Sandy shifted with one uid movement, reseating herself so that she faced him, her legs wrapped behind his hips as she sat in his lap. The thin barrier of her silk panties rested over the bulge in his crotch. Breath coming fast, she rubbed herself on him in short, fast circles, bearing down harder with each rotation. "I might...beat you to it, baby."

Captivated by the ickering images of pleasure racing across her face, Mitch cradled her hips in his palms and pulled her to him, increasing the friction between them. "Do it, honey. Let me see you come on me."

* 221 *

RADCLY fFE "I'm going to," she said in wonder, clutching his shoulders, rocking now in sharp, erratic jerks.

His own need forgotten, he tore his gaze away from her face long enough to look down, his stomach tightening at the sight of her pa.s.sion soaking the denim stretched over his c.o.c.k. The sight was enough to make him come, but he held back, concentrating on her-timing his thrusts to the lift and fall of her hips. "That's it, honey," he whispered.

"That's it."

She gave one startled cry and stiffened in his embrace, pressing down so hard against him he thought he'd burst. Then she collapsed into his arms, soft and warm, making small, broken sounds of contentment.

"Oh yeah," Mitch muttered, pressing his face to her damp hair.

"I'm gonna look at some other girl after this."

"Okay," Sandy replied drowsily. "But no touching."

"Not 'til I get home," Mitch promised. "But then, I'm gonna do a lot of touching."

* 222 *

Justice Served

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

Sunday, Early Hours You doing okay?" Jasmine asked as she sidled close to Mitch in the semicircular booth that faced the stage.

"Great." He tried not to stare at the performers, young women Sandy's age, most of them built like her- rm and sleek and limber- and barely postadolescent. He couldn't think about Sandy and the years she had been available for the t.i.tillation and arousal of strangers, not and do the job he had to do. Between him and the bodies gyrating a few feet away, the air hung in a blue-gray cloud of smoke and dust ecks that drifted in desultory waves, stirred by the motion of the dancers. Two dozen rapt voyeurs were gathered around at tables or booths, their faces cast in deathly pallor by slanting beams of light from the recessed spots focused in three glaring columns on the raised central platform. Generic strip music blared, and Mitch had to lean close to make himself heard.

Jasmine smelled of some exotic spice and a hint of something darker.

Despite the dim lighting, her slender form, made sleeker by painted-on black slacks and a plunging vee-neck top, was in nitely more alluring than the naked bodies on display. "You see anyone interesting?"

In the last week, they'd a.s.sembled photos of dozens of suspected midlevel Mob members from police les and surveillance images-the crew captains, their lieutenants, and the street soldiers who did the dirty work-but Mitch hadn't seen anyone he recognized.

"No," Jasmine said. "They're here, somewhere. Probably in a back of ce. Chances are the lieutenants are all keeping a low pro le because of the arrests last week. They usually send their soldiers to do the real work anyhow."

Ken Dewar slid into the black leather-covered booth next to Mitch and handed out bottles of beer.

"Thanks," Mitch said. "Find anybody worth checking out on your travels?"

* 223 *

RADCLY fFE "Not yet, but the night is young," Ken replied, sipping his beer.

"It's the usual crowd-same bartender as last week too. I don't recognize the dancers tonight, but in this kind of work, they turn over pretty fast.

Some john beats them up, they get sick, they get addicted. They don't last long."

Mitch's stomach twisted as he remembered the bright promise in Sandy's eyes and the sleek, smooth lines of her body. He swore to himself that she was never coming back to this life. "Have you ever...

dated any of these girls?"

"For more than one night?"

From the other side of the table, Phil snickered.

"Doesn't matter," Mitch answered. "I was wondering if you ever went home with one of them."

Ken, bulkier than Mitch in his chest and shoulders, the barest suggestion of a beard darkening his angular jaw, shook his head. "They don't take you home. They do you in the back hall or the john. These girls don't date."

"They don't date or you don't ask them out?"

"Why would we?" Ken asked with no suggestion of censure in his voice. "They're all working girls. If that's your pleasure, a fty will get you anything you want."

A muscle on the edge of Mitch's jaw twitched, and he carefully kept his voice even. This wasn't about Sandy. It wasn't about him. This was about the job. "I don't know-you guys don't strike me as the hit-and-run types, and it wouldn't be the rst time some guy tried to rescue one of them."

He intentionally took a swallow of his beer and let his gaze drift over the woman who danced closest to them. She was nude, bathed in an unforgiving light that revealed the faint sheen of sweat covering her body, which was slightly thinner than was healthy, but attractive nonetheless. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were high and rm, her belly long and sensuous, her legs suggestively sinuous. As the music pulsed, she squatted with her hands on her knees-legs spread, hips rolling-opening herself for their inspection. He wasn't aroused, but he couldn't help but look at her. When he did, she smiled and extended a hand with a come-hither motion. He feigned interest, letting his eyes follow her hand as it dropped down between her thighs. "She's hot."

* 224 *

Justice Served "Yeah," Ken said dismissively, "but she's not going to have your babies. These girls don't settle down. It's too late for that."

"So you don't know where they live, who they really are?"

"Never thought about it," Ken acknowledged. "Besides, like I said, they're not here that long."

They're not here that long.

There've been a lot of new girls in the clubs the last eighteen months.

"How long?"

"Huh?" Ken asked, angling his body and craning his neck as he followed the particularly acrobatic maneuverings of a tall blond working out on a pole.

"How long are they usually here?"

Ken seemed to pick up on the urgency in Mitch's voice and nally gave him his full attention. "Somebody catch your eye?"

"Maybe."

"With that little hottie you have at home?" Ken's tone was incredulous.

"I didn't give her a ring yet."

Ken looked skeptical, and Mitch gured the Kings' leader wasn't buying his story. He wouldn't either, not after getting one look at Sandy.

"I'm...looking for someone I saw last week. Maybe she'll be back."

"It's not like I actually counted," Ken said.

"But you noticed." And if you noticed, there must be a pattern.

"Yeah," Ken agreed thoughtfully, turning to the other members of his troupe. "Hey, guys, listen up."

Mitch waited impatiently while the other guys talked.

"What's going on?" Jasmine asked.

"Remember what the lieutenant has always said-it has to do with the girls?"

"Yes, why? You have an idea?"

"Maybe."

Ken turned back. "Okay, we think two months, no more than three."

What exactly did Trudy say about the nights that she lled in for the video shoots? Lieutenant Frye had asked Sandy.

Every few months, is what she told me.

"I need to hit the head," Mitch said abruptly. He looked around * 225 *

RADCLY fFE the table at the other kings and Jasmine. "Anybody need a beer or anything?"

As the group chorused no, he slipped from the booth and headed back to the bar.

"Back again, huh?" the bartender from the previous weekend asked in a bored tone as he wiped down the bar.

"Best show in town," Mitch replied. He pulled a folded twenty from his front pocket and slid it across the bar. "Let me have a Bud."

The bartender took his time squeezing out the rag and folding it carefully before reaching into the cooler under the bar and extracting a dripping bottle of beer. As he took the bill and turned toward the register on the narrow counter underneath the mirror opposite the bar, Mitch said, "Keep the change."

After ringing up the sale, extracting the change from the cash drawer, and whisking it into his pocket, he swung back around to face Mitch. "Something you want?"

"Irina," Mitch said. "She here tonight?"

The bartender smirked. "Setting your sights pretty high, aren't you, stud?"

Mitch lifted a shoulder. "She liked it pretty well the other night."

"You'd have better luck with one of her girls."

"She's like, what, their keeper or something?"

The bartender's face hardened. "You ask a lot of questions." He leaned his elbows on the bar and peered over it, his gaze sliding down to Mitch's crotch. "I can think of one or two who might go for what you got in there."

"How much?" Mitch asked, his heart pounding but his voice steady.

"Depends on what you're after."

"Just some company."

The bartender laughed. "Yeah, and my d.i.c.k don't get hard watching those girls up there either. You gotta spell it out, or no deal."

"All right, I want to f.u.c.k, but not back there in some corner. I want to take my time."

"It's here or nowhere."

"I'll pay for a room. There's plenty of rent-by-the-hour places around here."

"No deal. The girls don't leave this place."

* 226 *

Justice Served Mitch watched the guy's eyes, trying to judge how far to push.

"Five hundred for an hour."

The bartender shook his head. "You get a room in the back. Take it or leave it."

"I want Irina." Mitch hadn't seen her so far that night, but somehow he sensed that she was the key. She was the constant. He was praying that she would remember him and still be interested.

"You must have a lot in those jeans, boy."

"It's not how much you got, it's how much you do with it."

The bartender stared at Mitch impa.s.sively for a long moment, then cracked a smile and nally laughed out loud. "Yeah, and you got the b.a.l.l.s too. I'll see what I can do, but it's not gonna be tonight."

He tilted his chin toward the stage. "Those are new girls. Irina always keeps close tabs on them when they rst start working. She won't hang around tonight."

"Let me talk to her. Maybe tomorrow night."

"You must have a hard-on that won't quit." The bartender laughed again. "But then, yours never does, does it."

Surprisingly, he sounded just a bit jealous.

"Working around here, I'm surprised yours ever lets up either,"

Mitch said.