Justice in the Shadows (17 page)

“I love you.”

Michael smiled. “Then let me watch you come.”’

Sloan rested her forehead on Michael’s, her hand gently cupping Michael’s breast. She kept her eyes on her lover, but she couldn’t see. Love, desire, and need colluded to make her blind. Michael’s presence, alive and beautiful and loving, was more exciting even than her exquisite touch. It was too much for Sloan to hold.

A small cry of surprise and wonder escaped her. “Ohh…there…”

“Yes. Yes, my love.”

Gasping, Sloan slumped down to the bed, her limbs boneless, her chest heaving. “I’m…out of practice.”

Michael laughed, a husky sensuous purr of satisfaction. “Oh, I don’t think so.” Michael rested her head on Sloan’s shoulder, drawing lazy circles on Sloan’s belly with her fingers. “What are your plans for tonight?”

Sloan nuzzled Michael’s ear, then lightly bit the lobe. “I should head downstairs. I left things up in the air this morning.”

Michael lifted her chin and kissed the undersurface of Sloan’s jaw. “Promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“When you find out who caused the accident, let Rebecca handle it.”

There was nothing Sloan could do. There was nothing in her, nothing she was, that Michael didn’t own. “I promise.”

“Thank you.” Michael kissed her again. “I know what that took.”

“You don’t know how much I love you.”

Softly Michael smiled. “Oh yes, darling, I do. You always make me know.”

———

Catherine stretched and sighed. “God, I love sex in the afternoon.”

“It’s not afternoon,” Rebecca pointed out.

“Mmm. It was when we started.”

Rebecca grinned. “Wonder what Joyce thinks about where you disappeared to.”

“I hardly disappeared,” Catherine pointed out. “I merely took some…personal time…before my evening sessions.”

Rebecca stroked her lover’s hair, aware of a strange new emotion. Contentment. “I’ll be late tonight.”

“Has something happened?” Catherine asked carefully. She wanted to say,
Don’t go out. Stay here. Let me close my eyes knowing you’re safe. Let me fall asleep in your arms.

“Not yet, but soon. Mitchell is going out undercover again, and I want to be nearby.”

“Be careful, hmm?”

“What, with Mitchell?” Rebecca asked.

“No, my sweet detective,
you.”

Rebecca sighed. “I more or less ordered Mitchell to see you professionally today.”

“
Ordering
someone to undergo therapy isn’t usually the best way to start that process.” Catherine’s tone was mild, but her eyes were deeply serious.

“Maybe not, but she’s about to fuck-up her career. I gave her a choice.”

“Me or what—traffic patrol?”

Rebecca grinned. “Something like that.”

Catherine sighed. “Rebecca, darling—”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. I said she could see anyone she wants, and that whether she did or not was up to her. I wouldn’t check up on her.” Rebecca brushed her fingers over Catherine’s cheek. “Okay?”

“It sounds like a done deal.” Catherine rolled onto her lover and kissed her, a kiss that soon deepened and grew hungry. “Oh, dear,” she gasped.

“Uh-huh,” Rebecca muttered, wrapping her arms around Catherine and turning until she was on top. “Oh dear indeed.”

———

“Aren’t you hungry?” Sandy asked.

“What?” Mitchell picked up her chop sticks, then set them down with a sigh. “Not really.”

Sandy tipped her beer bottle back and drained it. “So. What’s up?”

Mitchell met Sandy’s inquiring gaze with worried blue eyes. “Look, will you just please promise not to go off to some meeting with this porno guy without checking in? Just do that?”

“Ah, jeez, Dell. Not that again.”

“What if something happens, and we don’t know where you are?”

Sandy put her hand on Mitchell’s leg and leaned close. “Nothing’s going to happen. Trudy will take me to meet the guy. I’ll say, Oh yes, I’d love to take off my clothes and suck your dick, and then he’ll say, Great, I’ll pick you up at such and such a time blah blah blah. Then you and Frye and Bluto will kick his ass.”

Mitchell smiled despite the unease that was burning holes in her gut.

“I’m a big girl, rookie. Don’t worry.”

“I know,” Mitchell said softly, playing with Sandy’s fingers. “Will you just
try
, really try to call Frye if anything goes down. I…I can’t take thinking about you getting hurt again.”

“Okay, baby, okay.” Sandy leaned into Mitchell and kissed her, her hand sliding to Mitchell’s stomach and then around her waist. As her tongue met Mitchell’s, she whimpered faintly and half climbed into Mitchell’s lap.

“Home,” Mitchell gasped when Sandy finally broke the kiss. “Home—Jesus, we gotta go home now.”

Breathing hard, Sandy rubbed her hand over Mitchell’s middle, then down the front of her jeans. “Yeah? To do what?”

Mitchell fumbled for her wallet, her hands shaking. “Take off our clothes, roll around—you know.”

“Oh, that. Okay.” Sandy tugged lightly on Mitchell’s waistband, grinning at the hazy need in Mitchell’s eyes. “Then we can dress
Mitch.
“

“Oh, Jesus,” Mitchell moaned.

Laughing, Sandy tugged her from the booth by the hand. “Come on, rookie. You got business to tend to.”

“Mitch?
Mitch,
you okay?”

Mitch blinked and focused on the bare breasts two feet in front of his face. Quickly, he averted his gaze and turned to Jasmine. “Yeah. Fine.”

“I have a feeling she’d like you to look a little more interested.” Jasmine studied the drag king with some concern. “You look a little bit out of it.”

“Just tired.” It was after three in the morning, and he hadn’t had much sleep the night before. Knock-down, drag-out sex with Sandy had pretty much taken everything he had left. After Jasmine’s show at the Troc, Jasmine and all the kings had gone barhopping. Ziggies was their last stop and by then, Mitch was bleary-eyed with fatigue.

“You need to be sharp,” Jasmine said as she leaned close and rested her hand on Mitch’s thigh. With her lips close to Mitch’s ear and her hand roaming over his leg, anyone watching would have thought they were lovers, which was just what she intended. “You lose focus, you’ll be in trouble.”

Mitch tilted his chin and kissed the corner of Jasmine’s mouth. Then he moved his lips along her jaw and murmured, “I got it. I faded out a little, but I’m okay now. Thanks.”

Jasmine nuzzled Mitch’s neck. “Frye would have my ass if anything happens to you.”

“Mine, too, if there was anything left of it.” Mitch blew softly in Jasmine’s ear. “You can probably take your hand off my dick now.”

Jasmine laughed and settled back in her seat. “I never get to play with any of the boys.”

Laughing, Mitch stood and stretched, then pulled a dollar from the pocket of his leather pants, reached out, and tucked it into the barely-there red G-string of the woman dancing just in front of him.

“You coming back, hot stuff?” she purred as she swiveled her hips suggestively.

“I will if you’ll still be here.” Mitch glanced at the other kings and Jasmine. “I’m gonna grab another beer.”

I need to get someone to talk to me, not just flirt with me. I need to make something happen.

———

“There’s so many things wrong with this picture, I don’t even know where to start.”

Rebecca balanced her third cup of coffee since midnight on her knee and gave Watts a wordless stare.

He returned her gaze with righteous indignation. “I’m a detective second grade, and I’m sitting on my ass out here in the cold while a wet-behind-the-ears rookie is inside where it’s nice and warm.”

“You’d look…” Rebecca shuddered, “out of place in leather pants. So you’re with me out here in the cold, and if you want to make detective one, you’ll act happy to be along.”

Watts snorted, his good sense having vanished with the last ten degree temperature drop. “And another thing…I’m freezing my nuts off while the kid with the fake johnson gets to watch the girls hump those shiny steel poles. Probably can’t even get a decent hard-on.”

Rebecca rubbed at the blistering headache that pounded between her eyes. “I don’t want to hear about your ass or your nuts or any other part of your anatomy, freezing or otherwise. I just want you to sit there and shut up. We’re on surveillance here, not Entertainment Tonight.”

“At least
I’d
be able to appreciate all the bare tits getting thrown around in there,” he grumbled. “So, can I smoke? It’s a department ride.”

“No,” Rebecca replied for the fifth time in an hour. She lifted her coffee cup, halted with it half way to her face, and squinted at two figures approaching from the far end of the block. Softly she said, “Oh, oh. What’s this?”

———

“So,” Mitch said casually to the bartender when he passed him the beer, “how do I get some action around here?”

The bartender seemed not to have heard, his attention focused on something across the room. Mitch turned in that direction, and his heart stuttered to a stop while his stomach convulsed with shock. A pretty Asian girl wended her way between the tables, followed closely by Sandy.

For an instant, Sandy looked in Mitch’s direction, and when their eyes met, there was nothing in Sandy’s expression to suggest that she had ever seen Mitch before in her life. She looked back to her companion. “What did you say this guy’s name was?”

“I didn’t.” Trudy shrugged. “I don’t think he ever said. He’s got some kind of accent…I don’t know what. Italian. Russian. Something like that.”

“I’m gonna get a drink. You want something?”

“Nah.” Trudy sat at one of the tables opposite the kings and Jasmine. “He should be here soon.”

Sandy sauntered to the bar and edged a hip up onto a stool six seats down from where Mitch still leaned with his back against the bar. The bartender took his time approaching, and when he got within earshot, she said, “Would it be too much trouble for you to get me a beer?”

“Would it be too much trouble for you to suck my dick?”

“Not if the price is right.”

He laughed. “You think in a place like this I have to pay for it?”

“If I told you what I think, I might not get my beer.” Sandy lifted a shoulder, a slow easy smile on her face. “And I’m very thirsty.”

Still laughing, he pulled a bottle of Budweiser from the cold case beneath the bar, popped the top, and slid it to her. “Four bucks.”

Sandy pulled a bill from a slit pocket beneath the waistband of her crotch-high red skirt. Her shoes were the same deep red, and she wore a black satin top with spaghetti-string straps.

“Give me five minutes in the backroom, and you can keep your money.” As he spoke, his eyes dipped to her breasts and fixed on the outline of tight nipples stretching the shiny material.

“You wouldn’t last a minute, but it’s still not worth my time.” She pushed the bill across the bar.

As he snorted and picked up the money, Sandy hefted the bottle and turned in Mitch’s direction. Their eyes met, and Sandy nodded, then turned and walked away.

———

“What do you think?” Watts asked.

“I think there’s going to be a meet right now,” Rebecca said sharply. “Christ almighty. We’ve got three people in there, and we’re deaf and blind out here. There’s no way we’re going to know what’s going on.”

“She should have waited, god damn it.” Furious, Watts regarded the windowless door of the sex club. “We were supposed to get her the wire tomorrow.”

“She gets the call, she goes. Sandy knows the game.” Rebecca’s stomach writhed with apprehension, but her voice was cool, her face expressionless. “Jasmine and Mitch will keep an eye on her while she’s inside.”

“Right—a flaming fruit civilian and a rookie whose head is harder than her dick.”

“They’ll stand up,” Rebecca murmured, recognizing Watts’s insults for what they were. Concern. Gaze nailed to the door, she willed Sandy to walk back through it.
Come on, sweetheart. Bring him out to us.

“You want I should call for backup?”

“For what? Right now all we’ve got is a CI looking for information.” Rebecca shook her head, then, with more confidence than she felt, said, “We’ll tail them when they leave—find his
studio.
“

“This don’t smell right.”

I know.

———

A few minutes later, Mitch watched from the bar as a muscular, dark-haired man in a surprisingly expensive looking suit entered from the rear of the semi-dark room. The newcomer stopped at the far corner of the stage where two women continued to gyrate and casually, but thoroughly, surveyed the room. After his perusal of the bar’s occupants, the man walked to Sandy’s table and sat down.

It was the guy from the video. There was no way for Mitch to get close enough to hear the conversation. All he could do was watch helplessly as the man leaned forward and put his fingers beneath Sandy’s chin, then turned her head from one side to the other. Acid burned a hole in Mitch’s stomach, and when the stranger ran a thick index finger down the side of Sandy’s neck and then between her breasts, Mitch’s vision blurred with a combination of rage and sick terror.

Do the job.
He forced himself to walk casually back to his seat. As he sat, he slid an arm around Jasmine’s shoulders. “You see them?”

“Yes.” Jasmine snuggled beneath Mitch’s arm, keeping her voice low. Mitch’s body vibrated with tension. “Take it easy. Nothing’s going to happen in here.”

“I’m not worried about
in here.
“

“Rebecca’s outside.”

Mitch stiffened as Sandy, Trudy, and the man rose. “They’re going to go out the back door.
Fuck.
Frye won’t see them leave.”

“Mitch,” Jasmine warned as Mitch stood. “What—”

“I’ll take my bike down the alley and come around on the street behind the bar. I should be able to pick them up from there. Tell Frye.”

“Wait for back-up…”

But Mitch was already half-way to the door, and he was not turning back. He was not going to let Sandy disappear into the night.

The young cop swung a leg over the motorcycle, started the engine with one swift, hard leg kick, and wheeled the motorcycle down the alley next to the building that housed the bar. In less than five seconds, she had disappeared from sight.