Chapter One

 

Manhattan's First Precinct encompassed an area from the southern tip of Manhattan north to Canal Street, bounded on the west by Pearl Street, and on the east by the Hudson River. It's a measly one square mile, but contains some of the most expensive real estate in the world. It's the home of Tribeca, Battery Park, the financial district, and Soho, and of course, the World Trade Center complex.

For all its small size it wasn't the easiest area to police. It had a huge transient population, that is, people who came in during the day, then left, was a 'target rich environment' for terrorists and thieves, and was just a short subway ride from Brooklyn, which had more street gangs than anywhere else in New York.

Thus it was rich hunting grounds, where it wasn't unusual to find women wearing diamond and emerald necklaces and men wearing ten thousand dollar gold watches as casually as the gang members displayed their Air Jordans.

The job of separating these two groups hadn't gotten any easier with a liberal at city hall who loudly decried profiling. Just because there was a black teenager with his pants half falling off his ass, wearing gang colors and looking furtively around at all the richly dressed Caucasians in their business suits and dresses in the Financial District was no reason to suspect that he was out of place and deserved to be stopped and asked his business, according to the mayor.

That left people like Jamie watching them instead, watching them watch others, waiting for them to do the inevitable. Predators hunted prey, and there was no question which was which. Of course, Jamie was a predator too. She simply had different prey.

She was temporarily attached to the anti-crime unit of the First precinct. Anti-crime's job was to work in plainclothes and watch for crime being done in specific targeted zones - or to watch known repeat criminals, or to work with the detective squad in other surveillance jobs.

It was not undercover work, exactly. They simply walked around in street clothes, or drove around in unmarked cars, keeping an eye on things. The uniformed patrols did the same, but then, the criminals watched for them, and were very unlikely to mug someone when a cop in uniform was standing across the street.

For her own crimes, that being she was both young, agile, long-legged, and looked the part, Jamie had often been given the job of walking around higher crime areas. Not only did she blend in well, but she was an excellent runner. So were her prey. They hadn't had the same training from Coach Saunders at Roy Thompson High school, when she was on the track team, though, or from Coach Milinski at St. John's University.

Having long, nicely muscled legs was important. Having breath, was just as important. You needed proper running technique, and you needed to learn how to breathe deep, through your diaphragm, to get more air into your body. That also meant core exercises to strengthen your middle.

Most of the people Jamie chased were young Hispanic and African American men, few of whom had such training. Which meant they were very fast, but had little endurance. That was helpful in several ways, primarily in catching them, of course, but also in arresting them once they were caught, once they were so out of breath their ability to resist was often minimal.

Walking around lower Manhattan was not the most exciting job in the world, but at least it beat sitting in a car watching someone's door for eight hours. And it got her lots of exercise, even if she didn't chase down anyone at all.

Of course, terrorists and petty thieves weren't her only concern. There was the usual assortment of traffic accidents, drunken assaults (though not many in the daytime) crazy street people, perverts and drugs (though usually the dealers were a higher caliber of people here).

Jamie's day began by taking the subway across the East River. Several trains crossed from the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood to lower Manhattan so the commute was usually fairly quick and painless, though she often had to stand most of the way.

The train was crowded that morning, it was rush hour, and she stood up, feet casually braced apart, holding onto a bar. It was going to be a warm day but it wasn't yet and she had a jacket on because it made it easier for her to hide her gun, which sat just behind her left hip.

Her badge, however, hung from a lanyard around her neck, and by habit - she wasn't supposed to be obviously a cop, she usually wore it under her sweater, shirt, sweatshirt or jersey. Since her left arm was raised, though, it had pulled her jacket aside and allowed the closest seated passenger to see her Glock.

That wasn't something she immediately noticed as she looked lazily out the window at the concrete walls, pipes, and wiring they passed. But she had very good ears, and she picked out the word 'gun' from a nearly whispered conversation and turned her eyes down to see a wide-eyed middle aged woman on her cell phone.

The woman saw her looking and suddenly looked frightened and Jamie gave her a quizzical look, then realized she must have seen the gun. In other parts of America, even other parts of New York State, a number of people carried concealed and a lot of people were familiar with firearms. New York was different.

It was almost impossible to get a concealed carry permit in New York City, nor did it honor such permits issued by anyone else, including the state of New York. Penalties for violating the law were severe. Even buying a hand gun, while possible, took determination and a year or so of wading through the bureaucracy.

Jamie blinked and then reached into the top of her sweatshirt, tugging on the lanyard and pulling her badge out to let it dangle there. The woman's eyes flicked to it and then to Jamie, who raised her eyebrows. The woman smiled, looking embarrassed, and Jamie heard the word "badge" whispered into her phone.

Hopefully, if she'd been calling 911, they wouldn't be sending uniforms to drag her off the train. Some of the ones Jamie had encountered were a bit more excitable than she preferred, and she had little desire to be face down on the platform until they assured themselves she wasn't a threat.

She made it to work without being frisked, and went downstairs to her locker to change.

Battery Park was on the southern tip of lower Manhattan, and very popular with tourists and residents alike. Her native efficiency liked the idea of getting in her exercise (two birds with one stone) while on the job, so she changed into jogging gear.

She had also reluctantly concluded that wearing something cute and sexy would not only allow her to watch for the usual assortment of thieves and troublemakers, but serve double duty by acting as a lure for perverts.

So instead of jeans and a baseball jersey she had on a pair of stretchy gray yoga pants which sat low on her hips, and a tight, midriff baring tank top with a track suit hoody over it. She couldn't hide anything in an outfit like that, but she could wear a fanny pack with her gun, cuffs and pepper spray inside it. Her radio was a miniature, disguised as an IPod.

She was aware she was getting looks as she walked back upstairs and headed into Anti-crime, but she had been getting those looks since she'd hit adolescence and more or less ignored them. She reached her desk and Sergeant Lynch, her new supervisor, looked her up and down.

"You're not going to the Y, McCloud," he said.

"Lots of joggers in Battery Park, Sergeant," she said.

He shrugged and nodded.

"Maybe some perverts, too."

"In New York? Not possible," he said, making a face. "But speaking of perverts, Baxter wants to see you before you go," he said.

"What? Who?"

"Detective squad."

She shrugged. She didn't know many of the cops who worked out of the First. She'd only been here a week. She'd been temporarily transferred from Midtown North because some Muslim crazies had declared her a target after she'd shot down a 'lone wolf' Omar Mohamed, aka Leon Smith, when he'd been about his holy task of trying to murder several uniformed cops sitting in a diner.

Omar hadn't recognized the cops sitting at another table as cops since they hadn't been in uniform, allowing her to get the drop on him and send him off to his putative reward of multiple virgins in heaven. A week later another reward seeker had tried to ambush her while leaving the precinct station, but her boyfriend Danny Lucas had spotted him and killed him first.

That made her justly grateful to Danny, but she was also justly pissed off at him at the moment. He was an incredibly arrogant, pushy, bossy, 'dominating' guy, at least in bed. She'd gone along with his dominance and submission games to a far greater degree than she would have ever expected because he and his games left her breathless and her body flaming hot to the point of melting.

It wasn't just his incredible body, either. Though she was willing to agree that it was pretty damned hot all by itself. His sexual games outraged her, but outraged her in a scalding hot way which left her instinct to tell him to drop dead overridden by desire and a dark sexual voice in her head which said "why not try it!?".

It was the thrill of the forbidden, dark, daring, kinky sex unlike anything she'd ever experienced or even imagined before. And Danny Lucas knew how to use his body and how to play hers. He was, for one thing, by far the most skilled at oral sex of any man she'd ever encountered.

He was also obsessed with giving her sexual pleasure - which she couldn't exactly fault. Most women were delighted to find a man who managed to hold off long enough for their girlfriend to orgasm first. Finding one who wanted her to orgasm at least a half dozen times was stunning.

Finding one able to do it was even more of a shock.

So she was willing to cut him an awful lot of slack for his dark, kinky games. He was also older than her by almost a decade, and much more sexually sophisticated. He was a federal agent, and with his skills and body, one of the few men who met her requirement that her boyfriend not be someone she could easily beat up.

But every time she thought she'd done the kinkiest, nastiest, most shockingly, wickedly HOT thing he led her deeper into the abyss. He kept pushing her limits, and in doing so those limits were expanding.

The burnt hand taught best, as they say. Your mind and body both quickly learned to shy away from things which caused pain. But the opposite was true, as well.

Every time he started to tie her up now she got hot. The tighter he bound her the hotter she got - even before he'd done anything else! Her body had learned, like Pavlov's dog, who salivated at the sound of a bell, knowing dinner was coming.

Only her body knew orgasms were coming, powerful, incredibly intense and extended orgasms!

But he'd really outdone himself in pushing her limits a few days ago, and she was still angry over it - even if she had had incredible orgasms!