“Christ.”

Sandy watched something very close to fury flicker across the starkly handsome planes of Frye’s face. There it was again, that undercurrent of concern that touched something in Sandy that she didn’t want to be awakened. It happened when she was with Dell, too. Even just being around Dell made it happen. Made her feel connected. “What?” she asked, realizing that Frye was speaking.

“Did she tell you where this was?” Rebecca repeated.

“Two different places—and apparently the girls don’t know where it’s going to be until that night. Someone picks them up and takes them there and it’s all very, you know, Mission Impossible. Darkened windows in the van, that kind of thing. A warehouse is all she told me.” She finished her beer and pushed the bottle aside. “I’m pretty sure it’s in the city though, because she said it wasn’t more than half an hour and it seemed like they were driving in circles for quite a while.”

Rebecca felt the familiar thrill of the hunt. This was a real lead. “She give you anything else?”

“Uh uh. Just that she did two of them—one was about six months ago and the other three weeks ago.”

“How often do these live films get made?”

“She’s not sure.” Sandy began gathering her things. “Look, I can probably find out more. I just thought you’d want to know about this operation.”

“You did plenty,” Rebecca said seriously. “I’ll take it from here.” She’d have Watts get with someone from juvie and pull the files on all the girls under 17 known to be turning tricks and still on the streets. One of them would know someone who’d been in on one of these shoots. The community was too close for this to be a secret. Eventually a location or a name or a description would pop up.

“I could pass, Frye,” Sandy said quietly. “I do it all the time.”

“What?” Rebecca asked sharply, her attention suddenly completely focused.

“For 14 or 15. If I send out the word that I want in—”

She should do it. She should use her. It was probably a better avenue to whoever was behind the whole operation than waiting for Sloan and Jason to sift through hundreds of pedophiles in hopes of finding one who could open a door for them.

“No. You’re done with this.” She stood, shrugging into her jacket. “Thanks.”

“Hey, Frye?” Sandy asked casually. “Who’s Catherine anyway?”

Rebecca regarded her expressionlessly for a long moment, then smiled. A brief, quicksilver smile. “Anybody ever tell you you ask too many questions?”

Than she was gone, leaving Sandy grinning at her back.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

WHEN REBECCA RETURNED to Sloan Security, she found Jason, Sloan, and Catherine crowded around the large central work station while messages scrolled on three of the four computer monitors simultaneously. Glancing over Jason’s shoulder, she asked, “Any progress?”

“Lots of action,” Sloan responded as Jason continued to chat electronically with someone by the name of Everhard1040. “No sign of LongJohn XXX yet.”

“Mitchell go home?”

“Under duress,” Sloan said with a laugh. “She’s been here since eight yesterday morning, so I told her to take off.”

It was 1:30 in the morning, and Rebecca felt the dull edge of fatigue beginning to cloud her brain. She shook herself mentally, annoyed that she still didn’t seem able to function at full speed. “How long are you going to keep at it?”

“A while longer,” Jason muttered. “He might still show up.”

“Catherine, I think you can probably call it a night,” Sloan said with a sigh. “We’ll keep an eye on things here a while longer.”

“If you get anything that looks promising,” Rebecca said, “call me. As soon as we have something solid, I want to take this to my Captain and start discussing what we’ll need for a warrant.”

“You might as well start the wheels moving—you know how long the DA’s office takes to make a decision. At the very least, we’re going to need to confiscate any computer equipment we find so I can work on it back here,” Sloan advised with an optimism Rebecca did not share. “Once I have just one CPU that’s been receiving these live feeds, I can start tracing where the broadcasts are coming from.”

“We’ll probably need your crime scene techs on the scene to log everything we find and remove also,” Jason remarked, his eyes still fixed on the constantly changing messages and occasionally typing a message himself.

“Fine. I was planning on giving my Captain an update tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning before I meet with him if I don’t hear from you first.”

“Good enough,” Sloan agreed.

Bending down, Rebecca murmured to Catherine, “Are you ready to leave?”

“Yes.” She was used to dealing with people—emotions—in the intimate confines of therapy, one on one, face to face. Watching the disembodied phrases stream across the screen, knowing that somewhere there was a person attached to them, but having no sense of who that person truly was, disturbed and disoriented her. It left her with a compelling need to feel connected, to see and be seen. “More than ready.”

“Is your car here?” Rebecca asked as they stepped out onto the deserted street. Sloan’s building faced the river one block west of Front Street, the busy thoroughfare which ran along the waterfront, but at this hour, no one was about.

“Yes, I’m parked just down the block,” Catherine informed her, “but I’ll probably come back to review more transcripts some time tomorrow, so I don’t mind leaving it here overnight.”

“Fine. I can swing by and pick you up at your place in the morning before I go in to see the boss.” Rebecca unlocked the passenger door of the Corvette and held it open for Catherine. After walking around to the driver’s side, she slid in behind the wheel and reached to put the keys in the ignition. Catherine’s soft touch on her wrist stilled her motion. Turning to face her passenger, she said quietly, “What is it?”

“Let’s go to your apartment.”

“My apartment?” Rebecca said, startled.

“Yes. It occurred to me over the last few days that all of our time together has been spent at my place. I don’t know where you go when you leave me.”

Rebecca was still for a long moment, then she said in a low voice heavy with feeling, “When I’m not with you, Catherine, I’m either working or waiting to be with you again.”

Catherine smiled fondly, struck by how Rebecca’s simple words stirred her so much. Insistently, she said, “I want to see where you sleep. I want to be able to imagine you there when I’m in bed alone.” She didn’t add out loud, I want to be able to imagine you somewhere other than Sandy’s apartment—or a hospital bed.

“Okay. I have to warn you, though, it’s the maid’s week off.”

Catherine laughed and settled back into the bucket seat. “I promise not to look under the bed.”

From Sloan’s, Rebecca drove south on Third Street into Queen Village, a pocket of small row houses and restaurants sandwiched between the newly trendy South Street business district and South Philadelphia, the historically working-class Irish and Italian area. Ten minutes later they were climbing the stairs to Rebecca’s second floor apartment above a mom-and-pop grocery store which had been owned by the same family for over fifty years. Rebecca tried frantically to remember exactly what condition she had left her apartment in, but she drew a blank. She so very rarely paid attention to her surroundings when she was home. It was a place to sleep and make coffee and shower before going back to her real home, the city streets. After unlocking the door, she pushed it open and said, “Come on in.”

Catherine stepped through and waited for Rebecca, who pulled the door closed, bolted it, and flicked on a wall switch to her right. After her eyes adjusted to the light, Catherine looked around, smiling to herself when she found that the apartment was very close to the way she had envisioned it. One large living room with a door to the left that opened into a small kitchen and another on the right that most likely led to the bedroom and bath. A utilitarian sofa with the requisite coffee table in front of it, a very nice stereo set with a layer of dust coating it that suggested that it rarely saw any use, and a high-end television comprised the furnishings. An end table supported a haphazard stack of paperbacks and a gym bag lay open on the floor to her left, apparently having been abandoned there after Rebecca removed her soiled work out clothes. It looked like a bachelor apartment which, of course, was what it was.

“As I said,” Rebecca began in an apologetic tone, “it’s not much to look at —”

“No,” Catherine said. “It seems very much like you. Utilitarian, and a little bit…” she quirked an eyebrow, grinning at Rebecca, “Spartan.”

“Spartan, huh?” Rebecca laughed, too, and began to relax. “Can I get you something? I’ve got soda, I think, and…” her voice trailed off as she followed Catherine’s gaze.

“Is that yours?” Catherine asked quietly, her tone carefully neutral. Her heart was pounding furiously, but she knew that her voice sounded calm. That was the benefit of years of training.

Rebecca stared at the half empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black on her coffee table. “Yes.”

“Are you drinking?” It terrified her more than she would have ever dreamed to think of Rebecca in any kind of trouble, physically or emotionally. If she were drinking again, then something was very wrong. To find that something that serious could be happening to someone she loved and that she wouldn’t even know, wouldn’t even suspect, made her wonder what exactly had happened to the two of them. How could they have drifted so far part? “Rebecca?” Catherine asked again into the silence.

Rebecca took a deep breath. “No, I’m not.”