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Immigration. It’s probably Justice, and it’s probably Avery Clark. Immigration doesn’t have the pull to get in the middle of an operation like this. But Clark and the Justice Department do. God damn it. Every time we get close to inside information, he shuts us out.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Watts and I will track him down and see what we can squeeze out of him.”
    As if tuned into her fatigue and frustration, Watts picked up the ball. “We know a lot more than we did a week ago. We know the Russians are bringing young girls in through the port in containers and we know where some of them were working. What we need is to connect the Zamoras to these girls, because if we can, that’s a federal crime and they’re going down for a long long time.”
    “We need eyes and ears back in the clubs.” Rebecca straightened and looked at Mitchell. “Is your cover good?”
    “Yes ma’am,” Mitchell said. “As far as anyone knows, including Irina, I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m pretty sure she saw me get cuffed.”
    “Good. Then I want Mitch to reconnect with his drag king buddies and get back into the clubs. Jasmine too, for backup. There’ll be a lot of talk on the streets, and we’ll need our CIs working their sources hard.”
    “Oh goodie,” Jason breathed in a husky whisper that was pure Jasmine.
    “Yes ma’am,” Mitchell said stiffly. Sandy was one of Rebecca’s CIs. A friend of hers had been murdered just a few days before, when she’d gotten too close to some major players in the porn film business, and Mitchell wanted Sandy off the streets, but it wasn’t her call to make. If she pushed her, Sandy would get pissed and be less likely to tell Mitchell if she ran into trouble.
    Jason leaned forward. “Somebody has to be doing fancy work with the computers at the port to reroute the containers with the girls in them and bury the shipping manifests. I don’t see anyone down there having the know-how for that.”
    “Plus,” Sloan added, “someone injected a very smart Trojan horse into the City Hall system to hack into confidential files.”
    “What are you saying?” Rebecca asked. “There’s a high-level hacker at work for the opposite side?”
    “Undoubtedly,” Sloan said.
    “Can you find them?”
    Sloan grinned, her eyes darkening to indigo with the scent of the hunt. “Oh yeah. Now we’ve got two intrusion sites—at the port and City Hall. Even the best hacker leaves fingerprints.”
    “Do it,” Rebecca said. “Watts, I need you to pave the way at the port for our people. And check in with the organized crime team and see if they’ve got any intel on Zamora’s activities that might help us.” She took a deep breath. “Our target is the Zamoras. The feds will chase the Russians. If we happen to trip over them, all the better. But we need to clean up our own house first.”
    “The OC guys aren’t going to like us poking around on their turf,” Watts pointed out mildly.
    Rebecca shrugged. “The HPCU has cross-divisional jurisdiction. We’ll be polite, but we’ll go where the trail leads.”
    Watts chuckled again. The day just got better and better.

    *

    Michael turned the corner for home with a mental sigh of relief. She’d gotten caught up in a project meeting that afternoon and hadn’t realized how very tired she was until it was close to six. Just the short drive across town seemed endless. Her eyeballs pounded as if she hadn’t slept in weeks, when all she seemed to do was sleep. As she slowed to pull into the garage, she noted a familiar figure leaning against a lamppost a few yards ahead. Sandy looked even younger than her eighteen years in the muted glow of the streetlight. She also looked like she must be cold in her very short skirt and her thin red faux-leather jacket. Hugging herself, Sandy strolled up as soon as Michael got out of the car.
    “You can’t be waiting for a bus,” Michael said, “since none of them