by Radclyffe
“Coffee. Black. Strong. Now, Watts.”
As soon as he headed off to the small kitchen tucked into one corner, Rebecca made her way to the only other enclosed area in the expansive space. The conference room held a massive antique library table surrounded by ten chairs, a counter in the back where a never-empty coffeepot usually sat on a warmer, and one entire wall of monitors. The screens provided views of the streets in front and rear of the building in both directions, the entry alcove, the elevator, and everywhere else in and around the building except Sloan and Michael’s living quarters one floor up. A laptop rested on the table in front of Sloan and Jason’s customary seats. Rebecca eased into a chair in her spot on Sloan’s right, happy to be off her feet. She needed to be able to think, and the less she moved around, the less her head bothered her.
It felt good to be back at work. She’d been part of the special sex crimes unit until her previous partner, Jeff Cruz, was murdered. She’d been in the middle of an intense manhunt for a serial rapist, and between the stress of the case and Jeff’s death, she’d almost come unglued. But she’d met Catherine, and her life had changed in ways she’d never dreamed. Then her captain had assigned her to head the HPCU. She had worked in multijurisdictional task forces before, but not with civilian consultants. She’d resisted at first, even though both Sloan and Jason were highly skilled ex-federal agents. Now she couldn’t envision her team without them, any more than she could envision her life without Catherine.
“Here you go, Loo.” Watts slid a mug of coffee in front of her and put the pot on the warmer at the back of the room. Then he dropped into a chair across from her and sighed. “Home sweet home.”
Rebecca was about to answer when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.
“It’s about time you two showed up,” she said when Sloan charged in.
Sloan’s sleek dark hair was windblown, her face flushed from the fast ride in the cold air. Jason McBride, a svelte handsome blond with piercing blue eyes, followed her in. As usual, he was impeccably attired in an open-collared pale blue shirt and dark trousers. He looked every inch the successful young businessman, which he was. What everyone on the team knew, but few others did, was that he was also a breathtakingly beautiful transvestite named Jasmine.
“How you feeling, Frye?” Sloan asked as she and Jason took their seats.
“Good.”
The sounds of running footsteps heralded the arrival of the last team member, newly minted Detective Dellon Mitchell. Five-eight, black hair, blue eyes, slim and muscular, she wore low-slung black jeans, a black T-shirt molded to her slender torso, scuffed black motorcycle boots, and an equally well-worn leather motorcycle jacket. At first glance she might be thought either a strikingly handsome young woman or a beautiful boy. At times, she was both.
“Lieutenant!” Mitchell’s eyes sparkled with welcome. “Hey. Great to see you.”
“Detective.” Despite her headache and fatigue, Rebecca put some force into her voice. The team would function without her, but just as much as she needed to be here, they needed to believe she was fit and ready to lead. “Sorry to interrupt your day off.”
“No problem.” Mitchell slouched into a chair, her legs spread casually. “It’s just so good to see you…” She colored. “I mean—”
“So,” Rebecca interrupted, saving both Mitchell and herself further embarrassment, “somebody fill me in on what the hell we accomplished the other night.”
She’d been shot in the middle of a raid and, despite her demands, none of her team was given access to brief her. Consequently, she had no idea where things stood with their ongoing investigation into a web of human trafficking and sex slavery that extended from the Port of Philadelphia deep into the heart of the city.
“We blew away the scumbag who shot you, for starters,” Watts said, his eyes hard and flat.
Rebecca hated to let on that she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened, but she knew who’d been backing her up. “Thanks, Sloan.”
Sloan nodded. At the instant she’d pulled the trigger, she hadn’t been thinking of anything except that if she didn’t shoot the guy, he was going to shoot her and finish off Rebecca too. Afterward, she hoped the dead man was the one who had nearly killed Michael during a thwarted attempt on Sloan’s life. She wanted retribution for Michael’s injuries even more than she wanted to put a stop to the abuse of young girls and dismantle the organization behind the prostitution, pornography, and drugs.
“Anything on the ballistics yet?” Rebecca doubted they’d hit the one house where the man who’d assassinated her partner just happened to be guarding a group of smuggled Russian girls, but stranger things had occurred. Sometimes police work was just a lot of sweat, drudgery, and occasional luck.
“No match to anything in the system,” Watts said. “He was using a semiautomatic. These guys probably import them by the case.”
“So the weapon used to kill Jeff and Jimmy is still out there. And presumably the shooter is too,” Rebecca summarized. Initially they’d theorized that her partner Jeff and an undercover fed, Jimmy Hogan, had been executed by a contract killer who was long gone. However, an assistant district attorney, George Beecher, was murdered more recently, only days before the HPCU raid. He was shot with the same weapon used to kill the detectives.
Mitchell piped up. “So what are we thinking? That the shooter is local? A mob guy, maybe?”
“Pretty ballsy for anyone local to kill a cop,” Watts said.
“Yes, if we’re talking about the usual suspects,” Rebecca said. Organized crime bosses preferred not to bring down heat in their own backyards. The killings were an escalation that suggested direct involvement from outside players, most likely foreign interests, since the girls were being smuggled in on ships from Eastern Europe. “Mitchell,” she said, “grab the whiteboard and let’s put down what we know and what we better find out.”
Several hours passed as the team shared information and speculated. Finally, Mitchell put the marker down and they all stared at the names and arrows and tried to complete the picture.
“What do we know?” Rebecca looked around the table. “Who’s bringing these girls in and how?”
“They have to have local contacts to work the container switches on the docks and to put them to work in the sex clubs,” Sloan said. “That’s the Zamoras’ territory.”
“Probably,” Rebecca agreed. “But the Zamoras are not in it alone. Are we getting any information from Irina?”
Dell Mitchell turned bright red. She had gone undercover as Mitch, a drag king, to establish contact with a young Russian woman, Irina, who appeared to supervise a group of smuggled girls when they were dancing in local strip clubs. Mitch had needed to seduce Irina to discover the address where the girls were held at night under armed guard. Some of the surveillance team had listened in during the seduction, a fact that still embarrassed the young detective.
After a minute, Mitchell said, “I tried to get information on the girls who were in the house, including Irina, down at headquarters. The story is as soon as our people brought them in, Immigration claimed jurisdiction and moved them to a federal facility. No one’s heard anything since then.”
Rebecca pinched the bridge of her nose, trying unsuccessfully to back off the headache that was accelerating by the moment. “It’s not Immigration. It’s probably Justice, and it’s probably Avery Clark. Immigration doesn’t have the pull to get in the middle of an operation like this. But Clark and the Justice Department do. God damn it. Every time we get close to inside information, he shuts us out.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Watts and I will track him down and see what we can squeeze out of him.”
As if tuned into her fatigue and frustration, Watts picked up the ball. “We know a lot more than we did a week ago. We know the Russians are bringing young girls in through the port in containers and we know where some of them were working. What we need is to connect the Zamoras to these girls, because if we
can, that’s a federal crime and they’re going down for a long long time.”
“We need eyes and ears back in the clubs.” Rebecca straightened and looked at Mitchell. “Is your cover good?”
“Yes ma’am,” Mitchell said. “As far as anyone knows, including Irina, I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m pretty sure she saw me get cuffed.”
“Good. Then I want Mitch to reconnect with his drag king buddies and get back into the clubs. Jasmine too, for backup. There’ll be a lot of talk on the streets, and we’ll need our CIs working their sources hard.”
“Oh goodie,” Jason breathed in a husky whisper that was pure Jasmine.
“Yes ma’am,” Mitchell said stiffly. Sandy was one of Rebecca’s CIs. A friend of hers had been murdered just a few days before, when she’d gotten too close to some major players in the porn film business, and Mitchell wanted Sandy off the streets, but it wasn’t her call to make. If she pushed her, Sandy would get pissed and be less likely to tell Mitchell if she ran into trouble.
Jason leaned forward. “Somebody has to be doing fancy work with the computers at the port to reroute the containers with the girls in them and bury the shipping manifests. I don’t see anyone down there having the know-how for that.”
“Plus,” Sloan added, “someone injected a very smart Trojan horse into the City Hall system to hack into confidential files.”
“What are you saying?” Rebecca asked. “There’s a high-level hacker at work for the opposite side?”
“Undoubtedly,” Sloan said.
“Can you find them?”
Sloan grinned, her eyes darkening to indigo with the scent of the hunt. “Oh yeah. Now we’ve got two intrusion sites—at the port and City Hall. Even the best hacker leaves fingerprints.”
“Do it,” Rebecca said. “Watts, I need you to pave the way at the port for our people. And check in with the organized crime team and see if they’ve got any intel on Zamora’s activities that might help us.” She took a deep breath. “Our target is the Zamoras. The feds will chase the Russians. If we happen to trip over them, all the better. But we need to clean up our own house first.”
“The OC guys aren’t going to like us poking around on their turf,” Watts pointed out mildly.
Rebecca shrugged. “The HPCU has cross-divisional jurisdiction. We’ll be polite, but we’ll go where the trail leads.”
Watts chuckled again. The day just got better and better.
*
Michael turned the corner for home with a mental sigh of relief. She’d gotten caught up in a project meeting that afternoon and hadn’t realized how very tired she was until it was close to six. Just the short drive across town seemed endless. Her eyeballs pounded as if she hadn’t slept in weeks, when all she seemed to do was sleep. As she slowed to pull into the garage, she noted a familiar figure leaning against a lamppost a few yards ahead. Sandy looked even younger than her eighteen years in the muted glow of the streetlight. She also looked like she must be cold in her very short skirt and her thin red faux-leather jacket. Hugging herself, Sandy strolled up as soon as Michael got out of the car.
“You can’t be waiting for a bus,” Michael said, “since none of them can get down these streets.”
Sandy smiled shyly, as if caught out doing something untoward. “I might as well be waiting for some bus that will never come. Waiting for Dell when she’s in a cop meeting isn’t much different.”
“Ah.” Michael shifted her briefcase to her other shoulder. God, she ached all over. “Still at it, are they?”
“Either that or they’re up there sitting around drinking beer and watching television.”
Michael laughed. “I sincerely doubt it. You know they’d rather talk shop than anything else.” She touched Sandy’s shoulder. “Come on upstairs. I’ll make some tea.”
“Oh,” Sandy said quickly, “that’s okay. I’m good here.”
“I’d like the company, and this is perfect timing. I was going to call you tomorrow.” Michael knew that Sandy was sensitive about her history on the streets, despite being proud and self-sufficient and incredibly brave. Michael was fond of the young woman and admired her. The last thing she wanted to do was make her uncomfortable. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Sandy looked concerned. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Michael said, gently grasping Sandy’s hand. “Come upstairs. I’ll tell you.”
“Okay, sure.” Sandy fell into step with her, nervously smiling, her hand still in Michael’s.
*
Across the street and six floors up, Angelo DeVito stood at the darkened window, his video camera trained on the building he was supposed to be watching. He absently reached down and rearranged his crotch while he filmed the two blonde babes as they cozied up together. The one he’d first taken for a hot little whore seemed to know the tall leggy one with the shoulder-length hair and movie star face. Man, he’d love to see them get it on for real. From what he understood about the targets, he just might get the chance. He flicked off the camera when the women disappeared inside hand in hand, and noted the time to mark the spot on the tape and the license number of the car. Then he settled in the chair in front of the window to wait.
Chapter Three
“Excuse me,” Sandy said to Michael when her phone rang out the melody to “I Kissed a Girl.” She fished it out of her jacket pocket and swiveled away from the breakfast bar where they’d been drinking tea and talking.
“Hi, babe,” Dell said. “I’m at Sloan’s. We’re just wrapping up, but I’ll be a little while yet. You anywhere nearby?”
“Like upstairs?”
“Oh hey, that’s good.” Dell didn’t sound all that glad.
“What’s up?”
“The lieutenant is here. She wants to talk to you.”
“In person? Now?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be down in a few.” Sandy disconnected and shrugged at Michael. “Sorry. Frye wants me.”
“Of course. I understand. Are you still…helping out?” Michael hesitated. “You don’t have to tell me, if you can’t.”
“I don’t think it’s a secret. I mean, Sloan probably tells you everything, right?”
Michael smiled, but said nothing.
“Dell tells me stuff. Not much. She’s really all about the rules when it comes to the cop stuff.” Sandy grinned. “She’s loosened up some since she’s been hanging out with Jasmine, though.”
“Sloan doesn’t like to talk about her work very much either,” Michael said. “In fact, when she’s involved in a case, she pretty much forgets to eat, sleep, or do much of anything else except work.”
“That worries you, huh?”
“Oh,” Michael said quickly. “I didn’t mean… She’s intense. I fell in love with her because of how focused she is, how driven. How…” She blushed. “Passionate.”
“I get that part all right.” Sandy laughed. “Any girl with a beating heart gets that part about Sloan.”
“Apparently.” Michael laughed. “I had to get used to that pretty quickly. Fortunately I’m not really the jealous type.”
“I am.”
“I don’t think you have much to worry about from what I can see,” Michael said softly.
“I didn’t know I was—jealous that way. Until her.” Sandy shrugged. “Dell is the first one who ever mattered, you know.”
Michael nodded. “I do know. Exactly.”
Sandy grinned. She had girlfriends, sort of. Girls she hung with on the street. Girls she looked out for and who looked out for her. But mostly they talked about what they needed to know to get by—which johns to avoid and which pimps were quick with their hands and which cops wanted favors. And the rare ones, like Frye, who didn’t. But she’d never talked to any of them about Dell. About being with her. About having someone of her own. “I should go. Frye gets cranky if you keep her waiting.”
“Does she now.” Michael chuckled. “She’s never be
en anything except completely chivalrous with me.”
They eyed one another for a few seconds, and then burst out laughing together. Michael draped her arm around Sandy’s shoulder and walked her toward the door.
“You’ll think about what I said?”
“I will. I should talk to Dell, you know?”
“Absolutely. Take all the time you need.”
“Thanks,” Sandy said, feeling so much more than gratitude but not quite knowing what to say.
“You don’t need to thank me,” Michael said gently. “We’re friends.”
“Yeah,” Sandy said with a sense of wonder as she stepped into the elevator. “We are.”
*
“Hiya, Frye,” Sandy said as she plopped into a chair across the table from Rebecca in the conference room. On her way through the main room she’d seen Dell bent over a computer with Jason and Sloan, but Frye was alone. Frye never talked to her about street stuff in front of others, especially not Dell. “You look like crap.”
“I’ve heard that two times too many today.”
“You okay or just playing macho cop?” Sandy didn’t add that she’d been scared just about brainless when she’d heard that a cop had been shot in a raid, because Dell had been in on the bust, and she’d felt only a little less terrified when she’d learned it was Frye. Frye was special in a crazy kind of way she couldn’t explain. Frye was a hard-ass and pain in the ass, but she’d never lied to Sandy about what she wanted from her. Even back in the early days when Sandy was working the streets for real and Frye squeezed her for information, she never took advantage like some cops. Frye always paid and treated her like she mattered. She was the first person who ever had.
“I’m okay enough,” Rebecca said. “Everything quiet?”
“As far as I know.” Sandy picked at a chip on the red polish on her thumbnail. “I haven’t been out since things went down the other night. I wasn’t sure—” She glanced through the open door in Dell’s direction, but Dell was busy tapping away at a computer. Dell always got hinky when she was working for Frye. She liked that Dell worried about her, but she didn’t want her to worry too much. She liked that Dell got a little jealous. Okay, sometimes a lot jealous. She liked that feeling of being special and cared about. But she would never make her jealous on purpose. She’d played games to survive her whole life, and she would never do it with Dell.
