"Yes, ma'am, but until-" Mitch.e.l.l faltered, her jaw working but no sounds emitting. She swallowed hard. "I'm sorry? What did you say?"

Rebecca grinned and Watts guffawed.

"Congratulations, Mitch.e.l.l," Rebecca p.r.o.nounced. "You've earned yourself a provisional promotion. Detective One."

"For real?" Without thinking, Mitch.e.l.l held out her hand to Sandy, who took it while edging closer to the bed.

"You'll need to take the exam next time it's offered to satisfy all the requirements, but yes, it's for real." Rebecca didn't try to hide her pleasure. "Well done."

"Yeah, nice going, kid," Watts chimed in. He gestured toward Rebecca with his chin. "The Loo here deserves some congrats too."

"Lieutenant?" Mitch.e.l.l echoed, before grinning broadly. "That's great!"

"Thanks," Rebecca said quietly.

"And the team is staying together?" Mitch.e.l.l asked anxiously.

* 24 *

Justice Served Being laid up made her worry that the investigation would move on without her-something she fervently did not want to happen.

"Let's say we're restructuring." Rebecca went on to describe the High Pro le Crimes Unit in general terms, leaving out the political machinations behind the scenes. "So, Detective, bottom line is that you're on medical leave until cleared by both Dr. Torveau and the department. Then we'll talk about a.s.signments."

"Oh man," Mitch.e.l.l whispered. "Detective." Her eyes tracked from Rebecca to Watts and then to Sandy. "What do you think?"

Sandy's expression was unreadable as she quietly said, "I think you'll be a bigger pain in the a.s.s now than ever."

Mitch.e.l.l grinned. "Yeah. Most likely."

v The room was very quiet after Rebecca and Watts left. Sandy still sat beside the bed. Her small hand, the nails tipped in a red so dark it might have been blood, rested motionless on the white sheets next to Mitch.e.l.l's thigh. Mitch.e.l.l hooked her index nger around Sandy's thumb and shook gently. "You mad?"

"No. Why?"

Mitch.e.l.l eased the rest of her ngers over the top of Sandy's hand and closed them. Sandy did not return the pressure. "Before they showed up, you seemed pretty warm and cuddly. It's kinda cold in here now."

"You know, Dell, I have to do s.e.x pretty much twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood, okay?"

A muscle in Mitch.e.l.l's jaw twitched, but she kept her hand on Sandy's. "That's a f.u.c.ked-up thing to say to me."

Sandy slowly turned her head and met Mitch.e.l.l's eyes. The sharp retort died on her tongue when she saw the undisguised pain in the deep blue eyes. She closed her own and took a long, wavering breath before opening them again. "I'm sorry."

"Okay," Mitch.e.l.l said quietly.

"I want you all the time," Sandy murmured.

"Same here." Mitch.e.l.l lifted Sandy's hand to her cheek and rubbed it against her skin. "You p.i.s.sed off about the promotion?"

Sandy shook her head.

* 25 *

RADCLY fFE "About me staying with you?"

"No."

"Come on, honey. Just tell me."

The silence dragged on so long that Mitch.e.l.l couldn't stand it.

"Sandy?"

"It's the undercover thing."

Mitch.e.l.l's brows furrowed. "I thought you liked Mitch," she said, referring to her undercover persona. She bit the tip of Sandy's index nger playfully. "He likes you."

"It's not Mitch. You know what Mitch does to me." Sandy swiveled on her chair, gripping Mitch.e.l.l's hand hard. "In case you haven't noticed, since all this started, somebody popped Frye's partner in broad daylight, and then somebody else tried to run down Sloan and almost took out her girlfriend instead. You got knifed two days ago and just about bled to death. These guys aren't f.u.c.king fooling. You go poking around down at the clubs, and the next time that blade is going to be in your chest."

"Jeez, Sandy. I'm a cop." Mitch.e.l.l's tone was clearly incredulous.

"I can handle myself. You're the one who's likely to get into trouble, being Frye's con dential informant. If anybody ought to quit, it's you."

Sandy snorted. "Look, rookie. I've been managing on the streets a lot longer than you've been a cop. I know my way around."

"Oh yeah, sure you-" Mitch.e.l.l broke off as a knock sounded at the door. "Yeah?"

The door swung open, and Sloan took one step into the room. "Safe to come in? Or should I wait until you're done throwing things?"

"I oughtta go," Sandy said, leaping up as she released Mitch.e.l.l's hand.

"Hey," Mitch.e.l.l protested. She rolled over and made a grab for Sandy's hand, then caught her breath and groaned as pain lanced through her leg. "Oh, ow, f.u.c.k. Ow."

"Dell!" Sandy grasped Mitch.e.l.l's shoulders and pushed her gently back to the pillows. "Lay down, you blockhead."

"Don't go," Mitch.e.l.l gasped.

"Okay, okay. Jeez." Sandy stroked Mitch.e.l.l's cheek. "I'll stay already."

Sloan cleared her throat. "You two squared away now?"

* 26 *

Justice Served "Yeah," they answered in unison.

"Good." She tilted her chin at Mitch.e.l.l. "How're you doing?"

"Not too bad," Mitch.e.l.l said, ghting to keep her breath even. Her leg throbbed as if someone had kicked her, more than once. She took in the circles under Sloan's normally vibrant violet eyes and the sallow tint to her skin. Now that she was paying attention, Sloan, dressed in her usual faded jeans and tight white T-shirt, looked thinner than Mitch.e.l.l remembered. "You?"

Sloan lifted a shoulder. "Jason and I have been working around the clock extracting data from the computers we con scated in the raid the other night. We've got a dozen sources of potential subscribers to sift through-chat-room transcripts, e-mail distribution lists, on-line bulletin boards. We're drowning in data." Despite her obvious fatigue, she exuded excitement.

"You know," Mitch.e.l.l said, suddenly energized. "I could work on that until my leg's better. I helped Jason with the initial data a.n.a.lysis, and I set up some of the traces."

"It's an idea," Sloan replied hesitantly. She had considered suggesting it herself, but had resisted trying to recruit one of Frye's people for her own private investigation out of respect for the homicide detective. But if Mitch.e.l.l was otherwise unoccupied... "Look, why don't we see how you're feeling in a few days-"

Mitch.e.l.l pushed up on the pillows, shaking her head vehemently.

"I'm okay. They're going to let me out of here today. I could start tomorrow."

"There's just one little problem," Sandy interjected with the barest hint of sarcasm.

"What?" Mitch.e.l.l asked, turning to her girlfriend.

"You can't walk, let alone drive or ride the bike."

"By tomorrow, I'll-"

"Stay at our place," Sloan interjected. "We've got plenty of room, and all you have to do is ride the elevator one oor."

"Yeah? That would be grea-" Mitch.e.l.l halted, carefully not looking in Sandy's direction. "Thanks, but I'll be ne at Sandy's."

"Both of you." Sloan grinned at Sandy. "I don't plan to keep an eye on her, and somebody should. You'd be doing me a favor if you hung out at our place for the next few days and made sure she doesn't get into trouble."

* 27 *

RADCLY fFE "What do you say?" Mitch.e.l.l gave Sandy a pleading look.

"I'm not going to sit around there all day, you know," Sandy said atly. "I've got things to do too."

"I know. No problem." Mitch.e.l.l's eyes were alight with antic.i.p.ation. "So that's a yes?"

Sandy turned to Sloan, trying unsuccessfully to mask her grateful expression. "Sure. Why not."

* 28 *

Justice Served

CHAPTER THREE.

Just as Sloan settled behind the wheel of her new gunmetal gray Porsche Carrera GT, her cell phone rang. She peeled out of the parking s.p.a.ce and accelerated down the exit ramp before hitting the speaker b.u.t.ton on her phone.

"Sloan."

"It's Frye."

Sloan shoved bills at the bored high school student in the gla.s.s-enclosed booth and then gunned the 5.7L V10 engine, just missing the slowly rising toll arm as she sped beneath it and onto one of the narrow one-way streets behind the hospital. "What's up?"

"Can you meet me at Police Plaza now?"

"Why?" Sloan's hand tightened on the wheel. A trip to the heart of police bureaucracy was the last thing she wanted to do. Just being inside any law enforcement complex brought back memories she didn't care to revisit.

"I'd like you to have a talk with my captain."

"Is this an of cial request?"

"Not exactly."

Sloan pushed the Carrera east toward downtown, having intended to return to her of ce/residence in a renovated four-story factory building in Old City. With a slight detour, she could be at Police Plaza in ten minutes. It was a tangent, however, that held far more than a few moments of lost time in the balance. She had promised herself seven years before that she would never again voluntarily a.s.sociate with organized law enforcement on any level.

"It's important, Sloan."

Rebecca might be a friend, but she was still a cop. That wasn't something Rebecca Frye ever stopped being. Some part of this request was of cial, and that's exactly what Sloan wanted none of. She could * 29 *

RADCLY fFE do a lot of things on her own to discover who had orchestrated the hit-and-run a.s.sault that had almost killed Michael. She was con dent that, in time, she would have a name. She was equally con dent that she could do what needed to be done for justice to be served, with her own hand and with a clear conscience. She didn't need of cial sanction; she needed retribution. The silence grew. The purr of the huge engine and the steady throb of barely leashed power echoed the animal hunger for vengeance that raged in her depths.

"Sloan?"

"Yeah." Sloan eased her grip on the wheel, downshifted, and turned left toward North Philadelphia. "Be there in ve."

v Rebecca stood waiting for her on the other side of the security booths in the main lobby, and Sloan followed her silently toward the elevators.

"There've been some developments since the last time we talked,"

Rebecca said as they waited for the elevator doors to open.

"Problem with the arrests?" Sloan asked, suddenly concerned that some legal loophole had popped up to taint the evidence that she and Jason had gathered from the bust the previous weekend. Electronic evidence and computer forensics were still something akin to black magic to most law enforcement agents, who preferred to base their cases on court-tested modes of proof such as ngerprints and eyewitness identi cation.

Rebecca shook her head. "No. They're all solid. The two of you did a great job." Once on the third oor, Rebecca led the way down the hall. "In fact, that's why you're here."

The nerve center of the detective bureau was a huge, brightly lit room lled with the sounds of ringing phones and rumbling male voices.

Sloan glimpsed only one woman, against the far wall, her voice lost in the cacophony. Picking her way along a narrow pathway created by a dozen or so haphazardly placed desks, she felt the eyes of everyone in the room on her back. All too aware of the rapid pounding of her heart and the knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach, she waited beside Rebecca, who rapped on the door of a gla.s.s-enclosed of ce. The last time she'd been in a police station, she'd been wearing handcuffs. She * 30 *

Justice Served fought the urge to reach over and rub her left wrist where a faint scar still remained. They'd tossed her none too gently into the backseat of a patrol car, and she'd fallen so that the weight of her body had pinned her arms to the seat. The pressure on the too-tight cuffs had torn her esh.

"The captain has a proposition for you."

"Look, Frye," Sloan began urgently, "I don't think-"

"Just hear him out." Rebecca pushed the door open and said, "This is Captain John Henry. Sir, JT Sloan."

Sloan had no choice but to enter the small room, made smaller by the two chairs in front of the desk and a bank of le cabinets along one wall. The big man behind the paper-covered desk rose and extended his hand.

"I thought it was about time we met, Ms. Sloan," Henry said in his rich ba.s.so profundo.