The cop pulled her hands behind her back and cuffed her wrists so hard she winced. The stale scents of the bathroom drifted up once again into her nostrils along with the fresh coppery odor of the blood…
It didn’t matter.
Mission complete.
Friday
6:15 a.m.
“Hey, good-lookin’.”
“Hey, yourself,” Ana countered, and rubbed her bleary eyes. She glanced up from her seat to see SIDE member Aaron Nabarro, codename Romeo, standing in front of her.
He set a soda can of Mr. Pibb on her table. “It’s not Dr. Pepper.”
“It’ll do me.” She popped the tab, glancing at him. She wasn’t used to people doing nice things without a price tag attached. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Heard about last night.”
“What’s that?” She took a swig of soda.
“That you caught your target. Cleaned his clock before he was put down. That brings up your arrest count.”
“I guess.” She set the perspiring can down, turning it with her fingers. She hadn’t thought about her average. The first thing she’d done when she returned home was take a long heated shower, scrubbing away the evidence of the rave before crashing for a few hours of restless sleep. She’d awakened feeling gritty. A cold ten-minute shower hadn’t revived her any more than the brisk two-block hike from her studio apartment to the old three-story brick firehouse SIDE used as headquarters.
“Sorry it went down like that. Seeing someone killed. It’s rough.”
Ana shifted in her seat. Nabarro wasn’t christened Romeo for nothing. He’d been arrested for sweeping older women off their feet and leisurely taking gifts. Unfortunately, the “gifts” hadn’t been offered. And from the time she’d met him six months ago, he’d done nothing but tease and flirt with her and Julia Kelly, the other female on the team. So now his sincere words snuck out of left field.
She stared down at the can. “Do you know what it’s like?” When he didn’t answer right away, she met his gaze.
He smiled. Romeo was bi-racial—Filipino and white—and twenty-one years old, the same age as her. Sometimes she felt a mild kinship toward him because of her own mutt status.
All she knew was that her mother was Caucasian—she’d never been informed what nationality—and that her father had been Mexican, leaving her with a question mark on what nationality to check when filling out forms. Her multicultural background had been considered a problem in the state homes she’d grown up in. She wasn’t white, yet she wasn’t full-blooded Mexican. Half the time the counselors hadn’t known what type of family would offer a home for her, and without a clear identity, Ana had always floundered with which clique would accept her in the girls’ home.
After a while, she’d given up trying to fit in anywhere.
Romeo leaned down. “Push it aside, Switch, and move on. It’ll eat you up if you don’t.” He walked to Skates, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Good advice given too late. She’d tossed and turned in bed, fighting the lifeless images of Boner. His eyes staring in horror, his mouth slack with stark red blood drooling from his thin lips, the puddle growing and growing beneath him. She’d never seen a dead body before, never witnessed a death, but she felt she’d seen enough blood to last her a lifetime.
“Listen up,” commanded Miles “Sarge” Winters as he sauntered into the meet room.
Blinking away the gruesome images, Ana straightened in her metal seat and raked her fingers through her black chin-length chopped hair.
Justin Smythe, aka Jay-man, Sarge’s sidekick-slash-assistant, lurked a couple feet away to the right. His face was composed in its habitual passive expression as his solid black form towered over everyone in the room.
Sarge, an ex-Vice cop and a hardcore believer in drug enforcement, headed the SIDE program. Standing behind a shoddy metal desk with his standard police-issued Glock snug in his hip holster, Sarge held court like some kind of would-be king, his face deadpan and his thick arms crossed against the polo shirt molded over his linebacker chest.
“DEA’s received recent information about a large shipment of Ecstasy tablets coming into San Francisco within the next week.” His voice, as usual, sounded as if his throat was packed with gravel. His black eyes moved over each of the five SIDE members in the room. “The time frame’s uncertain. When I say large, I’m talking similar size to the Ecstasy confiscation in 2008 where a half-mill of tablets were pulled in.”
That was Sarge. No time wasted for pleasantries. But yeah, she was intrigued. To date, that bust had been the largest Ecstasy seizure in the United States.
“Tip came from a foreign source. Not only is a cargo of a Substance I drug coming into the U.S., the load’s mixed with identical PMA tablets.”
“Shit,” Romeo swore aloud.
Her sentiments exactly. In tablet form, both drugs deceived the user with their near duplicate stimulant properties. PMA, aka chicken powder, was considered one of the most dangerous of amphetamines. The drug increased heart rate, blood pressure and body temp just like MDMA, the chemical abbreviation for Ecstasy, but to one big mother of an extreme.
Ecstasy heightened sexual awareness and feelings of euphoria, making it a sought-after designer drug for upscale crowds. Like most street drugs, this one had its share of dangerous side effects, including messing with hormone levels and causing brain damage.
Sarge nodded and ran his thumb and forefinger down the sides of his thick mustache. “We’re dealing with a real nut job.” Sarge’s voice went oddly dull. “You all recall the incident a few years ago when ravers mistook PMA tablets for Ecstasy? They called it the Rave Massacre.” At the team’s mumbled agreement, he went on. “Due to the delayed reaction of PMA, multiple doses were consumed. The incident resulted in nearly fifty deaths.”
The obvious wasn’t stated. Now, with a lethal cargo heading for San Francisco, the same fatal disaster could occur.
Ana scraped her teeth across her bottom lip.
There’s gonna be prime shit comin’ to the city. Somethin’ big
—bigger
than ya’ve ever seen
.
“Last night’s target, Stephen Johnson, was one of the sources we found with the PMA on him at the Rave Massacre. Other sources are either still incarcerated, not talking, or not to be found. Johnson, underage at the time, had claimed he didn’t know what he was selling. We took a chance he’d be connected to this next shipment. With Johnson gone we’re at a dead end.”
Ana cracked her knuckles as the importance of last night’s mission sunk in. And how she’d been given no clue beforehand.
Sarge’s wiry brows pushed together. “You can be damn sure nobody wants another large death toll on this city’s hands. We’re going over all the info we have. If need be, question every scum dealer in this city, search every corner of each filthy alley until we find out the source behind this Ecstasy load.”
He shifted, rolled his thick shoulders and went to the corkboard. “DEA has come up with three potential suspects.”
Various eight-by-tens of individuals lined the board. He tapped a finger against the first picture of a man with a light complexion and a brown receding hairline. His gray eyes stared flat. Empty. If Ana ever came across him, she’d have to fight the urge to knock on his head and ask if anyone was home.
“Salvador Tyler. Five-seven. One-seventy-five. Age forty-one. This guy, only a mother could love. A dead mother. She was fished out of the bay ten years ago.”
“Are you saying he killed his own mom?” Julia, codename Digit, asked, mouth agape.
“No one’s been convicted but I wouldn’t put it past him. Tyler’s hand is in a little of everything, from drug pushing to black market porn. We’re led to believe he does business through the Internet. He has alleged illegal drug connections with every leading foreign drug source. Israel, Belgium, Netherlands, Peru.
“Three years ago he was brought in on cocaine trafficking charges. Evidence went missing, along with witnesses. He walked. Heroin is his favorite candy to shop around. A lethal batch of pills could be his next.
“I’ll pass around a file on each suspect. Learn it. This new operation is priority. We’ll be referring to it as Operation Deadly Adam.”
Ana smirked. Real original naming the operation after a street slang for Ecstasy.
“Next on the list, Raymond Brooks. Six foot, brown eyes, one-ninety. His looks are plain, ordinary—the average Joe. Never been brought in, not enough evidence to pin on him. This guy’s slick. Got a reputation for illegal gambling, rumored for drug pushing. Money is growing out of his ass, and no one knows where it’s coming from. Owns a couple of businesses, one an art gallery. Surveillance revealed interesting Israeli connections. A high indicator he could be our guy.
“Brooks is venturing out with a new club called Zero. It’s opening tonight. I’ll expect a couple of you to attend.”
“Right,” Ana said. “How do you propose a couple of
us
are going to be able to waltz into a hot new club on opening night?”
“Bribe the doorman. Don’t care, just find a way.” With no more elaboration, Sarge continued. “Brooks has a right-hand man who never leaves his side. Name’s Jonas Saven.”
Ana studied the photo. The man in the picture stood with his hands tucked into his front pants pockets. His gaze focused somewhere right of the camera, expression distant, as if he couldn’t give a rat’s ass. She pictured men following his orders
and
women falling at his feet. Lips full, with no smile; clean-shaven jaw. Rich brown hair slicked back from a strong forehead and bound at his neck. His too-gorgeous face showed only one flaw—a scar cut across his thick dark eyebrow.
Ana frowned, tucking her hair behind her ears. Was this Saven the same person Boner mentioned last night?
“The guy’s a pretty boy, brown eyes and hair. Five-eleven. One-seventy. Age twenty-seven. A reputation for having a head for business as well as an eye for the ladies. He runs Brooks’s security, his business ventures. Hires men out as bone breakers. It’s unknown how the two met, but they’ve been working together for five years.
“Our last suspect is Rico Garcia, leader of the Black Dragons gang. Got a rap sheet as long as the Constitution, from assaults to petty theft to drug trafficking. Keeps his brother, Tomas Garcia, close to his side.
“Members of the gang have never talked. Their followers are loyal and dangerous. They’re just one of the more notorious gangs in San Francisco, but the only group with recent evidence of an Israeli connection.”
The picture of Rico Garcia didn’t
say
gang member, it screamed it at the top of its lungs. He sported a black bandana tied on his head, and bore something tattooed on his neck. His lips curled as if in a permanent snarl and his head appeared shaved.
Sarge turned toward the group. “Any questions?”
“How do you expect us to find out about the deal?” Billy Donavon asked. A surprisingly logical question coming from a major jerk. Donavon, codename Jax, led the team with twenty-six arrests. Ana placed second, with twenty-two. Their competitive egos were just one of the reasons they didn’t get along.
Sarge walked around the front of his desk, crossed his hairy arms and leaned back. “The same way you always do. Study the targets, hit the streets, and ask around. Put it this way, I
require
you to do whatever it takes to crack this case. You won’t like the alternative if funding for this program is pulled.”
Skates sat up from his slouched position two seats away from Ana. The bruise on his forehead, from hitting the toilet last night, stood out like a smudge of purple paint against his pale skin.
“We could be put back in prison?” he asked.
Silence.
Ana’s stomach tightened as she held her breath, waiting with the rest of the team for the worst answer of their lives.
No one talked about the program being shut down or their own personal reasons for taking a position in SIDE. They just dealt with each day as it occurred and concentrated on keeping themselves whole while they waited for their terms to be up. Some of the team had spent time behind bars, others hadn’t, yet they all clung to the same goal of staying out of a prison cell.
The chance the U.S. government felt SIDE wasn’t worth the effort had never occurred to Ana. Although she should have expected this. She’d never been worth the effort to anyone.
Sarge grunted. “I see I have everyone’s attention now. It’s not a secret there are forces against us and if the money goes, so does everyone. We have seventy arrests to date, and it’s not enough. We need something to prove we’re making a difference. Like this X shipment.
“If you want to stay out of lockup, find the answers. Who. When. Where.” He pushed off the desk and turned to the suspects lining the corkboard. “Meet at the gym for training in thirty. Dismissed.”
Ana ran a finger over the right side of her sweatshirt as familiar resentment shoved yet another brick in the towering wall inside of her. Even through the layer of clothing, she knew the precise location of the vertical two-inch scar under her right collarbone. A two-by-two tracking device resembling a small pacemaker had been surgically implanted when she agreed to join SIDE.
The team obeyed the rules Sarge laid out, listened to each of his cold threats. He knew they did their jobs. It wasn’t like they had much of a choice. Years in a caged cell or living free in the real world. Yeah, a difficult decision.
After the stunt Narcotics had pulled during the rave op last night—the uncertainty if she and Skates would walk out of that building or be carried out in body bags—hearing the threat now of the team’s freedom being taken away was like a sucker punch in her gut.
“Wait a minute,” she called out.
Sarge’s broad shoulders rose then lowered as if taking a breath. Slowly he faced her, and Ana confronted eyes so cold she felt the frost bite straight through her bones.
“Got a problem, Switch?”
“As a matter of fact…”
“Switch,” Skates whispered a warning.
Ana ignored him. She wasn’t breaking the rules of SIDE’s contract. She’d known most of her life that if she wanted somebody to stick up for her, that person had to be herself.