"Nocturne City police!" I bellowed, as a mobster loaded the last of the girls into the container and slammed the door. Above me, the crane whined as its magnetic arm lowered. "Stand where you are!"

I don't know what I'd expected, really, but it wasn't for the fattest of the heavies to open his long duster and pull out a Kalashnikov.

Bryson had time to say "Oh, shi'" before we all hit the dirt.

Automatic-weapon fire is like being trapped inside a pinball machine-it's louder than the voices of the gods and a spray of bullets in your general direction feels like the air is punching you. Bryson and I took cover behind a Port Authority cart parked between us and the mobsters, and Lane rolled behind a Dumpster. Batista and Will were dug in beside the van, returning fire.

"I told you to stay inside!" Will bellowed at me.

Amid the chaos, the crane arm caught the container of girls and whisked it upward and out of my vision. I went low, between the small, fat wheels of the cart, and aimed for Kalashnikov's legs. Two shots, one for each. He went down, but impressively didn't stop firing. Tough fat bastard.

One of the mobsters had the presence of mind to back the car between us and them as both sides opened up like we were John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis. Handgun slugs tore the poor little cart to shreds, and Bryson cursed as it rocked and threatened to tip over.

"Wilder, we do not have the fuckin' advantage here!"

The mobsters grabbed the guy I'd tagged and got him into the Jaguar. The car's engine roared and I came up, planting two slugs in its bumper out of pure spite.

The Jag fishtailed, righted and then, as quickly as the shooting had started, the car was gone. The container. Everything except a stink from the spent shells and a roaring in my abused ears.

I lowered my gun. "Shit," I said viciously. "Everyone all right?"

"We're okay, LT," Bryson said. Will holstered his weapon, shaking his head. At least he had the grace not to say I told you so I told you so.

"We've got plenty of evidence," Lane said to me, almost gently. "We'll have them IDed and arrested in a couple of hours with these photos and recordings to speed warrants along."

I looked at the spot the container had occupied. "Somehow that's not making me feel any better," I murmured.

Will tried to put his arm around me, give me a squeeze, but I shrugged him away. He gave me a hurt look and I kept my face stony. Those girls with their vacant eyes were all I wanted to think about right now. Men who would do this to innocent people had a monster inside, too.

I couldn't wait until I introduced them to mine.

CHAPTER 9.

"You should sleep," Will said when he saw me under the lights of the motor pool.

"No," I said. "I should find out who those men are before they ship those poor girls off to god knows where."

"Luna..." Will sighed and pushed his hand through his hair. "You have to take a step back and remember that this is a case, not a crusade."

I blinked at him. "Excuse me? I know you didn't just get federal and all-knowing with me, your hysterical little woman."

Will shook his head. "Don't start. You know that's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" I snapped. Lane, Bryson and Batista gave us our space, offloading the cameras and the recording equipment without a word. Once IA had gotten done with their shooting report, it had nearly been morning, and I was no closer to finding one shot-up gangster and his friends.

"Do you really want to have this fight in front of your subordinates?" Will asked me softly.

"Is that what we're doing?" I said. "Fighting? Because from where I sit it just looks like you're ordering me around."

"Listen," Will growled, grabbing me by the arm. "I know your damage, all right? I know you have a pathological fear of being pushed around, but I'm telling you this as a fellow professional-you are going to have to let this go. You have no case, even if you could get a warrant for the container that the FBI doesn't sit on. Nothing those men did was beyond a misdemeanor until you started waving your gun around."

"You know as well as I do that something rotten is going down over there," I said. "You know that the Russians got Lily Dubois killed. You know nothing nothing good is going to happen to those poor women who are probably on their way to some third-world hellhole this very second." good is going to happen to those poor women who are probably on their way to some third-world hellhole this very second."

Will shoved his hands through his hair, leaving a ruined trail of golden strands across his face. "Knowing and proof are two very different things, Luna. I learned that the hard way, just like you. That's all I'm going to say, since I can tell I'm already in the doghouse."

I turned away from him, so furious that I knew if I stayed I'd slap him across the face. How dare he be so condescending and smug and, well, right?

Absolutely right. I had not a shred of hard proof that would allow me to make a case against anything except the shooting. Lily Dubois was a were, but her case would be solved because I was a detective, not a night creature. I had to set my emotions aside and let those women, those victims, sail away into the night.

Out of all the shitty things I'd had to let ride in my career, this was the worst, the largest. By far. It settled in my stomach like a small ball of ice, cold and foreign, the knowledge that their welfare was on my head. If they died, were hurt, were sold ...

"Lane?" I said, as something fell into my head, a piece that stood out as mismatched with what I knew of the gangsters who had murdered Lily.

Lane looked to me like she expected to be screamed at. "Yes, Lieutenant?" Lieutenant. Great. Now she thought I was a hysterical broad like most of the rest of the Nocturne City PD.

"Why are they taking girls out of the city?" I said. "Russia exports sex slaves, it doesn't buy them from the decadent capitalists."

"Actually, Russia is a democracy now, with a premier that functions much like the British prime minister," said Bryson. I gave him my Are-you-kidding-me? Are-you-kidding-me? glare. "What?" He shrugged. glare. "What?" He shrugged.

"He's right," Lane said. "And I can't think of a reason. The sex trade in Russia depends on men in this country paying to exploit the girls from the former Soviet Union."

"Then why?" I said. "Why send women out?"

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant," Lane said softly. "I have no idea."

Me, either, and it was costing me this case. I decided that punching the rear panel of the van would be an appropriate response, and did it, leaving a dent. Lane flinched. "I do have an old friend who works organized crime," she said. "I could call him for some background on the men at the port, assuming they manage to keep their friend out of a hospital."

"Fine," I sighed, realizing that everyone, including Will, was staring at me like I'd just started speaking Klingon. "Do it in the morning. The real morning." Sun was peering over the top of the Justice Plaza in a thin gold line. "I'm going to offload these photos onto the department server. The rest of you should go home."

Batista and Bryson withdrew gratefully, but Lane stayed with me. "It's never easy to lose an offender, Luna, but it happens. To the best of us."

"In what kind of a world?" I sighed.

"In the kind of world where you wait until you can nail the motherfucker to the wall for life," Lane said calmly. "Don't worry. We'll get these sons of bitches."

"Your optimism is infectious," I assured her when she looked disappointed that there wasn't more excitement at her speech. "But now I have to write my report and find some coffee that won't give me an ulcer."

Will touched my arm. "You need company? You seem a little ... high-strung." His nice way of saying, Honey, when you punch a van you scare all the plain humans Honey, when you punch a van you scare all the plain humans.

"No," I sighed. "You might as well go home and get some rest. No sense both of us being irrationally exhausted." I made sure to kiss him in front of Lane, so he'd know I didn't hold our little confrontation against him. Those days, of blaming all of my problems on my asshole boyfriend, were behind me.

Leaving Lane at her desk, I went into my office and loaded the photos on the SCS network drive, making sure Pete would see them when he came into work in a few hours.

Then I stretched out on the battered sofa in my office and took a nap, waking up with a kink in my neck and Lane standing over me. She'd changed to an entirely new conservative pastel blouse and freshened her makeup. I felt grit in my eyes from yesterday's mascara and sort of hated her.

"My friend up in organized crime is ready for us," she said. "And I'm pretty sure they have coffee in their office."

"I'm up," I grumbled. I checked myself in the mirror hanging on my door. To say I looked like I'd been dragged through five of the seven hells was an understatement. I tried to do something about my smeared makeup and my Siouxsie hair, but there was nothing I could fix about the grumpy first-thing-in-the-morning attitude.

Lane and I rode the elevator up to the daylight climes of the Plaza proper, and she led me to the warren of Organized Crime, which shared a vast open floor with Fraud. I saw Kilkenny's swath of red hair and tipped him a salute.

"This is Detective Han," she said, gesturing to a fellow sporting a shaved tattooed head, a few earrings more than department issue and a leather jacket. "Shi, this is Luna Wilder."

"Pleasure," Han Shi said, standing and shaking my hand. "I've heard a lot about you since the department opened the SCS." He had a firm grip and an infectious grin that transformed his face from hard to open. "You'll forgive the getup-I've been out on the street for a week working on the Golden Snake gang."

I was kicking myself for not washing my face or at least finding some deodorant before we came up here. Han was cute. And still smiling at me. Dammit.

"So, Natalie here tells me that you're having troubles from our comrades in the Russian mob," he said. "Care to take a look at the pyramid of shame?"

"What's that?" I said. Han led me to the end of the row of cubicles and pointed to a large corkboard covered in mug shots, surveillance photos and crime-scene shots that varied from garden-variety dead bodies to parts that even your mother couldn't identify.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Lane said. "Animals."

"The Chinese are worse, believe it or not," said Han. "They have that creative edge the Russians haven't quite mastered. The new leader of the Golden Snake cut out his predecessor's eyes and sent them to the detective in charge of watching the gang's headquarters. Sort of a Spy Versus Spy Spy Versus Spy thing. Only with eyeballs." thing. Only with eyeballs."

Lane started to turn green, but I was looking at the mug shots. "This is the hierarchy of the Nocturne outfit?"

"As far as we've been able to tell," Han said. "We don't have anyone on the inside with the Russians, and neither does the FBI. Eastern Promises Eastern Promises, this is not."

I scanned the board, seeing a lot of hard-bitten, tattooed men glaring back at me. "Him," I said, landing on a mug shot of Goatee. "That's who I shot it out with last night."

"That's Nikolai Rostov," said Han. "He's an enforcer, a high-level one in line to be the boss. Very old school. Did time in a couple of Soviet prisons before he fled to the wicked, wicked West. That doesn't exactly turn you into a cuddly sort of guy."

"Is he involved in the human trafficking going on through the port?" Lane asked. Han nodded.

"Probably. Rostov is who you send in when you don't want to get your hands bloody. Blood doesn't bother him overmuch."

"Or selling women into slavery..." I said, taking his photo off the board. Han made a sound of protest.

"You better bring that back. My captain gets very upset when we disturb the pyramid."

"Don't worry," I said with a wink. "I promise I'll return him and he'll still be ugly."

I yawned as I rode back down to the SCS to pull the computer file on Nikolai Rostov. I just needed to get a fix on him, and then I was on him like a fat kid on a birthday cake until this case was closed up tight.

My nose warned me that someone was in my office seconds before the door banged shut behind me. My Sig came out as I turned around and I found myself looking at Nate Dubois over the barrel.

"Hex me," I sighed, lowering the gun. "That's a real easy way to get yourself killed, Nate."

"Maybe I don't care," he muttered, his shoulders slumping. "You arrested that man John Black. Is he the one?"

I scented him, subtly so that he wouldn't take it as a threat to his dominance, and caught a whiff of cheap bourbon on his skin and breath. On a second look, Nate didn't seem so hot. His hair was sticking up all over the place and the lines on his face were twice as deep as when I'd seen him last. "I don't know," I said, and then added, "I don't think so. He has an alibi."

Nate grabbed my citation plaque for bravery off my desk, the only one I'd managed to earn in Homicide, and flung it at the wall. "Why the hell not?" he bellowed.

"Okay," I said, tightening my grip on the Sig. "You can calm down, or you can leave."

Nate glared at me, his lips pulling back over his teeth, and then he crumpled, missing the edge of my sofa and sitting hard on the floor, legs akimbo.

"No one knows who hurt my little girl," he sobbed. "No one cares ... She's just gone ... I can still smell her in her bedroom, I think I hear her coming into the room, laughing..."

I crouched down next to Nate and gripped him by the shoulder. "I promise you that I am going to make this right. Where's your wife?"

"Home," Nate sighed. "She's taking this so well ... she's being so strong. I went out last night just to get away from the house and I ended up here..."

I stood up and dialed Norris, our office assistant. He was old as the hills and twice as crotchety, and we didn't talk if I could help it, but this was an emergency. My life is full of those. "Norris, can you get Petra Dubois on the line and tell her that her husband is here and needs a ride home?"

"Very good, Lieutenant," he said prissily, and hung up on me. It was probably the most civil exchange we'd ever had.

Nate tried to pull himself up, and I helped him onto the sofa. "You wife will be here soon," I said. "You need to go home and be with her, and take care of yourself."

"I miss my Lily so much," Nate sighed. "Pack justice won't bring her back to me." He swiped his hand over his face. "You really pissed them off sending Theodore back like that. They're going to come for you now, just like Lily's killer."

"I thought you were the pack leader?" I said gently, even though his words sent an involuntary tingle of fear through my gut.

"I'm broken," Nate said, slumping. "One of the younger ones will use this as an excuse to oust me and then we're both fucked."

"I'll close this case," I said. "You just have to have a little faith in me."

"What kind of a world do we live in when this can happen to a sweet little girl?" Nate asked me.

"No kind of world," I said. "But it's the only one we've got."

Nate and I sat in silence for a time, him nodding in and out and me scrolling through the photos from the night before. Just a glutton for punishment, that's me. I paused on a clear shot of Nikolai Rostov's face. My last lead. My last hope.

My phone buzzed and I switched on the speaker. "What?"

"Mrs. Dubois is here," Norris said.

"Thank you. Send her in."

Petra came through the door a moment later and her face fell when she saw her husband. "Nate, is this really what it's come to? Stumbling around like a bum?"

"I'm not strong like you," he said matter-of-factly.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Lieutenant Wilder," said Petra. "I'm so sorry that he barged in here."

"Look," I sighed as Petra pulled Nate to his feet. "This may be out of line, but you two need help. Take the grief counselor's number. He's supposedly very good."

Not that I had ever gone to the guy. I'd seen the department psychiatrist, Dr. Merriman, more than a few times, but someone to help me actually deal with my problems was a luxury not afforded to most cops, unless they beat up their girlfriends or tried to eat their guns.

"We're dealing with this in our own way," Petra said coldly. "Something you obviously know nothing about."