In Pursuit Of Justice

“Tease me like that for very long and it will be quick,” Michael warned, arching her hips under Sloan’s clever fingers.

“I know.”

Still, Sloan took her time, drawing her fingertips along the warm sensitive folds, dipping into welcoming heat, then pressing the length of Michael’s clitoris only to move away quickly, eliciting sighs and faint cries from her lover. Only when Michael’s long delicate fingers fluttered over her cheek in mute appeal did she lower her head and take her gently between her lips. At Michael’s sharp cry, she pulled her in more deeply, her tongue stroking counterpoint to the pulse that hammered through swollen tissues. Careful not to increase the pressure enough to snap the threads of Michael’s control, she kept her quivering on the edge for long moments. Only when Michael began to thrust erratically against her, impossibly hard now and clearly on the verge of exploding, did she relent and increase the rhythm of her strokes.

Instantly, she was rewarded by a rigid stillness in Michael’s legs followed by a wrenching gasp, then a quiet sob of surrender. Sloan closed her eyes and savored every tremor that spiraled beneath her lips and moved outward through her lover’s body. Then she lay quietly, one hand extended, her fingers intertwined with Michael’s, completely satisfied.

Sloan was almost asleep again as Michael whispered in her ear, “I’ve set the alarm. Be careful today. I love you.”

Catherine turned off the alarm twenty minutes before it was set to ring. She’d been awake for a long time, listening to the silence in the still house punctuated occasionally by the distant sound of a car door opening, an engine starting, and someone leaving for an early day. And it had taken her a long time to fall asleep after Rebecca had left the night before, too. It was impossible not to wonder where she was going, who she would be talking to, and with whom she would be spending the last dark hours of the night. She had hoped that Rebecca would return when her work was done, to come quietly through the door to rest at her side. Once she had even awakened, her heart beating fast with anxious anticipation, only to realize it had been the wind blowing branches against her window that had called to her.

Wearily, she swung her legs from beneath the covers and stood, reaching for her robe as she straightened. She was tired, not from lack of sleep, although that had certainly been fitful, but from something deeper that tugged at her heart. As if standing at a distance, dispassionately watching a scene played out on stage, she studied the feeling, finally recognizing it as a combination of loneliness and fear. The loneliness did not surprise her. She missed Rebecca, which was only natural. The fear would take some time to understand, but part of it was simple enough. She was afraid because her love made her vulnerable—vulnerable not only to her own fate, but to Rebecca’s now as well. Their paths had crossed, their lives had intersected, and now their futures were entwined. It was entirely possible that the road ahead would be paved with disappointment and sorrow. How many times she had counseled others that there were no guarantees in life, and that only by living it could we ever hope to be fulfilled. She smiled to herself as she made her way toward the shower, thinking how easy it was to give advice and how hard sometimes to heed it.

Rebecca parked illegally in a bus stop and left her flashers on. She jogged up the block, glancing at her watch and searching for Catherine’s car. She didn’t see it, but Catherine had returned late the previous night and she probably hadn’t been able to find a place on this block. Her breath was a little tight and she was aware of a faint stabbing pain deep in her chest that pulsed with each footfall. Chalking it up to scar tissue that hadn’t yet matured, she ignored it. Nevertheless, as she pressed Catherine’s doorbell, she had to work to suppress the sound of her own breath wheezing in and out. What she didn’t need was to give Catherine something else to worry about. After a minute, she pressed the doorbell again, but she knew that she had missed her. When they’d parted the previous evening, they had been careful with one another, trying not to ignite the fires of anger that still smoldered dangerously. She hadn’t thought to ask Catherine what her morning schedule was. Turning away, she walked more slowly now down the marble stairs to the sidewalk and toward her car. There was a place inside of her that still hurt, and it had nothing to do with her injuries. It was just the part of her that always felt empty when they were apart, and now she knew it was going to ache all day. Cursing softly, she slid into her Vette, gunned the ignition, and roared away into the morning.

Her temper hadn’t improved any by the time she reached the station house, and it wasn’t soothed by the thought of her 7:30 appointment. Rand Whitaker opened the door to his office precisely on time.

“Come on in, Sergeant,” he said with a welcoming smile.

Rebecca followed him, carrying a cardboard cup of coffee she had picked up from the vending room on her way to his office. She settled into the straight-backed chair and balanced the cup on her knee.

“So you’ve been back on the job a few days now, isn’t that right?” he asked, jotting the date and time on a yellow legal pad as he sipped from his own mug of coffee.

“Not precisely,” Rebecca corrected in an even tone. The one place you didn’t want to appear disgruntled was in this room. “My normal assignment is working active special crimes cases—detective work. For the time being, I’ve been assigned as an intermediary between the Police Department and a government agency that’s running a multijurisdictional task force.”

“That sounds like a desk job.”

“More or less,” she conceded, not seeing the necessity of offering anything further. The less he knew, the less he could report to someone else.

“You okay with that?”

“It’s not what I’m trained to do, and it wouldn’t be my choice of assignments. I’m assuming it will be temporary and as soon as you sign off on my evaluation, I expect my captain to pull me off it and put me back on regular duty.” Hopefully, he’d get the hint and do what everyone knew he was going to do anyhow, which was certify her fit for duty. Christ, I’m the one who got shot. You’d think that would earn me some slack.

He eased back in his chair, nodding as if he agreed with what she was thinking. “I’m curious, Sergeant. Why didn’t you wait for backup that night with Blake? Wouldn’t that have been standard operating procedure?”

“As I told you before, I felt that the hostage was in imminent danger and that any delay would put her at risk.”

“Your partner stated in his report that she had not been harmed up to that point. What made you think the situation was so serious?”

“Detective Watts stated in his report that Dr. Rawlings had apparently not been sexually assaulted up to that point, but he confirmed that she was physically restrained and in immediate peril.” Jesus, doesn’t he know that I would have read Watts’ report by now? He is clearly not a detective.

“The reason I’m asking is that if someone were to look at this from the outside, your actions could be construed as taking the law into your own hands. You not only saved the hostage, you executed the perpetrator.”

Rebecca almost smiled. Now he was trying to provoke her into saying more than she intended to reveal. Another interrogation technique that he wasn’t employing very well. “Dr. Whitaker, I did not execute the suspect. I used appropriate force to subdue a violent criminal who gave every indication that he was about to inflict severe bodily harm on a civilian and who gave verbal confirmation that he intended to kill her as well as me.”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Detective Sergeant.”

“That would be nice.”

“Given the same situation, would you do the same thing again?”

“Yes,” Rebecca answered without hesitation. Her eyes met his, and whatever he saw in her steel gaze made him blink.

“Would you risk your life for any hostage, or only one you were personally involved with?” he asked softly.

She leaned forward, never taking her eyes from his, and her voice was flint. “Meaning what?”

“You knew the hostage personally, didn’t you?”

“I met her during the course of the investigation, yes.”

He gave no sign that she hadn’t precisely answered his question, but merely continued. “Did the fact that you…knew her…influence your reaction to the situation?”

“No.” She didn’t see any need to tell him that she’d been almost out of her mind with fear and anger only a short time before she’d finally found Blake and Catherine. Because her mind had been crystal clear when she’d stepped into the room with them. She’d been in perfect control.

“So,” he said with soft finality. “What you’re saying is that you would risk your life…no, forfeit your life…for anyone in the same situation.”

“I’m a cop, Whitaker,” Rebecca remarked sharply, finally allowing her impatience to show. “In case you haven’t noticed, that’s what we do. I’m not a loose cannon; I’m not a danger to society. I’m not a risk to anyone.”

“Except yourself.”

Standing, she asked quietly, “Are we done here?”

“For today, yes. I’d like to see you one more time, which is my standard operating procedure.” As she turned to leave, he added, “You might consider, Sergeant, that you would be much more effective if you valued yourself as much as those you were sworn to protect.”

She didn’t answer, but closed the door gently behind her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WHEN REBECCA WALKED out into the hallway after leaving Whitaker’s office, she turned right and almost walked into Watts, who was leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette under a big bright red No Smoking sign. She stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you pull into the parking lot this morning.”

“And what?” she asked tersely. “You didn’t have anything better to do than hang around out here?”

Well,” he said unhurriedly, taking the last drag on his cigarette and dropping it on to the stained tile floor and crushing it beneath his scuffed wingtips. “Now that you mention it, I do have something better to do, and I thought you might like something better to do, too.”

“What have you got?” she asked, curious despite her irritation at finding him outside the psychologist’s office. It wasn’t exactly a secret what she was doing there, but she still didn’t like being reminded that her colleagues were aware of the fact that she was undergoing evaluation. Even though she was not under any kind of suspicion, it still made her feel as if she were not on firm ground within her own province. As much as she understood intellectually the need for police officers, with their steady diet of stressful and dangerous situations, to have the access to and support of psychologists who understood the pressures of the job, it was still something of a stigma. Before he could speak, she snapped, “Let’s get out of here.”

The two of them began to walk toward the exit sign above the stairwell at the end of the hallway, and Watts replied, “I’ve tracked down a guest of the state, located right here at our own correctional institution, who might be willing to give us some information for something in return. You know the drill—these cons will roll on their own mothers for extra privileges or a shot at an earlier parole hearing.”

“Who is he?” Rebecca asked, her pulse quickening at the thought of any kind of hard lead. It wasn’t in her nature to sit by and wait for other departments, or in this case, federal agents to point her in the right direction on a case. If Sloan and McBride turned up something with their Internet searches, all the better, but she wasn’t holding her breath.

“A guy by the name of Alonso Richards. He’s doing six to ten for possession with the intent to sell.”

“Huh,” Rebecca said disappointedly. “Drugs. What makes you think he can help us?”

“Because when they raided the house where he was holed up with his stash of crack cocaine, they also found some very interesting videotapes. Tapes with a whole bunch of teenage girls and a couple of …uh… mature men frolicking in the nude in a variety of combinations. And they weren’t commercial tapes—these were home movies.”

“Do you have the tapes?”

Watts shook his head disgustedly. “Nope. I checked with the evidence room last night. Mysteriously, the tapes have disappeared.”

“So we don’t know who was on them?”

“No such luck. There was no mention as to whether the men were ever ID’d or not.”

Rebecca stopped at the bottom of the stairwell and stared at Watts. “How did you find this? And how come we’re just hearing about it now?”

Watts shrugged, but his expression was wary. “Something doesn’t smell right, but I can’t figure out where the smell is coming from. Since we’re Vice, someone from Narco should have tipped us off about it. But it was buried in the arrest report, and the only reason I found it at all is because I pulled the files on the busts you and Cruz made when you closed down that chicken coop last spring. I was trying to find some connection with the guys running that deal, hoping we’d find someone still working the streets, so I cross-referenced the names of the guys you sent away for known associates. Then I ran the names of those guys looking for recent activity and out popped this Richards.”

They pushed through the exit door into the parking lot, where Watts promptly lit another cigarette. Police vans, cruisers, and unmarked vehicles were interspersed with civilian cars, and as the two of them wove between the haphazardly parked automobiles towards Rebecca’s Corvette, she asked, “You must have spent a lot of time humping that computer. Nice job.”

He didn’t reply but a smile flickered across his face and was just as quickly gone. “I think we need to hunt down the narc dicks who made the bust and find out why we never heard about the pornography tie-in. I’ve called and left messages, but no callbacks. Anything to do with prostitution and kids should have automatically been kicked over to someone in our division, and I couldn’t find a record of it.”

As Rebecca opened the door and slid into the seat, she grumbled, “There seems to be a lot of things that we should have been informed of that we haven’t been. Come to think of it, Cruz and I were lucky to have made that initial arrest. We were tipped off to the place by a junkie we were questioning about something entirely unrelated, and he gave up the location hoping we’d leave him alone. Now I wonder if we hadn’t moved on it so quickly whether there would have been anyone there at all when we showed up.” When Watts had settled in beside her, she swiveled in her seat and said to him, “How come you didn’t tell me about the rumors that Jeff Cruz was dirty?”

Watts merely regarded her with his bland, laid-back to the point of stupor expression and said, “Because it’s bullshit. And if I had any idea who started that talk, I’d wait for them out here in the parking lot some night after dark and kick the crap out of them. Cruz was a cop who died in the line of duty, and you don’t tarnish their badge until you see it carved in stone.”

Rebecca started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. There wasn’t any reason to comment. For once, she and Watts were in perfect agreement.

Three hours later, Rebecca dropped Watts off in front of the 18th. “I need to stop around to Sloan’s office and put in an appearance,” she said. “You want to write this up and run those names through the computer?”

Sure,” Watts said, considering it wise not to mention that she was supposed to be on desk duty and he was supposed to be the leg man. Whoever thought they could put Frye behind a desk didn’t know her very well, or knew her well enough to know that it would be a sit down job in name only. “Hey Sarge,” he added as if in afterthought, “if you’re going to be poking around in other departments, you might not want to spread around why.”

Rebecca studied him thoughtfully. Not counting the period of her recovery, she and Watts had really only worked together a few weeks. She had absolutely no reason to trust him, but she finally had to admit to herself that she did. “What are you saying, Watts?”

“I’m not saying anything,” he said innocently. He looked like he was about to scratch his balls, and then thought better of it, putting his hand in his pocket instead. “I just think it pays to be careful until we know what happened to Hogan and Cruz.”

“You think we have a mole?”

“Don’t you?” His expression didn’t change, but his eyes grew hard.

She looked away for a second, thinking of all the inconsistencies that had surfaced in just a few days. Homicide had apparently dropped the investigation of two dead detectives; files were missing from the crime scene lab concerning the deaths of the same two cops; arrest reports containing information that might have pointed towards a local child pornography network had been buried; and, finally, she had been quietly assigned to an investigation that was being run from outside the department but which seemed to have connections to local organized crime figures. She was beginning to wonder exactly who Avery Clark was investigating. “Yeah, Watts, I do. So you watch your back, too, okay?”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Sarge. I don’t intend to make waves.” Whistling, he turned and walked away.

She watched him for a minute, wondering how many people he had fooled with his nonchalant facade. Watts was a good cop, and that was one department secret she was happy to have uncovered. Just as she was about to pull away, her beeper went off and she recognized the University Hospital’s number. She fished her cell phone from her pocket and punched in the number even as she headed across town toward University City.

“This is Frye,” she said when the call was picked up.

“It’s Catherine, Rebecca.”

Rebecca’s heart skipped a beat. “Hey. I’m just on my way over. Can I see you?”

“I’m in my office.”

“Is everything okay?” There was an odd formality to Catherine’s tone that made Rebecca uneasy.

“Everything’s fine. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

“Okay,” Rebecca replied suspiciously. It hadn’t been her experience that when a woman wanted to talk to her that it was something minor. Especially not when she and that woman had parted on less than perfect terms the night before.

Catherine laughed, picking up on Rebecca’s uncertainty. “And I wanted to tell you that I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“Good. Drive carefully.”

An instant after Rebecca knocked, Catherine answered the door.

“Hi,” Rebecca said, feeling uncertain.

“Hi.” Catherine took her hand and pulled her into the waiting room that adjoined her office. She closed the door behind Rebecca. “Joyce is at lunch, and I don’t have a session for an hour. What about you?”

“My schedule is my own. I’m still on light-duty, remember.”

“Yes, I know that’s what it’s called,” Catherine said dryly. “Come on back to my office.”

Catherine locked her inner office door and motioned Rebecca to the couch, then settled beside her. Before she could speak, Rebecca slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her. It was more than a simple hello kiss. There was an edge to it, an underlying pulse of hunger that immediately aroused her. She kissed her back, for longer than she should have, but she liked knowing that she stirred this desire in her lover. Finally, she broke away, her palm against Rebecca’s chest. “I’m working,” she gasped. “I have to see patients in less than an hour. I can’t sit here all afternoon in a state of sexual frustration.”

“I could fix that in just a few minutes.”

Catherine laughed. “I have no doubt that you could. But I think I’d rather anticipate now and be satisfied later at a slightly more leisurely pace.”

“Then that’s what you shall have,” Rebecca to promised, lifting Catherine’s hand from her chest and kissing her palm. Serious now she asked, “What did you need to see me about?”

Catherine appeared uncharacteristically hesitant as she glanced away, and then met Rebecca’s gaze squarely. Taking a deep breath, she said quietly, “I was contacted by Agent Avery Clark this morning. He requested my services as a consultant to a task force he’s running.”

Rebecca stiffened and her eyes grew cold. “Son of a bitch,” she said softly. “How did he get your name?”

“I’m on the list of departmental consultants,” Catherine said. “He also mentioned Captain Henry.”

Rebecca got up and quickly crossed the room to the window that fronted the street. She’d stood there once before, the first night she’d met Catherine, but it had been dark then. She watched University students come and go, carefree and confident. It was a beautiful early September day. Without turning, she said, “What did you say?”

“I said I would get back to him. This is your task force, isn’t it?”

“No,” Rebecca said sharply, her back still to the room. “It’s Clark’s task force.”

“You know what I mean.”

There was no anger or accusation in Catherine’s voice, and Rebecca realized that Catherine had not instigated the situation. Turning to face her, she tried to figure out why she felt like punching something. “I’m sorry. You caught me off guard. Yes, it’s the task force I’m involved with — the pornography prostitution investigation.”

“I work with the police fairly frequently, Rebecca. It’s likely that you and I will come into professional contact from time to time.”

“I know. Why didn’t you give Clark your answer earlier?” She tried and failed to keep the anger from her voice.

“Because this is the first time it’s come up for us,” Catherine said gently. “I wanted to see how you felt about it.”

“The last time you and I worked together it ended badly.”

“This isn’t the same thing, though, is it?” When Rebecca was silent, Catherine rose and crossed to her. “Is it, Rebecca? You said this was more or less an administrative assignment for you. That it wasn’t dangerous. Is there more to it than that?”

“No,” Rebecca said, deciding that there was no point in bringing up her suspicions and speculations about something going on behind the scenes in the department. She didn’t really have any facts, and there was no point in worrying her for nothing. Still, she didn’t like the idea of Catherine being anywhere near the investigation. “I wonder why he isn’t bringing in his own people. If there’s one thing the feds have plenty of, it’s profilers.”

“I asked him the same thing,” Catherine said. “Clark pointed out that we’re not profiling an individual, but just a general pathologic type, and that I probably have as much experience with it as anyone. He also suggested that it would be helpful to have someone local so that… he mentioned two people, Sloan and… McBride… so they would have someone immediately available if they got a hit.”

“That makes sense,” Rebecca agreed reluctantly.

“Rebecca,” Catherine said, taking her hand. “This is what I do, and it’s something I love to do. If it’s going to be a problem working this closely with me —”

“No,” Rebecca interrupted swiftly, finally getting her emotions under control. “It’s not. When you first mentioned it, I thought about Blake. That’s all.”

Catherine moved closer, gently threading her arms around Rebecca’s waist. “It’s not the same thing. I will never do anything like that again. I would never put you in danger.”

Rebecca stared at her. “What are you talking about? That wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was.” There were tears in her voice, although her face was calm.

“Jesus, Catherine. Is that what you think? You blame yourself?” She pulled her tightly into her arms, resting her cheek against Catherine’s hair. “Is that what the dreams are about?” When Catherine didn’t answer, she leaned back, cupping Catherine’s chin in her palm. Looking into her deep green eyes, she could see the pain swimming close to the surface. “No. It wasn’t your fault. It was my decision. I thought of Blake just now because I don’t want you anywhere near an investigation that might be dangerous. I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you. I can still see him, with that fucking gun against your head.”

Suddenly, they were both trembling, both of them remembering the moment, each fearing for the other. Finally, Catherine said quietly, “I love you.”

Rebecca pressed her lips to the Catherine’s temple, her fingers curved possessively on the back of her neck. “I love you.” Sighing, she asked, “When are you briefing with us?”

“Tomorrow at 7.” Her cheek still nestled against Rebecca’s shoulder, she added, “Will you come to me tonight?”

“It might be late,” Rebecca answered reluctantly.

“I don’t care.”

“I want to. I miss you so much.”

Eyes closed, listening to Rebecca’s heartbeat, Catherine said softly, “Then don’t stay away.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

REBECCA KNEW THAT what she should do was go home and catch some sleep, but she was too restless for that. Watts was following up on the scant help they’d gotten from Alonso Richards, the inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, in exchange for a promise to get him moved to another cell block far away from a particular prisoner who wanted to kill him for reasons Richards couldn’t imagine. He’d reluctantly given them a couple of names of some of his old running buddies who’d might know somebody who possibly knew somebody who maybe had once helped make some sex movies. But he swore he didn’t know who or where or for whom—all he knew was that it was someplace in the city and the chicks were young. Maybe Watts would pull another rabbit out of his hat, but she’d pretty much resigned herself to the fact that unless Sloan came up with something, or an informant gave her a lead, for the moment she had nothing to chase. But Jeff’s murder was still open and she wanted to be able to tell Shelly Cruz that justice had been done when she went to see her. She’d been putting off visiting Jeff’s widow because she was embarrassed that the department—that she —had nothing substantial to offer the young widow in terms of consolation.

Taking a shot in the dark, she drove back to the station house and took the elevator to the fourth floor where the Homicide division was housed. She usually walked up, but she was beat. A couple of detectives she knew nodded hello, one of them remarking as she passed, “Good to see you back, Frye.”

She muttered her thanks, but didn’t stop to talk. She found the person she was looking for in the coffee room, jacket off, feet propped on a wastepaper basket, multi-tasking with an open murder book propped next to her brown bag lunch.

“Sorry to bother you,” Rebecca said to the woman in the dark blue suit as she closed the door to the small stuffy space behind her. There was a window with a view of the river, but it was grimy and looked to be nailed shut. “Got a minute?”

Trish Marks glanced up from the case file she was reviewing, startled but too experienced to show it. “Frye. How are you doing?”

“I’m not bad. You?”

“Different day, same old shit. Crime might be down, but murder still has a way of happening.”

Rebecca nodded. “I know what you mean. Sex still sells, too.”

Trish closed the thick file and pushed it aside, draining her coke can and tossing it into a nearby wastebasket. Leaning back in her chair, she fixed Frye with a steady look. “What’s on your mind?”

“Jeff Cruz and Jimmy Hogan.”

“Why aren’t I surprised,” Marks said to herself, and it wasn’t meant to be a question. She got up and stretched, then walked to the coffee machine and poured a cup. She glanced inquiringly at Rebecca, who shook her head no. When she had added two sugars and enough fake cream to give herself brain cancer, she walked back to the table and sat down again. “What have you heard?”

Rebecca wondered how much to reveal. Trish Marks had a rep as a solid cop, and every time Rebecca had interacted with her in the past, everything she’d seen had seemed to confirm that. On the other hand, Marks was one of the detectives who was responsible for solving Jeff’s murder, and she hadn’t done that. Rebecca had to wonder why she’d dropped the ball. For a moment, the two women simply assessed one another in the silence. At first glance they didn’t seem all that similar, even though Marks was about Rebecca’s age. She was dark where Rebecca was light, short where Rebecca was tall, mildly curvaceous where Rebecca was lean—but the look in their eyes was a matched set—tough, competent, and wary.

Rebecca could almost see it when Marks reached a decision, and she just waited, giving the Homicide detective a chance to gather her thoughts. There were allegiances to be considered, and cops were loath to give out information on their cases, even to other cops. Finally, Marks began to speak.

“We didn’t get anything from the crime scene, which is about what you’d expect. Flanagan worked it hard but there just wasn’t anything to find.”

“Contract hit, right?”

Trish nodded. “Despite how fucked up this case got, I still think that’s the truth. There was absolutely nothing at the scene to go on. And no rumors on the street to say differently—no talk of personal beefs, nothing to suggest it was a drug buy gone bad. Everything about it spelled hit.” She stopped, wondering without much hope if Frye would let it go at that.

“What about Jimmy Hogan’s files? What about his supervisors? Somebody somewhere knew what he was into. The last time I spoke with you and your partner, you hadn’t had a chance to go through Jimmy’s cases. What did you turn up there?”

Marks’ eyes narrowed. “Nothing.”

“Now, see, that’s where I start to get confused,” Rebecca said tonelessly, her eyes boring into the woman across from her. “What did his Captain say? What about his contact man in Narco? He must have been reporting to someone.”

“Yeah, maybe he was.” Marks shrugged. “But I’ve got a feeling it wasn’t anybody in narcotics.” She watched Frye stiffen in surprise, the first sign of any unguarded emotion the blond detective had shown since she’d walked into the room, and Marks hastened to add, “and that stays in this room.”

“Are you telling me you don’t think Hogan was undercover for narcotics?” Unconsciously, Rebecca reached under the left side of her jacket and rubbed her chest, trying to work the tightness out of the scar. When she realized what she was doing, she placed her palms flat on her thighs. Never let on you’re tired; never let on you’re hurt; never let on you’re scared. Where’d she learn that—the academy, or home? She concentrated on Trish Marks, and forgot about the pain.

“What I’m saying is, no one in narcotics is willing to cop to being Jimmy’s contact. No one admits to having received any significant Intel from him in months. And the more I asked about it, the bigger the wall got. Finally, I couldn’t get anybody over there to talk to me at all.”

“You think they were shut down by someone higher up?”

“Probably, but I can’t get a line on who that somebody might be.”

Rebecca’s mind was racing furiously. There was a strange sort of logic to what Marks had told her. If Jimmy Hogan was undercover, he could be gathering information on anything—for anyone—not necessarily simply on drug traffic for the Narco division. The problem was, if he wasn’t narcotics, then who was he? Or more importantly, what was he? She was beginning to see how people thought Hogan might have turned bad, and that kind of suspicion naturally tainted anyone who was associated with him, including her partner.

“Has anyone specific told you to back off the case?” she asked Marks.

For the first time, Marks looked like she was contemplating an evasion. “Look, Frye, I don’t think that this homicide is solvable. You know as well as I do that finding a contract killer is almost impossible. Someone hires an out-of-towner who is only here for an afternoon and there’s absolutely no way to trace him. He flies in; he rents a car, along with a thousand other businessmen at the airport; he drives to a location that someone else has already set up; he identifies Hogan—probably from a faxed photo and, unfortunately, Cruz is with him. He needs to take Hogan out and anybody with him that could identify him. Bang Bang, two dead cops. He turns around, he drives back to the airport, and he goes back to where ever he lives. End of story.”

“You know, Marks, when you’re talking to another cop, it’s pretty obvious when there’s something you don’t want to say. I can tell when you’re trying to blow me off.” Rebecca waited.

“Fuck.” Marks strafed her short thick dark hair in frustration. “All I know is one morning a few days after you got taken down during that Blake thing, the Chief of Detectives was in a closed door meeting with your captain and my captain. An hour later, Horton and I got the word to back off the case. They gave us some bullshit about IAD following up on it.” She snorted derisively. “Like that was supposed to make us happy.”

It was Rebecca’s turned to look startled. “Captain Henry was in on this?”

““Yeah, he was there,” Marks admitted, nodding uncomfortably. “Look, I didn’t hear the conversation, Frye. Give me a break. But I got the distinct feeling that if I ever wanted to make detective one, I’d better toe the line. And that’s what I did. Sorry, Frye, but he wasn’t my partner.”

Rebecca stood and extended her hand. “Thanks, Marks. I know you didn’t have to give me anything. And as far as I’m concerned, if anybody asks, you didn’t.”

Her first impulse had been to the storm into Captain John Henry’s office and demand to know what the fuck was going on. Fortunately, it was one floor down and an entire city block away and by the time she was halfway there, she realized that if she were going to confront anyone about the situation, she needed to have a little bit more than just a hunch under her belt. What she needed to do was dig a little bit more into Jimmy Hogan’s background, and for that she was going to need to talk to some people at the Academy as well as the narcotics detectives he’d worked with. There were things she could get from a computer search, too, but she didn’t want to do that in the middle of the squad room in the middle of the afternoon. She believed Marks’ story that someone high up in the chain of command had shut down the homicide investigation, and that could mean any number of things. It could mean there were things that the bureaucrats who really ran the Police Department did not want made public, like the fact that Jimmy Hogan was dirty. That was certainly one explanation. It could also mean that the people in charge who were supposed to know what was happening didn’t have a clue as to what was really happening, and the best way to protect your own ass was to limit the flow of information. She could almost believe that IAD had taken over the investigation, which as far as she was concerned was about equivalent to flushing it down the toilet. IAD had never solved anything that she was aware of, but they did answer directly to the Chief and the Commissioner, so they would be the logical choices to take over the investigation if the brass wanted the findings kept quiet. That would fit with what Flanagan said about IAD raiding her files. And then there was the possibility that Jimmy Hogan was exactly what he appeared to be—an undercover narcotics detective who had done his job so well that someone in the Zamora organization had seen him as competition, and simply had him eliminated. Jeff was there by mistake, and just got caught in the crossfire. She probably would have believed that, if so many roadblocks hadn’t been thrown up around the case.

By the time she pulled up in front of Sloan’s building, her headache was raging and her temper was ready to snap. Maybe concentrating on the investigation was the best thing she could do for the moment. As she stepped from her car, she thought fleetingly to the few moments she had spent with Catherine earlier that afternoon. It occurred to her that the best thing she could really do would be to meet Catherine after work, take her somewhere for dinner, forget about prostitution and pornography and dead partners, and simply enjoy the company of a beautiful, intelligent woman who loved her. Why was it, she wondered, that she wasn’t going to do just that?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MITCHELL JUMPED TO her feet when Rebecca walked unexpectedly into the room. A muscle twitched at the corner of Rebecca’s mouth, but she managed not to smile.

“Status report, Mitchell?” She could see that Mitchell had been working at a computer terminal next to those occupied by Sloan and McBride. It looked like she was updating some kind of data sheet. Clearly, the young officer was a good choice for the post, even though Rebecca doubted that that had been the intention of the Duty Sergeant when he had assigned Mitchell to the task force. Women didn’t get accepted to West Point unless they were tough, sharp and dedicated. Mitchell must have once been among the brightest of the bright, and now some idiot at the 18th was trying to bury her. Nothing of Rebecca’s disgust at that thought showed in her face. “Bring me up to speed.”

“I’ve been logging in potential online suspects as Mr. McBride has initiated contact, ma’am. It’s too early to tell you the specifics such as location or level of activity, but I should be able to begin cross-referencing within a day or two and generate possible lines of follow-up from that.”

Rebecca glanced at Sloan, her eyebrow elevating slightly in question. That hadn’t been part of Mitchell’s job description. The kid had initiative as well as brains, apparently.

Sloan nodded, as if reading her thoughts. “Officer Mitchell has been making herself very useful. She’s freed me up to focus on large scale web-hosting sites that seem to have concentrated activities in this area. Anyone receiving live-video feeds will need high-speed access and they’re going to be paying hefty user fees. I’m trying to get in the back door by starting with the customer data bases and looking for common user time frames.”

“How about grabbing a cup of coffee, Sloan,” Rebecca replied, choosing not to comment on Sloan’s information until they were alone. You didn’t discuss strategy in front of the ranks.

“Sure,” Sloan replied. The two of them walked in silence to the conference room where they had first been briefed by Clark, helped themselves to coffee, and settled across from one another at the conference table.

“How close are you to narrowing this search down to real people and not just internet aliases?” Rebecca asked.

“Closer than anyone would have expected a week ago. We caught a break—the FBI has been running a national sting operation over the last eighteen months called Operation Avalanche. They’ve already identified and collated a tremendous number of potential Internet sites marketing porn, and they’ve prescreened hundreds of e-mail accounts of users frequenting porn chat rooms aimed at those with a taste for kids. A lot of those names have already been traced and filed geographically.”

“Did Clark get you that information from the FBI?”

“Nope,” Sloan answered immediately.

“Are you going to tell him you have it?”

“Nope.”

Rebecca sipped her coffee, considering Sloan’s openness in answering questions, her seeming lack of concern about the repercussions of her hacking into Federal law enforcement data bases, and her obvious skill. The woman had all the earmarks of a rogue agent, but Rebecca didn’t think she was. Sloan wasn’t rogue, because rogue agents were always wary and suspicious and afraid of being caught. She was just untouchable. And you only got that way if you’d already had everything done to hurt you that could be done. “What about Mitchell? She’s just a rookie, and I don’t want her getting in the middle of anything.”

“Mitchell may be young, but she’s savvy. I’ll give her the info when we have some local leads to chase electronically. Everything she touches will be clean and accountable.” Sloan eased back in her chair, watching the blond detective astutely. “If you want, I can just give you the bottom line and leave out how we got there, too.”

“I don’t need your protection, Sloan,” Rebecca replied, her tone oddly mild. “But I appreciate the thought. I prefer to have as much information as possible during an investigation. What I’m curious about is why you are so willing to share.”

“I’m willing to share with you, because when the time comes, I figure you’re going to be the one standing in front of the door, not Avery Clark. Maybe I’m wrong to trust you, but, then, I don’t work for Agent Clark.”

“No, you don’t. Not anymore.”

Sloan’s eyes narrowed and her fingers tensed on the coffee cup. “I never worked for Clark.”

“But you did work for the Justice Department, didn’t you?” Rebecca knew she’d struck gold when the dark haired woman across from her grew tight and still. A second later, she could see Sloan consciously relax each tense muscle in her formidably powerful shoulders. Incredible control. “Does Clark have something on you and McBride?”

“Not a thing,” Sloan said amiably. “Believe it or not, I took this job because I thought it was a job worth doing. Believe me, Detective, I don’t take any job unless I want to. Not even for the Department of Justice.”

“Fair enough,” Rebecca said with a nod. “It’s been my experience that people who are blackmailed into an assignment aren’t very trustworthy. And I like to know if I can trust the people I’m working with.”

“I could tell you I’m trustworthy,” Sloan said, unveiling her megawatt, devil-may-care grin, “but I don’t think that would impress you.”

Despite herself, Rebecca grinned back. “I don’t impress very easily, Sloan. But if you can come up with someone for me to investigate, I’ll be appropriately impressed, I promise. What about McBride? Do you vouch for him, too?”

“Jason is his own man, and if you have any doubts, talk to him yourself.”

“But he’s your associate.”

“And my friend.”

Rebecca could easily imagine JT Sloan standing up to the Justice Department, and she had a feeling that Sloan probably had. The computer expert had obviously been valuable to them once, or they wouldn’t have come back to her when they needed her services. Rebecca had a feeling that they had come back with apologies in one hand while waving the flag in the other. “I’m working on a few things from my end, but at this point I don’t have dick.”

Sloan looked surprised at the honest admission, then said good-naturedly, “I’ll never tell.”

“Thanks,” Rebecca said dryly, but she finally smiled. On impulse she added, “Question—if someone pilfered files—stole them—from someone’s system, could you figure out who did it?”

“Probably.” Sloan’s deep violet eyes sparkled with interest. “Unless they were awfully good at concealing themselves, and most hackers aren’t that good.”

“Compared to you, you mean.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

“What would you need to do to find them?”

“I’d need the hard drive. Preferably, I’d like to have it here, but I could work on the system in place if I had to.”

Rebecca stood and rolled her shoulders, “It would be unofficial, and it would be for free. If you did it, I’d owe you.”

“No, you wouldn’t. I do it because it’s fun.”

“If I can’t find out any other way, I’ll let you know.”

Sloan stood with her, and as they walked back towards the work area, she said softly, “Usually people who hack computers aren’t very dangerous, but you never know, Frye. You should be careful.”

“I’m a cop, Sloan. I don’t scare easily.”

“I used to be a cop, too. I didn’t carry a gun, and maybe I should have.”

Rebecca watched her walk away, surprised to discover how much she liked her.

Sandy opened the door and immediately considered slamming it. “I’m working. Go away.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve been watching your building for two hours, and I know you don’t have anyone up here unless they’ve paid for the whole night.”

“If you keep hanging around me, I’m going to starve to death.”

Rebecca lifted the brown paper bag in her hand. “No, you won’t. I brought dinner.”

Sandy rested her forehead on the edge of the door and cursed colorfully. “Whatever it is you think you do for me, Frye, it is so not enough to make up for all the trouble you could cause me.”

“I know,” Rebecca replied seriously. “Can I come in?”

“What did you bring?”

“Thai.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Rebecca had never been in Sandy’s apartment before, although she had known for months where she lived. She knew almost everything about the people in her territory who were important to her—friends, suspects, and enemies alike. She wouldn’t have come to Sandy’s if she’d had any other choice, but she had checked all of the normal places for her and had finally given up and staked out her apartment. When the light had come on in the front windows, she’d waited until she was certain that Sandy wasn’t with a john, and then she’d come up. She took in the small efficiency in one practiced glance. It was neat, tidy, and tastefully, although economically, decorated. “Nice place,” she said, meaning it.

“Thanks,” Sandy replied, eying the tall cop suspiciously. “Hey, Frye, has anyone told you lately that you look like crap?”

Rebecca didn’t reply, just settled herself on the sofa without being invited and put the bag of carry out on the low, plain pine coffee table in front of her. “Go ahead and eat while we talk.”

“You want something?” Sandy asked as she walked into the small, adjoining galley kitchen. “A beer?”

“Water would be fine.” Her throat was scratchy and dry, and, briefly, she considered taking off her jacket, then thought better of it. Even though it was warm in the apartment, and she was sweating, she didn’t make a habit of flashing her weapon if she could help it.

Sandy returned and set a pile of paper plates, silverware, a bottle of beer, and a glass of water on the table. She opened the bags, checked out the contents of the cardboard cartons, and dished out a generous amount for herself. Gesturing to Rebecca with one of the containers, she asked, “Want some?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Uh huh. Sure,” Sandy replied, not bothering to repeat that the cop looked even paler and more drawn then she had the night before. “Rita called me and said you sprung her last night. Thanks.”

“You should tell her to be more careful who she pitches her lines to.”

“Hey!” Sandy said indignantly. “She swore she never mentioned money to that cop. The guy was cute and he told Rita he’d make it worth her while if she got him off. Doesn’t that sound like entrapment to you?”

“It’s just her word, Sandy,” Rebecca pointed out quietly. The undercover vice cop had reported that the prostitute had solicited him, but Rebecca was inclined to believe Sandy. Nevertheless, a prostitute’s word against that of a cop would never hold up in court. She shook her head, not quite certain how she had allowed the topic to stray from what had brought her there. Probably the damn headache that was back again in force. “So, what have you got for me?”

“Not a thing.”

“I don’t have anywhere to be tonight.”

“God, you think because you buy me dinner a couple nights in a row that you own me?”

Rebecca smiled. “Trust me, Sandy. Owning you is the furthest thing from my mind.”

Sandy took a pull on her Corona and shifted on the couch until her knees brushed Rebecca’s and their eyes met. “I’ve heard that a couple of the girls have been making extra cash doing films.”

“Films?” Rebecca asked with interest.

“Skin flicks.”

“Tell me everything you know. Names, dates, places—what do you have?”

“Nothing yet,” Sandy said defensively. “Only talk. But I think I can probably find out if you give me a little room here.”

“Good,” Rebecca said, reaching for the water as she coughed dryly.

“Who knows, maybe I’ll get into a new line of work. Do you think I would make it as a porno queen?” She frowned. “Probably my tits are too small…but then I’d fit right in if they’re looking for girls.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Rebecca said sharply, ignoring the pain that had started in her chest on the heels of the cough. “All I want is for you to get some information. Do not agree to anything else.”

“Well, I could probably get a lot more information if I hired on to do one of the movies,” Sandy said musingly. “The talk is they’re paying mucho bucks.”

“Just call me if you hear anything,” Rebecca ordered as she stood, suddenly feeling like she needed some fresh air. “Don’t go playing games.”

“You know, you are a real pain in… Frye?… Hey!”

Rebecca was aware of Sandy’s voice, but she couldn’t make out the words over the roaring in her head. She could just barely hear someone saying fuck…it might have been her…she thought she was speaking. Mostly all she wanted to do was get one clean, deep breath and she’d be fine. Man, it hurt to breathe, and it kept on hurting until finally, she just closed her eyes and stopped struggling.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CATHERINE KNOCKED SHARPLY on the door to apartment 3 B. Although socioeconomically the residential area immediately surrounding University City where she lived in a historically renovated Victorian was light years away from the apartments bordering the Tenderloin, they were separated in distance only by the river that bisected the city and twenty city blocks. It had taken her less than six minutes to arrive after she had gotten the phone call. The door opened and a young Annie Lennox look-alike in a tight, midriff baring T-shirt and hip hugger jeans slung so low they barely covered the essentials greeted her with a distinct disregard for social amenities.

“Are you Catherine? Fuck, you better be.”

Catherine merely nodded and stepped hurriedly inside. “Where is she?”

“Over there. Goddamned stubborn cop moron.”

Sandy jerked her head in the direction of the couch, but she needn’t have bothered. Catherine could hear the labored breathing from across the small apartment. Two steps further into the room and she saw Rebecca lying on the sofa, her shoulders propped against the arm with a pillow behind her head. The top three buttons on her shirt were open and her chest heaved spasmodically with each struggling attempt to get air. Sweat poured from her face, and her skin had a faint bluish tint. Catherine’s heart seized with fear. God, what was this? Hemorrhage? Embolus? It looked terrifyingly like an MI.

“Call 911.”

“No,” Rebecca gasped, opening her eyes.

When she turned to Catherine, her eyes were swimming with pain and something else, something Catherine didn’t think she had ever seen in them before. Fear.

“See what I mean?” Sandy muttered. “You think I didn’t want to? She threatened to shoot the phone if I did. I’m lucky she gave me your number. Fucking rock head.”

Catherine knelt by the sofa, noting the remains of a takeout meal and Rebecca’s jacket thrown over a nearby chair. Anger was an excellent antidote to fear, but she had time for neither, so she pushed the quick surge of jealousy and confused disappointment aside. Pulling open a worn satchel that she hadn’t used in more than a decade, she extracted a stethoscope, which she swung around her neck with one hand while reaching for a blood pressure cuff with the other. As she wrapped the cuff around Rebecca’s arm, she said steadily, “I need to get you to a hospital.”

“I… know.” Rebecca made an effort to sit up, but any exertion made her lightheaded. “I’ll go. Just not…in an…ambulance.”

Catherine tried not to think about what might be going inside Rebecca’s body as she concentrated on the physical facts. Although her pressure was low, it wasn’t critical yet. Slipping her hand under Rebecca’s shirt, Catherine moved the stethoscope back and forth over her chest. Frowning, she listened for a few seconds to the right and then the left, then she glanced quickly at the distended veins in Rebecca’s neck. “Your left lung is collapsed. We need to get you out of here.” Looking over her shoulder, she said again, forcefully, “Call 911.”

“Uh, it will probably take them a few minutes to get here. This area doesn’t get the fastest service. Maybe it would be quicker if you drove her?” Sandy stood close behind Catherine’s shoulder, watching Rebecca’s face. “She didn’t look this bad when I called you.”

Listening to Rebecca fight for air, Catherine had to agree. “Can you stand?” she asked, pulling the blood pressure monitor from the detective’s arm and stuffing it into her bag. “We’ll help you.”

“Yes.”

Sandy and Catherine steadied Rebecca from either side with an arm around her waist and half-carried her down the three flights of stairs to Catherine’s car, which she had left in front of a hydrant a few doors down from the once elegant brownstone that now had been subdivided into apartments. By the time they got her into the front seat, and Catherine had fumbled the seat belt around her, she was barely conscious and her stridor had worsened.

“Rebecca,” Catherine said sharply, grasping her chin, turning her lover’s face up toward her. “Rebecca, don’t struggle. Breathe as slowly as you can. Do you understand?”

She couldn’t get enough air to speak, but she nodded.

Sandy bent down and whispered something to Rebecca that Catherine couldn’t hear as she ran around the front of the car to the driver’s side. She had the key in the ignition before she was completely settled behind the wheel, and she careened away from the curb without even a backward glance at the young woman who stood on the sidewalk watching the taillights disappear into the dark.

Thankfully, at that time of night there was almost no traffic in University City. Within a matter of minutes, she was screeching to a halt outside the emergency room at University Hospital. She ran through the double doors into the harshly lit admitting area and shouted, “I’m Dr. Catherine Rawlings. I have a critically ill patient in my car. Someone bring a gurney.”

Catherine glanced at the clock in the small doctor’s lounge adjacent to the emergency room. Midnight. The waiting created a painful sense of déjà vu, and as the minutes dragged on, it was harder and harder for her not to think about the night that Raymond Blake had taken her and nearly taken Rebecca’s life. Forcing her thoughts from that horror, she reminded herself that Rebecca was not dying, not tonight. But being separated from her, not knowing precisely what was happening, frayed the last remnants of her nerves, and she was losing the battle to stay calm. She had too many recollections, some of them too terrifying to erase even from her dreams. Now she had another unwelcome memory—the image of Rebecca suffering, struggling in agony for each insufficient breath. It was tearing her apart.

“Catherine?”

She spun around, grateful for the sound of another human voice to distract her from her pain.

“Jim! How is she?”

“She’s stable…”

“Where is she? Can I see her? What—”

The emergency room physician smiled, raising a hand to stem the flow of words. “In a minute. She’s on her way back from CAT scan.”

“How serious is it?” Catherine managed to ask in a more controlled fashion. The panic that had simmered just beneath the surface of her soul was beginning to abate.

“Well,” the treating physician replied, motioning to a chair beside him as he sank heavily into a seat at the small table. “If you were looking for a new job, I’m fairly certain we can find you one down here. Your exam on the scene saved us a lot of time, and her a lot of pain. She had a pneumothorax, just as you suspected. Probably an area of scar tissue had adhered to the inner surface of one of her ribs, and it tore lose tonight, collapsing her lung.”

“Are they going to need to operate?” These things happened; she knew that as well as anyone. Then why did she feel like screaming?

“A little too soon to tell.” He gave her a satisfied smile. “I put a needle in, aspirated the air, and the lung came back up. The CAT scan looks good right now. We’ll have to see if the lung stays up or not.”

“Thank you, Jim.”

“Don’t mention it. She should be back by now. Cubicle seven.”

She murmured her thanks once again and hurried away. To her great relief, when she opened the door to the small private treatment room, she found Rebecca sitting up on a stretcher, looking drawn but breathing easily. The relief was so intense, for a second she feared she might cry.

“How do you feel?” Catherine managed, struggling to keep her voice from quivering. Something of her fragile emotional state must have shown in her face, because Rebecca’s welcoming smile immediately turned to a look of concern.

“I’m okay.” Reaching out a hand, the one that was not tethered to an intravenous line, she drew Catherine closer. “If I understood what he was telling me, it was a fluke—a little bit of scar tissue acting up. Not a big deal.”

Catherine was tired. Tired and still reeling from worry and her own terrifying memories. If she hadn’t been so shaken, she probably would have been more circumspect, but she just didn’t have enough strength to control her response. “Rebecca, you could have died. If you weren’t as physically fit as you are, you probably would have. It could happen again—in fact it often does. This was a warning, and you were lucky that your young friend was quick-witted enough to realize how ill you were.”

“She’s not a friend. She’s a source.”

“What she may be to you, I don’t know,” she said more sharply than she intended. “But she’s fond of you, I’ll tell you that.”

Rebecca had never seen Catherine quite like this before. When she had first walked into the room, it’d looked like she was going to break down. That in itself was frightening, because during all the long weeks of Rebecca’s convalescence, Catherine had been nothing but upbeat and positive. If she had cried, she had done it alone. And then tonight, anger had followed so closely on the heels of her concern that Rebecca was stunned. The problem was, she wasn’t quite certain what Catherine was angry about. It seemed as if Sandy was part of it, but that didn’t make any sense—Catherine didn’t know anything about Sandy.

“Sandy is an informant,” Rebecca began carefully. “I was working—”

“You’re not required to explain,” Catherine interrupted, angry at herself for even bringing the girl up. She had no idea why she had. Except there had been something strangely intimate about the entire setting—the small cozy apartment, the takeout dinner, and the way the young woman had berated Rebecca with unmistakable tenderness in her voice. You have another life that I know nothing about. A life that might mean more to you than anything we could share.

” I’m sorry that you had to go through this,” Rebecca said, lifting Catherine’s hand and placing a kiss against the fingers she cradled in her own. “I’m sorry I had to drag you into it at all, but I didn’t want an official report—any kind of record—tying Sandy to me.”

“Why?”

She hesitated only a second. “Because officially Sandy and I don’t have a relationship. It’s safer for her that way.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t call Watts instead of me,” Catherine said, and there was pain in that knowledge. “Would you have called me if I hadn’t been a doctor?”

She hesitated longer this time. “I don’t know.”

“Would you even have told me?”

The silence between them grew so loud that Catherine slipped your fingers out of Rebecca’s hand and moved a little away from the stretcher. “Rebecca?”

“I don’t know. I would have told you—something. Maybe not all of it.”

“Why not?” Her anger was gone, replaced by an honest desire to know, and by incredible sadness. How could they feel so much, and share so little?

“Because I don’t want you to worry. I don’t want you to hate what I do,” she admitted. The foot of space between them felt like a hundred miles, and it hurt so much more now than she had hurt an hour ago. She was doing this all wrong, but she couldn’t think of the right way to do it. Desperately, she whispered, “Because I don’t know what else to do.”

“Jim says your CAT scan looked good,” Catherine said quietly. “It might be a while before they move you upstairs to a bed—you should try to rest. I’ll come by tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”

“Okay.” She swallowed, a sinking feeling in her stomach. It was all coming apart.

Catherine turned to leave, then looked back over her shoulder. “Is there anyone you want me to call? Watts?”

“No. I’ll call him.”

“Sandy?”

“No. Catherine—”

“Get some sleep,” she said softly as she closed the door behind her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“WHAT DO YOU mean you don’t have any record of her?” Catherine asked in the general direction of the hands-free microphone that was clipped to the visor above the steering wheel while she attempted to maneuver through early rush-hour traffic. “She should have been admitted last night—sometime after midnight. Are you spelling the last name right? That’s Frye—with an e on the end.”

She listened for a few seconds, eyes searching the street for a parking place on the block with the address she had been given. Pulling to the curb, she said with uncharacteristic irritation, “Never mind. I don’t have time to wait. I’ll call back later.”

She clicked off the cell phone, cut the ignition, and sat for a few seconds behind the wheel, waiting for the last remnants of frustration to ebb. I should have stayed at the hospital last night. It was ridiculous to think I could do this now, not knowing how she is. If I were a patient, I’d say this is a very good example of self-delusion resulting from lousy conflict management and unresolved anger.

“Well, thank you. That’s helpful,” she said out loud in disgust. Glancing at her watch, she saw that she had five minutes to find the building. “And now you can just do what you came here to do.”

She locked the car and started north on Front Street, checking the building numbers as she walked. Fortunately, she had guessed right and had started searching in the appropriate direction. In less than a minute she was standing on the steps of a four story warehouse fumbling in her briefcase for her wallet and a photo ID. After the disembodied voice instructed her to enter and an electronic lock clicked open, she stepped through into the cavernous ground floor and proceeded toward the elevator as she had been directed. As curious as she was about the place, her mind was only half on her surroundings. She had spent another restless night, finding it difficult to fall asleep after the adrenaline surge of emotions that had started when she had first gotten the call from Sandy and which hadn’t begun to abate until she had seen that Rebecca was stable. It had been excruciatingly hard to leave her, but the evening had brought up so many conflicting feelings that she doubted either of them were equipped to deal with the aftermath in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, when she had finally slid naked beneath the sheets, she had ached for her, body and soul.

The elevator stopped smoothly and opened with no more than a whisper, whereupon she found herself looking out into an enormous room filled with electronic equipment. It was time to set her personal life aside, and do her job. Stepping out into the hall that ran along one side of the building opposite the warren of computer stations, she glanced right and left looking for someone who might know where the meeting was. Almost immediately, she saw a woman in jeans and an open-collared navy shirt approaching. At first glance, the startlingly attractive woman didn’t strike Catherine as being a law-enforcement officer of any type. Even discounting her decidedly informal appearance, she moved with a kind of casual confidence that suggested she rarely worried about protocol. There was none of the tight focus that Rebecca displayed when she was working or the self-important attitude of the typical bureaucrat. If she were asked to guess, Catherine would say this was the private consultant.

“Good morning,” Catherine said as the woman drew near. “I’m Doctor Catherine Rawlings.”

“J. T. Sloan, Doctor.” Sloan extended her hand to the elegant, auburn-haired woman and added, “We were just gathering in the conference room. I’ll take you down.”

“Thank you.”

As they walked, Sloan explained, “Unfortunately, the full team isn’t here at the moment, but I know your schedule is very tight so we’ll go with what we have and I’ll fill in the others later.”

Much later, Catherine thought to herself, but she merely nodded. She wondered, not for the first time that morning, if Rebecca would be pulled from the case. At this point it should be evident to everyone at police headquarters that she wasn’t ready to go back to work. In some ways, it was fortunate that the episode had occurred when it did. If it had happened when Rebecca was in the middle of an altercation, or even if she had just been out on the street alone, the outcome could have been disastrous. At any rate, she was out of danger for the moment and Catherine gratefully cleared her mind to focus on the job at hand. As she followed Sloan into a glass enclosed conference room, several people stood and turned in her direction. One of them she already knew.

“Doctor Rawlings,” Sloan began, “this is my associate Jason McBride, Agent Clark—there at the end of the table, and Officer Mitchell, who is with the Philadelphia Police Department.”

Catherine shook each individual’s hand in turn, saying merely, “Officer Mitchell,” in a neutral tone when she got to her. It wasn’t uncommon for her to run into patients in social or professional settings, and although she tried to anticipate when that might happen and discuss with the patient their feelings about it, it wasn’t always possible to do that. She had known Mitchell was involved in a task force that might have been this one, but she hadn’t really expected her to be at the briefing. As was usual when something like this happened, it was something they would have to deal with later.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Doctor,” Clark said with an appreciative smile. Looking pointedly at Sloan, he added, “Our investigation is moving a little faster than we had anticipated. Since I know that time is short, and I expect that what Sloan and McBride have to discuss will be of most use to you, let me say a few brief words and then turn it over to them.”

Catherine listened while he gave her a capsule summary of the task force’s purpose and some background on the results of similar operations across the nation, but she was watching the people at the table, trying to get a sense of how the individuals fit into the team. Clark, the federal representative, alone at one end of the table and the first to speak, was the titular head, but she had the feeling that Sloan, an arm draped over the back of her chair in an utterly relaxed pose, was the real leader. The woman projected an incredible sense of self-assurance and as she toyed with a pencil, her eyes fixed on a spot in the center of the table, she reminded Catherine of a great, sleek predator fixing on its prey. Her associate, the remarkably handsome man by her side, was completely expressionless, but his eyes glinted with intelligence. Mitchell sat stiffly to her right, and Catherine wasn’t certain if that was due to her presence or just the young officer’s natural intensity. Were Rebecca present, Catherine knew, she’d be sitting across from Sloan, the two of them perfectly matched in skill and drive. Rebecca, relentlessly single-minded when in pursuit of a suspect, was every bit the hunter Sloan appeared to be. The thought of Rebecca brought a swift surge of longing, and Catherine brought her complete attention back to Clark.

He was saying, “We have some information pertaining to perpetrator profiles that have been generated by other investigations. What we need, Doctor—actually, what Sloan and McBride need—is a way to flag the contacts with the most potential to lead us into a real life meeting. Any guidance you can provide would be welcome.”

“Before we get into specifics,” Catherine said, turning her attention to Sloan and her colleague, “I had planned to review a few broad characteristics of the subjects. That may be redundant, however, if you are all familiar with them.”

“It wouldn’t be for me, ma’am,” Mitchell said from beside Catherine, meeting her gaze unwaveringly when Catherine glanced at her.

“I agree, Doctor,” Sloan added, wanting to hear what the psychiatrist had to say. She’d had enough experience with Bureau profilers to know that they were often too rigid with their composites to be of any real use in dealing with individuals. In all fairness, that probably resulted from the necessity of using probability models, but maybe a clinician who had real life experience would have a different take. From the brief rundown Clark had given her, this woman was supposed to be an excellent forensic consultant, even though it wasn’t her primary specialty.

“Let me tell you where we stand. Thus far Jason has focused on establishing an Internet presence by adapting various persona that might be attractive to someone who is interested in preteens or adolescents. I’ve has been trying to localize areas of concentrated activity by targeting intersecting or overlapping patterns of transmission, site traffic, and financial expenditures. The theory being that eventually these two lists can be cross-referenced using additional identifiers to produce a manageable number of individuals for actual investigation. Jason and I are close to narrowing down the search, and while we started with a broad net, we’ve found ourselves with more potential avenues of pursuit than we could possibly explore. Very shortly, we’re going to be in one-on-one situations and there’s a real likelihood of scaring these guys away if we go about it incorrectly.”

Smiling, Catherine replied, “All right then. I’ll hit the highlights and then you tell me what else you need from me.”

“Excellent,” Sloan replied, liking the psychiatrist’s composed, noncompetitive attitude. There was no evidence of the turf struggles she’d been used to within the agency when different departments collaborated. And there was a sincerity in the woman’s calm, ocean green eyes that instilled trust. Sloan caught herself short and almost grinned at her uncharacteristic reaction. She bet Catherine Rawlings was one hell of a psychiatrist. “Fire away, Doctor.”

“What we’re talking about here is typology,” Catherine began, “profiling if you will. Despite popular conceptions, I’m sure all of you realize that this is not hard science. We can make general assumptions, but there are always exceptions, and it pays to be flexible when assessing prospective perpetrators.”

Mitchell, Catherine noticed, was taking notes. “Pedophiles are almost always men, and may be heterosexual or homosexual. It’s difficult to determine the percentages, because so many instances are never reported. I assume this will have some bearing on how you focus your Internet search, and since I don’t know your starting point, my best advice would be to know the victims and begin there.”

“As far as we can ascertain,” Sloan said carefully, “the video productions we’re interested in tracking are primarily adult men depicted with adolescent girls. We have Jason trying to make contact both as a young girl and as an adult male.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Catherine responded. “The Internet provides a sense of anonymity, thus making many individuals more comfortable in revealing socially unacceptable preferences that they might otherwise keep hidden for fear of exposure and reprisal. On the other hand, that may make it easier for you to pick up on the truly serious pedophiles because they will have a false sense of security—believing that the Internet provides a blind behind which they can hide.”

“I’m sorry?” Mitchell asked abruptly. “Serious pedophiles as opposed to what?”

“Sorry. Poor choice of words. What we know is that a large percentage of individuals are content with graphic material and have no interest in instituting true sexual contact. They will most likely never act on their fantasies.”

“Collectors,” Jason clarified. “The bulletin boards and newsgroups are filled with people who just want to trade image files. They look but don’t tough. Then there are the chatters, the ones who probably never take their interest behind the keyboard.”

“Precisely,” Catherine agreed. “These men rarely show any interest in exchanging files, but do spend hours online engaging in cybersex and occasionally escalating to phone sex. Both groups are on the bottom rung of the probability ladder in terms of likelihood of sexual contact. Because the problem is so widespread, both geographically and in terms of numbers, it makes sense to focus on the theoretically more dangerous class of perpetrators. These would be the travelers—men who manipulate online relationships with children in an attempt to institute real-life contact. They often set up meetings, paying for bus fare or plane tickets or hotel rooms in advance, and then coaxing kids into joining them.”

“How do we sort them out—or get them to expose themselves,” Sloan asked, ignoring Jason’s pointed groan at her unintended pun.

“If you were to ask me how to target an individual type—men you could actually track down and ultimately arrest,” Catherine said by way of summary, “I’d say you need to bond with them, instill trust. And the fastest way to do that is to express the behaviors that you expect them to display. Instead of trying to make direct contact, which might seem suspicious, let them see you doing what they do—talk about the same kind of lust object, vocalize a desire for obtaining images, or boast about a fabricated conquest. They’ll come to you eventually, because they are seeking validation through others like themselves.”

“Perfect,” Sloan said, giving Catherine an appreciative glance. Yeah, she’s good all right. “Jason? Any thoughts?”

He looked pensive. “I can focus more on my interactions in the chat rooms and try to attract some attention.”

“Mitchell?” Sloan added. “We can use one of the computer models to screen the chat transcripts for identifiers.”

Mitchell’s face lit up. “Absolutely.”

Catherine turned to Avery Clark. “It seems to me that your team already has the plan well in hand. I’m not certain how I can help you.”

“I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on that, too,” a voice said from the doorway.

Everyone in the room turned as Rebecca and Watts walked in.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

“SORRY WE’RE LATE,” Rebecca said, carefully avoiding Catherine’s eyes. “Traffic.” She and Watts took seats at the table while everyone murmured greetings.

Clark said, “Dr. Rawlings, this is Detective Sergeant…”

“We’ve met, thank you.” Catherine stared at Rebecca, her initial disbelief having given way to something between incredulity and outrage. The detective was wearing the same clothes that Catherine had last seen her in, and it was obvious that she had come directly from the hospital. From the nearly translucent pallor of her skin and the hollow shadows beneath her eyes, it looked like that’s precisely where she still should be—in a hospital bed.

Sloan watched the two of them curiously, aware that the temperature in the room had plummeted to below freezing, but she wasn’t quite certain the cause. Frye had taken a seat across from her to the left of Rawlings, and after a brief nod to the psychiatrist, the detective stared pointedly ahead. Still, Sloan could have sworn the air between them vibrated, rather like the tremor in the tracks when a freight train approached. Something very volatile going on there—professional differences, maybe? Cops rarely take to theoreticians.

Then, Sloan smiled inwardly, thinking of her own theoretician and how very quickly and inextricably she had taken to her. Thinking about Michael in the middle of a meeting was a bad idea, because Michael, in body or spirit, was the only thing she had ever encountered that could distract her. And she couldn’t afford to be distracted—not with Clark already hinting that he’d picked up on how quickly she and Jason had developed a working list of suspects. She wanted to end the briefing as quickly as possible, before Clark could push her for the specifics of their investigation or ask just how they had managed to assemble a preliminary list of potentials in record time. Clearing her throat, she said into the obvious silence, “We have transcripts of dozens of online chats between Jason and personalities who thought he was a 13-year-old girl. We also have a number of hits from men in a private bulletin board who have made overt or veiled allusions to movie distribution. It would be great to nail them—all of them—but what we really want are the manufacturers. Those are the guys who have set up their computers as FTP servers and are broadcasting to a select group of subscribers. With a videocam hook up, they can produce live feeds of child sex. And they have the kids.”

“Locations?” Rebecca asked sharply. She needed a lead to chase, a case to work—something to take her mind off the hollow feeling in her chest that hurt every time she breathed. The pain had built all night in that empty place where Catherine had once dwelled, until finally she hadn’t been able to stand it any longer and she’d called Watts. Catherine sat next to her now, and she felt like they were strangers. The loneliness had been so much easier to bear before. Before she had known what it was to be touched. “Anything solid?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.

“Nothing specific, not yet,” Sloan admitted. “But we’re pretty sure they’re regional, if not local.” She glanced at Catherine. “It would be very helpful if you could go through these with us, and give us your take on the most likely possibles, and perhaps lend some insight as to how Jason can more effectively manipulate them into committing themselves.”

“And then?” Catherine asked with genuine interest, even as she listened with relief to the sound of Rebecca breathing beside her. Respirations steady, unlabored. Stable. For now.

Sloan grinned, a happy, hungry grin. “As soon as we narrow it down to a manageable number, I can launch digger programs which will follow the sender back to his ISP address, among other things. Then we’ll cross-reference to the credit card clearing houses, track the business sources. Get us some names.”

“Yeah, and once you get us a name, we can start knocking on doors,” Watts said with evident satisfaction. “Real police work.”

Sloan managed not to snarl.

“Anything from your street sources, Detective?” Clark asked, looking at Rebecca.

“Not yet.” She had no intention of sharing anything with Clark at this point, and she certainly didn’t want to discuss the details of the case with Catherine in the room. Jesus, everyone was acting like Catherine was an official part of the team.

“My schedule is pretty full,” Catherine stated, “but I should be able to spare an hour or two in the evenings—or even during the day if you absolutely need me.”

Avery Clark stood, signaling the end of the meeting. “We’ll try to give you as much advance notice as we can, Doctor. Any time you can spare would be greatly appreciated. I’ll leave the details to you and Sloan to work out.”

“Certainly,” Catherine replied, standing as well and gathering her things.

“Sloan, may I see you outside?” Clark murmured softly as he passed behind her.

“Sure.” Sloan responded, rising and following.

Jason and Mitchell left as well, leaving Catherine staring at Rebecca while Watts fidgeted in the doorway, looking as if he wasn’t certain whether to go or stay.

“What in God’s name are you doing here?” Catherine demanded.

“I knew the meeting wouldn’t be long. I wanted to make it.”

“How did you get discharged so quickly?”

Rebecca held Catherine’s gaze. “I was never admitted.”

“Jim would never have released you, not in the shape you were in last night. You signed out AMA, didn’t you?” she accused furiously. She wanted to touch her. It felt like days since she had. But she was so angry, the last thing she wanted was contact. Her mind was reeling from the barrage of dissident emotions.

“Not exactly against medical advice. We made a deal.” She said it reasonably, trying to sound confident, but Catherine’s fury was so potent it was like a blow. Her hands trembled and she stuffed them in her pockets.

“Doctors don’t make deals,” the psychiatrist snapped.

“All right,” Rebecca admitted. “But I agreed to go back for a chest x-ray this morning.”

“And if your lung drops right now?”

“He left a catheter in my chest. In an emergency, he said I’d be able to aspirate the air out. That I’d have plenty of time to get back to the emergency room.”

Catherine slammed both palms down on the tabletop and leaned forward, her eyes blazing. “What is the matter with you? Don’t you know you almost died last night? What could be so important about this meeting?”

“It’s not the meeting,” Rebecca said quietly, but the fear was thundering through her now. She had to stay calm. If she explained it clearly, Catherine would have to understand. “If I let them admit me, if I didn’t show up here—if I can’t work—they won’t just take me off the case. They’ll put me on medical disability. I won’t even have light-duty.”

“You shouldn’t have any kind of duty! You should be home or in the hospital.” Catherine whirled in Watts’ direction so quickly that he jumped. “Did you have a hand in this? After all the nights we sat by her bedside, waiting for her to live or die? After that, you could help her do this?” She ran a hand over her eyes and then slowly turned from one to the other. In a voice that was deadly calm, she said, “I do not understand what is important to you. All I know is that whatever it is, it’s more important to you than your life. And I can’t live with knowing that.”

For a moment, it seemed as if no one even breathed. Then, Catherine quietly lifted her briefcase and walked from the room.

Rebecca stood rigidly, the fingertips of her right hand pressed against the granite table top, white to the bone. She hadn’t realized that her eyes were closed until they snapped open at the sound of Watts’ voice. She blinked in the bright sunlight coming through the windows.

“Sarge?”

“I want to talk to Mitchell and you—alone. We need to assess where we are in this case. Five minutes, in our conference room.”

“She’s just steamed, Sarge. She’ll get over it.”

No, she won’t. Christ, what do I do now?

“You just gotta give her ti—”

“Let it go, Watts.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Goddamn it,” she shouted, her fist connecting with stone as she pounded her hand onto the table. “Go find Mitchell and shut the—”

She started to cough and he thought his heart would stop. “Oh, fuck. Are you—”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, waving a hand as she caught her breath. “Just do it.”

“Right. Just do me a fucking favor and go sit down until we get there.” He didn’t wait for an answer, but went to find the rookie. They couldn’t get back to the hospital soon enough to suit him.

Sloan looked up as Watts charged by and then caught sight of Frye still in the conference room. She walked back in, poured a cup of coffee, and leaned against the counter, observing the detective, who seemed a little unsteady on her feet.

“You all right?”

Rebecca stared at her. “Yeah.”

Sloan sipped her coffee. “We’re making progress.”

“Good,” the detective sighed, giving in and sitting down. She rubbed her eyes, then blew out a breath. Just work the case, Frye. That’s what you do. That’s what you know. “Because I’m not. We had a couple of names from the previous kiddie prostitution bust, but we haven’t been able to turn up anything. I’ve got a few feelers out, but so far, nada. There’s a rumor of somebody making movies, but so far that’s weak. If I get lucky, someone will point us toward that.”

“It’s early, on a case like this,” Sloan observed mildly, wondering how out of line it would be to ask Frye what the hell was going on. The cop didn’t exactly make it easy to get friendly, but she looked like she was hurting. And not just physically.

“Is Clark on to your FBI hack?” Rebecca asked suddenly.

“You’re sharp, Frye,” Sloan said with an appreciative laugh. “You were here, what? Five minutes? And you picked up on a certain tension between us?”

“I’ve met the type.” Rebecca shrugged and grinned weakly. “When someone says outside the way Clark said it, it usually implies they have a burr up their ass.”

“He suspects we might have used unorthodox methods to acquire some of our information, but he didn’t want specifics.”

“They never do,” Rebecca observed wearily. “Too accountable then.”

“Yeah. Mostly he wanted to be certain that I understood that I was on my own.”

“Why are you doing this, Sloan? You could be making a lot more money doing something with a lot less potential to fuck you over.”

Sloan walked to the sink and poured out the last of her coffee, surprised at the question. When she turned around, she said quietly, all hint of her usual cockiness gone. “Maybe I wanted them to see what they lost.”

Rebecca rose, more surprised at herself for asking than she was by Sloan’s answer. “That’s a fairly fucked up reason.”

“Yeah,” Sloan admitted, feeling an odd sense of relief.

“But I understand,” Rebecca added as she headed out the door. “Keep me up to speed, Sloan.”

“Right,” Sloan called after her. She hesitated for a second, then walked to the wall phone and dialed a number. After a second, she smiled and said, “Hey. Any chance you could meet me for lunch?…No special reason. I just love you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

HAZEL HOLCOMB REACHED for the phone, pushing aside a pile of administrative bulletins as she did. “Yes?”

“Catherine Rawlings is on line two,” her secretary informed her.

“I’ll take it.” She pressed the other line and said, “Catherine? What can I do for you?”

“Can you see me this morning?”

“Just a minute,” Hazel replied, instantly alert to the flat tone of her friend’s voice. She rummaged under a stack of file folders and found her weekly schedule. “I have forty-five minutes open now. If it’s urgent, I could cancel a meeting later this morning.”

“No—I’ll come right over. I have clinic in an hour, too. That’s perfect. Thank you.”

Hazel buzzed her secretary and instructed, “Send Doctor Rawlings in when she arrives, and then hold my calls.”

Five minutes later, a knock on the door heralded Catherine’s arrival.

“I’m sorry to barge in like this,” Catherine began as she took one of the upholstered chairs in front of Hazel’s desk.

“It’s fine,” the Chief of Psychiatry assured her colleague as she moved around to join her in the other chair. “What’s happened?”

“Is it that obvious?” Catherine asked ruefully, folding her hands in her lap to hide the trembling. “God, I’m embarrassed.”

“Catherine, nothing is obvious unless one knows you. You wouldn’t have called if it weren’t important, and you wouldn’t have that very wounded expression in your eyes if it weren’t personal. So—something has happened.”

“I think Rebecca and I just—I don’t even know what to call it. Broke up?”

“Well,” Hazel said gently, a small smile on her face. “We can start with that. What prompted this—event?”

“I’m not sure,” Catherine admitted. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Ah, I see. Good point—spoken like a true psychiatrist. Let’s hear the details, then we’ll plumb for all the deeper, hidden meanings.”

Catherine managed a faint laugh. “Do you talk to all your patients like this? It’s very irreverent. Freud is cringing somewhere in another dimension.”

“You’re not a patient. You’re a friend,” Hazel replied softly, placing her hand briefly on Catherine’s arm. “So, tell me.”

Catherine closed her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them and said, “I got a call from a woman last night whom I’d never met, telling me that Rebecca had collapsed in her apartment and that she needed my help.”

Hazel listened, her expression intent, as Catherine described the previous night and morning’s events. When her friend fell silent, she remarked, “I’m afraid I have to ask—how do you feel right now?”

“Terribly angry at her, and just—empty.” Catherine met Hazel’s eyes, tears swimming behind her lashes. “It’s tearing me apart that she would risk her life like this, and that she doesn’t realize what that does to me.”

“Yes, I can see how much it hurts. I’m sorry.”

“I thought about calling her Captain, telling him what happened.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because,” Catherine replied with a sigh, “it would be divulging patient confidences—”

“You’re not her doctor,” Hazel pointed out.

“No, but I have privileged knowledge that I wouldn’t otherwise have had.”

Hazel made a dismissive gesture. “A technicality at best.”

“All right,” Catherine conceded. “Because she’d never forgive me.”

“She’s hurt you.” Hazel’s tone suggested that turn-about was fair play.

“She’s hurt me because she’s stubborn and careless with herself, but this would be such a betrayal.”

“And what she’s done—isn’t that a betrayal? Of the connection between you? Of your love for one another?”

Catherine regarded her sharply. “It’s only a betrayal if you know what you’re doing—if it’s a conscious act. She didn’t intend to hurt me, she’s just doing what’s she’s always done.”

“But things are not the same any longer—for either of you,” Hazel pointed out reasonably.

“No,” Catherine said quietly. “Everything is different.” She looked at Hazel in frustration. “What a mess. I keep thinking that I should be better at this.”

Hazel laughed. “Why? Love is messy. Relationships are horrible, unpredictable things.” Suddenly serious, she asked, “What do you intend to do?”

“I don’t know. I can’t be with her like this; I can’t watch her kill herself.”

“You know, Catherine, I don’t know this detective of yours, although I’d certainly like to. She sounds fascinating, especially if you don’t happen to be in love with her. But I know that she almost died two months ago. That’s a terrifying occurrence. For someone like her, the best defense against that fear is to—”

“Deny it ever happened.” Catherine sighed. “Yes, I know. Like the business executive who has an MI, and insists on taking phone calls in the cardiac care unit. I know. It doesn’t help.” She rubbed her eyes, glanced at her watch. “I have to work, and so do you.”

“Don’t make any decisions today, or even tomorrow. It’s already too late to break up. You love her, remember.”

“Yes, I do,” Catherine said, wondering if that would be enough.

Catherine contemplated canceling her last patient of the day. It was almost eight; she was tired. Beyond tired. Bone weary and just plain—sad.

“It’s going to be a tough session and you want to avoid it. Because she’s going to walk in here, all spit and polish, and very possibly pissed off. And she reminds you of Rebecca.” She rubbed her temples. “And you’ve started talking to yourself, which can’t be good.”

Joyce knocked on the door and stuck her head in. “You’ve got five minutes. Want anything?”

“Yes,” Catherine replied, “when she gets here, tell her I need to resche—”

“What?”

“Nothing. A coke if you’re getting one.”

“Will do.”

A few minutes later, the door opened again to admit Dellon Mitchell.

“Hi,” Catherine said as Mitchell settled into the chair. She wasn’t in uniform, but she wore her chinos and shirt as if it were one. Neat, tidy, precise.

“Hi.”

Catherine waited a beat, and when nothing else appeared to be forthcoming, she said, “Let’s talk about this morning.”

“All right,” Mitchell replied neutrally, but her eyes were wary.

“Sometimes it can be awkward or uncomfortable when you run into your therapist unexpectedly. Was it a problem—my being there?”

Mitchell regarded her steadily. “What we talk about in here—it’s confidential, right?”

“Usually, yes,” Catherine answered. Mitchell stiffened, and she added quickly, “Officer, you were referred for an official evaluation. I still have to do that. I don’t include information that isn’t relevant to my opinions, and I very rarely include specific details of what we’ve discussed.”

“But you wouldn’t…” She searched for words. “You’re going to be working with the people I work with. There are things…private things…I don’t want anyone to know.”

“They won’t learn them from me,” Catherine said quietly. “First of all, it’s my business to keep confidences. Secondly, I’ll be there for professional purposes, and on a fairly limited basis. There is absolutely no reason anyone should know that you and I have a professional relationship.”

“Fine.”

“Good.” The officer crossed one ankle over her knee, and sat back a little into her chair, a pose Catherine was coming to recognize as relaxed. For Mitchell. “Now, let’s talk about the incident in the alley.”

“I knew her.”

Catherine had many years of therapeutic experience, and she was glad of that now. Because she wanted to blurt out, What? Slowly, carefully, she asked, “The young woman who was being attacked?”

“Yes.”

“When did you realize that you knew her?”

“When he let her go. She fell…I saw her face in the light from the window.”

There was sweat on her forehead that Catherine was certain that she didn’t know was there. Her right hand trembled where it rested on the chair arm.

“What happened when you recognized her?”

She was quiet a long time. Then, her voice hoarse, she replied, “I hesitated. I thought maybe I had imagined it. That’s when he hit me, knocked me down.” She looked at Catherine, stricken. “There was so much blood on her face, I was frozen…I thought she…Jesus, there was so much blood.”

Catherine’s stomach lurched. So much blood. She took a long, slow breath. “How well do you know her?”

“She’s just someone I met…on the job.”

“More than a passing acquaintance?” Catherine probed softly. “A friend?”

Another pause. “Yes.”

“You told me you don’t remember hitting him with your gun.”

“I don’t.” For the first time, the young woman looked scared.

“What do you remember?”

Mitchell ran a hand through her hair. “I remember…I remember her face. I was so fucking angry. The bastard had his hands up her…and then I was on the ground…and she was screaming at him. Screaming not to hurt me…” She stopped and stared at Catherine. “Oh, fuck. I was on the ground, and he kicked me. My head…my side…it hurt. And I could hear her screaming at him…he hit her again, I think. I was afraid he’d kill her.”

“Do you remember striking him with your gun?”

“I don’t,” Mitchell shouted. She covered her face with both hands, shoulders heaving. “I don’t.”

“It’s okay,” Catherine said gently. “It’s okay.”

She finally looked up, her face streaked with tears. “It isn’t really, is it?”

“Oh, yes, it is,” Catherine replied firmly, sitting forward, hands clasped on the desk. “You were alone, in a dangerous situation. There was the threat of deadly injury to yourself or a civilian. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the situation is personalized—this is someone you know, care about. And you were both in peril. You had a gun, Officer Mitchell…and you were facing a bigger, stronger opponent who had already hurt you. You protected yourself, instinctively, but you didn’t shoot him.” Catherine paused, making certain that Mitchell was listening. “You didn’t shoot him. And you could have. You did well, Officer.”

Mitchell grinned weakly, brushing impatiently at the moisture on her cheeks. “Would you mind putting that in your report?”

“I most definitely will,” Catherine replied, smiling. “In my opinion you acted appropriately under the given circumstances.”

“There’s a problem.”

“What?”

“The part about me knowing her? It’s not in my report.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s nobody’s business. It doesn’t have any bearing on the events. I reported it exactly as it occurred.”

Catherine considered the information. “I can’t see that it affects the legalities involved, but,” she continued as she saw Mitchell give a sigh of relief, “it is germane to the effect this has had on you.”

“I’m okay.”

“Yes, in all probability you are,” Catherine answered wearily, suddenly aware of her own fatigue. “I’ll take care of the report to your precinct, Officer.”

Mitchell was quiet for a long moment. “Would you mind—uh, holding off for a little while. You said it might take five or six visits, right?”

“Do you mind telling me what brought about this sudden change of heart?”

“I don’t want to get pulled off the task force.”

The task force. And here I thought it was my stellar therapy techniques . “I think the situation reasonably warrants another visit or two. But then I’ll have to file the report.”

“Fair enough. Thank you.” Mitchell stood, a smile to match the one she’d had when Sloan included her in the plans that morning. “Thanks a lot.”

As the door shut behind the young officer, Catherine leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

Rebecca rolled over and opened her eyes. She lifted her wrist and squinted at the dim dial of her watch. Nine p.m. She’d been asleep for eleven hours. She was wearing loose cotton workout shorts and nothing else. Her body was covered with a thin film of sweat, and when she brushed her palm over her chest and down her abdomen, her hand came away wet.

Nine p.m. Plenty of time to get some work done. She got up from the bed, stiff muscles protesting, and made her way into the bathroom to shower.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CATHERINE ANSWERED THE door and stared wordlessly at the woman on her porch. Finally she said, “Hi.”

“Hi.” Rebecca lifted the pizza box with two video tapes resting on its top. “Dinner and a movie?”

“We have a lot to talk about, you know,” Catherine answered, leaning with a shoulder against the partially open door. Behind her the soft strains of jazz played in the dimly lit living room.

“I know. Would you rather I…” she stopped, looked uncertain. “What do you want me to do?”

“Are you working tonight? Is this just a drive-by visit?”

Rebecca winced. “No. I was going to. I intended to, when I got up. But…no.”

“I’m too tired for this, Rebecca. I really am,” Catherine said with a sigh.

The look in her eyes, the sound of her voice. Sadness, disappointment, loss. It was a knife in Rebecca’s heart. She lifted a hand toward her lover’s face, then stopped herself. “Okay. I’ll call you. Can I call you?”

“No,” Catherine said with a shake of her head, and Rebecca’s world tilted, then began to crumble.

“Please. Catheri—”

“I really can’t talk now.” She reached out, took Rebecca’s hand, pulled her gently forward. “Just come inside for tonight. Just…be here.”

“Hey,” a quiet, husky voice said from the shadows.

Sandy jumped at the sound, then peered into the dim overhang of a video store closed for the night. “Jesus, Dell. Will you not do that? Some night I’m going to shoot you.”

Mitchell laughed. “You don’t have a gun.”

“I’ll get one if you keep this up.”

“Can we talk?” She stepped onto the sidewalk beside the young blond, wiping the light rain that had been falling since midnight from her eyes.

“Yeah, okay. Let’s go to the diner.”

“How about Chen’s? It’s quieter.”

Sandy regarded her curiously. “Sure.”

Ten minutes later they were seated at a back booth, the only customers in the place. Sandy ordered her usual and Mitchell opted for steamed dumplings and a beer.

“So,” Sandy asked, regarding the dark-haired young woman in the black jeans and T-shirt. “What’s up? Gonna bag out on the Quivers this weekend?”

“No,” Mitchell said hastily, looking surprised. “Hey, I said I wanted to go.”

Sandy hadn’t really expected the rookie to go through with it after Sandy’d teasingly dared her to join her at a club to hear a band down from New York City. She didn’t even know why she’d asked the cop to come with her. They’d just been talking on the corner one night, only passing time, the way they had now and then since they’d met. Since that night Anne Marie’d died.

“You don’t have to take me home. I know where I live.”

“Sorry, ma’am. The detective in charge requested I see you home.”

” Ma’am?” Sandy stopped dead on the sidewalk, impatiently brushing the last tears from her face. “You’re kidding, right?”

Mitchell regarded her steadily. “My patrol car is right this way. If you’d follow me, please.”

“Look, rookie—give it a rest. The night is young and I’ve got a living to earn. So, beat it.”

“I really think you should go home. You look—upset.”

Sandy snorted. “You mean I look like hell? The johns don’t care how you look in the dark.” She turned and walked away.

“It’s probably best if we don’t discuss that,” Mitchell remarked, falling into step beside her.

“What?” Sandy snapped.

“Your line of work.”

“Why, you don’t approve?”

“It’s…unlawful.”

“Now there’s a news flash.” Sandy stopped once more, turning so quickly her breasts grazed the young cop’s arm again. “I don’t happen to be so crazy about your job either, you know.”

“So we won’t talk shop,” Mitchell said quietly as they began to walk on beneath flickering streetlamps, stepping through pools of red and yellow, reflections from blinking neon signs. “You knew her, the dead woman?”

“Yeah, I knew her,” Sandy said softly.

“I’m sorry.”

Sandy hadn’t said anything more, but she’d let the rookie walk her home. And after that, when she’d see the young cop walking her beat, she’d acknowledge her with a tilt of her chin as they passed. And then after a week or two, a word of hello, until, unexpectedly one night, Sandy’d been eating alone in Chen’s and Mitchell, off duty and in street clothes, had slipped into the seat across from her, and they’d talked. And now, it happened a lot—Dell would show up and they’d have breakfast, and talk about anything—except the life.

“So,” Sandy said, dabbing a pancake with plum sauce and rolling the moo shu inside, “you gonna tell me?”

Mitchell hesitated, looking for the right words.

“Dell?” Sandy asked, watching uncertainty play across the rookie’s good-looking face. “It’s not about what happened, is it? Are you in trouble?”

“No,” Mitchell said quickly. “Everything’s okay with that.”

“Then how come I haven’t seen you down here playing super cop since then.”

“I’m off the streets for a bit—just routine.” At Sandy’s quick expression of concern, she added hastily, “It’s okay. Really.”

“You’re fucking lying, Dell,” Sandy said angrily, tossing her chopsticks down and rising. “I don’t need that from you. And I didn’t ask you to come down the goddamned alley and get in the middle of something that wasn’t any of your business.”

“I was doing my job, Sandy,” Mitchell protested, reaching out and grabbing her wrist.

“So was I,” Sandy snapped, jerking her arm away.

“No, you weren’t,” Mitchell growled, sliding from the booth and blocking Sandy’s path. “He was raping you.”

Sandy stared, astonished by the anger in the young cop’s voice. Like it mattered to her. “You know what I do.”

“Yes, I know,” Mitchell said flatly, trying not to think about the sound of flesh striking flesh, Sandy’s head meeting stone. “But that wasn’t what was happening with him, was it?”

“No.” Sandy sat back down. Mitchell followed. After a minute she said quietly, “We agreed not to talk shop.”

“I guess we’ll have to reconsider.”

Sandy looked away. She hadn’t counted on this. She hadn’t expected things to get so far, to the point where she cared. “Are you in trouble?”

“A little,” Mitchell admitted. “But it will work out.”

“Then what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Rebecca Frye.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Now who’s lying?” Mitchell leaned across the small chipped formica table top. “Maybe this will help you remember her—tall blond detective. The one who had her arms around you? The one who was holding you while you cried on her shoulder?”

Sandy studied her, saw the hard penetrating look in her eyes. Cop’s eyes. Jesus, just like Frye’s. Oh, man, she so did not need this. “What? You want in on this, too? Is that why you’ve been coming around? Do you need a snitch, Dell?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Mitchell cursed. “No. Goddamn it.”

“Then what?”

“I wanted to tell you…” God, what had she wanted to do? All she knew was that she’d felt a little sick in the meeting that morning when Frye had mentioned how one of her street sources was trying to track down the porno makers. That maybe they’d get a break in the case from her.

“How good is the source?” Watts asked.

“Very good,” Rebecca replied. “She’s a hooker, knows every one in the Tenderloin, and she’s smart.”

“She got any kind of body to go with the brain?” Watts inquired, apparently not noticing Mitchell stiffen beside him.

“What do you care, Watts? I don’t think she’s looking for a date.”

“Cause whoever’s making the kiddie flicks is probably making other skin movies, too. Maybe she could hire out for a walk on part.” He laughed. “Well, she probably wouldn’t need to do any walking—kneeling’d be more like it. They gotta be using local talent, and you know it’s always runaways or whores. It’d be good if we could get somebody inside. You can’t ask an undercover cop to do it, cause she’d have to fuck somebody, most likely. But a hooker wouldn’t care.”

Mitchell sat very still, her fist white around the pen in her hand.

“She suggested it and I said no,” Rebecca replied in a tone that said it wasn’t negotiable. “It’s dangerous and she’s not trained for it.”

“What’s it take to lie on her back and spread her legs?”

“We’re done discussing this, Watts,” Rebecca said, and this time there was a hint of danger in her tone. “She’s not some junkie skel like you’re used to bracing in an alley. I’m not putting her at risk.”

And that’s when she’d realized who it must be. Because Sandy and Frye had a history.

“I know you’re her source,” Mitchell said.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Look,” Mitchell said, trying to sound calm and reasonable. “Passing on what you hear on the street is one thing. Asking around, that’s something else. People notice when you ask questions.”

Sandy actually grinned. “Frye will kick your ass if she finds out you’re messing with her sources.”

“She could try,” Mitchell responded sharply. Sandy laughed out loud. “Okay, yeah, probably.”

“Listen, rookie. You’re the newbie here. I know my way around.” Her expression softened for an instant, and she added quietly, “But thanks.”

Without thinking, Mitchell reached out and traced the healing wound on Sandy’s forehead with her fingers. “Just be careful, okay? One scar’s enough.”

“I thought it looked kinda sexy,” Sandy said, her voice oddly thick.

“It does.”

Catherine lay with her head on Rebecca’s right shoulder, tracing her fingertips in a circle around the newest wound on Rebecca’s chest. Two stitches closed the puncture site where the catheter had been inserted between her third and fourth ribs to reinflate her collapsed lung.

Rebecca reached up and covered Catherine’s hand with her own, stilling it. “The chest X-ray was normal this morning.”

“I know. I called the ER and asked about it.”

“I said I’d go back tomorrow for a repeat, just to be sure,” Rebecca continued. They were in bed, naked under a light cover, their bodies touching but distance between them still. It made her insides ache to have Catherine in her arms and feel her slipping away.

“Good.”

“Catherine, I’m sor—“

“Shh,” Catherine said softly, her fingers pressed to Rebecca’s mouth. “Don’t talk. I just want to feel you.”

Rebecca pulled her closer, ran her palm down her back, over her hips. Pressing her lips to Catherine’s temple, she whispered, “Please don’t leave me.”

Catherine Rawlings closed her eyes and listened to the steady heartbeat beneath her cheek, the most precious sound she’d ever heard.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

FIVE DAYS LATER, Michael Lassiter lay with her head on Sloan’s shoulder, waiting for the alarm to go off. She was surprised when she felt soft warm lips against her brow. “Good morning,” she murmured quietly.

“You know,” Sloan whispered in the rapidly graying dawn, “this is the first time we’ve been together and awake in four days. I’ve missed you.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Michael said with a sigh, turning her head to kiss the faint hollow just below Sloan’s collarbone. “When I get home from work, you’re already behind closed doors downstairs. When you come upstairs — if you come upstairs — to get some sleep, I’ve already left for work.”

“What’s today—Friday?” Sloan asked, trying to dispel the cobwebs from her still fuzzy brain. “You’ve got that managers’ meeting this morning at eleven, then the 4:20 flight to Boston, right?”

“How do you manage to keep my schedule in your head?” Michael asked, still astonished that Sloan always seemed to know where she was and what she was doing, despite whatever case she herself was absorbed in.

“I like to remember the important things,” Sloan replied, kissing her again. This time it was a bit more than a good morning kiss.

“I could move the meeting back an hour,” Michael suggested, the kiss tingling all the way down her spine. “Except you should probably get some sleep. Do you think you’ll be working all night again tonight?”

“Probably,” Sloan admitted regretfully, caressing the smooth muscles in Michael’s back. “I’m sorry. We’ve been pushing pretty hard on this case, because believe it or not, I think something’s going to break soon. It’s just a question of finding the right combination of factors and narrowing down our list of possibilities.”

“None of you are going to be able to keep going at this pace for much longer,” Michael pointed out quietly. She’d seen Jason and Sloan work nonstop for days, including during her own business crisis when she and Sloan had first met. It happened sometimes, she knew that—there were times when she was working against deadline that she didn’t get home for a day or two either. Still, knowing it was part of the job never stopped her from being concerned about the toll it took on her lover. It wasn’t her intent to change the way Sloan worked, as if that were even possible. All she wanted to do was interject a tiny voice of reason. “After all,” she chided gently, “you wouldn’t want to miss something because you were too tired to think straight. It might ruin your superstar reputation.”

“Heaven forbid,” Sloan laughed. Sighing, she shifted, settling Michael more firmly in her arms. It was good—no, better than good—to be close to her like this. It was this connection to Michael that restored her and gave her the perspective she needed, a perspective which was critical now. “Not much longer, I hope. At least for this stage.”

“Are you really close to getting names?”

“We’ve been making a lot of headway in that direction. Catherine has been here every night for the last week reviewing transcripts with Jason and discussing indexing parameters with Mitchell. That’s given me enough free time to narrow down locations of subscribers to the two or three Web credit card clearinghouses that the F…. that other sources provided.”

Michael slid her right thigh across Sloan’s hips and sat up, straddling the supine woman. Leaning forward slightly, she began to circle her palms over Sloan’s shoulders and chest. “Believe me, I’m glad it’s going well. I just want to make sure you’re still functional when it’s over.” She lowered herself until she could find Sloan’s mouth with hers, kissing her as she slowly rocked her pelvis back and forth over Sloan’s stomach.

“Don’t worry,” Sloan murmured when Michael finally released her. “I promise to be at least one hundred percent anytime it’s required.” As she spoke, she lifted her hands until she cradled the undersurface of Michael’s breasts, rubbing her thumbs deliberately back and forth across the peaks of her hardened nipples.

Michael drew a sharp breath, catching her lower lip between her teeth. She arched her back, pressing her breasts harder into her lover’s palms. “I think your services might be needed soon.”

“Really? How soon?”

“I’ll let you know.” Lids fluttering closed, Michael ran her hand slowly down her own torso until her fingers rested between her legs. Already hard and wet.

“Don’t hurry,” Sloan managed through a throat tight with desire. “You know how much I love to watch.”

“I know,” Michael whispered back, eyes still closed, listening to Sloan’s breathing quicken, feeling the muscles in Sloan’s abdomen ripple between her thighs, sensing Sloan’s hot gaze upon her. Very carefully, not wanting to lose control, she teased her lover as she teased herself.

Sloan continued to work her nipples, eyes fixed on the slow indolent motion of Michael’s hand, loving the exquisite torture of watching Michael’s passion rise. “God, you’re so beautiful.”

Michael’s eyes opened, their blue depths virtually eclipsed by the dark shadows of desire. She watched Sloan watch her, nearly slipping over the edge when she saw the hunger in her gaze. “Do you want me to stop?” she asked haltingly, her hips rocking into her hand of their own volition.

“Not yet,” Sloan ordered, thrusting upward, forcing Michael’s fingers to stroke them both. “Just don’t… come.”

Michael laughed shakily, her stomach muscles rippling with the first warning contractions. “I should stop then.” She thought she could, barely, if she stopped soon.

“No,” Sloan growled, her voice a savage groan. Knowing how close Michael was, knowing how much she must want to let go, was making her crazy. Michael was leaning hard into her hands now, her nipples rock hard against her palms, her entire body shuddering. “Hold on,” she urged, lifting her own hips so that the back of Michael’s fingers pressed into her clitoris. Watching Michael nearing orgasm, feeling her hand circling faster as she pleasured herself, was almost enough to get her there. The intermittent brush of Michael’s fingers over her clitoris was all she needed. Desperately close, she became the one struggling to wait.

“Sloan,” Michael gasped helplessly. “I’m coming.”

Sloan fought not to go off with her, watching the pleasure flow through Michael’s body, her own nerves melting as she began to burn from the inside out. Her arms trembled, supporting Michael’s weight as she convulsed, and her legs twisted as orgasm thundered through her. Her shouts were lost in Michael’s cries as they held to one another while pleasure raged.

Moments, eons, later, Sloan managed, “What do you think?”

“A hundred and ten percent,” Michael gasped, still trembling.

“Hmm,” Sloan grumbled. “Maybe I am slipping.”

Michael laughed. “You know, I can cancel this overnight to Boston. I don’t want to be away if something breaks on your case.”

“No—go ahead,” Sloan said, brushing her cheek against the fine hair at Michael’s temple. “We’re not that close. I’ll pick you up at the airport tomorrow night like we planned.”

“If something happens, will you call me? I’ll come right back.” Michael brushed her hand along Sloan’s side, feeling her stiffen. “I know you, Sloan. You’ll want to be in the middle of it. And I want to be here.”

“Just go sew up your deal,” Sloan insisted. “You’ll be back in plenty of time. Promise.”

“Mmm,” Michael said, curling into Sloan’s body and closing her eyes. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Eighteen hours later, Catherine looked up as the door to the conference room opened. As it never failed to do, her heart rate skyrocketed at the sight of the handsome blond in the pale blue button-down collar shirt and faded jeans. It was unusual to see Rebecca working in anything other than a well tailored suit, but it was, after all, eleven p.m. on a Friday night. She supposed that when Rebecca worked the streets well into the early morning hours, she did it in jeans and a leather jacket. The memory of just how good Rebecca looked when dressed that way was followed quickly by an image of Sandy’s small cozy apartment and the remains of the takeout meal. Impatiently, she set that thought aside. There was work to be done, and musing about Rebecca’s secret life was not going to help.

“You’re working late,” Rebecca remarked, surveying the pile of computer printouts on the table. Other than several phone calls and one hurried lunch together in the hospital cafeteria, they hadn’t really had much contact the entire week. It was the longest they had been separated since Rebecca moved back to her own apartment. With each passing day, Rebecca felt more at sea. She had a feeling that Catherine was waiting for her to say something, or do something, but she wasn’t certain what that was.

“I can’t believe how much traffic there is on these sites,” Catherine said, indicating the stacks of on-line chat transcripts. “And these are just the ones that Jason thought were interesting.”

“This is the fifth night into a row that you’ve been at it. You look tired. You do still have a day job, remember.”

Catherine studied her, aware of the reservation in her tone. The concern was genuine; she could see it in her eyes. But Rebecca hadn’t touched her when she’d walked into the room, and although she sat within arm’s length now, the emotional distance between them seemed unbridgeable. Not for the first time, she wondered where Rebecca had been spending her nights. “I’m okay. Reading through these is a lot easier than doing an hour or two of therapy.”

Rebecca smiled wryly. “I can only imagine. How’s it going?”

“Surprisingly,” Catherine said, pushing back in the chair with a sigh, “not too bad. It occurred to me this morning while I was making rounds that we aren’t the only people profiling.”

Rebecca edged a hip onto the corner of the table, her expression interested. “What do you mean?”

“Well, thus far, Sloan and Jason have been concentrating on finding individuals who fit a certain profile. I’m sure that the computer wizards in the other room will be able to manipulate this information and eventually come up with something concrete. Still, they’ve amassed a tremendous amount of information which could take a long time to analyze.”

“Right,” Rebecca grimaced. “If I think about it too hard, it gives me a headache.”

“Actually, me too. I think I might be able to add another piece to the puzzle and speed up the process.”

“How?” Rebecca asked, crossing the room and testing the heat of the coffeepot with her palm. It was warm and the coffee smelled fresh. She lifted the pot and gestured in Catherine’s direction. “Want some?”

“Thanks, no,” Catherine replied with a shake of her head. “Anyhow, it occurred to me that if someone is making money, presumably a lot of money, producing and selling pornographic movies—as well as broadcasting live videos of child prostitution—they have to have an audience.”

“Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?” Rebecca said, moving back to Catherine side with her coffee in hand. “All of these dirt balls that Jason’s been communicating with are the audience members.”

“I’m not arguing that they are all purveyors of child pornography in one form or another. But only a select few — probably very few — would actually be in the position to subscribe to this live broadcast that Sloan’s so anxious to get a lead on.”

“Wait a minute,” Rebecca said, an edge of excitement in her voice. “It’s just like any television program — a target audience always has a particular profile. A particular demographic make-up. Is that what you mean?”

“Precisely,” Catherine stated emphatically. “That’s exactly what I mean. Obviously, the viewers are going to be men, probably between the ages of twenty-five and fifty. Secondly, they need expensive equipment and high-speed Internet access—that requires a certain income level.”

“Probably single, or at least someone who has a large chunk of private time,” Rebecca interjected, a note of enthusiasm in her voice.

“So my theory,” Catherine continued, “is that there are probably a number of middlemen recruiting potential subscribers for this—broadcasting service—for want of a better word. And we should be able to identify them by the questions they’re asking.”

“So you’re looking for someone who is trying to find out if Jason—well, the Jason persona—is a single adult male with expendable income who might be interested in something more than still pics or cybersex.”

“You’ve got it. I’m looking for someone who appears to be profiling. What I’ve done is give Mitchell a list of hypothetical questions that these recruiters might ask so she can screen for them. Then we’ll pull the transcripts of anyone who hits fifty percent and, with luck, I can string all of that individual’s chats together and see if the whole picture fits.”

“I don’t know why Clark didn’t get you in on this from the beginning,” Rebecca said with a shake of her head.

A voice from the door responded, “Because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. And if you repeat that, I’ll deny all knowledge.” Grinning, Sloan nodded to Rebecca as she made her way to the coffeepot. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.” Rebecca glanced at the woman who entered behind Sloan. “Officer Mitchell. Putting in a little overtime?”

“No, ma’am. I’m here on my own time.”

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. “Any particular reason?”

“Since Dr. Rawlings is here, I thought I could help out with logging identifiers and running probabilities. Seemed like the best use of resources.”

“It’s your dime, Mitchell.” But she made note of it. The kid was quality.

“Any luck with street Intel, Frye?” Sloan inquired.

“Maybe. I’ll know better in a couple of hours,” Rebecca responded as she glanced in Sloan’s direction, not noticing Mitchell’s body stiffen or her expression darken.

“Here’s something,” Catherine said almost to herself. Every eye in the room turned to her.

“What?” Sloan asked immediately.

Catherine pushed a sheet of paper into the center of the table. “Look at these. It’s segments of five chats with the same person over the course of the last ten days.”

All conversation stopped as they crowded around to read the annotated transcript.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

“SLOAN?” REBECCA QUERIED, glancing at the pages. “What’s the background here?”

“Let me see.” She read the notations from the log Mitchell had generated with her indexing program that were printed across the top of each sheet. “These are segments of conversations that took place in a private chat room reached by way of an open bulletin board. The main site is trafficked by kids and adults—no real way to tell anyone’s age because even when they say, it might not be true. Many pedophiles pretend to be teenagers until they have established a relationship with a kid, and even then, may never reveal their true age. At any rate, this site is known for lots of chat and a lot of invitations to go private for sex. The room where these transcripts are from is frequented exclusively by men who have a taste for young girls—eleven to fourteen mostly. Invite only. You have to be sponsored.”

“How did Jason get in then?”

Sloan grinned, a predatory grin without a hint of humor. “We hacked in. Easy. Jason’s persona is BigMac10.”

“Creative,” Rebecca said wryly.

“These guys aren’t subtle.”

Transcript One – Excerpt

BigMac10 : Hey, man. Saw you with KewlChic12 over on the main board. Did you score

LongJohnXXX : Oh, yeah. Sweet

BigMac10: Wish I coulda been there

LongJohnXXX : Where were you? Watching?

BigMac10 : LOL. Yeah – until you went private

LongJohnXXX : You get off on that?

BigMac10 : Watching?

LongJohnXXX : Yeah

BigMac10: Every chance I get

Transcript Two – Excerpt

LongJohnXXX : Back again, huh, buddy

BigMac10: Can’t stay away. Such fine company

LongJohnXXX : Still watching?

BigMac10: Whenever I can

LongJohnXXX : Got flash to trade?

BigMac10: Stills don’t do it for me

LongJohnXXX : Know what you mean. I like ‘em moving You?

BigMac10: Moving and screaming. Oh yeah

“Jesus,” Rebecca murmured. “He is good.”

“Yeah,” Sloan said quietly. “And it doesn’t come easy.”

Rebecca glanced at her, but said nothing. She understood standing up for your partner. She returned to reading.

Transcript three – Excerpt

LongJohnXXX : Hey, BM10 – any action on the boards?

BigMac10: Just talk out there

LongJohnXXX : Kids stuff

BigMac10: Yeah

LongJohnXXX : How long you been lurking?

BigMac10: Few weeks here Been around HotRods before that

LongJohnXXX : You sharing the line?

BigMac10: No – all mine. Home alone

Transcript Four – Excerpt

BigMac10: welcome

LongJohnXXX : Evening watchman

BigMac10: Not much to see here tonight

LongJohnXXX : Second hand pickings, huh

BigMac10: Insufficient for a man of quality

LongJohnXXX : Quality costs

BigMac10: Not an object – for the right merchandise

LongJohnXXX : You looking to buy

BigMac10: Maybe if the stuff is prime

“And then this from last night—early this morning, I should say,”” Catherine remarked, pointing to the last entry.

Transcript Five - Excerpt

LongJohnXXX : Yo-BM10. You lurking?

BigMac10: here

LongJohnXXX : How’d you do?

BigMac10: How so?

LongJohnXXX : Don’t be a cock tease. HotChic13

BigMac10: Now who’s watching

LongJohnXXX : yeah – so give

BigMac10: she blew me off

LongJohnXXX : Whoa – for real?

BigMac10: No, man – she went private then backed out. Left me high and hard

LongJohnXXX : Bummer. No sure thing in cyberspace

BigMac10: yeah – not like RL

LongJohnXXX : The real thing is sweet

BigMac10: But hard to come by

LongJohnXXX : depends on who you know

BigMac10: yeah – I’m available

“This guy has potential,” Sloan agreed. “He sounds like he’s getting ready to offer Jas-uh, BigMac something.”

“And he’s mentioned watching a half dozen times,” Mitchell pointed out. “Could be he’s brokering the real time feeds.”

“There’s a problem,” Rebecca remarked with a frown.

“What?” Catherine asked in surprise. “Surely it can’t be entrapment?”

“No—trouble for Jason.”

“You want to spell that out?” Sloan asked, her voice suddenly edged with flint.

Rebecca regarded Mitchell for a moment. Mitchell squared her shoulders, set her jaw, and stared back. Clearly, she was not going to leave until ordered.

“How many of Jason’s chats do we have recorded, Mitchell? Logged in somewhere.”

“All of them,” the young officer replied immediately. That had been part of her assignment, and she was very thorough.

“That’s what I figured.” Rebecca rolled her shoulders, then faced Sloan, whose eyes had grown hard. “Jason could be in trouble if he’s been soliciting sex from minors on the internet, even in the course of an investigation. And these transcripts need to go into anything I take to the DA for a warrant.”

“Soliciting sex?” Sloan said, her surprise evident.

“The interaction mentioned here with HotChic13,” Rebecca clarified, waving the last page. “Is that recorded somewhere also?”

“Yep.” Sloan’s grin reappeared. “Every red hot word.”

“Well then—”

“Except,” Sloan added, “I’m HotChic13,”

Mitchell coughed. “Uh, and I’m PhillyFilly11. BigMac10’s other cybersex partner.”

Catherine laughed. Rebecca fixed Mitchell with a hard stare. “Redefining your assignment, Officer?”

“No, ma’am. Just—expanding it.”

Sloan looked for a moment as if she were going to come to Mitchell’s defense, then though better of it. You didn’t get between a superior officer and an underling. Not and keep the superior officer as an ally, or a friend.

“Just remember you’re a cop, Mitchell. Accountability is part of the job.”

Sloan smothered a smile. She was willing to bet there were a dozen things a day that Frye never reported and would deny any knowledge of. But she appreciated her keeping her rookie on the straight path. “We’ll desist using her, Sergeant, if you think it’s a problem.”

“No,” Rebecca responded. “Go ahead as you’ve been. But she doesn’t make contact with anyone else.”

“Roger,” Sloan said with a half-smile. “So,” she continued, turning to Catherine. “You think this LongJohn guy’s our best bet so far?”

“It certainly looks as if he’s pumping Jason for the right kinds of information.”

“Should we be a little more aggressive with him then?” Sloan asked. “Lead him a little?”

Catherine nodded thoughtfully. “Try to run into him tonight. I’d think it would be understandable if Ja…BigMac were curious after their last exchange and asked about real life opportunities.”

“Can you stay for a while and monitor the chats in case we get a hit?” Sloan inquired of the psychiatrist.

“Certainly.”

“Good. I’ll advise Jason of the plan so he can start trawling that board.”

Sloan left with Mitchell close behind. Catherine regarded Rebecca with a soft smile.

“You like Mitchell, don’t you?”

“Why do you say that,” Rebecca replied, an eyebrow arched in surprise.

“You’re hard on people you like.”

Rebecca winced. “On you, too?”

“No,” Catherine moved closer and rested her hand on Rebecca’s arm. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I’ve missed you,” Rebecca confessed, feeling her entire body sway toward Catherine like a flower to sunlight. “Can I take you home later?” At Catherine’s look of hesitation, she added quickly, “I’ll just drive you home. I won’t stay or—”

“Oh, Rebecca,” Catherine said quietly, a too familiar note of sadness in her voice. “Don’t you know how much I’ve missed you, too? Do you think I don’t want you?”

“I just didn’t want you to think I meant…that all I wanted…” Rebecca swore sharply, then leaned the last few inches and kissed her gently. After a very long minute, she lifted her mouth away and murmured, “It’s not just about sex. That’s all I meant.”

“Are you going out tonight?” Catherine asked, stepping back so she could think clearly.

“I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“I’ll be here.”

Rebecca waited across the street from the all night Gateway Diner on the corner of 13th and Locust. The early September night was chilly, and she hunched her shoulders inside her worn leather jacket. Secluded in the shadows beneath the awning of a shoe repair store, she watched the parade going in and out through the revolving doors. Some were bar patrons who had left the neighborhood watering holes in search of something to eat before wending their way home; some were prostitutes of both genders taking a break from working the streets or just socializing with friends, and some were merely lonely people with nowhere else to be and no one waiting for them to be there. At 1:15, as Sandy’s message had said, the young blond approached walking north on 13th and, a moment later, she joined Rebecca in the shadows.

“Hey,” Sandy said. Dressed in a short black leather skirt, open-toed high heeled sandals, a pale scoop neck top that outlined her high firm breasts, and a thin jacket that clearly wasn’t providing any warmth, she shivered visibly and wrapped her arms around herself as if to ward off the night.

“You’re gonna have to start covering up if you don’t want to freeze your assets off,” Rebecca remarked.

“If they can’t see it, they don’t buy it,” Sandy rejoined.

Rebecca glanced out into the street, knowing that the occupants of the cars slowly crawling by were cruising the sidewalks for hookers or hustlers, looking for a few minutes of company. “Did you ever think of getting into another line of work?”

“Yeah. Except no one seems to be hiring nuclear physicists at the moment. You know, space travel ain’t what it used to be.”

“There are programs available,” Rebecca said quietly. “Places you could get job training or-”

“Frye, if you keep on with this social work talk you’re really gonna scare me. Now do you want the information I’ve got for you, or not?” Sandy had no intention of discussing her choices with the tall blond cop. For one thing, it was none of her business. For another, the quiet concern in Frye’s voice bothered her and she didn’t want to think about exactly why. When people cared about you, they ended up owning a little piece of you. She didn’t want anyone to have even the smallest hold on her. Because then she was vulnerable.

Rebecca blew out a breath and rolled her shoulders, wondering what the hell she was trying to do. Sandy had probably been a runaway, most likely running from abuse, like the majority of young kids on the streets. Not all of them, she reminded herself, thinking of Anthony DeCarlo’s teenage daughter who had left home to punish her parents—an act of adolescent rebellion that had almost cost her life. But most of them arrived on buses or made their way into the city by hitchhiking, only to end up sleeping ten to a room and selling themselves in one way or another for a meal, or drugs, or merely some human connection. Sandy had made a choice for survival, and she had used her wits and whatever else she had to make that happen. As far as Rebecca knew, the young woman wasn’t using drugs and she wasn’t selling herself at truck stops or under bridges in the underbelly of the city. She had a decent apartment and it looked like she was eating well and taking care of herself. If she was using her body to make a life for herself, there were worse things she could’ve done. And no matter what she was doing, Sandy was a source of information and that was all. Rebecca finally replied, “Yeah, tell me what you’ve got.”

“Let’s go somewhere and get a drink. I’m freezing out here.”

A few minutes later they were seated at a back table in the Two Four Club, an after hours place that catered to a mixed clientele whose only common bond was that they didn’t want to go home until they had no other choice. Rebecca walked to the bar and asked for a cup of coffee for herself and a beer for Sandy. The bartender grimaced at her request, but poured lethal looking liquid into a styrofoam cup and passed it to her across the bar. She carried the cup and Sandy’s bottled beer back to the table, then fished four folded twenties out of her jeans and put them underneath Sandy’s beer bottle.

“I know a girl who made some movies.” Sandy deftly extracted the bills and slid them into a pocket under the waistband of her skirt.

“Name. When and where. Details. “

Sandy shook her head. “First of all, who she is isn’t going to help you and I’m not telling you. I know what she knows. Take it or leave it.”

“Give me what you got.” Pressing wouldn’t help. Sandy was unyielding about protecting her friends.

“She says she and two other girls had sex with three or four guys.”

“And that’s news?”

“Well, it is when somebody’s filming it for some kind of live TV.”

“What do you mean by live?” Rebecca’s pulse quickened.

“She says one guy told them that everything they said and did was going to be viewed just like prime time television right when it was happening, so to be careful not to use their own names.” Sandy sipped her beer, then continued with an expression of loathing on her face. “And to make sure they, you know, spoke up.”

“Why?” Rebecca asked.

“He gave them a…what do you call it…script to look over before they started filming. But apparently it wasn’t much, just a list of things to say, you now…the usual…”

“Give me a for instance.”

“The things guys like to hear. Oh baby, you’re so big. It feels so good. Don’t hurt me. Hurt me. Don’t come in my mouth. Come all over me.” Sandy looked past Rebecca at some vision only she could see. “That kind of thing.”

“Did your friend say who they were, describe the men in any way to you?”

Sandy shook her head again. “No names. She went along as a substitute for some chick who usually did it but couldn’t make it because her boyfriend’d put her in the hospital. Says she didn’t even know the other girls she was with very well.”

“How old were they?” Rebecca asked quietly. Under the table, her hands were balled into fists and she ignored the desire to break something.

“13, 15 and 16. But they all look about 12, especially if they dress for the part.”

“Christ.”

Sandy watched something very close to fury flicker across the starkly handsome planes of Frye’s face. There it was again, that undercurrent of concern that touched something in Sandy that she didn’t want to be awakened. It happened when she was with Dell, too. Even just being around Dell made it happen. Made her feel connected. “What?” she asked, realizing that Frye was speaking.

“Did she tell you where this was?” Rebecca repeated.

“Two different places—and apparently the girls don’t know where it’s going to be until that night. Someone picks them up and takes them there and it’s all very, you know, Mission Impossible. Darkened windows in the van, that kind of thing. A warehouse is all she told me.” She finished her beer and pushed the bottle aside. “I’m pretty sure it’s in the city though, because she said it wasn’t more than half an hour and it seemed like they were driving in circles for quite a while.”

Rebecca felt the familiar thrill of the hunt. This was a real lead. “She give you anything else?”

“Uh uh. Just that she did two of them—one was about six months ago and the other three weeks ago.”

“How often do these live films get made?”

“She’s not sure.” Sandy began gathering her things. “Look, I can probably find out more. I just thought you’d want to know about this operation.”

“You did plenty,” Rebecca said seriously. “I’ll take it from here.” She’d have Watts get with someone from juvie and pull the files on all the girls under 17 known to be turning tricks and still on the streets. One of them would know someone who’d been in on one of these shoots. The community was too close for this to be a secret. Eventually a location or a name or a description would pop up.

“I could pass, Frye,” Sandy said quietly. “I do it all the time.”

“What?” Rebecca asked sharply, her attention suddenly completely focused.

“For 14 or 15. If I send out the word that I want in—”

She should do it. She should use her. It was probably a better avenue to whoever was behind the whole operation than waiting for Sloan and Jason to sift through hundreds of pedophiles in hopes of finding one who could open a door for them.

“No. You’re done with this.” She stood, shrugging into her jacket. “Thanks.”

“Hey, Frye?” Sandy asked casually. “Who’s Catherine anyway?”

Rebecca regarded her expressionlessly for a long moment, then smiled. A brief, quicksilver smile. “Anybody ever tell you you ask too many questions?”

Than she was gone, leaving Sandy grinning at her back.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

WHEN REBECCA RETURNED to Sloan Security, she found Jason, Sloan, and Catherine crowded around the large central work station while messages scrolled on three of the four computer monitors simultaneously. Glancing over Jason’s shoulder, she asked, “Any progress?”

“Lots of action,” Sloan responded as Jason continued to chat electronically with someone by the name of Everhard1040. “No sign of LongJohn XXX yet.”

“Mitchell go home?”

“Under duress,” Sloan said with a laugh. “She’s been here since eight yesterday morning, so I told her to take off.”

It was 1:30 in the morning, and Rebecca felt the dull edge of fatigue beginning to cloud her brain. She shook herself mentally, annoyed that she still didn’t seem able to function at full speed. “How long are you going to keep at it?”

“A while longer,” Jason muttered. “He might still show up.”

“Catherine, I think you can probably call it a night,” Sloan said with a sigh. “We’ll keep an eye on things here a while longer.”

“If you get anything that looks promising,” Rebecca said, “call me. As soon as we have something solid, I want to take this to my Captain and start discussing what we’ll need for a warrant.”

“You might as well start the wheels moving—you know how long the DA’s office takes to make a decision. At the very least, we’re going to need to confiscate any computer equipment we find so I can work on it back here,” Sloan advised with an optimism Rebecca did not share. “Once I have just one CPU that’s been receiving these live feeds, I can start tracing where the broadcasts are coming from.”

“We’ll probably need your crime scene techs on the scene to log everything we find and remove also,” Jason remarked, his eyes still fixed on the constantly changing messages and occasionally typing a message himself.

“Fine. I was planning on giving my Captain an update tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning before I meet with him if I don’t hear from you first.”

“Good enough,” Sloan agreed.

Bending down, Rebecca murmured to Catherine, “Are you ready to leave?”

“Yes.” She was used to dealing with people—emotions—in the intimate confines of therapy, one on one, face to face. Watching the disembodied phrases stream across the screen, knowing that somewhere there was a person attached to them, but having no sense of who that person truly was, disturbed and disoriented her. It left her with a compelling need to feel connected, to see and be seen. “More than ready.”

“Is your car here?” Rebecca asked as they stepped out onto the deserted street. Sloan’s building faced the river one block west of Front Street, the busy thoroughfare which ran along the waterfront, but at this hour, no one was about.

“Yes, I’m parked just down the block,” Catherine informed her, “but I’ll probably come back to review more transcripts some time tomorrow, so I don’t mind leaving it here overnight.”

“Fine. I can swing by and pick you up at your place in the morning before I go in to see the boss.” Rebecca unlocked the passenger door of the Corvette and held it open for Catherine. After walking around to the driver’s side, she slid in behind the wheel and reached to put the keys in the ignition. Catherine’s soft touch on her wrist stilled her motion. Turning to face her passenger, she said quietly, “What is it?”

“Let’s go to your apartment.”

“My apartment?” Rebecca said, startled.

“Yes. It occurred to me over the last few days that all of our time together has been spent at my place. I don’t know where you go when you leave me.”

Rebecca was still for a long moment, then she said in a low voice heavy with feeling, “When I’m not with you, Catherine, I’m either working or waiting to be with you again.”

Catherine smiled fondly, struck by how Rebecca’s simple words stirred her so much. Insistently, she said, “I want to see where you sleep. I want to be able to imagine you there when I’m in bed alone.” She didn’t add out loud, I want to be able to imagine you somewhere other than Sandy’s apartment—or a hospital bed.

“Okay. I have to warn you, though, it’s the maid’s week off.”

Catherine laughed and settled back into the bucket seat. “I promise not to look under the bed.”

From Sloan’s, Rebecca drove south on Third Street into Queen Village, a pocket of small row houses and restaurants sandwiched between the newly trendy South Street business district and South Philadelphia, the historically working-class Irish and Italian area. Ten minutes later they were climbing the stairs to Rebecca’s second floor apartment above a mom-and-pop grocery store which had been owned by the same family for over fifty years. Rebecca tried frantically to remember exactly what condition she had left her apartment in, but she drew a blank. She so very rarely paid attention to her surroundings when she was home. It was a place to sleep and make coffee and shower before going back to her real home, the city streets. After unlocking the door, she pushed it open and said, “Come on in.”

Catherine stepped through and waited for Rebecca, who pulled the door closed, bolted it, and flicked on a wall switch to her right. After her eyes adjusted to the light, Catherine looked around, smiling to herself when she found that the apartment was very close to the way she had envisioned it. One large living room with a door to the left that opened into a small kitchen and another on the right that most likely led to the bedroom and bath. A utilitarian sofa with the requisite coffee table in front of it, a very nice stereo set with a layer of dust coating it that suggested that it rarely saw any use, and a high-end television comprised the furnishings. An end table supported a haphazard stack of paperbacks and a gym bag lay open on the floor to her left, apparently having been abandoned there after Rebecca removed her soiled work out clothes. It looked like a bachelor apartment which, of course, was what it was.

“As I said,” Rebecca began in an apologetic tone, “it’s not much to look at —”

“No,” Catherine said. “It seems very much like you. Utilitarian, and a little bit…” she quirked an eyebrow, grinning at Rebecca, “Spartan.”

“Spartan, huh?” Rebecca laughed, too, and began to relax. “Can I get you something? I’ve got soda, I think, and…” her voice trailed off as she followed Catherine’s gaze.

“Is that yours?” Catherine asked quietly, her tone carefully neutral. Her heart was pounding furiously, but she knew that her voice sounded calm. That was the benefit of years of training.

Rebecca stared at the half empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black on her coffee table. “Yes.”

“Are you drinking?” It terrified her more than she would have ever dreamed to think of Rebecca in any kind of trouble, physically or emotionally. If she were drinking again, then something was very wrong. To find that something that serious could be happening to someone she loved and that she wouldn’t even know, wouldn’t even suspect, made her wonder what exactly had happened to the two of them. How could they have drifted so far part? “Rebecca?” Catherine asked again into the silence.

Rebecca took a deep breath. “No, I’m not.”

“But you bought it?”

“Yes. I did. Four nights ago.” She shrugged out of her jacket and released the clasp on her shoulder holster, removing it and stowing it in its customary spot on top of the bookcase next to the door to her bedroom. Turning, she asked, “Can I take your jacket?”

Catherine simply nodded and slipped it from her shoulders. Approaching Rebecca, she held it out in one hand. Rebecca took it and carefully placed it on a hanger in the small closet next to the front door. She walked to the sofa, lifted the bottle of scotch in one hand, and carried it into the kitchen. She returned empty-handed and sat on the sofa. Catherine sat down beside her.

“Why?” Catherine asked, leaning toward her but not yet touching her.

“I’ve asked myself that every day for the last four days,” Rebecca said at length. “I can’t tell you exactly why, but I was lonely, and I was angry, and I was tired. I can usually deal with one or two of those things at one time, but when they all come together, I mostly just want to forget.”

The words and her expression shredded Catherine’s soul. “Is it me?”

“No,” Rebecca said, her voice a whisper. “It’s me.”

“Who is it?” Sandy called irritably.

“It’s me.”

She opened the door and regarded her unexpected visitor. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Neither of them moved; each leaned against the doorjamb on opposite sides of the threshold, regarding one another as if uncertain what to say next. Finally, Sandy said, “It’s three o’clock in the morning, Dell. What’s going on?”

“Did you talk to Frye tonight?”

Sandy’s eyes sparked with sudden anger. “We’re not going there.”

“Just tell me you’re not doing something crazy for her.”

“What I do for her or anyone else isn’t any of your business,” Sandy said, starting to close the door.

Mitchell straight armed the door before it could close completely, but she made no move to enter the room. “You met her tonight, didn’t you? I don’t want you to tell me what you told her. Just tell me if you’re doing anything except passing on information.”

“Go home, Dell,” Sandy said, but her voice was softer now.

“Please, Sandy,” Mitchell said with a note of quiet desperation. “I can’t sleep. I keep thinking… these guys…”

“There’s a reason we can’t be friends,” Sandy said, her eyes impossible to read but her tone bitter. “And this is it. For a little while, you can forget what I do, who I am. But not all the time, right, Dell? And this is what happens.”

“You’re wrong,” Dell whispered. “The only thing I can’t forget is the way you looked lying in that alley with blood on your face.”

Sandy blinked. The torment in Dell’s deep blue eyes was impossible to ignore. She wasn’t certain what brought the tears to her own eyes — the fact that Dell was hurting or the fact that the young cop could feel something like that for her. All she knew for certain was that no one had made her cry in a very long time, and she had sworn that no one ever would again. In a voice she didn’t recognize, she asked, “Are you coming in?”

“No,” Mitchell said hoarsely, her entire body trembling.

“Why not?”

Because I want to so bad.

Breathless, Catherine rolled over and pushed Rebecca away. “I have yet to determine how it is that every time I intend to have a serious conversation with you I end up in bed with you instead.”

“Sorry,” Rebecca gasped. “I think I started that.”

“Well,” Catherine murmured, linking her fingers with Rebecca’s as she stared at the ceiling in the semi darkness, “you had help finishing it.”

Rebecca waited for Catherine to continue, wondering what she was going to ask or what she hoped to hear. When the silence between them expanded to fill the room, Rebecca spoke out of a desperate need to break through the barriers between them. “Every night I poured a glass of scotch and sat staring at it… I don’t know for how long. Then I’d get up and pour it down the sink.”

Catherine turned on her side to study Rebecca’s profile in the moonlight. “Does anyone know?”

Startled, Rebecca replied, “Who would know?”

I should know. But this wasn’t the time for that. “Watts… or Whitaker?”

“No,” Rebecca replied abruptly. Then, aware of her defensive tone, she added more softly, “I can’t talk to Whitaker about this, Catherine. I’m still waiting for him to sign off on my incident evaluation. The last thing I can tell him is that I feel like getting drunk.”

“I understand, believe me. I see people every week who don’t want their employers to know. Still, it would probably help if you talked to…someone about this,” Catherine said carefully. “A friend or…me.” Gently, she stroked the length of Rebecca’s arm. “But keeping it inside is going to make it harder not to drink.”

“I know. I think I’m past it now. I emptied the bottle down the drain tonight.”

Catherine felt a small swell of relief, but she knew it was never that easy. “And the next time?”

After a pause, Rebecca answered quietly, “Next time… I’ll tell you.”

“Thank you,” Catherine whispered. “What you did, not drinking, was incredibly difficult, Rebecca. I’m proud of you.”

Rebecca turned on her side to face Catherine, her palm resting on the crest of Catherine’s hip, their bodies only inches apart. “I want to make things right between us. And I don’t know how.”

“What we’re doing right now will make things right between us,” Catherine said, her voice tight with emotion. “I need to know you, Rebecca. Not just all the strong, brave, wonderful parts of you, but the parts that are uncertain or lonely or…frightened.”

“I need practice at this.”

“So do I,” Catherine admitted. “I haven’t cared about anyone like this before, Rebecca. You bring up feelings in me I didn’t even know I was capable of having. Before you, my life was ordered and settled and comfortable.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad,” Rebecca said with a hint of laughter.

Catherine laughed, too. “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t bad at all; it was just not remarkable. Being with you is quite remarkable.”

“Captain Henry told me that I could be promoted to Lieutenant if I wanted it,” Rebecca said in a low voice. “I could tell him yes.”

“Do you want that?”

“I wouldn’t be on the street as much. I’d have more regular hours.”

Catherine leaned closer and kissed the point of Rebecca’s shoulder. “And you’d do that for me?”

“No,” Rebecca said, her eyes meeting Catherine’s. “I’d do that for us.”

“Maybe someday,” Catherine said softly, stroking the edge of Rebecca’s jaw with her fingertips, feeling the muscles bunched tightly beneath her fingers. “Right now, I’d rather you just share your life with me, not change it for me.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever done that with anyone, but I’ll try. I swear to God, I’ll try.”

“Good. You can start in the morning.” Catherine slipped her fingers into the hair at the base of Rebecca’s neck and guided the other woman down on top of her. “But right now, I’d rather not talk.”

Rebecca slid her thigh between Catherine’s legs and leaned on her elbows, staring down into Catherine’s face. “I feel like part of me is missing when I’m not with you.”

Maybe it was her words, maybe it was the pressure of warm firm muscle against her nerve centers, but a surge of desire so powerful it caused every muscle in her body to tense wrenched a sharp cry from Catherine’s throat. She wrapped her calves around Rebecca’s leg and thrust hard into her, forcing the blood to pound faster through her already swollen flesh. Pressing her lips to Rebecca’s ear she whispered raggedly, “I don’t want to… think. Make it so I can’t.”

First, Rebecca kissed her until she couldn’t speak. Then she found her nipples, and teased them, tormented them, until she couldn’t breathe. Then, she touched her, stroked her, and finally filled her… until she couldn’t do anything except feel.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

THE PHONE RANG at 6:40 a.m. Rebecca groped for the receiver and fumbled it to her ear. “Frye.”

“You up yet?” Sloan asked, her never ending, nearly irrepressible energy practically palpable over the line.

“No. You been to bed yet?”

“Nope. But I’ve got something for you.”

Rebecca sat up in bed, and Catherine rolled over to rest her head against Rebecca’s stomach, wrapping one arm around her waist. Rebecca threaded the fingers of her free hand through the thick tresses at the base of Catherine’s neck. “Tell me.”

“LongJohn finally showed up last night, and he’s dangling bait in front of BigMac’s… nose. You’ll have to see the transcript, but basically, he’s offered BigMac a show. A live show.”

“Excellent,” Rebecca rejoined, her mind already prioritizing her day’s work. “I need as many details as you can give me. I’ll be over in an hour.”

“I’ll put the coffee on.”

Rebecca leaned toward the night stand to hang up the phone.

“What is it?” Catherine asked sleepily.

“Sloan’s got something for us.”

“I take it that means we’re getting up?”

Rebecca slid down into bed and settled Catherine into her arms. “We’ve got a few minutes. You can sleep a little longer.”

Catherine ran her palm along Rebecca’s ribs and down to the base of her abdomen, her fingers settling lightly in the cleft between Rebecca’s thighs. “I wasn’t thinking of sleeping. The last thing I remember from last night is feeling like my entire body had disintegrated. It was wonderful, but at about the point where my arms and legs disassembled, I think I lost consciousness.” She laughed softly, edging her fingers lower as she spoke.

Rebecca’s body had come to attention, and she murmured huskily, “Like I said, we’ve got a few minutes.”

Catherine pressed closer, her mouth against Rebecca’s neck. Teasingly, she murmured, “I might need a little longer than that.”

“Uhh,” Rebecca gasped as fingers closed around her length, “take all the time you want.”

If Sloan was surprised to see Catherine arrive with Rebecca, she didn’t show it. Hair wet from the shower, in a tight black T-shirt and black jeans, she met them at the elevator with a handful of printouts in her fist. Her eyes alight with excitement and the thrill of the hunt, she said, “Come on down to the conference room.”

Jason was there waiting, looking immaculate in a crisp white shirt and blended silk trousers. Grinning at them, showing not the slightest hint of fatigue, he said, “Looks like I might have a date this weekend.”

They all helped themselves to coffee and then sat down with copies of the most recent chat transcript.

Transcript Six - Excerpt

LongJohnXXX: Hey big man, wondered where you were

BigMac10: Looked for you earlier, but you were nowhere

LongJohnXXX: Busy arranging entertainment for some friends

BigMac10: entertainment? anything hot?

LongJohnXXX: sizzlin

BigMac10: live action?

LongJohnXXX: Next best thing—live on screen

BigMac10: oh man, how sweet

LongJohnXXX: turn you on?

BigMac10: you know it. Room for one more?

LongJohnXXX: could be- -not exactly an open house, you know

BigMac10: I understand, but I’ve got the green. No matter the price

LongJohnXXX: You know liberty place?

BigMac10: like my own backyard

LongJohnXXX: Cybercafe at 17th and market, Log on Sunday 7 pm

BigMac10: and then?

LongJohnXXX: then we’ll see-come prepared to party

“What does this mean?” Catherine asked. “Why does he want you to go to this cybercafe?”

“It’s a test,” Jason explained. “One, to see if I’m serious, and two, to make sure I’m not trying to trace him from my computer. I suspect he’s been logging on somewhere other than his house just to protect his equipment.”

“He’ll probably be there—in the cafe,” Sloan added. “Trying to get a look at Jason and see if he looks legit or like a cop.”

Jason smiled. “What do you think?”

“You don’t look like a cop—more like a choir boy,” Rebecca said seriously. Only the slight quirk at the corner of her mouth suggested she was teasing. “This looks good,” she added as she leaned back in her chair. “I’ll take copies of these and the CI reports to my captain this morning. We’ll have the necessary support and paperwork if we get to the point where we can move on this guy.”

“It’s far from a lock,” Sloan warned in an unusual show of reservation. “This guy is very smart. We’re not talking about amateur hacks making videos in their basement. The fact that he wants Jason to contact him from a commercial machine means that he’s aware that he can be traced. That shows a fair amount of sophistication.”

Jason nodded in agreement. “He’s been very careful so far not to spell anything out. Not once has he mentioned kids or ages or any details of what he’s offering.”

“Well have to talk about putting someone inside that café with you, Jason,” Rebecca said thoughtfully. “At the very least, we’ll need to be able to follow you so we can set up outside his house once you get there.” Glancing at Sloan, she asked, “How do we play this once Jason’s inside? Is there any chance we can put an undercover cop in his place? I can probably find someone who is computer literate enough.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Catherine interjected. “Not at this point. Jason and this man have a relationship. There’s a certain style of speech, a certain way of responding to verbal cues, that Jason has established with him. No one else is going to have that flow.”

“I agree,” Jason said. “Besides, we have no reason to think this guy’s dangerous.”

Rebecca didn’t necessarily agree. If this was an operation being run by the local organized crime syndicate, then anyone involved was capable of violence. The hierarchy within organized crime dictated that everyone, at every level, protect the integrity of the organization at all cost. “What about once he’s inside this guys place? How will we get the signal to go in?”

“Ideally, we’ll want to wait until they’re receiving the live feed,” Sloan explained. “I want as much information in that CPU as possible before we confiscate. Plus, it will preserve Jason’s cover if you bring him in with this guy, just in case we need to use him again where he’ll be visible.”

Rebecca regarded Sloan sharply. The cybersleuth had been a cop, all right, because she still thought like one.

Again, Jason nodded, the same predatory glint in his eyes as Sloan’s. “You can bet this guy is going to be wired for everything. You can count on it. Anyone receiving this kind of feed will be recording and probably uploading to their own server. He’ll have a sophisticated wireless system that Sloan should be able to hack into from outside the building. She ought to be able to see what we’re seeing.”

“This is loose,” Rebecca insisted steadily. She knew she didn’t have to tell Sloan, or Jason for that matter, what she meant. There were a dozen ways something could go wrong.

“It won’t be by the time we get ready to roll,” Sloan said just as steadily.

“We’ll need to inform Clark,” Rebecca added with a sigh.

“Let’s tighten it up first,” Sloan suggested.

“Right,” Rebecca said brusquely, slapping her hand on the tabletop. “Okay then. I’ll take it to my boss.”

Catherine rode down with her in the elevator and walked her to her car. “I’m going to stay here for a few minutes, then I have few patients to see.”

Rebecca nodded, tossing the file folder with the transcript copies onto the front seat. “Okay.” She started to turn away, then as an afterthought added, “Uh, I’ll be at the stationhouse most of the day doing this paperwork and making phone calls. See you tonight?”

“Yes,” Catherine replied, smiling at Rebecca’s effort to explain her day. She tried, even when it was foreign to her, and it made Catherine feel more cherished than any other gift possibly could. “That would be just perfect.”

When Rebecca walked into the squad room later that morning, Watts was seated at his desk, his chair turned toward the door. The minute he saw her, he got to his feet and walked quickly to her. “Man, am I glad you finally called me. If I had to chase down one more flasher at the mall, I was going to have to start taking drugs. Have you got something? Because I’ve been working the computers every chance I get, and I still can’t spring any names. It seems like every time I get close, I run into another dead end. It’s uncanny. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say someone had been erasing files.”

Rebecca regarded him closely, because she had learned that Watts rarely said anything that he didn’t mean. Only people who didn’t know him very well thought he was all empty talk. “There are still some things you and I need to look into along those lines, but not right now. I’ve got something to take to the Captain, and I need you assigned officially from here on out.”

Watts beamed and then, looking around the squad room as if to make sure that no one had seen him, added, “Anything I need to know before we go in there?”

“No surprises,” she assured him. “Just try for once to follow my lead, and keep quiet—if you can.”

He just grinned as she turned and walked away. Five minutes later they sat facing Captain John Henry across the expanse of his desk, waiting for him to finish a phone call. When he put down the receiver, he immediately said, “It’s Saturday morning. What have you got that can’t wait?”

Rebecca began unhurriedly to explain. “The task force you assigned me to has turned up a lead here in the city on a kiddie porn ring. We’re going to need to stake out a suspect who we believe is receiving live child pornography over the Internet, marketing it to people he meets in chat rooms, and possibly broadcasting it as well. We think that he may have an indirect connection to the people making the videos, and they’re the ones who are using kids for sex.”

Henry regarded Rebecca quietly for a moment. “This task force, it’s being run by Justice, right?”

“Officially, yes. Most of the work has actually been done by the private computer consultants that Justice brought on board. The feds have pretty much taken a backseat up until now. I’d like to keep it that way. Any arrests should be ours, and if there’s a connection to anything local, I want to know about it first. You know what Justice is like—they’ll snatch up a couple of these guys and offer them immunity to turn State’s evidence on somebody higher up the food chain, and we’ll never bring anybody to trial.”

“The civilians—who are they? You trust them?”

“I do,” Rebecca informed him. “It’s an outfit by name of Sloan Security, and the two main people, Sloan and McBride, are experienced and highly skilled. In fact, Sloan could probably get this new electronic investigation division that the commissioner has been harping about off the ground. I don’t think we’ve got anybody in-house who can actually do it.”

Henry merely grunted, then glanced at Watts. “And Detective Watts figures in this, how?”

“We’re going to need manpower for stakeouts, plus I have information from a confidential informant that some of the younger prostitutes may be involved in making these films. I don’t have any names yet, and I’d like Watts to work with Harris in Juvie to track down some of the younger girls and question them. We really need to work through the juvenile unit because they’ve got all the records, and most likely they can find these kids a lot faster than we can. Plus, Harris is a good detective. I’m willing to bet she has relationships with some of these kids and can help us get the information we need.”

“So what’s the rush to go to the DA? You know they’re going to be running with a skeleton staff, and finding a judge to sign off on a warrant is always tricky on a weekend. Plus, it usually pisses off the judge to get paged during a golf game and that doesn’t help matters.”

“It’s possible that we’re going to have contact tonight or tomorrow night with one of these Internet guys dealing with the live video broadcasts. We’re going to need to bring him in for questioning, go through his place looking for a verification of child porn, and confiscate all of his electronic equipment. I’d like to have a warrant to cover that.”

“Which means we’re gonna need the crime scene techs, too,” Watts added. “That’s a lot of over time and it will help to have the DA on board to back us up with that.”

“Thank you, Detective,” Henry said dryly. “I’m well aware how the fiscal distribution of my division works.”

Rebecca squelched a smile, but she knew that Watts had made a good point. Administrators like Henry, even the ones who had once been good cops like he had been, were highly motivated by the bottom line, which was usually financial. The more paperwork he had to back up his allocation of funds and manpower, the better it would be.

He pushed back in his chair and sighed. “Okay, put the paperwork on my desk and I’ll make some calls.”

“Thank you, sir,” Rebecca said, beginning to rise.

“You stay, Frye.”

Watts hesitated for a second, glancing quickly from Frye to Captain Henry, and then left the room when it became apparent that no one was going to say anything until he did.

When Watts had closed the door behind him, Henry said, “How actively are you involved in this investigation?”

“Just gathering the information as it comes in.”

“I still haven’t seen anything on you from Whitaker.”

“I’ll see that he gets it to you.”

“See that you do, Sergeant.”

“Absolutely, Captain.”

Once outside his office, she glanced at her watch and decided that Whitaker probably wasn’t available on a Saturday afternoon. Monday would be in plenty of time.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

“WHAT ARE YOU thinking about?”

“Hmm? Oh,” Rebecca exclaimed with a wry smile. “I was thinking how nice it was not to be thinking about anything.”

They were walking hand-in-hand through the narrow streets of Old City on First Saturday, a monthly event where artisans of all persuasions displayed their wares on the sidewalks for passersby to peruse, musicians played in alcoves and on street corners, and the many bistros and cafes served drinks or cappuccino at tiny tables lining the walkways. It had a certain Mardi Gras flavor with the historical charm that made Philadelphia famous. They’d had dinner at a small, intimate restaurant and then had taken to the streets along with scores of others to luxuriate in the still warm September evening.

“You might have been thinking that five minutes ago,” Catherine said with a faint laugh, “but now you have that look of complete and utter detachment that spells cop mode.”

Rebecca blushed, an occurrence so rare for her that it was nearly reportable. It was true, she had been thinking about the case, and she had no idea that it showed so plainly. All she’d wanted when the evening had begun was to somehow let Catherine know how crazy in love with her she was, and now, not three hours later, here she was obsessing about the job again. Jesus. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, “I was just—”

“Don’t apologize. I have to admit that I’ve been wondering myself what was happening with Sloan and Jason. This waiting for something to break can get very wearing.”

“Really?” Rebecca was pleasantly surprised. It hadn’t occurred to her that Catherine could become as absorbed in a case as she, although she certainly should have realized that after their experience with Raymond Blake. Then, Catherine had been as persistent as any obsessive detective in bringing him to justice. “You know, we’re just around the corner—”

“I was just thinking the same thing.” Catherine stopped walking and regarded Rebecca with an eager glint in her eyes, then glanced at her watch. “It is after nine on a Saturday night. Think anyone is still around?”

“Can’t hurt to see.”

Ten minutes later, Jason’s now familiar voice said from the speaker above the door, “Come on up. Might as well have a party.”

When they had ascended the elevator and disembarked on the third floor, they discovered Jason and Mitchell in their now familiar poses, hunched over the monitors and murmuring conspiratorially.

Rebecca regarded Mitchell impassively when the young officer turned at the sound of footsteps. Mitchell gazed back, a faint hint of challenge in her eyes. It was the first time Rebecca had ever seen her anything but appropriately respectful. “Mitchell,” she said with a perfunctory nod.

“Detective,” Mitchell said stiffly.

Turning to Jason, Rebecca asked, “Anything?”

“The usual. Saturday night seems to bring out all the perverts. LongJohn hasn’t shown up though. I’m not entirely certain that he will, since we already have a specified meeting time tomorrow night. On the other hand, I want to be here if he does log on.”

Catherine nodded in agreement. “He may very well want to be sure that you’re still interested, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he sends a few more verbal tests in your direction—to verify your authenticity. He’s got to be suspicious that you—BigMac, I should say—might be law enforcement. I would suggest you appear enthusiastic, but don’t probe too overtly for more information.”

“Gotcha.” Jason reached to his right and thumbed through an inch high pile of computer printouts. “These are from the last couple of days, and there might be some other possibles in here.” Glancing at Catherine he said apologetically, “Have you got a few minutes?”

Catherine hesitated, looking at Rebecca, who shrugged infinitesimally. By unspoken agreement, they had thus far kept their personal involvement private from the others in the group, for no other reason than that they both preferred to separate their professional and personal lives whenever possible. “Sure,” Catherine said. “I’ll just take them back to the conference room and go through them.”

As she lifted the pile and turned to leave, Rebecca looked pointedly at Mitchell and said, “Officer, let’s take a walk.”

“Yes ma’am,” Mitchell said and rose instantly.

The two of them headed in the opposite direction from the conference room toward the far end of the vast loft space, finally stopping beneath an expanse of windows that afforded them a view all the way into southern New Jersey. Between them and the industrial center of Camden ran the Delaware River, illuminated by the lights of oil barges and other ships. “Captain Rodriguez called me this afternoon,” Rebecca began without preamble, referring to one of the uniform commanders and Mitchell’s superior. “He told me that all they need is your paperwork cleared up and you’ll be reassigned to street patrol.”

“I don’t want to be reassigned,” she said immediately.

“Is there some problem in house?”

Mitchell glanced at her sideways, surprised by the question. It was rare for detectives to take any interest in uniform officers, and rarer still for them to question the workings of other divisions. Frye was essentially asking her if she had a problem with her superiors or her fellow officers, which was to her knowledge, unheard of. “No ma’am. No problems.”

“Okay.” Rebecca expected no other answer from Mitchell. The young officer was clearly a by-the-book cop, and if she were having problems, she’d keep it to herself like any good cop and try to handle it on her own. Rebecca didn’t intend to push her on it, not now. They had other issues to get clear on. “Then why don’t you want to go back to your regular duty?”

Mitchell squared her shoulders and said directly, “Because I want to stay on this assignment. I like working with Sloan and McBride… and I like working with you.”

Rebecca turned her head and regarded Mitchell steadily. “Every uniform wants the gold shield, at least any uniform worth anything at all.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’ve got a long ways to go before that, Mitchell.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But you’ve made a good start.” Rebecca slid her hands into her pockets and rocked slightly on the balls of her feet as she watched the night slide by on the river below. “I’ll see what I can do about keeping you around.”

“Thank you very much,” Mitchell said, trying not to sound as relieved as she felt. Frye was not the type you kissed up to.

“One more thing.”

Mitchell looked at her questioningly. “Yes, ma’am?”

“You want to tell me about you and Sandy Dyer?”

Mitchell’s heart began to race. Suddenly, for the first time since the day she had stood on the parade ground at West Point as a new cadet, she felt her knees shaking. In a clear voice that she willed not to waver, she answered, “No, ma’am, I do not.”

“If you get between me and this investigation, or any other investigation, I’ll have your badge.”

“Understood.”

“Good,” Rebecca said. “We’ll meet here tomorrow afternoon at 4 p.m. to review the details of the operation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mitchell said, hoping that the shock didn’t show in her voice. Frye had just invited her along on a high level tactical maneuver. It was more than a dream come true, it was a career making opportunity. And that after asking her about Sandy. How in hell had she known?

“And Mitchell,” Rebecca added as if in afterthought, “never turn your back on the night. You never know who might be watching.”

Catherine reappeared an hour and a half later. Rebecca sat with her feet up on the counter, leaning back in a swivel chair, watching a computer monitor. Jason and Mitchell were busy inputting data into one of their seemingly endless analysis programs.

“I’ve pulled three that I think have promise. Officer Mitchell,” Catherine said, “I’ve circled the identifiers that I’d like you to cross-reference.”

“I’ll get on it right away.”

“Tomorrow will surely be soon enough,” Catherine said with a smile. Glancing at her watch, she said, “It’s nearly 11:30. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need a break. Where’s Sloan, by the way? She seems to be the only one of us with any common sense.”

Jason laughed. “Don’t you believe it. She went to the airport to pick up Michael. If it hadn’t been for that, you can bet she’d be right here.”

“Michael?” Catherine said, trying to remember if she had forgotten someone on the team.

“Her lover.”

“Oh,” Catherine said, somewhat surprised. She would have thought Sloan was a lesbian, but perhaps that was just because she found her attractive. Smiling inwardly, she reminded herself that appearances were most often deceiving. “Well then, I’ll say goodnight.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Rebecca said, getting to her feet. “Jason—call me if anything comes up. Mitchell—go home.”

Both of them nodded, but they were already engrossed in some bit of electronic information, their heads bent close together over a print out. Neither of them said goodnight.

Michael Lassiter glanced at her passenger. “I could have taken the train from the airport, you know.”

Sloan reclined in the passenger seat, her left hand resting loosely in Michael’s right, their fingers intertwined. Smiling, she replied without opening her eyes, “I know that. I just wanted to be there when you came home.”

“I’m glad you were,” Michael said softly, her voice thick with a panoply of emotions—wonder, gratitude, desire. In all the years of her marriage to Nicholas, she had never felt this kind of welcome or the peaceful sense of wellbeing that came from knowing precisely where you belonged in the universe. “I love you.”

“Good thing,” Sloan said drowsily. “Because I’m mad about you.”

Michael had rarely seen Sloan exhausted, but she had known when she’d left for Boston that it was unlikely that her lover would sleep at all in her absence. From everything she had gathered, things were moving so quickly on the new investigation that even had she been in town, Sloan would probably have been working nearly twenty-four hours a day. It was only her quiet insistence that her lover get an occasional hour or two of sleep that ever brought her upstairs during this kind of intensive assignment. Turning off the four lane highway that ran along the river onto the narrow streets of Old City, she stated emphatically, “When we get home, you’re going straight to bed.”

“Promise?” Sloan rejoined, turning her head on the seat and finally opening her eyes. Grinning, life clearly returning to her features, she added, “I think you’re exactly what I need to jump start my engines.”

“Well, you can just motor down, hotrod,” Michael said with a laugh. “Maybe in the morning I’ll take you for a ride.”

“I’ll pencil you in to my schedule then.”

Michael was about to launch a comeback as she turned onto their block. Slowing, peering at the unexpected obstacle in her path, she muttered in frustration, “For God’s sake, who would leave that right in front of the driveway.”

Had Sloan been less tired, perhaps she would have been faster to make a connection. As Michael downshifted into park and opened the driver’s door to get out, Sloan glanced idly out her window toward her building. A shopping cart, turned over on its side, lay on the sidewalk in front of the wide double doors leading into their garage. Odd, she thought to herself, as she dimly registered the sound of an engine starting nearby. Suddenly some long-ingrained distrust pulsed through her brain, and she turned just as Michael stepped from the car. “Michael, no…”

The words were lost in the sound of squealing tires, a muffled scream, and the rending of metal as the driver’s door of the Porsche was torn off and catapulted down the street. By the time Sloan extricated herself from the car, which had been pushed into a parked minivan, the vehicle which had struck her lover was gone.

Ten feet away, Michael lay motionless on the street, a dark pool spreading on the pavement beneath her head.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

“MY GOD, DID you hear that?” Catherine exclaimed as she and Rebecca stepped from the elevator.

“Sounds like a hell of a fender bender,” Rebecca muttered, instantly alert, “and it was awfully close.”

Suddenly, the sounds of frantic shouting were audible from just outside and Rebecca hurriedly pushed through the door to the street. Directly in front of her at the foot of the steps leading to the entrance, Sloan’s Porsche was canted onto the sidewalk with the engine still running. She glanced inside through a spider web of shattered safety glass. Empty. From the far side, she could hear strangled cries. “Catherine, stay here for a minute.”

“Rebecca, someone’s hurt. I’m a doctor,” Catherine said urgently from just behind her. “I need to attend to the victims.”

“I know that,” Rebecca said sharply, not used to having her authority questioned at a scene. “But you’ll have to wait. I don’t know what happened here. It might not have been an accident and I don’t want another victim.” Especially not you.

There was no time for discussion, and the detective didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, she climbed over the rear bumper of the parked minivan which now housed a portion of the front of Sloan’s abandoned vehicle, her cell phone in one hand and her automatic in the other. Even as she assessed the activity in the street, visually searching for possible assailants, she called for an ambulance and back-up in clipped, commanding tones. From the corner of her eye, she checked the figures in the street. Sloan, blood streaking her face and arms, was on her knees above the prone body of an unconscious blond woman Rebecca did not recognize. She couldn’t tell how badly either was injured and she couldn’t allow her concern to divert her mind from more important tasks. Like insuring that there were no further threats remaining in the immediate area and preserving any evidence of the crime.

Catherine clambered over the wreck after her and Rebecca cursed. “Keep down at least,” the detective barked, blocking the three women as best she could from the street with her body, scouring the windows in the buildings on both sides of them, searching for any kind of movement behind the many darkened windows. She could see nothing suspicious, but it was impossible for her to tell if any of the people in the densely packed buildings might represent a danger. Curious onlookers were approaching from down the block, but fortunately there were no vehicles to be diverted yet. She glanced down once more and saw a widening pool of blood beneath the blond’s head. “Catherine, keep them right there until back-up arrives.”

“No one is moving her without a backboard,” Catherine said grimly after one quick look.

Mitchell and Jason burst from the building. “Oh god,” Jason gasped, stopping in his tracks and staring in horror.

Rebecca, turning at the sound, ordered, “Mitchell, secure the scene. Backup is on the way. I’ll call for a crime scene unit and find out where the fuck the ambulances are. This was a hit and run at best.”

“Right,” Mitchell responded crisply, her face tight with shock but her voice strong as she clipped her badge to the waist band of her jeans. Glancing once at the badly smashed car, she asked in a quiet voice only Rebecca could hear, “Intentional?”

“We have to assume so, until proven otherwise,” Rebecca affirmed, noting approvingly the officer’s quick, intelligent assessment. “Keep your eyes open. Just because this was a vehicle hit doesn’t mean there won’t be someone in the crowd or on a rooftop with a gun. I’ll call Watts down to canvas with you.”

“I’m on it,” the officer replied, heading off in the direction of a group of civilians who were rapidly approaching.

“Jason,” Rebecca added brusquely, “you get back inside.”

Unsurprisingly, he ignored her and made his way to Sloan.

“Fuck,” Rebecca muttered in surrender and phoned Watts.

Sloan, still on her knees, curled protectively over Michael’s motionless form, her hand gripping her lover’s limp one, a world of anguish on her face. “Call an ambulance…” she implored to no one in particular, her eyes fixed on Michael’s pale face. “Oh, Jesus, please… Michael.”

“Sloan,” Catherine said gently, carefully placing her hand on the dark-haired woman’s shoulder. “I need to be where you are so I can evaluate her.” The injured woman lay nearly under a parked car and Catherine couldn’t get room to assess her status.

“No.” The sound was choked, agonized. Looking up into Catherine’s face, eyes unfocused, Sloan insisted desperately, “No. I’m not leaving her.”

“No, of course you’re not,” Catherine said quietly. “Just let me close enough to help her.”

Jason moved forward and knelt next to his friend. “Sloan—let Catherine help Michael. Just move back a little bit. You don’t have to leave her.”

Sloan looked at him as if she didn’t recognize him, and then she blinked and her eyes seemed to clear. “It was supposed to have been me, Jason. It’s my car. She was driving…”

“It’s okay. We’ll worry about it later.” His voice trembled on the words.

Mutely, Sloan shifted a fraction, tenaciously gripping Michael’s right hand. Catherine gently displaced her further until she could lean down and place her fingers on the woman’s neck, searching for a pulse. Automatically, as often happened when examining a patient no matter whether physically or psychologically, she observed many things at once, assimilating impressions almost unconsciously. While her fingers registered the faint, thready beat of blood through the artery she probed, her mind noted how achingly beautiful the injured woman was. The perfect unmarred features fit for an artist’s canvas, incongruously free of any sign of pain, as if she were only peacefully slumbering. The left hand lying gently between her breasts, a heavy platinum band glinting in the halo of light from the streetlights overhead. The lover bending to her, devotion etched in every line of her hauntingly handsome face. Only the maroon circle of blood rapidly darkening to black cast a nightmare pall over the ethereal tableau.

Catherine wrenched her gaze from Michael’s face. Quietly, she murmured to Sloan, whose shallow, tortured breathing spoke of unbearable grief. “Listen to me. She’s alive. That’s all that matters. We’ll have her in the hospital in a few minutes where she can be taken care of. Do you hear me?”