She slipped off her Ducati and walked over. The driver of the first cruiser slid down his window and the man leaned out his head.

He said, “Damn, Mace, heard you got your ass lifted out of West Virginia. Good to see you, girl.”

Mace leaned down and rested her elbows on the ledge of the open window. “Hey, Tony, how’s hoodle time?”

Tony was in his mid-forties with a thick neck, burly shoulders, and forearms the size of Mace’s thighs, all the result of serious gym time. He’d been a good friend to Mace and had provided her with flawless backup on more than one occasion when she’d been with Major Narcotics. Next to him was a Panasonic Toughbook laptop that was about as important to a cop as a gun-although the most important piece of equipment any cop carried was his radio. That was his lifeline to call in help when needed.

Tony flashed a smile. “Quiet tonight. Not so quiet last night. Did the circuit, been here twenty minutes, listening to some tunes.” He looked over at the young female cop next to him. “Francie, this is Mace Perry.”

Francie, who had short strawberry red hair and braces and looked like she was about fifteen, smiled at Mace. Yet she had a blocky build with buffed shoulders that told you not to mess with her. Both officers wore gloves thick enough that a syringe couldn’t penetrate easily. The last thing you wanted was to stick your hand under the front seat of a car you were doing a stop-and-search on and pull it back out with a needle sticking in it. Mace had known one beat cop who’d become HIV-infected that way.

“Hey, Francie, how long you been riding with this big old bear?”

“Six weeks.”

“So he’s your training officer?”

“Yep.”

“You could do a lot worse.”

Tony said, “Throwing arrests her way left and right. Getting in her courtroom OT. Being a real gentleman and teacher.”

Mace smacked him playfully on the arm. “Hell, you just don’t want to do the paperwork.”

“Now don’t go disillusioning the girl.”

“Sometimes I still miss roll call.”

Tony cracked a grin. “You’re crazy, Mace. Same old, same old. Just doling out bodies and wheels and running around trying to find some damn car keys.”

“Beats staring at a wall for two years.”

Tony stopped smiling. “I bet it does, Mace, I bet it does.”

“Same old same old bandits around here too?”

“Except the ones who’re dead.”

Mace glanced at the other cruisers. “Anybody I know?”

“Don’t think so. They send folks all over the place now.”

“So remind me how big your kids are?”

“One in college, two in high school and eating me out of house and home. Even when I pull my full twenty-five and get pensioned out, gonna have to get another job.”

“Go into consulting. Doesn’t matter what, it pays a lot better.”

“So why don’t you tell me what the hell you’re doing out here at two a.m. on your fancy bike with no gun.”

“How do you know I’m not packing?”

“Can you say probation violation?”

Mace grinned at Francie. “You see why he’s such a good T.O. Nothing gets by this guy. He looks like a musclehead but the dude’s got brains.”

“Seriously, Mace, why here?”

“Nostalgia.”

Tony laughed. “Go look in a photo album if you want that. Streets ain’t never fair, especially around here.” He turned serious. “You know that better than anybody.”

“You’re right, I do. Only they never found out who ripped me. That’s not right.”

“I know.”

“So how many blues think I’m dirty?”

“Honestly?”

“Only way that matters to me.”

Seventy-thirty on your side.”

“I guess it could be worse.”

“Hell yes it could be, considering who you share DNA with.”

“Beth is a cop’s cop. She came up right from the pavement, just like I did.”

“But she’s also a gal and you know some still don’t like that.”

“Well, hang in there, Tony, four more years.”

“I’m counting, baby, every damn day.”

She looked over at Francie. “And if Tony does pull his gun, just remember to duck. The son of a bitch never could shoot straight.”

CHAPTER 42

MACE RODE ON, venturing ever more deeply into an area that she, even with all her risk-perverse ways, shouldn’t have gone near without a weapon and a two-cruiser backup. Yet she knew exactly where she was headed. She had to see it; she wasn’t exactly sure why, only that she had to. It might have been what Mona had revealed in the bathroom. Mace could accept going down and maybe going back to prison, but what she could not accept was taking Beth with her.

She slowed her bike, very aware of silhouettes on the streets, pairs of eyes at curtained windows, heads eased against tinted car windows, all wondering what she was doing in this area at this hour. The human ecosystem here was both fragile and extraordinarily resilient, and also one that most citizens would never experience. Yet it had fascinated Mace for most of her life. The line between cop and bandit here, she knew, was both as thin and as thick as it could get. No layperson would understand what she meant by that, but any cop instantly would.

She looked up. It was straight ahead. Lodged in the middle of Six D like a glioblastoma among more ordinary tumors. It was an abandoned apartment building that had seen more drugs, death, and perversity than possibly any single building in the city. The cops had hit it time and again, but the bandits always returned, like an anthill after a blast of Diazinon granules. On the roof of this place she’d had her O.P., or observation post, set up, principally because no bandit would ever believe that a cop could infiltrate it. It had taken Mace a month of undercover work to wedge her way into this world, her camera and scopes hidden in her bulky clothing while she bought and sold drugs and fended off the sexual thrusts of an array of predators with her Glock 37 and a fast mouth. That was one of the good things about undercover work in that place. Not having a gun would have seemed suspicious, since everyone else was packing.

The roof had a dead-on view of a drug dropoff used by a trio of Latino brothers who had run one of the most violent gangs in D.C. Mace had been in Major Narcotics at the time, but she was looking for far more than just another drug bust. These guys were suspected in more than a dozen murders. Mace was taking pictures and members of her joint task force were tapping their cell phone conversations in hopes of taking the Lats down for life.

Nothing much had changed about the place. It was still a dump, still mostly abandoned, but no longer a beehive of criminal activity since Beth had placed a police satellite station on the first floor of the building. Two of the Lats had moved to the Houston area, or so she’d heard through the prison grapevine. The third brother had been found in Rock Creek Park, more skeleton than corpse. Word was his older brothers had found him skimming profits off their rock bag trade. Apparently, tough love started at home for those boys. Mace was convinced that the brothers had discovered her undercover surveillance either through the streets, dumb luck, or a mole at MPD and then exacted their revenge.

Why couldn’t you have just put a round in my head? Quicker, less painful.

It occurred to Mace now, more vividly than it ever had during her two years in prison, that the bastards who set her up were probably going to get away with it. While lying on that metal bed she’d constructed all these elaborate plans about how she would follow up the most insignificant clue, spend every waking moment on the case, until she got them. And then she would march triumphant to the police station with her captured bandits and all would be right with the world.

Perched on her Ducati, she shook her head in bewilderment. Did I really believe that?