Relentless. Jo Leigh

on concrete blocks. He’d gotten the mattress at Goodwill. His phone, like everybody else’s in the team, was prepaid—virtually untraceable. He’d never turned on the gas, doing all his cooking on a camp stove—on his plywood table. The couch had come with the room.

      Everything went into equipment and the needs of the team.

      He picked up his cell and dialed Seth’s. He knew the number by heart, just as he knew everyone else’s. No little scraps of paper lying about to get found later.

      “Hello?”

      “Seth. It’s Nate.”

      “Something new?”

      “Kate’s in trouble.”

      Nate could hear movement on the phone.

      “Shit. Where is she? I could be there in…”

      “Not that kind of trouble. She ran into a situation. She’s got to relocate.”

      “A-a-ah. Okay. The usual? Driver’s license, birth certificate…”

      “Yeah. Pretty quick, too. And how are you fixed for cash?”

      Seth let loose a strangled laugh. “I gave the last of it to you for that surveillance equipment. Maybe in a week.”

      Nate sighed. “Don’t sweat it. Just get to work on her new ID, would you?”

      “Sure thing. And Nate?”

      “Yeah?”

      “Get some sleep.”

      “WHAT THE FUCK were you thinking?”

      Vince looked at Captain Emerson’s red face, and he knew he wasn’t gonna walk out of this smelling like a rose. “He accused Tim of being in bed with drug dealers.”

      “So what?”

      “It wasn’t true.”

      “Since when is that something new? He’s not just putting the assault in the paper, he’s putting it on Channel 5.”

      “How much does he want?”

      “He says he wants twenty-million. What he really wants is your badge.”

      Vince sat back in the wooden chair across from Emerson’s desk. He’d been in here a lot during his years on the force. Mostly to get chewed out. He didn’t blame the Captain for that. He had a department to run. He had people to answer to. The Captain understood, most of the time. He knew Vince did the job.

      Most cops who got involved with investigating gangs didn’t last a year. They’d transfer to anything else they could, knowing it was the most dangerous of all the details. Hell, he knew guys who would quit rather than do one day on the streets. And Vince had stuck with it for three years already. “You gonna give it to him?”

      The Captain, looking a lot older today than he had yesterday, wiped his face with the flat of his hand. “I gotta suspend you. You know that, right? I can’t just give you a slap on the wrist this time. Goddammit, Vince. You had to hit him in the face?”

      “Yeah, Captain. I did.”

      “Shit, I suppose so. I’ll do what I can to soothe some feathers, but it’s not gonna be quick. Maybe the time off will do you good.”

      Vince leaned forward. “They killed Tim. I’m not gonna let that go.”

      “You have no choice.”

      He opened his mouth, then shut it before he got in deeper. Instead, he got out his badge and his weapon and put them on the desk. “Call me when I can come back.”

      The Captain looked at him for a long moment. “Don’t do anything stupid. Well, stupider. This may not be up to me. You got it?”

      Vince nodded as he stood, grateful it was only a suspension. “Thanks.”

      “Idiot.”

      “Nothing new there.”

      The Captain let him go. “Get out of town. Go get drunk. Get laid. Relax.”

      “I’ll do my best.”

      Emerson was already on the phone when Vince got to the door. The Captain had the press to deal with, and the city council and the mayor. It was all part of a thankless job, and keeping Vince’s badge was way, way down there in terms of importance. But that didn’t change things.

      There was no way in hell he was going to let this thing go. He had Kate Rydell’s address in his pocket. He’d find her, question her about what she saw, get her to testify if necessary. If it got him fired, oh, well. It was time for him to leave the job, anyway. He didn’t have the heart for it anymore.

      He walked into the squad room and to his desk. He unlocked the bottom drawer and reached far into the back, where he pulled out a black leather case. He didn’t open it until he was outside.

      Once he got in his car, he took out a badge. He wasn’t supposed to have it, let alone use it. But it went into his pocket, and the gun under his seat went into his holster. Screw it.

      THE KOSOVO PAPERS on her desk beckoned, but the want ads were more important, at least for the moment. She had two sections, one for jobs and one for furnished apartments. With red pen in hand, she started with the jobs.

      The primary criterion was the invisibility factor. Room service had been great for that. She’d also been a waitress, a housekeeper and worked at a copy store. Since she’d returned from Kosovo, the one time she’d tried to do anything close to her qualifications, she’d been forced to quit, leaving the R & D company in a real bind. She wouldn’t do that again.

      It had only been a few months since she’d seen the depths to which Omicron would go to stop her and her friends. They’d terrorized Christie, an innocent woman whose only crime was being Nate’s sister. It had come to a bloody end, and if things hadn’t worked out, they could have all been killed.

      Despite everything she’d seen, it was still hard for her to grasp that it was the U.S. government after them. The public didn’t know about this side of their government, and wouldn’t, unless she and the others could put together enough hard evidence to prove what they knew beyond doubt was true.

      If it had just been Omicron, it would have been easier, but someone—someone very powerful—was making sure the group was funded. It wasn’t enough to lay out the paper trail of deceit and murder. Kate and her friends had to dig deep into the black heart of the organization and find out who was pulling the strings.

      One thing at a time. She had to get a job. She needed a place to live. But first, she needed her new name, a new ID, a new license plate for her car.

      Nate was handling that. Right now she had to find the job and the apartment. And she had to figure out how to do it damn fast, because her money situation was more dire than she’d imagined.

      If only she could use her savings. She had over sixty-thousand dollars in a bank account in Washington, D.C., but she couldn’t touch it. Well, maybe she didn’t have it anymore—now that her family thought she was dead.

      So, she had seventy-four dollars to her name. That was it. And one night in this motel was going to eat up half of that. How was she going to get an apartment with no security or first month’s rent? Which meant she was probably going to end up sleeping in her car for a while.

      She felt vulnerable enough behind locked doors, but to be on the street? In a rusty old heap of a car? She thought about asking Nate or Harper to take her in, but that could put them in danger, what with the police likely searching for her. There had to be a way to get her check from the hotel. She didn’t want any favors, just what she was owed.

      She put her pen down and picked up her cell. There was no way she could go get the check herself. Perhaps there was something she could do.

      She had Ellen’s number listed in her phone. Kate had taken the housekeeper to work a few times when