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? 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.
“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
