by Radclyffe
“You think they’ll hurt her?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. But just the same—”
“You’re gonna be with her, Dell. What about you getting hurt?” Sandy slapped Dell’s chest. “And don’t give me that crap about you being a cop. You don’t wear a vest when you’re with her. Anything could happen.”
“Maybe,” Dell admitted. She wasn’t going to insult Sandy by blowing smoke at her. “But I’ll have backup. The lieutenant and Watts are following me.”
“Yeah, just like they were following you when you went into that house with her the last time. Frye almost ended up dead.” Sandy grabbed Dell’s face between her hands. “If something happens to you, rookie, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Dell covered Sandy’s hands with hers. “That’s how I feel about you, don’t you get it? I’m totally soft for you, babe.”
Sandy laughed, her eyes flickering down to Dell’s crotch. “Since when?”
“Up here,” Dell said, tapping her forehead.
Sandy straddled Dell’s lap. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Uh…it’s hard for me to think right now.”
“Try.” Sandy leaned forward and kissed Dell fleetingly before leaning back.
“Working.” Dell could tell from Sandy’s stare that she wasn’t going to get away with anything short of details. “At the Troc. Then Ziggie’s. Then I don’t know.”
“Jesus, Dell,” Sandy whispered. “You gotta be careful.”
“I will. I promise.”
Sandy kissed her again, but it wasn’t a fuck me kiss. It was an I love you more than anything kiss. Then she climbed off Dell’s lap, walked to the small closet, and pulled out a worn floral fabric suitcase.
“What are you doing?” Dell asked, her voice hoarse.
“Packing some stuff to go to Michael’s.”
“You sure?”
Sandy looked over her shoulder and made herself smile. “Yeah, Michael is cool. No problem.”
“I’ll be there later tonight.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
Sandy carried the bag to the dresser just inside the door and started pulling items from the drawers. Dell went up behind her and put her arms around her, tugging Sandy back against her chest. She nuzzled Sandy’s neck. “I know you don’t want to.”
“I said it’s okay.”
“I know. But it sucks. And I’m sorry.”
Sandy turned in Dell’s arms and pressed into the curve of Dell’s body until not even a whisper stood between them. “I want to do this for you.”
“Thank you,” Dell murmured, amazed when her eyes filled with tears. She probably should have been embarrassed, but she wasn’t. She just held on more tightly. “Thank you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Michael had just finished changing from her work clothes into loose cotton slacks and a pullover when Sandy buzzed from downstairs. Tugging the clasp from her hair, she shook out the shoulder-length waves on the way to the elevator.
“I hope you didn’t eat,” she said when Sandy emerged. “I just ordered Chinese.”
“That sounds great. Thanks for letting me crash here again.” Sandy followed Michael to the spare bedroom and dropped her suitcase by the closet. She plopped down on the bed and stared at her hands.
“You’re always welcome.” Michael sat next to Sandy. “We can go into the office together on Monday.”
“Geez. That seems like such a normal thing to do.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Michael took Sandy’s hand. “So what’s the deal?”
“Dell wants to stash me somewhere so she can shack up with Irina.”
“That’s handy. And you went along with it? Big of you.” Michael’s tone was teasing.
Sandy cut her a look. “Yeah right. As if.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.”
“But she does want me out of the way for a while. In case things get hinky.”
“Will you hate me if I say I think that makes sense?”
Sandy picked at the seam on the inside of her pale pink pants. “No. I get why she wants to do it this way. But I don’t like it.”
“I don’t blame you. Needing to leave your house is really upsetting.”
“Yeah well,” Sandy muttered, “when Dell got the apartment down the hall from me, we didn’t know she was going to end up with a girlfriend. Another girlfriend.”
“You’re not worried about Irina, are you?”
“Oh, no. She’s only practically gotten Mitch to fuck her two or three times already.” Sandy shifted further onto the bed and folded her legs beneath her. She glared at Michael. “And trust me. When a girl grabs a guy’s dick, he stops thinking about anything. Including his girlfriend.”
“Ah, I won’t argue.” Michael smiled. “Although I don’t think it’s completely a guy thing.”
Sandy snorted. “Okay. I suppose when Dell starts in on me I’m not thinking about much of anything either.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Sloan too?”
“She can be persuasive.” Michael gave Sandy’s hand a shake. “I’ve got a really good idea.”
“What?”
“Let’s open a bottle of wine, eat Chinese, and watch a movie.”
“Can I still bitch about Irina?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Sandy glanced around. “Sloan still at work?”
“She’s in a meeting with Rebecca. I think she’ll be there for a while.”
Sandy smiled. “In that case…what about sharing the inside scoop on her when she’s being persuasive.”
“I don’t like to brag.”
Laughing, Sandy bumped Michael’s hip with hers. “Yeah yeah. I’ll just stick to my fantasies.”
*
“So what’ve we got?” Rebecca asked when she found Sloan working at a computer in HPCU headquarters.
“Pull up a chair,” Sloan said, hitting a few more keystrokes before swiveling to face her. “Someone’s trying to get into our network.”
“And that’s unusual?”
Sloan shook her head. “Not really. Random intrusions are very common. Usually they’re probes launched en masse looking for susceptible computers to access.”
“I take it this isn’t random?”
“No. This is a very subtle and very smart assault. They hit the computers at Police Plaza too. Had more success there because the network’s not fully shielded yet.”
“All right,” Rebecca said. “Run this down for me. What are we looking at here?”
“Since I don’t believe in coincidences,” Sloan said, “I have to believe this is the same person who infiltrated Police Plaza before.”
“I thought we tracked that back to Beecher, and he’s dead.”
Sloan shook her head. “No. Beecher was the entry point. But he didn’t set it up himself. He was a middleman. A cyberbagman.”
Rebecca smiled grimly. “I get it. And now that the bagman is out of the equation, we’re moving up the ladder.”
“Oh yeah. Way up the ladder.” Sloan glanced at the monitor, then back at Rebecca. “There’s probably only a handful of people in the country that could do this. If you take out Jason and me, maybe three or four.”
“Do you know who they are?”
Sloan’s eyes narrowed. “Ten years ago I would have. When I was still with Justice.”
“Son of a bitch. Clark knows, doesn’t he?”
“I’d bet money on it. I bet he’s known all along.” Sloan leaned back in her chair and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “He’s playing us.”
“What do you he think he wants?”
“What every fed wants. A high-level informant inside the organized crime family.”
“And this thing with Irina and Mitch?”
“He’s hedging his bets. Irina might pay off for them, but she’s a long shot.” Sloan thought about Clark and Kratos Zamora and Michael. There were no coincidences. Avery Clark would use anyone, risk
anyone, to get what he wanted. “There are no good guys anymore.”
“Wrong,” Rebecca said softly. “There’s us.”
Sloan swung back to her monitor, not wanting Rebecca to read the truth in her eyes. She hadn’t been one of the good guys for a long time, and with every day that passed, and every time she faced the evidence of another betrayal, she knew she moved further away from the light. Rebecca might believe that their leaders weren’t corrupted, but she didn’t any longer. “I don’t want Clark to know we suspect. I want to let this guy try to get in, and every time he does, I’ll chase him back to his hole. I’ll find him.”
“I want to know when you do.” Rebecca waited in the silence, letting Sloan make her choices.
“Right,” Sloan said quietly.
Rebecca rested her hand on Sloan’s back. The muscles beneath her fingers were tight as steel. “You’re wrong, you know.”
“How’s that,” Sloan said hoarsely.
“There are still people you can trust.”
When Sloan turned around, Rebecca was gone. She wanted to believe her, needed to believe her. She needed not to feel so alone.
*
Mitch was a lot better at dressing than he used to be, but he really missed having Sandy around to approve the details. He smoothed his hand over his chest to be sure the Ace wrap lay smooth beneath his black T-shirt. Lucky for him, he didn’t have a lot to hide up top and his naturally rangy build meant he didn’t have much in the hip department either. He opened a drawer on his side of the dresser and selected a new item he’d never used before, a semi-rigid cock that let him pack comfortably, show a little more in his jeans than a softy would, and have a pretty functional dick if he needed it. Not that he planned on using it with Irina, but if he was taking her out and about, he wanted to come off to anyone checking them out like a guy who planned on treating his girl right.
As he checked his hair and the little bit of makeup he used to darken the angle of his jaw, he thought back to the first time Jasmine had shown up in his apartment with an array of dicks. He’d been embarrassed and excited. Jasmine had helped him get ready, but it had been Sandy, who had looked at him and immediately seen Mitch, that had made everything work. That still made everything work. He didn’t think he could do this job without her. He checked his watch. He had two minutes. He called her.
“Hi, babe,” he said when Sandy answered.
“Mitch?”
“Uh-huh.”
After a moment, Sandy said, “Ready to head out?”
Mitch knew she was trying to sound casual. “Soon. Whatcha doing?”
“Watching an old movie with Michael and getting buzzed. I think I like red wine.”
“What movie,” Mitch asked, smiling at the thought of Sandy getting into wine.
“St. Elmo’s Fire. There’s this guy who kinda reminds me of you. Except he’s an asshole.”
“Who?” Mitch heard Sandy say something to Michael, but couldn’t quite make it out.
“Rob Lowe.”
“We’ll have to watch it together.”
“So I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah,” Mitch said. “It’ll be late.”
“I don’t care about that.” More silence. “So be careful, rookie. See you.”
“See you, babe.”
Mitch disconnected, patted his pockets to be sure his wallet was in place, double-checked that his jeans didn’t bunch up around his ankle holster, and grabbed his jacket on the way out the door. When he got to Irina’s—his—apartment, he knocked. When she didn’t answer after a few minutes, he knocked again. Swearing, he used his key and let himself in. The efficiency was empty. The blanket was folded neatly on one corner of the mattress. He checked the refrigerator. A container of milk, a carton of eggs, butter, an apple. A pot rested upside down on the drain board next to the sink. So she’d shopped. She probably wouldn’t have done that if she were skipping out on him.
He walked to the closet and pulled it open. A stack of clothes sat on the top shelf. A few blouses hung from hangers. He sniffed them. They were clean. She’d done laundry. But where had she gone? Maybe she had a contact in the city they didn’t know about. Maybe she’d been free to move about between safe houses the whole time, and she was already back with the Russians. Maybe she had a secret boyfriend, or girlfriend.
He’d been up most of the night before, so he stretched out on the mattress to wait and closed his eyes. The Army had taught him to sleep lightly, and he was instantly alert at the first scratch of metal on metal. He sat up in the dark room.
“Come in and shut the door,” Mitch said when he saw Irina backlit by the hall light. He didn’t want her standing there like a target.
Irina closed the door and flipped on the wall switch. She stared at him from across the room, her gaze traveling slowly over his body. “Hello, new boy.”
“Hi.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been?”
Irina removed a thin quilted jacket and hung it in the closet. Beneath it, she wore formfitting black slacks with narrow tapered legs and a red wrap-around top. She couldn’t be too much older than Mitch, but her body was lush and womanly and Mitch had the sudden image of rich fertile fields bursting with life. He unexpectedly had the urge to plant some part of himself in her, and he quickly forced the thought away.
“I told you I wasn’t your keeper.” He didn’t add that she could easily lie to him, so what was the point of asking.
“So you didn’t follow me today?” Irina asked.
“Jesus. No.” Mitch jumped up. “Was there someone?”
Irina shrugged. “Sometimes I thought yes. Sometimes no.”
“You’d be able to tell?”
She smiled grimly. “I am used to making myself invisible. And I know when eyes are on me.”
Mitch spun around to the window. The sidewalks below were deserted. In the patchy light filtering through the neighboring rowhouse windows, the cars lining the street all appeared empty. For one brief second he was so happy Sandy wasn’t here. Then he concentrated on Irina.
“Did you actually see anyone?”
Irina shook her head. “Many someones. No one I recognized.”
“All right. If you see anyone suspicious, or even think you see anyone, tell me.”
“Where are we going?”
“We need to let people know we’re a couple, so your…associates…believe us. I’m taking you to a club. Then we’ll go to Ziggie’s.”
“Like a date,” Irina said.
“Like work,” Mitch replied. “We need to get you a warmer coat. We’ll be riding my motorcycle again.”
“I’m all right.”
“No, you’re not. We’ll stop on Market Street and get you something.”
“It’s nighttime, Mitch.”
“Those places are always open.” Mitch held out his leather jacket. “Wear this for now.”
Irina studied him curiously. “Why do you care? I am…an enemy. No?”
“No.” Mitch couldn’t say that she reminded him of Sandy. She was very proud and in her own way, very brave. He couldn’t say that he wished someone had given Sandy a warmer coat, or that she would take his more often.
“What will you do with these men you want me to help you find?”
“They’ll be arrested, and they’ll probably go to prison.”
“They will be killed?”
Mitch shrugged. “I don’t know. It depends on what they’ve done and what can be proved.”
“I will be sent to prison?”
“What did Clark tell you?” When Mitch saw her blank expression, he said, “The federal agent who said you had to help us?”
Irina laughed bitterly. “He told me I would go free.”
“You don’t believe him.”
“Would you?”
“No, probably not.” Mitch held his jacket open and after a few seconds Irina slid her arms into it. When she turned to face him, he gently tugged it closed. “We’re going to
try to help you.”
“You should not be a cop, new boy.”
“Why?”
Irina kissed him. “You are not hard enough.” She put her hand over his heart. “In here.”
Mitch hadn’t anticipated the kiss, not here and not like this, but he hadn’t felt anything other than an odd sadness. He put his hand on her back and guided her toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Do your friends believe we are together?” she asked him as they walked down the hall.
“Yes.”
Irina smiled. “Good.”
*
Talia sipped her wine, stretched her stockinged feet out onto a silk brocade hassock, and launched another probe. She didn’t really expect the bot to strike pay dirt. Thus far, she hadn’t found any easily accessible back doors in JT Sloan’s corporate system. No admin shortcuts, config errors, easily deciphered passwords, or unsecured remote access ports. Sloan’s system was completely unlike the one she’d encountered at Police Plaza when she’d done a quick scan a few hours earlier. After only moderate effort, she’d gotten in deep there. Granted, the average hacker would not have had such an easy time, but then she wasn’t average. She hadn’t launched a serious assault because she didn’t want to risk leaving a trail back to her home base—she’d only created her own back doors for access at some future time. With luck, a few would remain hidden long enough to be useful.
She chuckled as she encountered yet another roadblock. JT Sloan was very good. She thought back to the grainy newspaper images and the dark good looks that even the poor photographs couldn’t hide. Intelligent, handsome, and something of a cipher herself, Sloan had stood among the players whose names Kratos had provided. Talia had run background checks on all of them, and while several were notable locally, Sloan and her partner McBride were ex-federal agents, and both their dossiers had more blacked-out sections than available information. Sloan’s in particular had been thoroughly cleansed. Whatever she had done for the U.S. government, it had been cloaked under deep cover and high security.