Sandy looked up and caught Dell’s gaze moving over her. Men stared at her body all the time, sometimes with fever in their eyes, and their looks left her cold. The warmth in Dell’s eyes made her blush. “If they’re gonna stick you on a desk somewhere, I guess maybe I won’t be seeing you.”

Mitchell shook her head, her stomach suddenly tight. “That doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere no matter where they bury me.”

For the first time, Sandy realized just how bad things were for the rookie, because of her. Quickly, unthinkingly, she stepped across the small space and rested her fingers on Mitchell’s cheek. “I’m really sorry.”

Surprised, Mitchell straightened, her chest brushing Sandy’s. “Not your fault. I meant it when I said I’d do it again.”

Sandy’s nipples contracted swiftly at the touch of Dell’s shirt against her chest. Startled, she dropped her hand and backed up, wondering if Dell had felt it. “Nobody asked you to.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mitchell grinned. “I gotta go. I’ll see you.”

“Whatever,” Sandy replied. But she remained in the doorway watching until Dell was out of sight, her body still humming.

CHAPTER TWO

At precisely seven-thirty, Catherine opened her inner office door to the waiting room and motioned for her first patient to enter. Officer Dellon Mitchell was still in the clothes she had worn the night before during the task force raid.

“Haven’t you been to bed?”

“Watts and I had a lot of paperwork to do. By the time we cleaned that up it was late…early…uh, today already.”

“We can reschedule if you—”

“No.” Mitchell made an effort to sit up straighter and tried to clear the cloud of exhaustion from her brain. “I need to get this done. With the task force dead, I’m going to be reassigned.” She grimaced. “And I want to get back to the street. If I have this thing hanging over my head, they’ll bury me somewhere.”

“Have you talked to Rebecca?”

“About what?” Mitchell looked confused.

“Maybe she can help you with this situation.”

Mitchell stared at her, then laughed shortly. “It doesn’t work that way, Dr. Rawlings. You don’t take your troubles to anyone, especially not a detective like Frye.”

“Who do you talk to then? Friends? A lover?”

Mitchell hesitated. “Does this have something to do with my evaluation?”

“No. This just has to do with you.”

A muscle in Mitchell’s jaw twitched and she clamped her teeth down to stop it. She thought about the late night conversations beneath dim streetlights and the early morning breakfasts. She thought about the dark alley and the hulking stranger. “I have a friend.”

Catherine waited.

“The woman I told you about…the woman who was in the alley that night. We talk sometimes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sandy.” Mitchell smiled faintly. Her eyes met Catherine’s. “I met her on the job a while back and then I’d see her in my sector. She’s a prostitute.”

Catherine remembered what Dellon had told her about coming upon the woman being assaulted in the alley. He had one hand around her throat and the other under her skirt. Her thighs were bare, pale, ghostly in the moonlight. I saw her face for the first time then. There was blood on her face…She had been screaming before—shouting, I think—for him to stop. Now she was…whimpering. I was afraid he was going to kill her. “And does that worry you?”

Mitchell met her gaze. “Yeah.” She paused. “All the time.”

“Have you told her that?”

“Hell no.” Mitchell smiled. “She’d tell me to take a walk and not come back.”

“She sounds pretty independent,” Catherine observed, noting the tension ease from the tight body and taut features the longer Dellon spoke of her friend. More than friendship?

“Hard-headed and short-tempered.” Mitchell’s voice had softened.

“We’re about out of time, Officer. Do you—”

“Could you call me Dell?”

Surprised, Catherine nodded. “Of course. Dell, what are your plans for further sessions?”

“Do I have to say right now?” She hadn’t wanted to come, had only done it because she’d been forced to. Now…

Catherine’s eyes were gentle. “Come back any time, Dell.”

Across town, Rebecca walked into the squad room on the third floor of the eighteenth precinct and threaded her way through the maze of crowded metal desks and haphazardly placed chair toward her desk in the far left corner. She slowed as she approached, an eyebrow cocked in surprise. “What’s with the new suit?”

He looked down, then met her gaze. “I got two.”

“Uh-huh.” She picked up a stack of folders, glanced at them, and tossed them aside. She wasn’t interested in cold cases, or new ones for that matter. She was interested in two unsolved ones—Jeff Cruz’s murder and the attempted murder of J.T. Sloan. They had to be related, because both of them had the smell of an inside job. “Let’s take a ride.”

Without a word he followed her into the hall, down the stairwell, and out into the rear parking lot. A few minutes later they were rocketing south on I-95.

“Who’d you tell about the plans for the raid?” she asked without preamble.

“What? Fuck, nobody.” His voice was indignant.

“That leaves Catherine, Mitchell, Sloan, McBride, or Clark.” She looked at him, her expression remote. “Which one do you figure for the snitch?”

“It wasn’t anybody on the team,” he replied adamantly.

“I agree.” Rebecca’s voice was low, flat, the way it got when she was simmering with rage. “There’s something you don’t know,” she said at length. “Trish Marks over in Homicide told me that Captain Henry got with her Captain behind close doors, and then she and her partner were pulled off the investigation into Jeff and Jimmy’s murders.”

“That smells bad.”

“Yeah.” Rebecca eased up on the gas. “I don’t want to think it’s him, but…”

“You’d be a puss…ah, a chump to trust him right now.” He fingered his cigarettes fitfully, wondering if she’d ever let him smoke in her ride. “But it could be someone higher up in the Department.”

“Maybe. Or someone with access to department records.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but someone pulled all of Dee Flanagan’s evidence reports on Jeff and Jimmy.”

“Stole ‘em?”

Rebecca slowed, made a U-turn across the median, and headed back north. “They hacked them out of her computer, it seems.”

“And we have our very own computer whiz kids, and one of ‘ems got an ax to grind.” Watts turned on the seat and studied Rebecca’s sharply hewn profile. “You’re thinking about running a shadow investigation of your own, aren’t you? Going after the leak in the department?”

“It all ties together, Watts. The porn ring, the Justice inquiry, the sex videos, Jimmy Hogan’s Intel—all of it.” She gripped the wheel hard, although her face revealed nothing. “Who knows, this case might even shake loose Zamora and the rest of the organized crime family.”

“We could get hung out to dry, too.”

“Who said anything about we?”

He huffed. “We’re partners, Sarge. Right?”

Rebecca eyed the shabby cop in the clean blue suit and sighed. Almost too quietly for him to hear, she grunted, “Right.”

“The haldol should be fine for the agitation,” Catherine remarked as she signed off on the resident’s progress notes and checked her watch. She had an hour before clinic.

Just outside the intensive care unit, Catherine saw a red-headed woman walking in her direction. Slowing at the woman’s nod, Catherine said, “Hello. I’m Catherine Rawlings. We were never properly introduced last night when Michael was brought it.”

“Sarah Martin.” The red-head extended her hand.

Catherine noticed that there were faint circles beneath her eyes. The smile was soft and genuine, but her cornflower blue eyes were troubled. “How’s Michael? I was about to go check on her.”

“Not awake yet.” Sarah glanced briefly at the double steel doors leading in to the intensive care unit. “If you could talk to Sloan…I can’t get her to leave, and she’s about to collapse.”

“Of course.”

The two women parted and a moment later, Catherine entered the small cubicle where Michael Lassiter lay. “Sloan?”

“Catherine.” Sloan’s voice was hoarse, her eyes dark hollows, the normally vibrant violet brushed black with pain.

Crouching down, Catherine placed both hands on Sloan’s face, cupping her strong jaw. “You have to get some sleep. When she wakes up, she can’t see you like this. Worrying about you will not help her get well.”

“I’m afraid to leave. What if…” She looked away, trembling.

“There’s an on call room my residents use on the next floor. Rebecca’s slept there more than once. You can shower and get some sleep, and you’ll be five minutes away.” Catherine pulled Sloan to her feet and slid her arm around the muscular woman’s waist when she swayed. “I’ll speak to Michael’s nurse and give her the number there. I’ll be sure that you’re called the second there’s any change.”

Sloan wanted to protest, but she kept hearing Catherine’s words. Worrying about you will not help her get well. Carefully she lowered the steel rail that ran along the side of the bed and leaned down to kiss Michael. “I’ll be right back, baby. I love you so much.”

Catherine spoke to the staff, found scrubs for Sloan in the locker room next to the ICU, and walked Sloan up to the resident’s room. “No one will bother you here.”

“Okay, sure. Thanks.” The minute she was alone, Sloan pulled off the clothes she’d been in for over a day, stepped into a cold shower for two minutes, and then collapsed naked onto the bed. She was instantly asleep.

It seemed like only a minute when the phone rang.

CHAPTER THREE

“Yeah,” Sloan croaked groggily.