5. Justice Served - Неизвестный

“So you’re going to…what? Follow him around every night?”

Rebecca shrugged. “Once we get the Þ rst bit of hard evidence, I can justify twenty-four-hour surveillance to Henry. Until then, yeah, it’ll be just me. Watts is taking the woman.”

Catherine was silent, struggling to assimilate the reality of her lover’s work. That it was a valuable service, she did not doubt. That it was essential to the structure of the society in which she lived, she did not doubt. She respected Rebecca’s skill and was proud of her dedication. And she hated every minute, day or night, that Rebecca squared off, face-to-face, with evil.

“I see,” Catherine Þ nally said, because regardless of how she felt, Rebecca would do what needed to be done.

“It’s not dangerous,” Rebecca said as if reading Catherine’s thoughts. “Only deadly boring.”

“I don’t mind you being bored now and then,” Catherine murmured, smoothing her palm over the center of Rebecca’s chest. The tips of her Þ ngers brushed the ridge of scar tissue at the upper border of her lover’s left breast, and she faltered, the tactile sensation triggering the memory of the bullet impacting Rebecca’s chest.

“It won’t happen again,” Rebecca murmured, gathering Catherine’s Þ ngers and lifting them to her lips. She kissed each Þ ngertip, then the palm. When Catherine moaned softly in appreciation, the sound struck

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home hard. Suddenly, every cell vibrated, and the need to join exploded in the very heart of her. “Catherine.”

The word was a benediction in the darkness.

“Yes,” Catherine answered the unspoken.

Rebecca arched her back and angled her hips until Catherine was beneath her and her hands framed Catherine’s face. “Don’t worry.”

“I don’t.” Catherine kissed her, a gentle brush of lips, then a deeper caress of tongue against tongue. “Not much.”

“You lie very badly, Dr. Rawlings.” Rebecca drew Catherine’s lower lip between her teeth and nibbled gently before easing her mouth over the crest of her lover’s chin and down her throat. As she worked her lips along the smooth skin, Catherine tilted her head back, exposing the fragile structures to Rebecca’s teeth. The trust in that simple gesture drove the breath from Rebecca’s chest, and as need ripped through her, she skimmed a hand between Catherine’s thighs. Finding her lover wet, she teased a Þ nger between her lips and over her Þ rm clitoris, sliding through Catherine’s desire with tantalizing slowness.

Gasping, Catherine dug her Þ ngers into Rebecca’s back and lifted her hips, seeking more of the enticing touch. “You’re so good at that.”

“What?” Rebecca rubbed her cheek over Catherine’s breast and captured a nipple with her lips. She toyed with the hard nub, ß icking it with her tongue as she echoed the rhythm with her Þ ngers. “Oh.” Flick.

“You mean…” Tug. “This?”

“Yes. Oh God.” Catherine nearly screamed as her body stiffened.

She drove her face into Rebecca’s neck and, in a voice almost too strangled to be heard, pleaded, “Inside. Make me come…deep.”

Rebecca pushed herself up on one arm as she buried herself in Catherine’s yielding depths. She pushed steadily, gasping as tissue slick with passion enveloped her, claiming her even as she laid claim.

“Oh Christ,” Rebecca whispered. “I love you.” She leaned back to bring Catherine up to face her, her arm thrusting steadily between Catherine’s thighs.

“I can’t…” Catherine gasped for air. “Can’t wait much longer.”

Rebecca’s thumb found Catherine’s rigid clitoris, and she stroked Þ rmly. “I don’t want you to wait. I want you to come all over me, right now.”

“Oh, I am. I am.” Catherine shivered, then froze as a cry tore from

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her throat. As her climax crested, she dropped her head to Rebecca’s shoulder and sucked hard on the thick muscle.

The unexpected sensation lanced through Rebecca’s chest and belly, igniting the nerve endings that already danced on the edge of explosion. “Touch me. Catherine, God, touch me.”

Still coming, Catherine skimmed her hand down Rebecca’s tensed abdomen and between her legs, closing unerringly around her clitoris.

Beyond thought, she tugged at Rebecca with the same staccato rhythm that pulsed through her body, harder than she might have had she been aware of her actions.

“Oh,” Rebecca shouted, shocked into orgasm. “Oh yeah…oh.”

As they clung to one another in the Þ nal moments of release, their cries mingled and eventually dwindled to faint moans and soft whimpers. Rebecca carried Catherine with her down onto the bed, cradling her against her chest. Catherine groped for the sheet and pulled it over them.

“I don’t know how you do that,” Catherine murmured, her voice thick with the vestiges of passion. “Know just what I need, just when I need it.”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Rebecca said seriously. She stroked Catherine’s hair. “I feel so damn lucky to have you.”

“What we have,” Catherine said. “It’s precious.”

“I know.” Rebecca sighed. “I’m trying to deserve it. I know I probably don—”

Catherine pressed her Þ ngers to Rebecca’s mouth. “Shh. That’s not what I meant.” She pressed a kiss to the scar that marked Rebecca’s heart. “I want you more than anything else in my life—more than safety, more than certainty, more than promises. Just you, here with me like this, every night. When you can, give me that.”

“I will,” Rebecca whispered. When I’m sure I won’t disappoint you, I will.

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Justice Served

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tuesday

Hey, it’s about time you showed up.” Jason greeted Mitchell with an affectionate smile and rolled an ofÞ ce chair in her direction. “Park it there, and let’s get to work.”

Gingerly, Mitchell leaned her crutches against a bench, eased into the chair, and propelled herself across the hardwood ß oor with her good leg to Jason’s side. “Man, it feels good to get down here.”

“How’d you escape?”

“Sandy got in late. She’s still asleep. I think Michael’s napping too.”

“Well, let’s just see how much we can get done before Sandy hauls your ass back upstairs.”

“I’m a lot better,” Mitchell protested.

“Don’t tell me—tell her. She’s the one riding herd on you.”

Mitchell grinned. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Rebecca called earlier. She and Watts have to be in court for some other case and will be by later. Sloan is at Police Plaza with the detectives she’s training for the new Electronic Surveillance Unit.” He shook his head. “They have no clue what they’re in for.”

“You know, six weeks ago I would’ve done anything to get assigned to that unit.”

“So what changed your mind?” Jason pushed a stack of computer printouts toward her. “I bet Rebecca could get you assigned if you wanted. It wouldn’t hurt for us to have another inside computer technician.”

“Uh-uh. I’ve got other things to do now.” Mitchell shufß ed the papers. “Are these the hits on the porn subscribers?”

“Yep. We need to start putting names to accounts.” Jason brought up a spreadsheet on the monitor. “This is how I’ve broken down the data so far.”

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“Okay. Split it up and I’ll get going.”

“So,” Jason said, transferring Þ les, “you like the undercover thing, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mitchell said absently as she scanned the Þ gures scrolling on her screen.

“And Mitch. You like Mitch too.”

Slowly, Mitchell swiveled to face Jason. “You know I do.”

“And you’re still okay with it?”

If it had been anyone other than Jason, she might not have answered. But Jason was the one person, other than Sandy, whom she trusted to understand. “It feels good. Like, just another part of me.”

Jason nodded, his eyes on her face. Waiting.

“And, well, Sandy likes it too.”

“That’s handy.”

Mitchell grinned. “And I like that she likes it.”

“Even better.” Jason appeared to be weighing his words.

“Sometimes it can get confusing.”

“Are you ever confused?” Mitchell asked softly.

“No,” Jason replied just as softly. “Never about what I feel, only about what others might think.”

“I already know what the only people who matter to me think.”

Jason looked as if he wanted to ask more, but he merely nodded.

“The boys were asking after Mitch last night. I told them he was laid up for a few days because of the motorcycle accident. They want to visit.”

Mitchell blinked. “Here?”

“I told them he was staying with some friends. It would probably be good for your cover if they saw you and Sandy together.”

“What about all the security and stuff in the building? Don’t you think that’ll make them curious?”

“They won’t ever see this ß oor, because we’ll program the elevator to go right to the loft. All they’re going to see is the garage and Sloan and Michael’s apartment.”

“What about the camera over the door? Most people don’t have one of those.”

Jason grinned. “We have a custom light Þ xture that screws over it for just such times as these.”

“Okay then. When?”

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Justice Served

“Jasmine has a show tonight. The kings will probably be there.

You up for it afterward?”

“Sure.” Mitchell wondered, however, if Sandy would be ready for Mitch to get back to work.

v

Watts, carrying a Styrofoam cup brimming with mud-colored coffee, ambled down the hall leaving a trail of splashes on the scuffed tile ß oor in his wake. He leaned against the door frame of a large room that resembled the vice squad room with its haphazard arrangement of desks and mismatched chairs—but there were ten times as many computers here. Sipping his coffee absently, he regarded the two men in shirtsleeves and baggy chinos—the kind of nerdy guys who got their asses kicked in high school—as they listened with rapt attention to Sloan. She was half turned away from him, one hip hiked up on a desk, as she pointed to something on a monitor that Watts couldn’t see. He had assumed that she’d be bored to tears setting up whatever it was the city wanted her to do, but to his surprise, she seemed to be into whatever she was saying. Even from where he was standing, he could sense her energy. He pushed away from the doorway and strolled in to join the group.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“Just getting organized,” Sloan replied, easing off the desk. “You guys go ahead and get the network hardwired. I’ll be back.”

When she indicated the hallway with a tilt of her head, Watts nodded and preceded her out. Once there, he said, “I’d have brought you coffee, but this stuff doesn’t qualify.”

“Thanks anyway. I know better than to ingest anything around here.”

“I see you got stuck with the pocket-protector twins.” Watts snorted. “Hard to believe they’re detectives.”

Sloan suppressed a smile. “They’re eager.”

“So you’re really going to set up this electronic spy thing?”

“That’s what they’re paying me to do.” Sloan grinned. “Although if I only gave them what they’re actually paying me for, they might be able to manage interdepartmental data retrieval in a decade or so.”

“Nothing but the best when you work for the city.”

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RADCLY fFE

“Yeah, I noticed that.” Sloan glanced into the room where the two detectives were absorbed in sorting out a tangle of cables. She lowered her voice. “But once I get the various networks connected, I’ll be able to browse any database I choose. I already know someone on the inside has been hacking data from the crime lab and the detective bureau’s Þ les. With unlimited access, I can trace him back to the source computer, not just the department.”

“How long?” Watts asked eagerly.

“If I had Jason and Mitchell here, maybe a week, but there’s no way to do that without someone getting suspicious.” Sloan lifted a shoulder. “Working by myself—I don’t know. I could get lucky, or it could take me a few weeks.”

“How long if you sleep once in a while?”

Sloan’s mouth tightened. “I have a wife, Watts. I don’t need another one.”

Watts smirked. “How about a boyfriend?”

“How about you Þ nish your coffee break somewhere else and let me get to work.”

“I was hoping you could do me a favor.”

“What?”

“I need to look at some Þ les that don’t exist.”

“Yeah?” Sloan’s eyes brightened. “And where might these nonexistent Þ les be located?”

“Well—I Þ gure one of three places. Captain Henry, Avery Clark, or buried in the narco records.”

“You want to know what Jimmy Hogan was doing for the Justice Department that got him killed.”

Watts nodded.

“It’s not Henry,” Sloan said with certainty. “When the initial evidence pointed to him as being the mole, I went through every byte of data in his system. He never had anything to do with Hogan’s undercover assignment and never got a single report from him. That all went to narco, because Hogan was presumably their boy.” Her expression hardened. “Of course, no one knew he was really Justice’s plant and working for Clark. So it’s possible he never Þ led any kind of substantive report with the PPD but just passed everything he got on to the feds.”

“Maybe. But Hogan must’ve been feeding some tidbits to Jeff

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Justice Served

Cruz, or else why would Jeff have been with him down on the docks the day they were shot?” Watts slid a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and shook one out. He lit it with a scratched and dented Zippo and took a deep drag. “Hogan either thought Jeff knew something, or he decided to cut Jeff and the Loo in on his investigation.”

“Hogan was supposed to be undercover investigating the drug arm of Zamora’s operation. Frye and Cruz didn’t have anything to do with drugs.” Sloan followed the trail of smoke from Watts’s cigarette as it curled indolently toward the ceiling. “You’re gonna set off the smoke alarms.”

“Nah. None of them work.”

“No,” Sloan mused, her mind still occupied with the elusive connection between Jimmy Hogan, a federal agent working undercover as a narcotics detective working undercover as a small-time drug dealer, and Jeff Cruz, a detective in the Special Crimes Unit who dealt primarily with sex crimes. The obvious tie-in was that all of those criminal endeavors were part of the organized crime network. “Too loose.”

“Huh? What? The smoke detectors?”

“The association.”

Watts squinted through the fumes. “You wanna give me a hint here?”

“It has to be something more speciÞ c than just the fact that the Zamora organization was behind the crimes that both Hogan and Cruz were investigating. Something links the drugs and the sex.”

“It always comes down to the same thing,” Watts noted sourly.