And there it was—what she feared most, even though she was embarrassed to admit it. That she would never be first in anyone’s life.

That just as the child she’d been—of two people who loved her, but had loved each other more—she would always be waiting to be seen.

Catherine sighed. Rebecca’s words reminded her of why she had fallen in love with her, despite how hard some parts of being with her could be—moments just like this, when Rebecca saw her so clearly, even more clearly than she could see herself, and gave her the very thing she needed most. The certainty that she was loved. She believed in Rebecca’s love even when Rebecca’s life, Rebecca’s needs, hurt and frightened her.

“I’m terribly in love with you,” Catherine whispered. “And I need you so much.”

Shifting her hands from Catherine’s shoulders into her hair, Rebecca cradled Catherine’s head tenderly as she kissed her. “I’m an idiot. When I hurt you like this I want to shoot myself.”

Catherine pressed her fingers to Rebecca’s mouth. “Don’t even joke.”

“I’m not joking. You’re the best thing in my life. The best thing that’s ever happened to me, or ever will. I don’t mean to make you unhappy. I don’t mean to frighten you.”

“I know that. In my heart, I know that. And that truly is what’s

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most important to me.” Catherine wrapped her arms around Rebecca’s waist and kissed the side of her neck. “But you must promise me that you’ll stop and think. And remember that you’re not indestructible.”

“When I went in yesterday, I was only planning to sit at a desk,”

Rebecca said. “That’s what I’m still planning on doing.”

Catherine fixed her with an intense stare. “Are you going to tell me the only thing you did yesterday was sit with your feet propped up somewhere?”

Rebecca looked away. “I went for a very short walk with Sandy.”

“Sandy?” Catherine shook her head. “Sandy is a remarkable young woman, but I would rather have William or Sloan or Dellon protecting you.”

“I don’t need them protecting me. I’m their boss.”

“Yes, darling, you are. And when you’re a hundred percent, there’s no one better qualified. But you’re not a hundred percent. Not quite.”

Begrudgingly, Rebecca nodded. “And that’s why I’m going to sit my ass at a desk. All right?”

“Can I ask William to be sure that you do?”

Rebecca’s eyes shifted from their ordinary icy cool to blue flame.

“Hell, no.”

Catherine laughed softly. “I had to try.”

“Are you also trying to make my blood pressure go up?” Rebecca teased, tightening her grip and skating her lips along the edge of Catherine’s jaw. “Because if that’s your goal, I can think of more pleasurable ways to achieve it.”

“Don’t play with me, darling,” Catherine whispered. “Because we don’t have time and we have instructions not to make love, remember?”

Rebecca growled. “Like that’s happening.”

“No.” Catherine eased away. “We’re not. Not until Ali says we can.”“You can’t be serious. I feel fine.” Rebecca had the sudden urge to drag Catherine upstairs and show her just how fine she really felt.

She was willing to take a backseat at work for a while, but she’d be damned if she’d keep from touching Catherine. Not when she needed to be sure Catherine understood just how essential she was. Maybe, Rebecca thought, she didn’t always have the right words, and maybe she was selfish most of the time, but when they made love, she came as

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close as she ever could to showing Catherine how much she loved her.

“And I want you.”

“Go talk to William.” Catherine caressed Rebecca’s face. “No coffee.”

“Jesus,” Rebecca muttered under her breath. “No coffee, no work, no sex. I might as well have stayed in the hospital.”

“I’m not going to say I agree, but I do.” Catherine clasped Rebecca’s hand and kissed the back of her fingers. “So stop grumbling.

Call me later?”

“I will.”

“Go then, Detective,” Catherine murmured, because she had to let her go. Rebecca was many things, but first and always a cop.

v

Rebecca buckled her seat belt as Watts pulled away from the curb.

After a few seconds of silence, he said, “So I guess you got your balls busted for going back to work, huh?”

Rebecca slowly turned her head. “Sorry?”

“Nothing, Loo,” Watts said, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“Didn’t say a thing.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Despite rush-hour traffic, Watts made it across town in record time and pulled into the parking lot at One Police Plaza at a little past 8:30. They walked across the parking lot to a side door, avoiding the main lobby that serviced the administrative offices. A back elevator took them to the third floor. Since the formation of the HPCU, Rebecca reported directly to Captain John Henry, one of the few administrators she liked and respected. A former street cop who had worked his way up through the ranks, he gave her as much room as he could to run her unit the way she wanted. As she and Watts wended their way through a jumble of desks assigned to detectives from homicide, vice, and special crimes, Rebecca nodded and muttered her thanks to the colleagues who congratulated her on the recent successful raid or asked after her health.

At that hour of the morning, most of the desks were occupied with men and women reviewing reports, organizing case files for court, and planning the day’s work. She disliked fanfare for just doing her job,

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and she definitely didn’t want to dwell on almost taking a bullet in the face.

Henry’s door was open a few inches. With a sigh of relief, she rapped and a deep voice inquired, “Yes?”

“Frye and Watts, Captain.”

“Come in and close the door.”

Rebecca and Watts entered and remained standing until Captain Henry waved them to a couple of straight-backed chairs in front of his desk. As usual, he wore a crisp white shirt, subdued tie, and dark jacket, and sat ramrod straight, his smooth mahogany features giving no clue as to his thoughts. Only the sharp glint in his dark chocolate eyes revealed his irritation. That and the early-morning summons confirmed Rebecca’s suspicions that she was about to hear bad news.

“I got a wake-up call from Agent Clark this morning,” Henry said.

Watts uttered an insult directed at Clark’s parentage just low enough so that Henry wouldn’t be able to hear. Rebecca managed to contain her own oath. Avery Clark was a federal Justice Department agent who managed to show up just in time to claim jurisdiction every time she and her team made an arrest. They’d been ordered from the brass on high to cooperate with him. Unfortunately, no one had told Avery that teamwork was a two-way street.

“What does he want now?” Rebecca asked.

“He wants us to know he appreciates the HPCU’s expertise, and he knew there were things we could accomplish that he couldn’t.”

Beside her, Watts snorted. Rebecca shook her head. “He doesn’t pay compliments without a price.”

Henry nodded. “My guess is his resources are stretched thin, and he needs to ride our coattails as long as he can. He figures that we have the best chance of tying the sex slavery business to the local crime syndicate. If we can prove that they’re taking these girls across state lines for purposes of prostitution, the federal case gets a lot stronger.”

“He wants us to make his case for him,” Watts grumbled. “Just like old times.”

“Clark has a point,” Henry said. “The best shot at finding the people behind the trafficking operation is to uncover the link to the local crime organization.”

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“That means we have to get someone deep inside,” Rebecca said.

“That kind of undercover operation takes a lot of time to set up. And the Zamoras are going to be looking for a plant, especially after Jimmy.”

Running an operative undercover was one of the most frustrating jobs someone in Rebecca’s position could have. She had to put her people in danger and could do very little to protect them. She didn’t like it. Jimmy Hogan had managed to infiltrate the Zamora organization and he’d turned up dead. Undercover cops knew the risks, and often thrived on the constant stress and adrenaline high, but Zamora knew he was a target. The timing was all wrong.

“We’ve already got someone inside his organization,” Captain Henry said. “Courtesy of Avery Clark.”

“Uh-oh,” Watts said. “I’m starting to feel like there’s a dick up my ass.”

Henry pursed his lips. “Thank you for that personal revelation, Detective Watts.”

Watts grunted. “Fucking Clark.”

“If the organzied crime unit has an undercover agent inside the Zamora family, why are we just hearing about it?” Rebecca asked.

Interdepartmental communications weren’t always seamless and cops could get territorial, but her team had been poking around the edges of the Zamora organization for long enough that someone in OCU would have either waved them off or filled them in by now. Something wasn’t adding up. And that something had to be Avery Clark’s doing. When she’d woken up that morning, her headache had receded to a low-level throbbing. Just thinking about Clark interfering in her investigation, yet again, made her eyes ache.

“What aren’t I seeing here, Captain?” Rebecca asked.

Henry rose and carried a file folder with him around to the front of his desk. Opening it toward Watts and Rebecca, he displayed several typed pages and a glossy photograph clipped to the inside cover.

Rebecca leaned forward, recognizing the woman in the photograph at the same time as Watts.

“Hey,” Watts said. “That’s our boy Mitch’s new squeeze.”

“Irina Guterov,” Henry elaborated. Anyone else would’ve leaned against the edge of the desk, but he didn’t.

“She was picked up in the raid the other night,” Rebecca pointed

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out. Irina had unknowingly led them to one of the houses where the Russian girls were being held under armed guard. Mitch and Irina had been about to have sex when Rebecca’s team burst in.

“Clark has convinced her to work for us,” the captain said. “She’s our way inside.”

Rebecca replayed the details of the raid earlier that week. Mitch and Irina had been in the back bedroom, and all the working girls had been upstairs. The only other occupant of the house, the girls’ armed captor, was dead. The girls had immediately been sequestered by Immigration and would probably be deported, so no one in the crime ring knew Mitch’s true identity.

“Does Irina know Mitchell is one of ours?” Rebecca asked.

“Clark says no, but she’ll have to be briefed since the whole plan hinges on Mitchell being her contact.”

“That might fly,” Rebecca conceded. “Irina has worked with the handlers who send these girls out on jobs. It’s one step further up the ladder.” She took the folder from Henry and studied the photograph.

Even the stark black-and-white police photo couldn’t diminish Irina’s haunting beauty. “The problem is, Zamora’s people have to know she was in that house when we raided it.”

Henry nodded. “Her story is going to be that she and Mitch went out the back window and they’ve been hiding until the heat died down.

No one knows we’ve had her under wraps.”

“Then she has to get back into circulation quickly. With Detective Mitchell.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Henry said. “You need to get your boy back on the streets with her. Tonight.”

“And we’re going to trust her, why?” Watts asked, his voice laced with suspicion and anger. “Mitch is gonna be hanging out there by himself. You can bet Clark isn’t going to lose any sleep over him.”

“According to Irina, her little sister is in a house just like the one you took down the other night,” Henry said. “That’s part of the reason Irina has been willing to work for these people to begin with. She’s been trying to find her.”

“She says,” Watts snorted.

Henry lifted a shoulder. “Clark believes her.”

“And I’ve got a ten-inch pecker.”

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“If her story’s true, she’s got motivation to play along. At least until she finds her sister. Do we have an ID on the sister?”

“Not yet. The feds are searching the international databases, but she’s probably not in any of them. Irina says she has a picture of her at the club where she works,” Henry said.

“Ziggie’s,” Watts said.

“Right. Another reason we need her and Mitchell back there.”

“Where’s Irina now?” Rebecca asked.

“Clark’s got her stashed somewhere.” Henry’s face showed a flicker of anger. “He doesn’t trust our security and won’t tell me where.