Slowly, Mitchell nodded. “So…you and I, we could do that?”

“Yes, we could.”

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“Okay,” Mitchell said as if that settled the matter. Then she leaned forward, her gaze intent. “So, will you clear me to get back to work?”

Catherine didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

v

Mitch sat on the edge of the bed, leaning forward to pull on his right motorcycle boot. Sandy scooted around behind him and threaded her arms around his neck, running her hands back and forth over his chest.

“Remember, Ali said you couldn’t ride the bike.” Sandy kissed the back of his neck.

“I won’t,” he replied, reaching for the other boot. His leg ached when he stood too long or stretched too far. But basically, it didn’t bother him. The stitches hadn’t yet been removed, but the incision was healing Þ ne, and he rarely thought about it. “Jasmine will pick me up in her car.”

“I could come with you to the Troc,” Sandy suggested. “I am supposed to be your girlfriend, you know.”

“You are my girlfriend.”

“So, I’ll come.”

“I’m going to Ziggie’s after the Kings Þ nish their show.”

“I know. I’ll catch a ride home with someone.”

Mitch angled around on the bed until he could see Sandy’s face.

He grinned. “Uh-huh. Anybody who sees us together will really believe that I’m going to leave you to go out clubbing with the guys.”

Sandy ran her Þ ngertips along his jaw. “You look good. The shading is just right. Clubbing with the guys, huh. That’s what you call it? Watching a bunch of girls dance naked?”

“I’m not watching the girls. You know that.”

“Oh yeah, sure. I bet you keep your eyes closed the whole time you’re in Ziggie’s. I’ve seen the way those tables are placed. You’re practically at eye level with their—”

“Come on, San,” Mitch protested, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her sideways into his lap. Her arms automatically came around his neck, and he nuzzled her throat. “I’ll be working, and even if I wasn’t, the only girl I ever think about is you.” He kissed her

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neck, then rubbed his cheek against her breast. “All the time. I think about this all the time.”

Sandy smoothed her Þ ngers over the short hair at the back of his neck before guiding his mouth to the peak of her breast, murmuring her pleasure when he took her nipple into his mouth. The thin material of her camisole molded to her breast from the moisture of his lips, heightening the sensation as it tightened around her ß esh. “I know how you get,” she whispered, shifting her hips against his crotch, “when you’re geared up like this.”

Mitch groaned. “How? How do I get, huh, honey?”

“Horny.” Sandy leaned back, caught the bottom of her camisole in her Þ ngers, and lifted it to expose her breasts. Watching Mitch’s face, she cupped one small, Þ rm breast and ß icked the nipple with her Þ nger.

“Just remember, I’ll be waiting…” She lost her breath as Mitch’s mouth closed Þ rmly on her again.

Back arched, both hands clasped behind Mitch’s neck, Sandy rocked in his lap while he moved from one breast to the other, torturing her nipples with kisses interspersed with tiny bites. Within minutes, they were both gasping.

“You know what you’re doing to me, right?” Mitch groaned, both hands circling her breasts, squeezing rhythmically. He lifted his hips to meet Sandy’s as she ground down against him. “You know how bad I need you right now, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Sandy gasped, her head thrown back, eyes closed, her hips rolling over the prominence between his thighs.

“You trying to make me come in my jeans?”

A slow smile curved over Sandy’s face as she opened her eyes partway, her expression dreamy and soft. “Can you?”

“Keep riding me like that, you’ll Þ nd out,” Mitch growled.

Sandy shifted with one ß uid movement, reseating herself so that she faced him, her legs wrapped behind his hips as she sat in his lap. The thin barrier of her silk panties rested over the bulge in his crotch. Breath coming fast, she rubbed herself on him in short, fast circles, bearing down harder with each rotation. “I might…beat you to it, baby.”

Captivated by the ß ickering images of pleasure racing across her face, Mitch cradled her hips in his palms and pulled her to him, increasing the friction between them. “Do it, honey. Let me see you come on me.”

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“I’m going to,” she said in wonder, clutching his shoulders, rocking now in sharp, erratic jerks.

His own need forgotten, he tore his gaze away from her face long enough to look down, his stomach tightening at the sight of her passion soaking the denim stretched over his cock. The sight was enough to make him come, but he held back, concentrating on her—timing his thrusts to the lift and fall of her hips. “That’s it, honey,” he whispered.

“That’s it.”

She gave one startled cry and stiffened in his embrace, pressing down so hard against him he thought he’d burst. Then she collapsed into his arms, soft and warm, making small, broken sounds of contentment.

“Oh yeah,” Mitch muttered, pressing his face to her damp hair.

“I’m gonna look at some other girl after this.”

“Okay,” Sandy replied drowsily. “But no touching.”

“Not ’til I get home,” Mitch promised. “But then, I’m gonna do a lot of touching.”

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Justice Served

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Sunday, Early Hours

You doing okay?” Jasmine asked as she sidled close to Mitch in the semicircular booth that faced the stage.

“Great.” He tried not to stare at the performers, young women Sandy’s age, most of them built like her—Þ rm and sleek and limber—

and barely postadolescent. He couldn’t think about Sandy and the years she had been available for the titillation and arousal of strangers, not and do the job he had to do. Between him and the bodies gyrating a few feet away, the air hung in a blue-gray cloud of smoke and dust ß ecks that drifted in desultory waves, stirred by the motion of the dancers. Two dozen rapt voyeurs were gathered around at tables or booths, their faces cast in deathly pallor by slanting beams of light from the recessed spots focused in three glaring columns on the raised central platform. Generic strip music blared, and Mitch had to lean close to make himself heard.

Jasmine smelled of some exotic spice and a hint of something darker.

Despite the dim lighting, her slender form, made sleeker by painted-on black slacks and a plunging vee-neck top, was inÞ nitely more alluring than the naked bodies on display. “You see anyone interesting?”

In the last week, they’d assembled photos of dozens of suspected midlevel Mob members from police Þ les and surveillance images—the crew captains, their lieutenants, and the street soldiers who did the dirty work—but Mitch hadn’t seen anyone he recognized.

“No,” Jasmine said. “They’re here, somewhere. Probably in a back ofÞ ce. Chances are the lieutenants are all keeping a low proÞ le because of the arrests last week. They usually send their soldiers to do the real work anyhow.”

Ken Dewar slid into the black leather-covered booth next to Mitch and handed out bottles of beer.

“Thanks,” Mitch said. “Find anybody worth checking out on your travels?”

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“Not yet, but the night is young,” Ken replied, sipping his beer.

“It’s the usual crowd—same bartender as last week too. I don’t recognize the dancers tonight, but in this kind of work, they turn over pretty fast.

Some john beats them up, they get sick, they get addicted. They don’t last long.”

Mitch’s stomach twisted as he remembered the bright promise in Sandy’s eyes and the sleek, smooth lines of her body. He swore to himself that she was never coming back to this life. “Have you ever…

dated any of these girls?”

“For more than one night?”

From the other side of the table, Phil snickered.

“Doesn’t matter,” Mitch answered. “I was wondering if you ever went home with one of them.”

Ken, bulkier than Mitch in his chest and shoulders, the barest suggestion of a beard darkening his angular jaw, shook his head. “They don’t take you home. They do you in the back hall or the john. These girls don’t date.”

“They don’t date or you don’t ask them out?”

“Why would we?” Ken asked with no suggestion of censure in his voice. “They’re all working girls. If that’s your pleasure, a Þ fty will get you anything you want.”

A muscle on the edge of Mitch’s jaw twitched, and he carefully kept his voice even. This wasn’t about Sandy. It wasn’t about him. This was about the job. “I don’t know—you guys don’t strike me as the hit-and-run types, and it wouldn’t be the Þ rst time some guy tried to rescue one of them.”

He intentionally took a swallow of his beer and let his gaze drift over the woman who danced closest to them. She was nude, bathed in an unforgiving light that revealed the faint sheen of sweat covering her body, which was slightly thinner than was healthy, but attractive nonetheless. Her breasts were high and Þ rm, her belly long and sensuous, her legs suggestively sinuous. As the music pulsed, she squatted with her hands on her knees—legs spread, hips rolling—opening herself for their inspection. He wasn’t aroused, but he couldn’t help but look at her. When he did, she smiled and extended a hand with a come-hither motion. He feigned interest, letting his eyes follow her hand as it dropped down between her thighs. “She’s hot.”

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“Yeah,” Ken said dismissively, “but she’s not going to have your babies. These girls don’t settle down. It’s too late for that.”

“So you don’t know where they live, who they really are?”

“Never thought about it,” Ken acknowledged. “Besides, like I said, they’re not here that long.”

They’re not here that long.

There’ve been a lot of new girls in the clubs the last eighteen months.

“How long?”

“Huh?” Ken asked, angling his body and craning his neck as he followed the particularly acrobatic maneuverings of a tall blond working out on a pole.

“How long are they usually here?”

Ken seemed to pick up on the urgency in Mitch’s voice and Þ nally gave him his full attention. “Somebody catch your eye?”

“Maybe.”

“With that little hottie you have at home?” Ken’s tone was incredulous.

“I didn’t give her a ring yet.”

Ken looked skeptical, and Mitch Þ gured the Kings’ leader wasn’t buying his story. He wouldn’t either, not after getting one look at Sandy.

“I’m…looking for someone I saw last week. Maybe she’ll be back.”

“It’s not like I actually counted,” Ken said.

“But you noticed.” And if you noticed, there must be a pattern.

“Yeah,” Ken agreed thoughtfully, turning to the other members of his troupe. “Hey, guys, listen up.”

Mitch waited impatiently while the other guys talked.

“What’s going on?” Jasmine asked.

“Remember what the lieutenant has always said—it has to do with the girls?”

“Yes, why? You have an idea?”

“Maybe.”

Ken turned back. “Okay, we think two months, no more than three.”

What exactly did Trudy say about the nights that she Þ lled in for the video shoots? Lieutenant Frye had asked Sandy.

Every few months, is what she told me.

“I need to hit the head,” Mitch said abruptly. He looked around

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the table at the other kings and Jasmine. “Anybody need a beer or anything?”

As the group chorused no, he slipped from the booth and headed back to the bar.

“Back again, huh?” the bartender from the previous weekend asked in a bored tone as he wiped down the bar.

“Best show in town,” Mitch replied. He pulled a folded twenty from his front pocket and slid it across the bar. “Let me have a Bud.”

The bartender took his time squeezing out the rag and folding it carefully before reaching into the cooler under the bar and extracting a dripping bottle of beer. As he took the bill and turned toward the register on the narrow counter underneath the mirror opposite the bar, Mitch said, “Keep the change.”

After ringing up the sale, extracting the change from the cash drawer, and whisking it into his pocket, he swung back around to face Mitch. “Something you want?”

“Irina,” Mitch said. “She here tonight?”

The bartender smirked. “Setting your sights pretty high, aren’t you, stud?”

Mitch lifted a shoulder. “She liked it pretty well the other night.”

“You’d have better luck with one of her girls.”