Page 1 of Wicked Sin

1

Luke

Los Angeles

I like catching a new case.It means I’m going to close it. Win. It gives me a goal, a target. Something to focus on.

Unless it’s the week I’m supposed to go on vacation.

Captain Woods asks me to hang back after the morning briefing—the first sign that my vacation isn’t going to start as planned.

She pulls me into her office and closes the door. The way she takes off her suit jacket, rolls her neck, and grabs a Coke from the mini fridge under her desk all contribute to the pile of evidence that she’s working up to telling me something has come up.

And not a good case, either. Something messy, because she’s working up to it.

She wiggles the cola at me. “You want one?”

“I’m good.”

She nods.

I like the captain. She has nearly twenty-five years on the job, a lot of them when she was the only black woman in her division. Sometimes she’s a little too by-the-book, but that’s true for everyone who gets promoted up.

Not me. I’m going to be promoted out. Transferred. Any day now, which is nothing to do with her and everything to do with my urge to get my hands dirty.

“Detective Vasquez,” she begins, and I cock an eyebrow.

This is formal. I don’t like formal. “Yes, ma’am?”

“How flexible are your vacation plans?”

Completely. I wasn’t going to do much beyond hitting some clubs and blowing off some steam. Sleep in each day and go out for a late lunch. Take a long run on the beach, then rinse and repeat. Something tells me my plans are about to change. “Depends who’s asking, ma’am.”

“We’ve caught a case I think you might be interested in. The feds have requested our assistance.”

“Requested or demanded?” I reach for the file. She doesn’t hand it over right away.

“Semantics. The L.A. field office reported an anonymous tip, which they aren’t taking seriously, except…” She trails off. That’s not a good sign.

“The FBI is asking the LAPD to run down bad leads now?”

“Not the FBI.” I take the file as she sighs. “Secret Service. They want to be hands-off for political reasons. Read the file. The thing is, the timing is funny. Charges were laid this morning in D.C. Her father’s wearing an ankle monitor, her mother is cooperating and has handed over her passport.”

“Her…” I snap my gaze to the label on the file.

Dashford Reid, Taylor.

Son of a—“The Blow Job Princess?”

“Detective.”

“Come on, ifTimemagazine calls her that—”

“They didn’t.”

“I swear I saw it in a headline.”

“Drudge Report, maybe. You need to upgrade to a better caliber of news media, Vasquez.”

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