“Me too.” Mica wrapped her arms around Flynn’s shoulders and pressed against her, tilting her head back and giving Flynn her mouth.

Flynn kissed her again, deeper and more thoroughly. When she lifted her head she was gasping for breath. “Mica, we can’t—I’m sorry. I should’ve waited.”

“I think you should shut up and kiss me again.”

Flynn looped her arms around Mica’s waist and swayed with her in her embrace. “I want to. I really, really want to. But I’d rather be alone with you, somewhere private. Just in case.”

Mica grabbed Flynn’s hand and tugged her back onto the street. “Then you better hurry up. You already got me hot. Now you better deliver.”

Flynn practically had to run to keep up. She was getting dizzy, not from the pace, but from a lighthearted excitement she’d never known before. “Me? Me? It’s all you, Mica. You’re amazing.”

“Like I said, you’re crazy.” Mica smiled up at her, a blazing smile that made her look so young and so free, Flynn’s heart wept.

“No argument. I told you I’d be hungry.”

“It’s okay,” Mica said. “I like you that way.”

They passed through the center of town and into the East End, where the crowds thinned rapidly. Storefronts gave way to bed-and-breakfasts. The galleries along the way were all closed and dark. Soon they were alone. A block from Mica’s, Flynn noticed Mica glancing over her shoulder for the third time. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Mica said, but she sounded distracted and her expression was tight.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Mica’s smile was forced, all joy gone from it. “Come on, we’re almost there.”

They’d almost reached the alley where Flynn had tended to the woman who’d been assaulted when running footsteps bore down on them from behind.

Mica cried, “Flynn, run—”

Flynn didn’t have time. A heavy blow landed in the middle of her back, throwing her off balance. She stumbled forward into the darkened alley and crashed against the side of the building. She almost fell, caught herself with a hand against the building, and swung around, desperately searching for Mica. A man, judging by the size of the attacker, had Mica around the waist and was dragging her farther down the alley, into the dark.

“Let her go! Let her go! Help! Someone call the police!” Flynn charged, still yelling at the top of her lungs. She took a running leap and grabbed the guy around the neck, hoping the weight of her body would knock him down. He was twice her size and she didn’t have a prayer of taking him one-on-one. He grunted when she hit him, and the three of them landed in a heap in the sand and stones.

“Flynn,” Mica gasped. “Get out of—”

Mica’s voice ended in a strangled gasp. Flynn grabbed the arm circling Mica’s neck and yanked. A fist caught her just under the diaphragm and the air exploded from her chest. She couldn’t suck in a breath and curled into a ball, gasping and writhing. Her lungs were on fire. All she could think of was Mica. He had Mica.

Chapter Fifteen

Philadelphia

Dell rode the elevator to the third floor of the renovated warehouse in Old City where JT Sloan lived and, along with her business partner Jason, ran a cyber-security firm. Since the High Profile Crimes Unit had merged with Sloan’s civilian operation, the warehouse had become their headquarters. Dell liked that a lot better than a few desks shoved together in some corner at One Police Plaza. Here, she felt like they were in their own world, where Rebecca Frye led the team and they all contributed, regardless of rank or experience. She was still a rookie detective, but she felt as if she’d earned her stripes and the Loo treated her that way. Everyone did.

So it especially sucked when she wasn’t contributing. She hadn’t accomplished anything all day. She’d hit all her usual places, hunting up confidential informants, talking to the street girls, even spending a few hours at the Trocadero after dark, hoping someone had heard something about where all the action had gone. None of the drag queens, transvestites, or drag kings who frequented the Troc, and whose affiliations often crossed ethnic and cultural divides, had any intel.

Ever since the HPC unit had busted the human trafficking ring smuggling young girls from Eastern Europe into the country to fuel the porn and prostitution business for the Zamora family, crime had gone underground. None of the team believed they’d stopped the Hydra-like organization, even though they’d cut off one of its main heads. Kratos Zamora, one of the two brothers in charge of running everything from guns to crack cocaine to girls for hire, had been shanked in his jail cell before he even went to trial. His brother Gregor was suspected of having orchestrated Kratos’s assassination. Whatever information Kratos might have traded in a plea bargain to reduce his prison time had died with him. Gregor, so far, was untouchable. For all intents and purposes, he was an upstanding businessman.

The only rumor Dell had been able to pick up after pounding the streets for twelve hours was the same one she’d been hearing for the last six months—vague rumbles that new blood was moving in from Central America by way of the West Coast and challenging the long-established crime hierarchy on the East Coast. MS-13 and its offshoots were organizing, merging disparate cliques into cohesive gangs with solid leadership and better communication. Unlike traditional crime families that tended to specialize in one type of crime, La Mara would take on anything to turn a profit—drugs, guns, prostitution, pornography—and their currency was violence and intimidation.

The police were scrambling for leads—they had faces, they even had some names, but what they didn’t have was evidence. The OC guys were running wiretaps wherever they could, shooting thousands of surveillance photos, trying to put undercover officers into the gangs, but infiltrating well-organized groups took years. And every day that passed, more girls died in the service of masters who only saw them as commodities to be sold, bartered, bargained for, and discarded when their use was over. Every day more schoolkids became addicted to the drugs that flowed freely, every day young men died in gang wars fought not with fists and chains, but with automatic weapons. The battle was unending; only the colors of the uniforms and the symbols tattooed on faces, arms, and torsos changed.

Dell stepped off the elevator and the doors slid silently closed behind her. She threaded her way through the desks, computer workstations, monitoring equipment, file cabinets, and other workaday equipment that filled the huge loft. Ten thirty at night. Most of the lights were off, but she wasn’t surprised to see one monitor glowing. Sloan leaned back in her swivel chair, her hands flying over the keyboard as data streamed across the thirty-inch screen. From across the room she looked relaxed, sleepy even, but Dell knew better. She’d looked into Sloan’s face enough times to know her sharp indigo eyes would be intensely focused and her scarily quick mind assessing, collating, and discarding facts as rapidly as they appeared.

Dell pulled out a nearby chair and dropped into it. Sloan glanced over, brushing her hand through her jet black hair. The platinum wedding band glinted on her left hand. She wore her usual jeans and tight white T-shirt. She looked nothing like the Justice agent she’d once been, or the current civilian liaison to the police department. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know.” Dell stretched out her legs, clasped her hands behind her head, and stared at the ceiling. “Sandy’s got swing shift and won’t be home for a while. I’m getting nowhere. I think I must be missing something. Have you got anything?”

“Not yet. But there’s encouraging chatter.”

“Chatter.” Dell sat up straight. “Meaning?”

“Jason and I have been working on this new algorithm to track low-level street activity that ordinarily would get written off as too minor to mean anything—drive-bys, bar fights, domestic disturbances, drug busts. Minor street activity that usually flies under the radar.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Because when you can’t see the big picture, you need to start looking at the small pieces. Remember, maybe once or twice a year we’ll take down a huge shipment of cocaine or find a container full of girls, but those big hits never stop the crime machine from running. Business as usual is mostly small deals—selling a trunk full of guns, street soldiers peddling a dime bag here, a vial of crank there, some sleaze shooting a thirty minute porn flick on dirty sheets with his iPhone in the back of some warehouse. Your scumbag pedophile uploading a handful of blurry photos to his friends for a small charge.”

“How does tracking all that help us?”

“I’m pulling data from the central system downtown and mapping geographical profiles of where crimes are occurring, which gangs are involved or suspected to be involved, assigning territories, looking at shifting borders.”

“Does the brass know?”

Sloan grinned, a feral smile that would have made Dell’s blood run a little colder if she hadn’t known her. Sloan had been betrayed by the very system she’d fought for, and she had no respect for organized law enforcement. She followed no one’s lead, other than Frye’s. “They’re not using it, so I might as well.”

That figured. Dell leaned forward, clasping her hands between her knees. “What does all that tell you?”

“The old territories are in flux—boundaries are changing.”

Excitement shot through Dell’s chest. “Like we thought, new regimes.”

“Definitely. By cross-referencing crimes with the new geography along with what little intel we’re getting from vice, organized crime, and homicide, we can start placing people inside the high-activity zones, which means we can start building profiles of leadership.”