“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?