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.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

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.

Watts turned in his seat with some difficulty, released the lock on the rear door, and Jasmine tumbled in, saying breathlessly, “Thanks. They’re on their way…out the …rear exit.”

God damn it. Rebecca gritted her teeth, knowing that they’d been caught unprepared. “What the hell is Mitchell doing?”

“Following them,” Jasmine reported grimly.

“Jesus Christ.” Slowing, Rebecca edged the vehicle into what was little more than a wide alley. Most of the buildings that backed up to it were dark.

“There!” Jasmine pointed through the windshield as she leaned forward over the front seat. “At the other end of the alley—I think I saw taillights.”

At almost four in the morning, there was very little traffic in North Philadelphia. Since she hadn’t seen the target vehicle, she was forced to follow the motorcycle, hoping that Mitchell could manage to keep the suspect in sight. She followed the motorcycle as closely as she dared, using the few cars that were on the road for cover.

“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” Watts muttered. “I hope to hell that rookie doesn’t give himself…herself…ah, fuck…the tail away. If these guys think they’ve been made, they’ll do those girls and dump them somewhere.”

Watts was right, and Rebecca said nothing, her jaws clamped tight and her unblinking eyes fixed hard on the road in front of her. As they turned onto a dark street of mostly abandoned buildings and empty lots, Mitchell surprised her by accelerating fast and disappearing, the red taillight of the motorcycle fading like a candle extinguished in the wind.

“Let’s hope that was a signal,” Rebecca murmured as she pulled to the curb behind a broken-down car that sat tireless on rusted rims. She looked in all directions and saw no sign of life. There were half a dozen vehicles parked along both sides of the street, but no one on foot and no lights in any of the buildings.

Five minutes passed.

No one spoke.

Rebecca tilted her head, concentrating on a faint rumble in the distance. She glanced into the rearview mirror. There were no streetlights and little moon, and the street behind her was shrouded in shadows. As she watched, a ghostlike form emerged.

Watts glanced over his shoulder. “Son of a bitch.”

Driving without lights, Mitchell slid the big motorcycle in behind the surveillance sedan and cut the engine. Keeping low, she came alongside the vehicle and tapped on Watts’s door.

“Where are they?” Watts asked as he opened the door to find Mitchell crouched beside the car.