” Catherine said, slowing as she approached Rebecca, who leaned against a column in the hospital lobby. “This is a nice surprise.”
Rebecca pushed away from the column and kissed Catherine’s cheek. “Done for the day?”
Catherine hooked her arm through Rebecca’s as they both turned toward the lobby exit. “I am. And I don’t have any patients scheduled tonight. How about you?”
“I’ve got work later.” Rebecca went on quickly, “I thought we could grab a bite to eat, unless you want to have something at home?”
“Let’s do something easy, and you can tell me what prompted you to come pick me up.”
“It’s not enough that I missed you and wanted to see you?”
Catherine smiled softly. “Oh, it most certainly is. Anything whatsoever that brings you here unexpectedly is perfect.” She squeezed Rebecca’s arm. “However, with you, there’s always a reason.”
Rebecca let out a sigh. “I don’t know how it happened that you know me better than I know myself.”
On the sidewalk in front of the hospital, Catherine turned to face her lover and kissed her quickly but afÞ rmatively on the lips. “Oh, darling. That’s what happens when you love someone.”
“I don’t feel like I’m doing a very good job in that department, then.” Rebecca’s voice held real worry. “I have no idea half the time how to show you how much I love you.”
“You don’t have to worry about it, darling. You do it without even knowing it.”
“Lucky for me,” Rebecca muttered.
“But,” Catherine said, making Rebecca’s brow furrow in concern,
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“if you really, really love me, you’ll take me to the diner and we’ll have something sinful like ribs and French fries.”
“Now that,” Rebecca said with surety, “is something I can do.”
Fifteen minutes later they sat with a mound of nachos supreme between them, a beer for Catherine and coffee for Rebecca on the table, making small talk. Catherine munched a chip and studied her lover.
“What’s happening tonight?”
“We’re heading back to Ziggie’s again,” Rebecca said after a few seconds’ hesitation. “There’s a good chance that Mitch will get invited back to the stash house tonight. If he does, we’ll probably take it down.”
“That’s what you’ve been wanting, isn’t it?” Catherine’s heart raced with sudden anxiety. She knew without needing to be told that a place holding illegal immigrants—for all practical purposes, sex slaves—would be heavily guarded by men who would think nothing of shooting police ofÞ cers.
“Yes, but there’s more to the picture than just where the girls are held and who’s running them. Once we move on this house, we’ll have exposed our hand. Everyone involved in the smuggling operation will run for cover, including the dockworkers who were in on the transfer of the girls from the ships.”
“I see. You need to coordinate all those arrests.”
Rebecca sighed. “Unfortunately, we need to coordinate it with the feds. It’s the only way to make sure we get the Port Authority guys rounded up.”
“And that means Clark.”
“Yeah.”
“Does he know yet?”
“No, but Henry has called a command meeting for nine. With Clark.” She sipped her coffee and grimaced. “He didn’t give me any room on this. I’m just waiting for Sloan to give me the names of the inside men at the PA. She’s been pulling stuff together all day down at the docks. I talked to her right before I met you, and she says she’s close.”
Catherine reached across the table and covered Rebecca’s hand with hers. “I know how much it means to you to put an end to the abuse of these young girls. And to catch the man who killed Jeff.”
Rebecca threaded her Þ ngers through Catherine’s. “It’s my job. It’s
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what I’m paid to do.” She blew out a breath. “And yeah, it’s personal this time.” She gave Catherine a long look. “But I won’t let my feelings for Jeff cloud my judgment. I won’t risk Mitchell. She’s my priority tonight.”
Catherine said nothing, waiting.
“And I won’t be a hero,” Rebecca conceded. She lifted Catherine’s hand and skimmed her lips over Catherine’s knuckles. “I won’t let you down. I promise.”
“There, you see?” Catherine said softly. “You do know just what I need.”
Monday, 7:45 p.m., Sloan and Lassiter Residence
The elevator doors slid open soundlessly, and Michael stepped into the loft. She started down the hall toward her ofÞ ce alcove and stopped short when she saw Sloan stretched out on one of the sofas.
It was such an unusual sight that she simply stood and stared. There was no question—Sloan was asleep. Carefully, Michael set down her briefcase and tiptoed into the living area. She knelt by the side of the couch and brushed back the dark hair from Sloan’s forehead. Then she leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips.
“Mmm, nice,” Sloan murmured, eyes still closed, as she stretched, then cupped her Þ ngers behind Michael’s head. She returned the kiss lingeringly before opening her eyes. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Michael said softly. She rested her elbow on the sofa and propped her chin in her palm, stroking Sloan’s cheek with her free hand.
“Why didn’t you call me and let me know you were coming home? I would’ve left the ofÞ ce earlier.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be working yet,” Sloan observed.
“I feel much better, and I didn’t drive. I didn’t even spend that much time on the computer. I just met with the various division heads to make certain our current projects were on schedule.”
“Uh-huh. I know what those meetings are like. It couldn’t have been an easy day.”
Michael rose, indicated for Sloan to sit up, and then settled behind
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her on the sofa, guiding Sloan’s head back into her lap. She ran her Þ ngers through Sloan’s hair and replied, “It was Þ ne, really. I know not to overdo. Believe me, I don’t want to end up back in bed.” She laughed softly. “Well, at least not because I have a headache.”
Sloan grinned and rubbed her cheek against Michael’s breast.
“If I had a little more time, I’d take you up on that not-so-subtle suggestion.”
“Darling, you can be sure I’ll never be subtle about wanting to make love with you.” She brushed her Þ ngers down the center of Sloan’s chest and edged her Þ ngers beneath the waistband of Sloan’s trousers.
Sloan groaned. “I have to work tonight. No teasing.”
Michael grew still. “The surveillance again?”
“Yeah. Plus a meeting at Police Plaza in an hour. I just wanted to see you for a few minutes.” She grinned. “I didn’t intend to fall asleep.”
“No,” Michael murmured, keeping her hand against Sloan’s stomach. “That’s very unusual for you. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t ask me to do the impossible,” Michael said with a gentle smile. She leaned down and kissed Sloan again. “Did you get what you were after today?”
Sloan’s fatigue dropped away and her eyes brightened. “Oh yeah.
These guys were playing a pretty nifty shell game, moving containers from one spot to another and conveniently forgetting to log in the secondary locations. They bypassed the initial Customs inspection that way. Once the girls were picked up and transported from the docks, they moved the container back to the original location and altered the documentation stored in the computer.”
“And no one noticed the discrepancies?”
Sloan shook her head. “There’s no reason to review those records as long as all of the merchandise contracted for is eventually received.
Since the containers carrying the girls held no legitimate merchandise, there was no reason to track their contents. And you’d never Þ nd that out unless you followed individual containers from point of origin to Þ nal destination, and coming off those speciÞ c ships. These guys were counting on the fact that no one would. And no one did—until today.”
“It sounds too simple to work.”
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“Exactly,” Sloan said with a hint of respect. “The simpler the scam, the more likely it is to go unnoticed.”
“So—is tonight going to end it?”
Sloan’s eyes darkened and her expression hardened. “One way or the other.”
Michael drew Sloan’s face closer to her breasts, holding her tightly. Everything that needed to be said had already been said. Sloan had made her promise, and Michael trusted her to keep it.
Monday, 9:00 p.m., One Police Plaza
Rebecca leaned with one shoulder against the wall, her arms folded across her chest, taking stock of the others present as she waited for the meeting to begin. Avery Clark stood with his back to the room, his hands loosely clasped at the base of his spine, his legs slightly spread—a position that suggested military training somewhere in his background. He appeared oblivious to the low hum of conversation in the room, but Rebecca had no doubt that he was completely aware of everything that was transpiring. Sloan sat at the small conference table, her laptop open, apparently engrossed in whatever program she was running. Rebecca had no doubt that Sloan, too, knew exactly where everyone was positioned and precisely what was happening. Mitchell occupied another chair at the table and, with her legs stretched out in front of her and her hands tucked into the pockets of her jeans, appeared genuinely calm. Watts, looking bored, drummed his Þ ngers on the tabletop.
The door opened and Henry walked in, looking neither right nor left but walking directly to the head of the table. He did not sit, but leaned with his broad hands braced on the tabletop. “Lieutenant, bring us up to speed.”
Rebecca straightened. She was aware of Clark turning from the window to face her, but she kept her eyes on her captain as she gave a succinct rundown of the evidence they had gathered, stopping at one point for Sloan to update the group on the results of her computer searches at Port Authority. She ended by saying, “We believe that our undercover operatives will have the location of at least one stash house
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tonight. I’m sure there are others, but we should be able to get more information on that from the suspects we bring in.”
“And if you can’t,” Clark said mildly, “then all you’ll have done is apprehend a few midlevel enforcers while alerting the entire organization to how much we know. Or don’t know.”
“Between the inside men on the docks, the bodyguards, and the girls themselves, we’ll Þ nd someone who wants to deal,” Rebecca said with conÞ dence.
“The longer we wait,” Henry interjected, “the more chance that they’ll move the girls permanently or that someone may get wind of our investigation.” He grimaced. “God knows, this place leaks like a sieve.”
“Working on that, Captain,” Sloan said jauntily.
Henry just grunted.
“Since the moment we inÞ ltrated the Internet pornography ring,”
Rebecca said, “the organization has to have known we might get wind of the bigger picture. We can’t chance waiting until they move this arm of their operation somewhere else. I recommend that we go now.”
“I concur,” Henry said. “I’ll make the calls.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Clark said. “Since we have jurisdiction, we’ll handle that.”
“You might have jurisdiction,” Rebecca countered smoothly, in a surprisingly calm tone, “over some aspects of the investigation, but you won’t have anything at all if we don’t Þ nd the stash house.”
“Meaning?”
Rebecca lifted her shoulder. “Meaning, it’s our show. If you want your team to pick up the dockworkers and the inside men at Port Authority, be my guest.” She turned to Henry. “But it’s my people undercover, and I’m the one who will be leading the takedown team.”
“Seems fair,” Henry said. “Lieutenant, why don’t you and Clark coordinate the details of the joint strikes. We’ll have an assault team standing by in case you think it’s necessary. You’ll lead the assault on the stash house, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir,” Rebecca said, careful to keep the triumph from her voice. She waited until Henry left to make his calls and secure the necessary warrants before turning her attention fully to Clark. “Just how much of this did you already know when you put Jimmy Hogan undercover?”
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“We didn’t know anything,” Clark replied. “We’ve known for some time that trafÞ cking in girls from Eastern Europe and Mexico was picking up, but we didn’t know their points of entry and, more importantly, their destinations once they were over the border. Now and then we’d get intelligence from girls who’d been arrested or who’d run away from abusive owners, and we’d get some hint of how big this had become. Hogan never had a chance to get close.”
“That you know of.”
Clark nodded. “I suspect he was closer than he realized, and that’s what led them to take him out.”
“If you’d told us,” Sloan said through clenched jaws, “we might have found the connections a lot faster.”
“If I’d known where to point you,” he rejoined, “I would have.
Only a team like yours has the street intelligence to make this kind of case.”
“Yeah,” Watts grunted. “And then when we do, you can take the credit.”
Clark smiled. “I don’t want the credit, Detective. I just want a good source of information.”
“Well, this time,” Rebecca said ß atly, “you’re going to have to get in line.”
Monday, 11:30 p.m., Seventh and Fitzpatrick
“It’s gonna happen tonight, isn’t it,” Sandy said as she watched Mitchell strap the ankle holster just above the bottom of her jeans.
“Probably.”
Sandy drew her legs up onto the sofa, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her chin on her knees. “You think the guy who killed Trudy will be there?”
“The lieutenant does.” Mitchell settled beside Sandy on the couch and draped an arm around her shoulder. “I think so too. He has to be a ground-level part of the operation, because every step we’ve made, he’s been right behind us. This guy knows who we are.”
“Do you think he knows Mitch?”
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Mitchell tightened her hold and kissed Sandy’s cheek. “I don’t know, honey. I don’t think so.”
“You’re gonna be inside that house alone with her, Dell.”
“Sandy, I’m not…”
“I don’t care what you do with her,” Sandy said vehemently, turning to press against Mitchell’s side. She kissed Mitchell’s neck, then her mouth. “Just don’t get your ass shot up.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Mitchell murmured, stroking Sandy’s cheek before kissing her again.
Finally Sandy drew away and took a long shuddering breath. She stood, extending her hand. “Come on, then. Let’s get Mitch ready to roll.”
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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Tuesday, 1:40 a.m., Tenth and Arch
Static Þ lled the interior of the Ford Taurus.
“Jesus, can’t you clean that up?”
Sloan heard the uncharacteristic edge of anxiety in Rebecca’s voice as she made some adjustments to the receiver. “Mitch is probably standing behind some kind of barrier—a concrete column maybe, or a steel door.”
“I thought you could get through anything with that. I’ve got to know what’s happening every second. Christ.” Rebecca looked out the driver’s window at the blacked-out windows of the long, low-slung building. There was very little trafÞ c, and the street was eerily dark. Even the streetlights had been knocked out by gangs using them for target practice. What little illumination there was came from the ß ickering red ß uorescent sign that announced Ziggie’s. The place looked like a black hole, and she had two of her people inside. She ß icked a glance in the rearview mirror and checked on Watts, moderately comforted to see him sitting in a similar nondescript department-issue vehicle on the opposite side of the street.
“Don’t worry, this kind of interference is usually temp—”
“Hello, new boy. You are late.”
“Oh yeah? Have you been missing me?”
Low throaty laughter. “Give me your hand. Mmm, you
feel? What do you think?”
“I think your nipples are hard because you’ve been
imagining my mouth on them.” Mitch’s voice came through the small speakers sounding rough and urgent. “I bet you’re wet too.”
“Maybe. But maybe not for you.”
“Oh no. It’s for me. You’re on Þ re.”
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“You think you know what I want, Mitch?”
“Give me your hand. Now feel that.” A quick gasp, a
deep groan. “Oh yeah, just like that.”
“You’ve been thinking about me too, new boy.” More
laughter, sharp and triumphant. “Yesss. I can feel what you brought me, so big and hard already.”
“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought you wanted. Jesus, go slow.”
“Why? You want to come now, I can tell. Come in my
hand—do it. Come all over that big cock of yours.”
“Not here. Not like this.” The sound of quick, panting breaths. “Irina, don’t jack me off here. Come on, baby. You know how much I need to come inside you.”
“I have a room back there. I want you to fuck me now, new boy.”
“No. No. I want to touch all of you. I wanna take my time.” A rustle of fabric, a low keening sound of pleasure verging on pain. “You’re so wet, baby. I wanna make you come all night long.” Another whimper. “Take me home where I can make love to you, Irina. Please.”
v
In the hallway, Irina arched beneath Mitch’s hands, her head back, her eyes closed, her Þ ngers clamped around his wrist—pushing his Þ ngers deeper between her thighs. Mitch felt her clitoris lengthen and harden, and knowing she was about to come, lifted his Þ ngers and eased the dangerous pressure.
“Please,” she moaned. “Mitch, Mitch…”
“I’ll make you come, baby,” Mitch murmured, his mouth against her neck. “I promise. I’ll make you come until you scream. Just take me home with you.”
Eyes glazed, breasts heaving, she dug her Þ ngernails into his arm.
“Let me come now.”
He moved his Þ ngers from between her legs and cupped her breast, rubbing his thumb gently over her nipple. “Wait, baby. Wait. It will be so much better when I can do you right.”
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Irina’s eyes ß ared with anger and need. She twisted her Þ ngers in his hair and kissed him, her teeth closing on his lip until he groaned.
v
“Come on, come on,” Rebecca muttered, staring at the rectangular metal box propped on the console between the front seats. Her Þ sts were closed tightly on her thighs, and she had to Þ ght the urge to jump from the car and storm into the building. “Give us a fucking address.”
“He’s almost got her,” Sloan said quietly, intently. Every few seconds she made minute adjustments to the dials, modulating the sound and damping the background static.
“Bastard!”
“Oh, come on, baby, just think about me inside you,
how good it will be.”
“I don’t know— ”
“They’ll be closing here in twenty minutes. I’ll just follow you home.”
“No.” Firm and sharp. “No, they will be watching for that.”
“Who? Who will be watching?”
“It is not important. You come in an hour.”
“An hour’s a long time to wait when I’m this hard.”
Laughter, light and relaxed. “Then you’ll be sure to come, no?”
“Oh yeah, baby. I’m going to come all right. And so are you.”
v
Five minutes later, Jasmine exited the club and walked at a leisurely pace down the street. No one followed, and after one quick scan of the street, she crossed directly to Watts’s vehicle and got in the passenger side. Ten minutes later, Mitch came out the door and strode directly to the car that he and Jasmine had arrived in.
“He’s got the address,” Sloan said with satisfaction.
Mitch’s voice came through the speaker clearly. “I’m supposed to
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park in an alley behind the 500 block of Levick in North Philly. She’s going to let me in the back door in an hour. She didn’t give me the exact address but said she’d ß ick the light over the door twice when she was ready to open it. She’s careful.”
“Too careful to be taking a stranger into the stash house,” Rebecca said with a frown, frustrated by the lack of two-way communication.
“And that’s what’s worried me the whole time about this setup. Why the hell would she risk it?”
“Mitch isn’t exactly a stranger. He came with the regulars, and that made him part of the scene. And let’s face it. He’s got her hooked so bad, she’s not thinking straight.” Sloan laughed softly. “Jesus, he’s dangerous.”
“Still, I wish I could talk to him.”
“Mitch knows the plan. He’ll be Þ ne, because we’ll be right behind him.”
“Let’s make sure we are.” Rebecca checked her watch. “We’ll wait another twenty minutes to make sure Irina and the girls are gone.
Then we’ll drive ahead and set up a perimeter around that block.”
“Black-and-whites?”
“I don’t see any reason for an assault team at this point. They’ll just—”
Mitch’s voice cut in. “I’m going to drive around for a while, because I don’t want anyone who might be looking to see me hanging out here.” There was a beat of silence. “See you when it’s over.”
Rebecca watched Mitch’s car pull away, then reached for her two-way. “This is Detective Lieutenant Rebecca Frye, requesting backup at the following location.”
Her mind was clear, her focus sharp. It had begun.
Tuesday, 2:46 a.m., North Philadelphia
Mitchell sat in the car in the dark in the narrow alley that ran behind a series of opposing row houses identical to those that lined every block in North Philadelphia like so many Monopoly houses arranged on a board. Every fourth or Þ fth building showed a light burning somewhere, but less than a handful had the single lamp adjacent to the rear door
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lit. Ground-ß oor garages opened onto the alley with narrow second-
ß oor decks jutting out over them. The back door was tucked beneath the overhang adjacent to the garage. She guessed that the door opened into a room or hallway that led to the stairs to the rest of the house.
With luck, the rear entrance wouldn’t be guarded, at least not on the basement level. She could only assume that was the case, since Irina apparently planned to let her into the building that way.
She checked her watch and peered into the gloom at the far end of the alley. She wondered where the lieutenant would set up the perimeter.
She was out there, she was conÞ dent of that. She couldn’t see her, or hear her, but she knew that the lieutenant and the rest of the team were behind her. She waited another minute, then got out of the car and carefully closed it as soundlessly as possible. She started slowly down the alley, scanning the rear of the buildings ahead. One light ß ickered twice in rapid succession, and, after counting down the row from the corner to identify which one it was, she whispered the location. Then she hurried toward it.
v
“Shh. You must be very quiet. The others are asleep.”
“Jesus, it’s dark down here.”
“Here. Take my hand.”
“Are you sure we won’t wake everyone up?”
“They are all upstairs. My room is on the Þ rst ß oor.”
“This is Frye,” Rebecca said into her radio. “Hold your positions until I give the word.” Then she switched channels. “Watts? You set?”
“I’m in the middle of the block facing the fronts of the buildings with two uniforms. Nothing happening. You?”
“Mitchell’s inside, eighth house from the corner. You go on my order.”
“Roger. Watch your ass.”
“Thanks. You too.” She clicked off her radio and turned to Sloan.
“I want to get closer to the building. I’ll take the receiver now.”
“Bullshit. I’m coming. You need your hands and your eyes clear.
I’ll monitor Mitchell’s transmissions.”
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“You can come down the alley, but you stay back when we go inside.”
“I’ve got a vest on. I can use a weapon.” Sloan’s voice held a challenge.
“And you’re a civilian—”
“I’ve got federal credentials,” Sloan said ß atly as she eased her car door open. “And you can use me. Let’s go.”
“All right,” Rebecca conceded, because Sloan was right. She wanted people she trusted to go in Þ rst. Any screwups could cost Mitchell. “But stay the hell behind me when we go through the door.”
Sloan grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
“How do you know they’re all asleep?”
“They are. Don’t worry.”
“So we’re Þ nally going to be alone? God, I want to feel your skin against me, all over me.”
“Mitch, there is someone else here. A man—”
“Christ, a boyfriend? Husband?”
“No, no Mitch. It is not like that.”
“What, then?”
“He…works here.”
“Where is he?”
“Come on,” Rebecca murmured, her eyes on the rear of the building. “Lay it out for us, Irina. Tell us where he is.”
“Is this going to be enough for probable cause?” Sloan asked.
“All she’s gotta do is give some indication that those girls are being detained against their will or that they’re here illegally. Either one will do it for us.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
Rebecca met Sloan’s eyes head-on. “Mitchell’s inside. I’m not leaving her in there, so if we run into reception problems and I can’t tell what’s going on, I’m going to have to take the door. Whether you come along is up to you.”
“Let me know when you’re having trouble with the receiver, because I’ll be going in with you.”
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“He is upstairs. My room is down here, in the back…
come, Mitch, we are almost there.”
“Is he asleep?”
“No. He is watching.”
“Watching? Irina, watching who?”
“Don’t you know, new boy?”
“No. Irina, what—”
“Us. He watches us. So we stay . ”
“That’s good enough. Let’s put Clark to work rounding up the Port Authority suspects, then we go.” Rebecca thumbed her radio. “This is red team. Blue team, go.” She switched channels yet again. “Watts, there’s one guard, upper ß oor. The girls are up there too. We’ll go in silent from the rear, and once we’re in position, you’ll take the door.
Wait for my signal.”
“What about Mitchell?”
“Bedroom, Þ rst ß oor. Make sure she’s secure. Protect her cover if you can.”
“Okay, Loo.”
Rebecca glanced at Sloan. “Any good with locks?”
Sloan nodded, her eyes glinting in the moonlight. “Spycraft 101.”
“Let’s see just how slick you feds really are.”
v
Sloan picked the lock in under sixty seconds. She held the door open, and Rebecca led the way inside, weapon in hand, stepping carefully in the dark.
“Stairs,” Rebecca whispered.
A sliver of light at the top of the stairwell gave them direction as they moved stealthily upward. The house was dark and still, so still it was hard to believe that anyone inhabited it. Rebecca’s skin tingled, but her pulse was steady and slow. At the top of the stairs she stopped and edged her shoulder to the corner. “Take left.”
Without waiting for a response, Rebecca spun into the hallway, her gun arm extended. She had the sense of Sloan moving in tandem with her, facing the opposite direction. The rooms opposite them, their
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doorways little more than dark yawning mouths, appeared unoccupied.
Rebecca pointed with her left hand down the hallway where a staircase ascended to the second ß oor. Sloan nodded.
Rebecca saw no indication of motion sensors on the walls or ceiling, no cameras, no light beams crossing the hallways that might trigger an alarm if interrupted. Obviously, no one was expecting visitors. In all likelihood, the guard was there more for intimidation of the occupants than for security. Nevertheless, she approached the stairs carefully, her back to the wall, leading with her weapon as she carefully climbed upward. Two steps below the top, she stopped and pressed her radio to her mouth. “Watts, go.”
Silently, she counted to ten and then inched around the corner and into the upper hallway. A light shone from an open doorway halfway down, and the muted sound of a television drifted to her. She hand-motioned Sloan to stay behind and cover her. She had just reached the open door to the room when she heard the crack of the front door exploding open. With both arms extended, she swung into the open doorway and swept the room. She caught the blur of motion from the corner of her eye and pivoted in that direction, shouting simultaneously,
“Police! On the ß oor.”
She heard what sounded like a string of Þ recrackers on the Fourth of July at the same time as the Þ rst bullet struck. The impact knocked her back and she bounced off the opposite wall, lost her footing, and went down. She tried to raise her gun, but her right arm was numb. He was coming, the submachine gun pointed at her head.
Catherine, I’m sorry.
She heard the next shots too, but she didn’t feel a thing.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Tuesday, 3:23 a.m.
The staccato sounds thundering in the air shook the walls and trembled through the ß oorboards.
“What is it?” Irina’s voice rose in terror.
The roar was replaced by ominous silence.
“Stay here,” Mitchell said sharply as she spun toward the closed bedroom door. Just as she reached it, she heard shouts, the words indecipherable above the crack of splintering wood from somewhere close by. She debated drawing her weapon, but instinct warned her to wait. Only the immediate team members knew she was an undercover cop, and getting shot in a case of mistaken identity would be just plain dumb. She pulled open the door and stepped out into the hall, her hands at shoulder level.
A chorus of voices screamed.
“On the ß oor! On the ß oor! Hands above your head. Police.”
When Mitchell caught sight of a uniformed ofÞ cer swinging a weapon toward her chest, she dropped facedown, her arms spread-eagled at her sides. “Irina, get down,” she yelled toward the bedroom as someone roughly jerked her arms behind her back and cuffed them.
“Got a gun here,” a female ofÞ cer yelled, adrenaline making her voice sharp and brittle.
“Give it here,” Watts said as the uniform pulled the revolver from Mitchell’s ankle holster.
“Civilian in the bedroom,” a male voice called simultaneously.
“You two! Get the civilian out of the building and call for more backup. Leave this one here for now.” As the two ofÞ cers half dragged Irina out the front door, Watts knelt by Mitchell’s side. “You okay, kid?”
“Yeah, but all hell’s breaking loose upstairs. Jesus.” Mitchell jerked her arms. “Get these off.”
• 291 •
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He keyed the cuffs and they both got to their feet. He handed Mitchell her weapon.
“Here. Clear the downstairs.” He hesitated. “And get your badge on before some eager uniform plugs you full of holes.”
“I’m coming up with you,” she insisted, digging deep into her front pocket for her badge.
“You ain’t wearing a vest, and the Loo said to protect your cover.
You stay down here for now.”
“You might need me.”
“I need you, I’ll holler.” He was already halfway to the stairs and didn’t look back.
v
The hall was Þ lled with the stench of cordite, the pungent smell of blood, and the screams of petriÞ ed girls. Watts saw the body on the ß oor, and the air gushed out of his lungs as if he’d been punched in the gut. Oh, fuck me, I’m not seeing that.
Sloan pivoted toward him, gun extended, and he yelled, “Police, police. Sloan, it’s Watts. Jesus.”
“I can tell who the hell it is, for Christ’s sake.” Sloan’s eyes were hard dark stones. “Clear downstairs?”
“Mitchell’s sweeping it.” Watts wasn’t looking at her, but at Rebecca slumped against the wall. “Jesus Christ.”
“Call for the ambulance and a coroner.” Sloan holstered her weapon and spoke in Russian to the group of young women huddled together at the far end of the hall. Most were garbed only in ß imsy sleepwear or T-shirts, all were barefoot, and all were clearly terriÞ ed.
“They say there’s no one else up here,” she called back to Watts, “but I’ll do a room-to-room. You stay with Rebecca.”
“Loo?” Watts knelt by Rebecca’s side. Her eyes were open but glazed. Blood shimmered down her face and neck. “Take it easy, Lieutenant. The ambulance will be here in a minute.”
He waited, holding his breath, but no answer came.
v
Catherine opened her eyes to darkness, her heart racing. The
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bedside clock read 4:26 a.m. She listened for the sound of the key in the lock, but there was only silence. She sat up and reached for her robe.
The feeling of foreboding was oppressive and heavy, a weight in her chest that squeezed the air from her lungs and turned her limbs to stone.
She forced herself from the bed and, after pulling the robe around her naked body, walked into the living room. When the knock came at the door she was not surprised. For seconds that felt like eternity, she did not move. In that instant she understood the true power of denial. If she did not open the door, she would not suffer the loss. If she did not hear the words, she would not experience the anguish. If she did not accept, it would not be true.
The quiet knock repeated.
Catherine steeled herself and opened the door. She hadn’t meant to speak, but when she saw Sloan’s face, she whispered an agonized no.
“She’s hurt, but she’s alive. She’s at University ER. Ali Torveau’s with her.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Catherine said evenly, but when she turned, her legs were unsteady. She didn’t draw away when Sloan’s arm came around her waist.
“It’s going to be all right,” Sloan murmured as she walked beside Catherine back to the bedroom.
“Tell me what happened.”
Sloan averted her gaze as Catherine, apparently oblivious to Sloan’s presence, removed her robe and stood naked in front of the closet. “We took the stash house. The guard was armed.”
“Oh God.” Catherine closed her eyes and braced her hand against the closet door.
“She was wearing a vest, Catherine,” Sloan hurried on. “I couldn’t tell for sure, but I don’t think she took a body shot.”
“She would have called me if she could have. What aren’t you telling me?”
“There’s a head wound. I’m not sure how serious.”
Catherine gave a small cry before Þ ghting back the terror that threatened to immobilize her. Blanking her mind, she slipped into a blouse and slacks, heedless of the fact that she wore no underwear. She stepped barefoot into low-heeled boots and pulled a blazer off the rack.
• 293 •
RADCLY fFE
She walked determinedly toward the front door with Sloan in her wake.
“How could this happen? Who was with her?”
“I was.”
Catherine Þ nally looked directly at Sloan. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“And the…person who shot her?”
“Dead.” Sloan pointed. “My car’s over here.”
“You killed him?”
“Yeah.” Sloan keyed the remote and opened the passenger door for Catherine.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
Sloan handed Catherine into the car, pulled the seat belt across Catherine’s chest, and hooked it. “I’m just Þ ne.”
v
Catherine remembered nothing of the brief, rapid journey to the hospital. She was out of the car nearly before Sloan was able to halt the Porsche in front of the emergency room entrance. She rushed through the automatic double doors into the familiar chaos of the trauma admitting area. Tonight the waiting room was awash with a sea of blue.
Tonight, the PPD had turned out en masse in support of one of their fallen brethren. That realization passed quickly through Catherine’s mind as she grasped the arm of the Þ rst passing nurse. “Lieutenant Frye. Wounded police ofÞ cer. Where is she?”
“Trauma One, I think.”
“Thank you.”
Sloan caught up to Catherine before she was halfway down an adjacent hallway that sported curtained exam rooms along both sides.
“Maybe you should wait until I Þ nd Ali and get an update.”
“No. I want to see her now.”
“Okay,” Sloan relented. “I’ll see what I can Þ nd out.”
Before she could turn back to the crowded waiting room in hopes of Þ nding someone who would be willing to give her information, she heard the deep rumble of a familiar voice.
“Dr. Rawlings,” Captain Henry said in a surprisingly soothing tone of voice. “I’m sorry to see you again under these circumstances.
Can I get you anything?”
• 294 •
Justice Served
“Where is she?” Catherine asked immediately.
“Radiology, at least the last I heard.” He slid an arm beneath Catherine’s elbow. “No one is telling us very much, but the doctors listed her in critical, but stable, condition. Why don’t you come sit down in the family waiting room.”
“She’s not in the operating room?”
Henry looked perplexed. “No. No, they said something about a CAT scan.”
Some of the terrible pressure around Catherine’s heart eased. If they hadn’t taken her directly to the operating room, then she couldn’t be in grave danger. She might be hurt, but she wasn’t dying. Please, let that be true.
“I’m going down to radiology,” Catherine said.
“Of course,” Henry replied.
“You want me to come with you?” Sloan asked.
Catherine shook her head. “No, I’m all right.” She smiled at Sloan.
“Thank you for coming to get me. You should call Michael. She’ll be worried.” Suddenly, her expression changed to one of concern.
“Everyone else is all right? Dellon? Watts?”
Sloan nodded. “All okay.”
“Good. Good. I have to go.”
v
The Þ rst thing she saw when she exited the stairwell was Watts pacing in a tight circle with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.
Then she saw Mitchell, arms crossed, face pale, leaning with one shoulder against the wall next to the entrance to the radiology suite.
Still in her tight black jeans and motorcycle jacket, with the curves of her face shadowed and dark, she looked like a dangerous young animal.
But her eyes, when they met Catherine’s, were drenched with pain.
When he saw her, Watts hurried forward. “I woulda come to get you, but Sloan wanted to.”
“It’s all right,” Catherine said gently. “It’s good that you’re here watching over her.” Her gaze moved to the closed doors. “Is she still in there?”
“Yeah, and they won’t tell us a goddamn thing.”
• 295 •
RADCLY fFE
“Well, they’ll tell me.” And then she pushed her way through the doors.
She saw Ali Torveau immediately, leaning over the shoulder of an X-ray technician who was scrolling through a series of images on a computer screen.
“Let me see the cranial cuts again,” the trauma surgeon instructed.
“Ali,” Catherine said, “how is she?”
Ali Torveau spun around in surprise. “Catherine. Lucky, I think. We’re not done with the head CT. When she came in, she was unconscious, but I’m not seeing anything other than some occipital swelling.”
“Where was she…shot?” Catherine found it almost impossible to get the words out, but she forced herself. As she asked the questions that were so hard to even conceive, she glanced through the viewing window into the room where the huge machine even now shrouded her lover’s body.
“The vest took the brunt of it,” Ali said. “We haven’t scanned her chest, and there was considerable bruising over the mid-thorax.
She may have a fractured sternum, but my main concern is her head.
She’s got a deep temporal scalp laceration that looks to be from a bullet wound.”
For a few seconds, Catherine’s vision wavered and she pressed her Þ ngertips to the countertop to steady herself. “Can I see her?”
Ali pulled over a rolling chair and guided Catherine into it. “As soon as the scans are done. I need this information, Catherine.”
“But she’s going to be all right?”
“Let me Þ nish my evaluation, and then we’ll talk, okay?” Ali’s tone was gentle but Þ rm, and her attention was once again on the monitor. “Peter, run that series again, will you?”
v
Hand in hand, Michael and Sandy pushed through the crowd of police.
“There!” Michael pointed, having caught sight of Sloan and Jasmine standing off to one side in the hallway by the elevators.
Sloan looked in their direction at the sound of Michael’s voice,
• 296 •
Justice Served
and some of the tension drained from her face. Both she and Jasmine hurried to meet them.
“Hey,” Sloan murmured, kissing Michael quickly.
Michael rested her palm on Sloan’s chest, her eyes roving over her lover’s body. “You’re all right?”
“Yeah, Þ ne.”
Threading an arm around Sloan’s waist, Michael turned to Jasmine. “Sarah will be here any minute. I called her on the way over.
She’s bringing a change of clothes in case you want them.”
“At the moment, no one is paying any attention to me,” Jasmine replied. Gesturing to her skintight red dress and stiletto heels, she added, “But it won’t be long before they do. I think tonight I could do without the attention.”
As if on cue, Sarah emerged from the elevator, a canvas tote under one arm. When she saw the group, she approached with her usual composed expression. “Here you go,” she said as she kissed Jasmine brieß y on the mouth. “How’s Rebecca?”
“No word yet.” Jasmine squeezed Sarah’s hand. “I’ll be right back.
I just need to Þ nd a phone booth.”
“Where’s Dell?” Sandy asked sharply. Michael had come by to pick her up after Sloan called. When the phone had rung, she hadn’t been asleep. She’d been waiting. Waiting and trying not to think about where her girlfriend was or what she might be doing. She’d been entertaining visions of hunting down Irina and tearing her limb from limb. Now all she wanted was to see for herself that Dell was all right. She couldn’t have cared less what she might have done with Irina.
“She’s downstairs with Watts…where they took Rebecca.”
“Okay, thanks.” Sandy did a quick 360, spied the stairwell on the far side of the elevators, and headed for it. When she pushed through the Þ re door on the basement level, she saw Dell immediately. The rush of relief made her weak. That was nothing, though, compared to the way the look on Dell’s face made her feel when their eyes met. Warm and shaky and strong all at once. She took three steps forward just as Dell moved to her, and they ended up in the center of the hall with their arms wrapped around one another in a Þ erce embrace.
“You okay, baby?” Sandy whispered, running her hands up and down Mitchell’s back.
• 297 •
RADCLY fFE
“Rebecca’s shot,” Mitchell said, her face in the curve of Sandy’s neck. “God, Sandy. God.”
The tremor in her lover’s voice almost broke Sandy’s heart. “She’s gonna be okay, rookie. She’s always okay.”
“I’m so glad you came.” With effort, Mitchell straightened up.
“It’s like…everything is coming apart.”
“Look, rookie,” Sandy said, her voice Þ rm. “Frye will be okay.
She’ll be okay because…” She shrugged. “Because she’s what holds all you guys together, and that’s not gonna change. You need her, and she knows it, and she won’t let anything screw that up.”
“You think?” Mitchell whispered, needing desperately to believe.
Sandy smiled and stroked Mitchell’s cheek. “I know. ”
From a few feet away, Watts heard the words and whispered a silent prayer that Sandy was right.
v
GunÞ re echoed in Rebecca’s head. The smell of adrenaline and fear and hot metal permeated her consciousness. And somewhere, somewhere, struggling for dominance over all the other sensations, was the urgent need to reach Catherine. Catherine. She had to see her. Touch her. Tell her not to worry.
“Catherine,” she murmured.
“I’m here. Rebecca, darling, I’m here.” Catherine caressed trembling Þ ngers over Rebecca’s forehead, gripping Rebecca’s hand hard with her free hand. “You’re all right, darling.”
“Sorry.” Rebecca forced her eyes open, then blinked, even though the lights in the intensive care room were dim. After a few seconds of trying, she was able to focus on Catherine’s face. There was so much anguish in her eyes, Rebecca shuddered. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I know.” Catherine lifted Rebecca’s hand and kissed her knuckles one by one. “I know that. Don’t worry, just rest.”
“Sloan…Mitchell…my team…hurt?”
“No, darling. All okay.” Catherine kissed her gently. Only you.
Will it always be you here like this?
Rebecca frowned. There were things she couldn’t remember. She saw the dark, narrow alley and the back door of the row house, saw
• 298 •
Justice Served
herself climbing the pitch-black stairwell and inching down the hallway, saw herself crouching in the doorway and the ß ash of movement from her right. She jerked slightly, hearing the gunÞ re again.
“What is it?” Catherine exclaimed as the heart rate readout on the screen over Rebecca’s bed jumped twenty points and alarm bells rang.
“Are you in pain?”
“He must’ve been sitting there watching TV with the automatic in his hand.” Rebecca grimaced. “Careful bastard.”
Catherine didn’t want to think about someone lying in wait, ready and willing to kill her lover. But she knew that for Rebecca, talking it out, working it out, was the best way to heal. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I went down, and he kept coming.” Speaking slowly, still vague, still in pain, Rebecca moved her eyes back to Catherine’s. “I was afraid he would kill me and you would be the one left hurting.”
Catherine caught her lower lip between her teeth, but it was too late to stop the tears. “I love you. I love you so much.”
“Catherine—love. I’m so sorry.”
“I couldn’t bear to lose you.” Catherine brushed away tears.
“I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want you hurt—ever.”
Rebecca squinted against the sudden rush of pain. “Christ, my head is exploding.”
“You have a concussion. A substantial one.” As she spoke, Catherine scanned the monitors rapidly. Everything seemed stable, and she looked back to her lover. “Your head is going to hurt for a while.
Your memory might be a little fuzzy.”
“I got hit. I remember that now.” Rebecca brought a hand to her chest and pressed lightly, then winced. “Couple of places, it feels like.”
“Yes.” Catherine closed her eyes against the images that came unbidden. Of Rebecca lying on the warehouse ß oor, a river of blood pouring from her chest. Rebecca lying pale and motionless in the intensive care unit. Closed her mind to the nightmare of losing her…the empty bed, the silent house, the barren life. She attempted a smile. “Ali says you’ll be out of here in a few days.”
“Good.”
Rebecca closed her eyes for so long that Catherine thought she
• 299 •
RADCLY fFE
was asleep. However, when she tried to withdraw her hand, Rebecca’s grip on her Þ ngers tightened.
With her eyes still closed, Rebecca said, “I’d quit if I could, so that you would never have to go through this again. But I can’t.”
“I know.” Catherine leaned down, kissed Rebecca’s lips. “It’s enough that you would if you could.”
• 300 •
Justice Served
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tuesday
I killed a man last night.”
Sloan said the words so quietly that it took a few seconds for them to register. When Michael understood the signiÞ cance of what her lover had just said, she tightened her hold on the woman in her arms.
Sloan lay with her head on Michael’s shoulder, one arm loosely around her waist. Michael rested her cheek against the top of Sloan’s head and slowly caressed her back.
“Is that what the detectives were talking to you about for so long at the hospital?”
“Yeah, they were taking my statement.” Sloan spoke with her eyes closed, savoring the warmth and scent of Michael’s skin. “Took my weapon too. Until the investigation is completed.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“I don’t think so. I shot the guy that shot Rebecca. No one is going to look too hard at the circumstances.”
Michael searched beneath the cool, even tone for what Sloan might not be saying. “This man…is he the one?”
Sloan was quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know. He could be.”
She shrugged. “I think there’s a fair chance we’ll never know.”
“And if we don’t? Can you live with that? Can you let it go?”
“Yes.” Sloan tilted her head back and opened her eyes. She smiled softly at Michael. “The only thing that matters to me is that you’re all right and that we’re together.”
Michael smiled and kissed Sloan softly. When she drew away, her expression became serious. “Have you ever shot anyone before?”
“No.”
“Are you all right with it?”
“He was going to kill Rebecca. Then he was going to come after the rest of us.” Sloan’s eyes never wavered; her voice remained steady
• 301 •
RADCLY fFE
and calm. “I didn’t enjoy it, but I’d do it again. If it was the guy that hurt you, I’m glad. Either way, I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
Michael nodded. “I think I’d rather you do your investigating with the computer from now on.”
Sloan grinned. “I think I agree with you.”
v
“Hey,” Watts said. “I thought you’d be long gone by now.”
Carla Reiser smiled up from her desk. “Fat chance. I’ve got about seven hundred more forms to Þ ll out.”
“That all?” Watts ambled in and sagged into one corner of the sofa. “The feds gone?”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Carla said fervently.
Watts chuckled. “I guess you liked spending the night with Clark about as much as I would have.”
“OfÞ cious, condescending men are not my favorite types.”
“If I was half as slick as most of the women I work with, I’d say something smart to that.” Watts shrugged. “I can’t think of anything.”
Carla smiled. “I don’t require that you be real smooth.”
“Good thing.” Watts felt around in his jacket pockets for his cigarettes, then gave up. “How did it go?”
“Like clockwork. One thing I’ll say for the federal boys, they’ve got plenty of manpower and neat toys. Once Sloan gave us the names, we had audio and video surveillance up and running on the suspects here and at their homes within hours.” Carla stood and walked to the counter where a full pot of coffee steamed. As she poured a cup, she said, “As soon as we got the green light from Lieutenant Frye, we took everyone at once. Only one of the suspects was on shift here last night, and we just walked him out to a car and put him in it. No muss, no fuss.
Clark had secondary teams who picked up the other guys at home.”
“Is Clark doing the interrogations?”
“That’s my understanding.” Carla lifted the pot and an inquiring eyebrow in his direction. At his nod, she Þ lled another cup and handed it to him as she sat beside him on the sofa. “Clark made it crystal clear that the smuggling operation was his jurisdiction and we weren’t getting any piece of the arrests.”
“Any way you look at it, though,” Watts said as he sipped gratefully
• 302 •
Justice Served
at the coffee, “the organized crime organization in this city just took a big hit. Personally, I don’t think Clark is going to get anyone to ß ip on Zamora, but the feds will bag a nice number of midlevel guys. Enough to make the papers.”
“That’s Þ ne with me,” Carla said. “As long as my docks are clean again, I don’t care who gets the glory.”
Watts nodded appreciatively. “I’m with you.”
“Yes, I noticed. It’s kind of nice.”
Watts blushed and tried desperately to think of a comeback. He still couldn’t.
v
Sandy curled on one side beneath the covers and watched Mitchell pace, a cell phone to her ear.
“Look, all I want to know is what’s going to happen to them.”
Mitchell blew out a frustrated breath. “Okay, Þ ne. Your best guess, then.” She paced a few more steps. “Thanks. Yeah. I’ll check again later.” She ß ipped the phone closed, tossed it on a chair, and stripped.
Naked, she slid into bed beside Sandy.
“Roll over on your stomach,” Sandy said.
“Huh?”
“You’re totally wired, Dell. Roll over.”
Mitchell ß ipped onto her stomach and cradled her head in her folded arms. A second later, Sandy settled astride her butt. Her heart and a few other places lurched at the sensation of heat and wet against her skin. She groaned softly.
Sandy pressed the heels of both hands into the center of Mitchell’s back and kneaded the tight muscles. “So what did they say?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mitchell mumbled, her eyes closed.
“Don’t be a jerk. What’s going to happen to them?” Sandy shifted lower on Mitchell’s rear to get her thumbs into the small dip at the base of Mitchell’s spine. She dug them in, circled and stroked, and Mitchell moaned again.
“INS has them…Immigration and Naturalization Services.”
Mitchell lifted her hips and felt Sandy push back, the start of a slow, steady thrust-and-press that was going to make her awfully hot, awfully fast.
• 303 •
RADCLY fFE
“So they’ll do what? Send them back to wherever they came from?” Sandy turned her hand around and slid her Þ ngers lightly down the cleft between Mitchell’s legs, barely touching her. A feather-light caress.
“Jesus.” Mitchell caught her breath, struggled to focus. “I don’t know. They’re here illegally, but they’re victims too.”
“Even Irina?” Sandy asked, her tone casual. She stilled her movements but kept her Þ ngers resting against Mitchell’s sex.
“Yeah, I think so. I can’t see her having set up any part of that operation.” Mitchell rolled her hips and turned onto her back, unseating Sandy in the same motion. She caught Sandy as she started to topple onto the mattress and pulled her down on top of her body.
“What’d you do that for?”
“I gotta see your face if we’re gonna talk about this stuff.” Mitchell opened her thighs and settled Sandy’s hips between them. She kept an arm curved around Sandy’s small waist. “And you know what you were doing was gonna make me crazy.”
“Maybe,” Sandy said with a small smile. “But it relaxes you too.
And then you don’t notice when you’re talking about stuff you don’t want to talk about.”
Mitchell raised her head and caught Sandy’s mouth in a hungry kiss that deÞ nitely made her forget what she’d been talking about.
When she dropped her head back to the pillow, her body was buzzing.
“Pretty smart.”
“Is she under your skin?” Sandy asked quietly.
“Not the way you think.” Mitchell looked directly into Sandy’s eyes. “I don’t want her. I don’t love her. But I feel…sorta responsible for what’s happening to her.”
Sandy rolled her eyes. “Jeez, rookie. You didn’t put her on that ship or force her to shoot those videos or make her train those girls, or whatever she did with them.”
“I know. But…I connected with her. And I used her.”
“Most cops wouldn’t care about that.”
“Rebecca would.”
“Yeah yeah.” Sandy stretched out full-length on Mitchell’s body and nuzzled her neck. “And so do you.” She caressed Mitchell’s chest, her abdomen, the tops of her thighs with slow, soothing strokes. “So
• 304 •
Justice Served
you’re going to keep asking around, and I suppose you’re probably gonna go see her.”
“I don’t know. I’m sure the feds will keep them here until they Þ nd out everything they can about the smuggling operation. The girls probably know something about the local organized crime operation too.” Mitchell caught Sandy’s hand and pressed it between her thighs, keeping her Þ ngers over Sandy’s. “There’s probably nothing I can do to help them.”
Sandy eased a Þ nger on either side of Mitchell’s Þ rm clitoris. “But you’re going to try.”
“Yeah,” Mitchell said, a hitch in her voice. She squeezed Sandy’s Þ ngers hard around her. “Probably.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Mitchell’s belly was on Þ re.
“I know you gotta.” Sandy slicked her tongue over Mitchell’s lips, darted inside her mouth, and teased at her with quick ß icks. She matched the movements with her Þ ngertips between Mitchell’s legs.
She watched Mitchell’s eyes glaze over and her eyelids ß utter nearly closed. “And I know you’re mine.”
Then she proved it.
v
Rebecca turned her head toward the door as a shaft of bright light cut across the room. “I thought you were going to go home and get some sleep.”
“I was. I did.” Catherine crossed to the bed, leaned down, and kissed Rebecca. “I couldn’t sleep.” She stroked Rebecca’s cheek with the back of her Þ ngers. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” Carefully, Rebecca inched toward the opposite side of the bed and patted the space beside her with the hand that did not have the intravenous line attached. “Want to stretch out?”
Catherine kicked off her shoes, then unbuttoned her suit jacket and draped it over a nearby chair. She’d showered and changed when she’d gotten home. At the moment, a few wrinkles were the least of her worries. Taking care not to jostle the bed, knowing that Rebecca’s headache must still be brutal, she eased down beside her lover. She grasped Rebecca’s hand, entwined their Þ ngers, and leaned her cheek
• 305 •
RADCLY fFE
lightly against Rebecca’s shoulder. “I always have a hard time falling asleep when you’re not beside me.”
Rebecca brushed her lips over Catherine’s hair. “I know. I’ll try to get home earlier from now on.”
“Now there’s something to look forward to.” Catherine closed her eyes and sighed. “Is this investigation over?”
“Our part of it. For now,” Rebecca answered quietly. “We’ve exposed the human smuggling operation, crippled the Internet pornography ring, and freed some of the victims. We’ve taken a respectable chunk out of organized crime, but it takes more than this to break its back. We’ll gain ourselves a few well-positioned informants within Zamora’s organization, and that will help us in the future.”
“Just one chapter in the book,” Catherine murmured.
“Yeah,” Rebecca agreed. “That’s what police work is all about.
The story never really ends.”
Rebecca closed her eyes, and together, they slept.
• 306 •
About the Author
Radclyffe is the author of numerous lesbian romances ( Safe Harbor and its sequels Beyond the Breakwater and Distant Shores, Silent Thunder; Innocent Hearts, Love’s Melody Lost, Love’s Tender Warriors, Tomorrow’s Promise, Passion’s Bright Fury, Love’s Masquerade, shadowland, and Fated Love), as well as two romance/
intrigue series: the Honor series ( Above All, Honor; Honor Bound, Love
& Honor, Honor Guards) and the Justice series ( Shield of Justice, the prequel A Matter of Trust, In Pursuit of Justice, and Justice in the Shadows).
A 2003/2004 recipient of the Alice B. award for her body of work as well as a member of the Golden Crown Literary Society, Pink Ink, and the Romance Writers of America, she lives with her partner, Lee, in Philadelphia, PA, where she both writes and heads Bold Strokes Books, a lesbian publishing company. She states, “As an author, I know how much more it takes to ‘make a book’ than just adding a cover to a manuscript. Done with respect and love for the craft, creating a book is a never-ending joy. As a publisher, my mission is to provide that experience to every author at Bold Strokes Books.”
Her upcoming works include selections in Stolen Moments: Erotic Interludes 2 from Bold Strokes Books, After Dark from Bella Books, Hot Lesbian Erotica from Cleis, the next novel in the Honor series, Honor Reclaimed (Dec. 2005), and the romance Turn Back Time (Feb.
2006).
Look for information about these works at www.boldstrokesbooks.
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