LITMIR.BIZ

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He slid across the floor in time to avoid the bullets, and responded with three slugs of his own. He didn’t hit his target, but he got Smush off his back long enough to scramble for proper cover, which he found behind a stack of crates near the fire exit. He could hear Smush shuffling around in the dark . . . wounded and afraid. The hunt was on.

      Wolf spied movement on the other side of the boxes directly across from him. He could only see through the small creases between the boxes, so had it not been for the shift in the light he’d have never noticed Smush creeping. He was trying to come around the other side and get the drop on Wolf. If it was a drop he wanted, then a drop he would get.

      * * *

      Smush’s side was on fire. He was losing blood and feared that he would pass out at any moment, but the threat of going to prison for a very long time kept him conscious. He had fucked himself by trying to do side business with Archie, after his boss had already told him not to. Smush had secretly gone forward with the deal out of greed and the need to prove that he could make his own moves, and now it was costing him.

      He heard something shifting above his head and glanced up to the top tier of the shelf just in time to see something speeding his way. He barely had time to raise his arms in defense before the heavy wooden box landed on him. He knew without seeing a doctor that both of his arms were broken and he probably had a concussion. Smush wanted to just lay there and die, but the pain of someone pulling at one of his broken arms wouldn’t let him slip away.

      “As I was saying earlier,” Wolf began, while putting his spare handcuffs on Smush’s wrists, “your drug-selling ass is under arrest.”

      By the time Wolf had brought his quarry out of the storeroom, the diner was filled with police. Archie and the two goons were being led out, and from the bathroom two uniformed officers appeared holding the remaining cocaine. Wolf couldn’t believe they’d been dumb enough to have it all stashed in one spot. It was a victory for the department and everyone was smiling, except Wolf’s superior officer, Detective Sergeant Grady.

      Sergeant Tasha Grady was the subject of many whispers in the department, in and out of the locker room. She was a brown-skinned woman in her late thirties, yet with the body of a twenty-five-year-old that she didn’t mind showing off. Before joining the force she’d had a budding career as a model, but she gave it up to put her life on the line every night for the city she had been born and raised in. Being eye candy and an African American woman, Grady had to work twice as hard as anyone else to earn respect on the force, though she was more than up to the challenge. She’d started out as a uniformed beat walker on the streets of Harlem and had climbed the ladder quickly, due in part to her network of confidential informants and snitches. Grady had eyes and ears everywhere, but would never reveal the identities of the people who fed her information. None could say for sure why she guarded the list so closely, yet there was speculation. One rumor linked her romantically to a suspected assassin who went by the name Animal. Rumors and speculation aside, no one could deny that Grady was an efficient cop.

      Grady stood there, in the middle of the mess Wolf had made, wearing a tight-fitting gray skirt with a matching blazer. Her tall black heels were resting in a pool of blood, though she didn’t seem to notice. Her face was often inviting and warm, but not at that moment. Grady looked like she was about to blow a gasket. Wolf handed Smush off to one of the uniformed officers to be booked and went to take his medicine.

      “Wherever there’s a mess, there’s Lone Wolf James,” Grady addressed him by the moniker he’d earned during his years on the force for his solo tactics.

      “Good evening, Detective Sergeant Grady,” Wolf said pleasantly.

      “What’s so good about it? I’m in a shithole diner in the middle of the night, it’s raining, they’re loading a premed student who got hit by a stray bullet into an ambulance, this is going to require tons of paperwork, and I’m left to clean it all up because my lieutenant had a brunch appointment with his mistress that demanded his immediate attention. So tell me again what’s so good about this evening?” Grady replied.

      “Listen, Grady, I can explain—”

      “Save it,” she waved him silent. “I got the short version on the way over here. The plan was for you to come in and negotiate the deal while tactical teams moved into place, then leave and let them do the rest, not go John Rambo and shoot up the damn place! Jesus, Wolf, sometimes I think you’re trying to get yourself kicked off the force.”

      “All I’m trying to do is good police work,” Wolf told her.

      “Since when did making things up as you go along become good police work? It was a simple buy-and-bust and you turned it into a shoot-out,” Grady scolded him. “And speaking of buy, where’s the buy money? They said the briefcase was empty.”

      “The buy money is in the car. What, did you think I stole it?” Wolf asked sarcastically.

      “That’s not what I meant, Wolf. It’s just that everything has to be accounted for or it falls on me.”

      “Whatever you say, sergeant. The money is in the car. You’re more than welcome to count it to make sure I didn’t pinch anything off the top.”

      “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Wolf, I know you think I’m busting your balls, but I’m just trying to look out for you. With the rash of reckless police activity against the public, they’re really cracking down trying to save face. You can’t keep at this lone-wolf thing.”

      “Look, the important thing is we accomplished our goal by taking another scumbag and his drugs off the streets. That was the game plan and I got it done; I don’t see what the big deal is about how I got it done.”

      “The big deal is that you not only put your team in jeopardy by jumping the gun, you put civilians at risk!” Grady said heatedly. “How much of this cowboy shit do you think those people downtown are gonna take before they bury you in a hole somewhere and hand your mama a folded flag along with their condolences?”

      “They can do what they like, but it isn’t gonna change how I do my job. If I have to knock a few heads to get it done, then heads will be knocked. This is the fucking jungle, not the golf course. They’re playing for keeps and so am I. When the brass decides they wanna climb from behind those nice desks and get out here in the trenches, then they can tell me how to work these streets.”

      “James,” Grady called him now by his first name, “I come from the same thing you come from, so don’t try it with me. You’ve already dodged one bullet by the skin of your teeth and the next fuck-up is likely to have you out on your ass or brought up on charges. I know how hard it is trying to make a difference out here, but pissing on the rules isn’t going to help.”

      “I’m not pissing on the rules, I’m just rewriting them,” Wolf said smugly.

      Grady was about to respond when a uniformed officer walked up and whispered something in her ear. A sour expression crossed her face. “What do they want with him?” she asked, not hiding the fact that she was annoyed.

      “I don’t know, ma’am. I was just told to relay the message,” the officer answered before leaving.

      “Everything okay?” Wolf asked.

      “Why don’t you tell me? Your presence has just been requested at the scene of a homicide.”

      Wolf scoffed. “I don’t answer to homicide, I’m narcotics. So tell whatever lieutenant is requesting me that I don’t get sent for like some lackey.”

      “It wasn’t a lieutenant who sent for you. This summons came from Captain Marx directly.”

      CHAPTER 2

      It was just before dawn when the call came in. A basehead looking for a discrete spot to blast off had crept in through an open back door of the building and discovered the body. He called it in to the police, hoping to get a reward to put toward his next high, but all he got was detained for questioning. A wall of uniformed officers ringed

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