LITMIR.BIZ

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then laughter rang out.

      “Tell me who I am, Risa.” His pleading voice held a quality she hadn’t heard before. “Tell me who I am ’cause I’m balancing on a thin line here, baby.”

      Risa lifted his hands off her shoulders and dropped them, his rambling discourse too strange to understand. “Go home and sober up, Luke. I’ll call everyone and cancel tonight.” She started to walk away, but his answer stopped her.

      “I can’t.”

      She turned and looked at him, raising an eyebrow. He shook his head slowly.

      “You can’t what?” she asked.

      “I can’t go home. Melinda says I’m a loser and a freak and she threw me out. I had to leave….” Looking as if he wanted to cry, he managed to choke back his tears at the very last moment.

      “God, Luke…” Risa returned to where he stood, a wave of remorse for her callous attitude sweeping over her. “Shit, man, I’m really sorry.”

      And she was. Risa knew all about families shattered by the stresses their job generated—she’d grown up in one.

      Luke lifted his gaze and their eyes met again. He seldom mentioned his wife, but Risa had suspected trouble at home for that very reason. They had one child, a little boy named Jason. Most happily married men she knew never shut up about their wives and kids.

      “I’m very sorry,” she repeated. “I had no idea things were that bad.”

      He blinked. “I didn’t, either.”

      They stood in silence beside the car, Luke in obvious misery, Risa imagining the rumors that were sure to come. As soon as they’d become partners, a betting pool had started to predict when they’d hook up. The whole thing had irritated her—especially when she’d found out Luke wasn’t bothering to deny the gossip—but over time, she’d been so grateful that he never hit on her she’d let it go. Apparently all he’d wanted were the bragging rights, so who cared? Now she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. She sighed heavily.

      “Give me the keys.” Holding out her hand, she gestured. “I’ll drive, and you can sleep in the car while I talk to Sun.”

      His expression filled with gratitude, and he started to speak, but she held up her hand and stopped him. “Don’t say anything,” she demanded gruffly. “Just get a grip, okay? I can’t do my job and yours, too.”

      He nodded and mumbled a thank-you, turning over the keys. A second later, she was behind the wheel and he was slumped over in the passenger seat. Before she could wind the big car down the ramp and out to Travis Street, he was asleep.

      She shook her head sadly. Risa had always wanted to be a cop, but the thing she hated most about the life was the way law-enforcement families suffered. Her mother had fled her cop-father before Risa had been out of diapers. The youngest in her family, and the only girl, she had three older brothers. They were all in the business, too, and between them, they had four ex-wives and one pending.

      Luke’s fate was sealed. He and Melinda would divorce, the kid would get hauled like a sack of potatoes from one house to another, then they’d each find someone else and start over, making a new spouse as miserable as the previous one. Risa flinched at her cynicism, but the truth couldn’t be denied.

      There was nothing she could do to change the situation, either. She turned her concentration to the job—where it belonged—and headed out, vowing, as she did every time she heard this story, that she’d never, ever end up with a cop herself.

      She merged onto the Southwest Freeway, quickly hitting seventy. Traffic was light for a change, but then again, it was almost two in the morning. They’d wasted time talking down in the garage. Risa frowned. She hated to be late even though the woman she was meeting probably didn’t care, unless she was charging by the hour, instead of the act. The guys made fun of Risa’s obsession with time, but she didn’t give a damn. They didn’t make fun of her collars and she was getting close to topping every one of them.

      If things went as planned tonight, Risa would be adding to that record, too. In the past six months, three hookers had turned up at Ben Taub Hospital with their faces pounded into bloody masks. Risa wanted the SOB behind the beatings so badly that she dreamed about making the arrest. After days of negotiating, she’d finally gotten one of the street hookers to agree to meet her and Luke. Sun, the friend of a friend of a friend of one of the girls who’d been injured, had sounded like a flake but who knew? Her information might help Risa find the slimeball.

      Within minutes, Risa reached the part of Richmond Street known locally as “the Strip.” For several miles on either side, bars stood next to massage parlors, which stood next to strip joints, which stood next to bars. The cycle seemed to go on forever, the signs the only thing that changed as one place went out of business and another one opened. The people who haunted the area stayed the same and so did the level of trouble they generated. When the clubs closed and the heat got to everyone, they’d take to the streets and drag race. Any sane person stayed away after eleven o’clock at night.

      Slowing the Crown Victoria, Risa eased into the right-hand lane to join the line of vehicles waiting to get into the parking lot of Tequila Jack’s. Luke was now snoring with his mouth open, his head propped up against the window.

      A space of two—maybe three—feet opened up between her bumper and the car ahead of her, and immediately the Impala behind Risa honked. She glanced into her rearview mirror. A wildly colored low-rider was sitting on her tail, the two pachucos inside laughing and passing a bottle of something between them. She closed the gap then looked back again. Catching her glare, the driver raised his bottle in her direction as if to offer her a drink, then he made a kissing motion with his lips. She held his eyes until he looked away.

      Fifteen minutes later she parked the Crown Vic, grabbed her bag and opened the car door. The air hit her like a soggy blanket, steamy and thick. She instantly broke into a sweat that dried into clamminess when she entered the air-conditioned club.

      She felt eyes following her as she headed for the bar, but she was accustomed to the sensation. All her life men had watched her enter a room. In the past, they’d done so because of how she looked; they did it now because of how she acted. Obviously they didn’t know who she was or what she did, but they knew she was someone they probably wanted to avoid. She’d worked on the attitude since she’d been a rookie and she had it down pat.

      Pushing through the crowd, she took one of the empty seats at the end of a long Formica counter, the music so loud she could hardly think, much less hear. Screaming her order for iced tea, she ignored the bartender’s arch expression. Lots of cops drank on the job, but not Risa. She did things by the book. A minute later, the aproned man came back with a glass of something amber-colored, a few listless ice cubes floating on top. The watery concoction tasted like used dishwater, but the glass was half-empty when she put it back down. In the meantime, the bar stool next to her had filled. She glanced to her right.

      The girl who’d sat down didn’t look old enough to even be in the place legally, much less be a hooker named Sun.

      “You’ll have to find another spot.” Risa turned back to her drink. “I’m saving that for a friend.”

      “I am your friend.” The teen’s voice was high and sweet with a Hispanic lilt. Risa barely caught her words over the music and the girl had to lean in closer and repeat them. A tidal wave of cheap perfume came with her as she laid her fingers on Risa’s arm. Her nails were painted with silvery polish. “It’s cool…”

      Risa looked down at the girl’s fingers. They felt bony and slight as Risa lifted them and placed them back on the bar. “I really am waiting for someone else,” she said firmly. “Why don’t you—”

      “You’re waiting for me.” She met Risa’s eyes. “You’re Risa, right? I’m Sun.”

      The image of the last beaten prostitute, Janie Seguaro, superimposed itself on the girl’s childlike features and Risa had to take a deep breath. She shouldn’t

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