Justice for All (3 page)

“Good enough. Let’s go.”

Catherine sighed. “I can’t fight you both.” Then she stepped closer to the big detective. “I’m counting on you to look after her, William.”

The smirk disappeared from Watts’s face and he straightened, warmth replacing the usual sarcastic gleam in his eyes. “Yes ma’am. I’ll do that.”

“Move it, Watts,” Rebecca grumbled. The last thing she needed was babysitting. She kissed Catherine’s cheek. “I’ll see you later. Don’t worry.”

Catherine brushed her fingertips over Rebecca’s uninjured cheek. “Get some rest.”

“I won’t do anything strenuous. Promise.”

The three rode down in the elevator together and then parted in front of the hospital as Catherine hurried off to the medical arts building down the block. Rebecca eased into the front seat of the department-issue Crown Vic and was instantly at home. The interior smelled of smoke from Watts’s cigarettes, grease from the McDonald’s containers on the floor in the backseat, and the unmistakable scent of dozens of bodies. For the first time in days she felt like herself.

Watts settled his belly behind the wheel and pulled out into traffic. “Your place or the doc’s?”

“Neither. Let’s head to the office.”

“I don’t want to get my balls in a vise here, Loo. You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”

“No one said I couldn’t sit in a chair and talk.” Rebecca leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Assemble the troops.”

“I ought to be wearing a cup,” Watts muttered. “My balls are aching already.”

“Shut up, Watts.” Rebecca smiled to herself when she heard his happy chuckle.

*

JT Sloan took the call at just after 2:00 p.m. Watts’s message to meet at the unofficial headquarters of the HPCU in her private office building was a welcome reprieve to a life prison sentence. She’d just spent the last five hours working with two detectives who, along with her, made up the fledgling Electronic Surveillance Unit at the Philadelphia Police Department. In a moment of pure insanity, she’d signed on as the civilian consultant to help set up the unit and train the newly assigned detectives whose knowledge of cybersleuthing began with being able to turn on a computer and ended with signing on to the Internet for their e-mail. Fortunately, they made up for their lack of knowledge with eagerness. Still, there was a limit to how long she could rein in her temper, not one of her talents.

“Gotta run, fellas,” she said, clipping her phone back to her belt. “Go ahead and start the downloads from the archives.”

Lloyd Elliott, a sandy-haired, boyish-looking detective who was the reverse of Sloan’s black haired, blue-eyed good looks, straightened up in his chair in alarm. “Without you? What if—”

Sloan waved a hand and headed for the door. “There’s nothing you can do I can’t fix. Have fun.”

Hearing their grumbles as she made her escape, she laughed. There was a lot to be said for being her own boss. On her way to her Porsche, she made another call.

“Michael Lassiter’s office,” a smooth, sophisticated voice answered.

“It’s Sloan. Is she around?”

“Of course, Ms. Sloan. I’ll get her.”

“Just Sloan,” Sloan said automatically. She wasn’t sure why her partner’s executive assistant couldn’t get that straight.

While she waited, she put the top down on the Carrera and took a deep breath of the cool autumn air. The sun was bright, but it lacked heat. She should probably get her leather jacket out of the trunk, because she’d feel the chill in just her usual white T-shirt and blue jeans, but she didn’t bother. She wasn’t going far and she liked the freedom of the air blowing against her skin. She’d spent three days behind bars once and that was enough to make her hate any kind of confinement for the rest of her life. She pushed the thought away. All that was behind her.

“Sloan?”

“Hi, baby.”

“This is a nice surprise,” Michael Lassiter said.

Sloan got a little rush just hearing her speak. Michael not only had a kind of Lauren Bacall beauty, she had the voice to go with it. “I’m headed back to the office. Rebecca is out of the hospital.”

“That’s wonderful news.”

“How are you feeling?” Sloan asked. Michael had been injured herself not long before and was still only working half days at Innova, the design corporation she headed.

“I’m fine.”

“No migraines?” Sloan started the engine and let it idle while she talked.

“Really, sweetheart. A little tired, maybe, but I’m all right.”

“Don’t overdo, okay?”

“I promise. I’ll see you at home in a little while.”

“I might still be in the office when you arrive,” Sloan said. The cyberinvestigation company she’d founded with another ex-federal agent, Jason McBride, after she’d been falsely arrested and dismissed from her Justice position, occupied the third floor of a renovated warehouse in Old City. She’d been sharing her loft apartment on the floor above with Michael for the last two years. “Call me when you get home.”

“Sloan,” Michael chided softly. “You know very well if you’re involved in something I won’t be able to drag you upstairs.”

Laughing, Sloan gunned the Porsche across the lot and out onto the Benjamin Franklin Parkway heading east. “Baby, I want to see you. And being dragged away sounds like fun.”

“Oh, I’m sure I can think of other fun things too.”

“Can’t wait. See you soon.”

Michael said good-bye and Sloan hung up, just barely managing not to ask again if Michael was sure she was all right. She had argued against her going back to her job so soon, but she understood the need to work. Until she’d fallen in love with Michael, all she’d had was work. Even now, when the hunt was on, the chase consumed her. Sometimes she couldn’t tell the difference between being the hunter and the hunted and all she could do was keep running through the complex labyrinth of cyberspace until she won or dropped. Only Michael had ever been able to call her back.

*

“Tell them no,” Sandy Sullivan mumbled, wrapping her slim arm around Dellon Mitchell’s narrow waist and tethering her with a leg across the thighs.

“Work, babe,” Dell whispered, trying unsuccessfully to extricate herself from Sandy’s grip. Not that she really wanted to go anywhere. Sandy might be half her size, but she was curvy in all the right places and her skin was so smooth Dell could lose herself for hours just running her fingertips over every inch. Not that she could really last for hours without doing more than just touch her, but it
felt
that way sometimes. The only thing in the world that could get her out of bed with Sandy was a call to arms. The only thing she loved as much as Sandy was being a cop. She was the youngest member of the High Profile Crimes Unit and awakened daily hardly able to believe she was part of the team. She’d do anything to prove herself. “I gotta go, babe.”

“Screw that, Dell. It’s your day off.” Sandy propped her head on her elbow, her short blond hair spiky and her eyes even sharper. “Even cops and whores get a day off.”

“You’re not a whore. You were never a whore.”

Sandy rolled her eyes. “Okay. Even classy streetwalkers like myself get a break once in a while.”

“I had a day off. Well, most of the day. And you kept me busy.” Dell pushed up against the pillows, brushing strands of dark hair back from her face. Sandy automatically curled up against her chest and Dell stroked her hair. “The lieutenant’s out of the hospital.”

Sandy stopped playing with Dell’s nipple, thank God, and sat up facing Dell. “Frye’s okay?”

“I guess so, or they wouldn’t have let her out. I told you I would have taken you to visit her.” Dell wasn’t crazy about the fact that Sandy was her lieutenant’s confidential informant. In fact, she hated the risk Sandy took every time she went out on the street to gather intel. It only bugged her some that Sandy was a little bit in love with Rebecca Frye. She trusted the lieutenant. She trusted Sandy. It’s just that she couldn’t imagine measuring up to the lieutenant in anybody’s eyes. Frye was not only good-looking, she was an awesome cop. Dell thought if she turned out to be half as brave and smart at her job as the lieutenant, she’d be satisfied.

“She had enough people hanging around her,” Sandy said dismissively. She ran her finger down the center of Dell’s thigh, smiling when Dell twitched as if an electric current had shot through her. “Sure you have to go?”

Dell grabbed Sandy’s hand. “You know I gotta. And yeah, I’m gonna be thinking about what I’m missing the whole time.”

Sandy kissed her, rubbing her breasts lightly over Dell’s. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Dell grabbed her and flipped her onto her back. Then she settled her hips between Sandy’s legs and gently bit down on her neck. She could spare ten minutes.

Rebecca shook Watts’s hand off her elbow as they climbed the few stairs to the alcove at the entrance to Sloan’s building. “Will you cut that out. I’m fine.” She glared up at the palm-sized surveillance camera tucked into the corner. “Rebecca Frye and William Watts.”

Watts leaned forward so the camera could pick up his face. “You look like shit,” he muttered without moving his lips.

“Thank you. Now that you’ve registered your opinion, stop hovering.”

When the door didn’t automatically click open, she knew they were the first to arrive. A few seconds later a faint beep sounded and she quickly keyed in her security code. The door opened and she stalked into the cavernous ground level with Watts on her heels.

“I was just saying, you—”

“Unless you want to walk up to the third floor,” Rebecca said, punching the button to the elevator, “you should put a sock in it.”

Her voice echoed around the unfinished brick walls. Wood beams extended twenty feet overhead, enclosing the space that housed Sloan’s vehicles and the sophisticated mechanics controlling the building. Sloan’s security was beyond state of the art and her company’s electronic surveillance center made the NSA look antiquated. With its hi-tech equipment and privacy, her building was the perfect place from which to run the HPCU.

“Man,” Watts muttered, hastily sliding into the elevator, “it was so nice and peaceful the last couple of days. Nobody bitchin’ at me. Nothing more strenuous to do than fill out a few forms.”

“I’ll bet it was great,” Rebecca said as the elevator whisked soundlessly upward. “Bored yet?”

“It was enough to make a man cry.”

Rebecca smiled as she stepped off into Sloan and Jason’s domain. Two huge U-shaped workstations holding more than a dozen computers faced each other around an open central area. No one was currently at work but data streamed across many of the oversized plasma monitors. “I’ll be in the conference room. You think you can rustle up some stuff to make coffee?”

Watts frowned. “Is it okay, do you think? I mean, coffee’s like a stimulant, right? Makes your blood pressure go up?”

“Don’t tell me you were listening at the door.” Having Catherine worry about her was bad enough. Appearing weak in front of her colleagues, especially those she commanded, was just adding insult to injury.

Watts held up both hands. “I’m not saying a word.”

“Coffee. Black. Strong. Now, Watts.”

As soon as he headed off to the small kitchen tucked into one corner, Rebecca made her way to the only other enclosed area in the expansive space. The conference room held a massive antique library table surrounded by ten chairs, a counter in the back where a never-empty coffeepot usually sat on a warmer, and one entire wall of monitors. The screens provided views of the streets in front and rear of the building in both directions, the entry alcove, the elevator, and everywhere else in and around the building except Sloan and Michael’s living quarters one floor up. A laptop rested on the table in front of Sloan and Jason’s customary seats. Rebecca eased into a chair in her spot on Sloan’s right, happy to be off her feet. She needed to be able to think, and the less she moved around, the less her head bothered her.

It felt good to be back at work. She’d been part of the special sex crimes unit until her previous partner, Jeff Cruz, was murdered. She’d been in the middle of an intense manhunt for a serial rapist, and between the stress of the case and Jeff’s death, she’d almost come unglued. But she’d met Catherine, and her life had changed in ways she’d never dreamed. Then her captain had assigned her to head the HPCU. She had worked in multijurisdictional task forces before, but not with civilian consultants. She’d resisted at first, even though both Sloan and Jason were highly skilled ex-federal agents. Now she couldn’t envision her team without them, any more than she could envision her life without Catherine.

“Here you go, Loo.” Watts slid a mug of coffee in front of her and put the pot on the warmer at the back of the room. Then he dropped into a chair across from her and sighed. “Home sweet home.”

Rebecca was about to answer when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

“It’s about time you two showed up,” she said when Sloan charged in.

Sloan’s sleek dark hair was windblown, her face flushed from the fast ride in the cold air. Jason McBride, a svelte handsome blond with piercing blue eyes, followed her in. As usual, he was impeccably attired in an open-collared pale blue shirt and dark trousers. He looked every inch the successful young businessman, which he was. What everyone on the team knew, but few others did, was that he was also a breathtakingly beautiful transvestite named Jasmine.