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the procedure until we connect.”
    Jesse powered down the phone, flipped it closed, then slipped it into the right front jeans pocket. “If you don’t hear from me, that means I couldn’t get anything, and had to disappear.”
    She saw the alternative in his expression; or I’m dead .
    “Am I to disavow any knowledge of your actions?” he asked, and she knew he wanted to voice what had been left unsaid between them far too long.
    “After all I’ve gone through, if my efforts go to waste, I’ll likely return from the dead and haunt you.”
    “There are worse fates,” he replied softly.
    She rose and flashed an affectionate smile. “I know the perfect girl for you.”
    He stood and waved off her suggestion. “I don’t need a matchmaker.”
    But he did. At six-foot one, one-ninety, with a strong jaw and kissable lips, he would please any woman. Having skipped childhood and adolescence, he’d gone straight into OIA and missed all those boy-girl things that turned into men-women things. He needed a matchmaker more than anyone else she knew.
    “Keep telling yourself that,” she teased.
    He chuckled and drew her into his arms. “Maybe after I finish my thirty years.”
    Jesse returned his hug and planted a kiss on his mouth. “When this is all over, we’re taking a long vacation in Hawaii.”
    He squeezed and released her. “Good luck. You’ll need it.”
    She smiled as she stepped back, then headed for the door. He was right. She needed more luck than any person had a right to expect. Her father used to say there was no such thing as luck. Grit got a person through.
    The sweet smile Amanda reserved for those she loved once again flashed before Jesse’s mental vision. She had to expose Lanton and clear her name. For her sister and for the father who never asked, but depended on Jesse to take care of her sister when he knew he wouldn’t be around to watch out after his two daughters, for Green Team, for Martinez, and for Maria.
     
     

Chapter Seven
    Night always came slow in the city. After leaving the club, Jesse had taken four cabs and two subway rides in a grand circle through Manhattan, and now strode uptown on Seventh Avenue toward her hotel. A shadow flitted across the mouth of an alleyway on her right as if the night hid some creature in the rat-infested darkness. A woman’s cry erupted from the alleyway.
    Straight on. Leave town. Get to Amanda. This isn’t your business. Despite the admonition, she slowed and scanned the littered street. Empty. Sunday night on New York’s midtown west side turned into a ghost town. She loved that about this part of the city—until now.
    “Where’s a cop when you need one?” she growled.
    In a better part of town , her mind responded.
    “Let go!” The woman’s cry reverberated between brick buildings lining the alley.
    Jesse turned and headed back. She paused at the corner of the building and peered into the alley as she fished a hair-tie from her jeans pocket. Always be prepared was the Girl Scouts motto. Or was that the Boy Scouts? She pulled her hair back in a ponytail, her gaze locking onto several large figures headed deeper into the murky depths located among the dumpsters. One man half dragged, half carried a thin, struggling form into the shadows.
    Jesse slipped off her gold bracelet, stuffed it into her pocket, and unsnapped the front catch on her Oscar d’Larenta bra. She never wore such items while on assignment. An assailant could grab the front of a bra or snag a bracelet and pin her in a flash. She yanked the bra straps down her bare arms, glad now for the heat wave that had prompted her to wear a tank top, and dropped the bra on the ground. She glanced heavenward. The half moon hung too low in the sky to be of any help once the men got much father into the alley. Jesse sighed and stepped away from the building.
    “Hey!” she shouted.
    The men whirled in unison like predators on a hunt. One man had an arm clinched around the woman’s