Sheltering Dunes

Chapter Fifteen

Philadelphia

Dell rode the elevator to the third floor of the renovated warehouse in Old City where JT Sloan lived and, along with her business partner Jason, ran a cyber-security firm. Since the High Profile Crimes Unit had merged with Sloan’s civilian operation, the warehouse had become their headquarters. Dell liked that a lot better than a few desks shoved together in some corner at One Police Plaza. Here, she felt like they were in their own world, where Rebecca Frye led the team and they all contributed, regardless of rank or experience. She was still a rookie detective, but she felt as if she’d earned her stripes and the Loo treated her that way. Everyone did.

So it especially sucked when she wasn’t contributing. She hadn’t accomplished anything all day. She’d hit all her usual places, hunting up confidential informants, talking to the street girls, even spending a few hours at the Trocadero after dark, hoping someone had heard something about where all the action had gone. None of the drag queens, transvestites, or drag kings who frequented the Troc, and whose affiliations often crossed ethnic and cultural divides, had any intel.

Ever since the HPC unit had busted the human trafficking ring smuggling young girls from Eastern Europe into the country to fuel the porn and prostitution business for the Zamora family, crime had gone underground. None of the team believed they’d stopped the Hydra-like organization, even though they’d cut off one of its main heads. Kratos Zamora, one of the two brothers in charge of running everything from guns to crack cocaine to girls for hire, had been shanked in his jail cell before he even went to trial. His brother Gregor was suspected of having orchestrated Kratos’s assassination. Whatever information Kratos might have traded in a plea bargain to reduce his prison time had died with him. Gregor, so far, was untouchable. For all intents and purposes, he was an upstanding businessman.

The only rumor Dell had been able to pick up after pounding the streets for twelve hours was the same one she’d been hearing for the last six months—vague rumbles that new blood was moving in from Central America by way of the West Coast and challenging the long-established crime hierarchy on the East Coast. MS-13 and its offshoots were organizing, merging disparate cliques into cohesive gangs with solid leadership and better communication. Unlike traditional crime families that tended to specialize in one type of crime, La Mara would take on anything to turn a profit—drugs, guns, prostitution, pornography—and their currency was violence and intimidation.

The police were scrambling for leads—they had faces, they even had some names, but what they didn’t have was evidence. The OC guys were running wiretaps wherever they could, shooting thousands of surveillance photos, trying to put undercover officers into the gangs, but infiltrating well-organized groups took years. And every day that passed, more girls died in the service of masters who only saw them as commodities to be sold, bartered, bargained for, and discarded when their use was over. Every day more schoolkids became addicted to the drugs that flowed freely, every day young men died in gang wars fought not with fists and chains, but with automatic weapons. The battle was unending; only the colors of the uniforms and the symbols tattooed on faces, arms, and torsos changed.

Dell stepped off the elevator and the doors slid silently closed behind her. She threaded her way through the desks, computer workstations, monitoring equipment, file cabinets, and other workaday equipment that filled the huge loft. Ten thirty at night. Most of the lights were off, but she wasn’t surprised to see one monitor glowing. Sloan leaned back in her swivel chair, her hands flying over the keyboard as data streamed across the thirty-inch screen. From across the room she looked relaxed, sleepy even, but Dell knew better. She’d looked into Sloan’s face enough times to know her sharp indigo eyes would be intensely focused and her scarily quick mind assessing, collating, and discarding facts as rapidly as they appeared.

Dell pulled out a nearby chair and dropped into it. Sloan glanced over, brushing her hand through her jet black hair. The platinum wedding band glinted on her left hand. She wore her usual jeans and tight white T-shirt. She looked nothing like the Justice agent she’d once been, or the current civilian liaison to the police department. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know.” Dell stretched out her legs, clasped her hands behind her head, and stared at the ceiling. “Sandy’s got swing shift and won’t be home for a while. I’m getting nowhere. I think I must be missing something. Have you got anything?”

“Not yet. But there’s encouraging chatter.”

“Chatter.” Dell sat up straight. “Meaning?”

“Jason and I have been working on this new algorithm to track low-level street activity that ordinarily would get written off as too minor to mean anything—drive-bys, bar fights, domestic disturbances, drug busts. Minor street activity that usually flies under the radar.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Because when you can’t see the big picture, you need to start looking at the small pieces. Remember, maybe once or twice a year we’ll take down a huge shipment of cocaine or find a container full of girls, but those big hits never stop the crime machine from running. Business as usual is mostly small deals—selling a trunk full of guns, street soldiers peddling a dime bag here, a vial of crank there, some sleaze shooting a thirty minute porn flick on dirty sheets with his iPhone in the back of some warehouse. Your scumbag pedophile uploading a handful of blurry photos to his friends for a small charge.”

“How does tracking all that help us?”

“I’m pulling data from the central system downtown and mapping geographical profiles of where crimes are occurring, which gangs are involved or suspected to be involved, assigning territories, looking at shifting borders.”

“Does the brass know?”

Sloan grinned, a feral smile that would have made Dell’s blood run a little colder if she hadn’t known her. Sloan had been betrayed by the very system she’d fought for, and she had no respect for organized law enforcement. She followed no one’s lead, other than Frye’s. “They’re not using it, so I might as well.”

That figured. Dell leaned forward, clasping her hands between her knees. “What does all that tell you?”

“The old territories are in flux—boundaries are changing.”

Excitement shot through Dell’s chest. “Like we thought, new regimes.”

“Definitely. By cross-referencing crimes with the new geography along with what little intel we’re getting from vice, organized crime, and homicide, we can start placing people inside the high-activity zones, which means we can start building profiles of leadership.”

“Yeah, I got it.” Dell glanced across the room to the huge whiteboard where they posted photographs and other data on the hierarchy of the various crime families. What had once been a simple genealogy with one dominant ruling crime faction now looked like an array of stars circling a sun. The smaller constellations weren’t splinter groups, but new gangs moving in. La Mara was one, but only a few photos with names underneath were arranged in that constellation. No clear leader had been identified.

“So how do we figure who’s who?”

“You tell me.” Sloan’s eyes glinted.

“We need someone inside, but infiltrating a gang takes a long time.”

“Or?”

“We turn someone already inside.”

Sloan nodded. “Exactly. I’ve set up a capture net to monitor any busts involving anyone from the hot zones, anyone associated with anyone from those areas, anyone who we might be able to leverage into giving us intelligence.”

“You know,” Dell said, “if we could get to someone like that, we could use them to get one of our people inside. Save us a lot of time.”

“You got anybody in mind?” Sloan grinned.

Dell ran her hand over her chest and rested her fingertips just above her belt line. She hadn’t been undercover for a while. After things got really hot with the Zamoras, Mitch had to disappear for a while. She missed him. “Yeah. I know just the guy.”

*

Provincetown

Flynn retched, her stomach empty, nausea rolling through her like an oily tide. Gravel bit into her cheek, burning the abraded skin. She blinked dirt from her eyes and rolled onto her belly, trying to get her hands and knees underneath her. She was so weak she couldn’t push herself up. If she could just get a breath, just one short breath, she could get to her feet, she could find Mica, she could tear that bastard apart for putting his hands on her.

Screams filled the alley.

Oh God, not Mica. Please, please don’t let her be hurt.

The screaming trailed off into a steady wail, reverberating inside her head. Her lungs expanded sharply and cool salty air burst down her throat. She sucked in a lungful, coughed, sucked in more, and managed to push to her knees.

Siren. Not screaming. A siren.

“Mica?” Her voice was barely a croak.

A bright light hit her in the face and she raised her arm, trying to shield her tearing eyes.

“Hands in the air,” someone shouted.

Flynn raised her other arm. “Mica,” she gasped. “A guy…took Mica.”

“Flynn?”

Flynn couldn’t see through the glare, but she recognized Bri’s voice. Dark shapes raced by at the edges of Flynn’s vision. “Bri, somebody’s got Mica.” Fear gripped her throat so hard she couldn’t get the rest of the words out. She shoved upright and staggered, nearly going down again. “He’s got—”

“Hey, take it easy.” Bri’s arm came around Flynn’s waist. “Let’s get you over here where you can sit down.”

“No.” Flynn tried to pull away. “Mica.” She scrubbed her eyes and saw swaths of light cutting through the dark near the beach. Flashlights.

“Got something,” someone yelled.

Flynn’s heart stilled in her chest and she managed to break Bri’s grip.

“Stay here, Flynn,” Bri ordered, a command edge in her voice. “More backup’s on the way.”

“I need to find her. If she’s hurt—”

“If she’s hurt, we’ll take care of her.”

Flynn couldn’t just wait. Mica was out there in the dark, maybe hurt, maybe dying. Life ended so quickly, without warning, without rhyme or reason or logic. Life’s plan wasn’t meant to be understood. Flynn knew that, but she’d never been able to accept it. She couldn’t accept it when Debbie had done the unthinkable, and she couldn’t accept it now. If she could have found peace with God’s wisdom, she’d still be wearing her collar. She yanked away from Bri. “I’m not leaving her out there alone.”

“Sorry, Flynn, but you need to stay out of the way.” Bri waved to a sandy-haired officer. “Smith, keep an eye on her until the EMTs come.”

Two figures stumbled out of the darkness into the flickering blue light that bathed the alley.

A uniformed officer called, “Need a medic.”

A second, raspy voice cut through the jumble of voices. “Get your hands off me. Where’s Flynn?”

Mica. The fist of terror crushing Flynn’s chest eased. Mica sounded royally pissed off. She’d never heard anything sweeter. “Mica? Mica!”

“Flynn!”

Flynn ran toward the sound and Mica broke free, stumbling toward her. Flynn braced herself and Mica crashed into her arms. Pain raged through her chest, but she wrapped her arms around Mica and held her close. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” Mica’s hands flew over Flynn, tracing her shoulders, her chest, her sides. “Did that motherfucker stick you?”

“I’m okay.” Flynn winced when Mica squeezed her right side.

“Like hell you are.” Mica searched the faces of the officers milling about, her arm around Flynn’s waist. “Yo, you guys! Over here. She’s the one who needs a medic. I think her ribs are broken.”

Bri stepped out of the crowd. “You’re both going to the clinic. Once you’ve been seen to, I’ll get your statements.”

Another cruiser screeched to a halt in the street, a door slammed, and Reese Conlon strode down the alley. She took one look at Flynn and Mica, then turned to Bri. “Do we have the assailant?”

“Negative,” Bri said. “We were here maybe a minute or two tops after this all went down. A civilian walking by heard someone yell for police and hit nine-one-one. We were ten-seven at the Wired Puppy. Two seconds sooner and we would’ve had him.”

Reese’s cool gaze slid over Mica and Flynn. “Looks like you got here in time.”

More sirens, the crackle of radios, and the alley quickly filled with paramedics and more officers. EMTs from the night crew pushed a gurney toward Flynn and Mica.

“Who’s first?” a short muscular blonde asked, staring at Flynn in concern. “God, Flynn, are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’ll walk, Chris,” Flynn said.

“Like hell you will.” Mica pointed at the EMT. “Her ribs are broken. She needs to ride.”

“You heard the lady, Flynn,” Chris said, taking Flynn’s arm and leading her to the stretcher. “No use fighting us all.”

Flynn gave in. Her legs were about to give out. When she tried to lie back, pain shot through her chest and she felt something pop. She groaned.

“What is it?” Mica said sharply. “Where are you hurting?”

“I think the cartilage is separated,” Flynn said, gritting her teeth. “It hurts like hell but the ribs aren’t broken.” She raised her hand and Mica took it. Mica’s knuckles were scraped and bloody. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” Mica said her expression closing down. “I’m just great.”

“You’ve got blood on your shirt,” Flynn said gently, her stomach twisting.

“Yeah.” Mica glanced down as she walked along beside the stretcher. “It’s not mine, though. Asshole had a switch. Now he doesn’t.”