Chapter One

 

"Jesus! What an ass!"

"Calm down, Jerry," Mike said in amusement.

His partner's eye was glued to the 50 power spotter scope mounted on a small tripod as they sat in the unmarked surveillance van.

Jerry groaned. "I want that ass, man!"

He zoomed it on the redheaded girl jogging along the path. She was wearing tight fitting gray sweat pants low enough on her hips that one string of her black thong was visible curving up across a bare hip. Her baby blue tank top revealed a long expanse of creamy skin over a taut, firm belly, and her hair was in a pony tail bouncing behind her as she jogged.

"You can't have it," Mike said, examining his cell phone for messages.

"Oh shit!"

Mike rolled his eyes.

"Now she's stretching!"

Mike sat forward and picked up the binoculars, looking out the same one way glass as his partner, and blew a long, slow whistle.

"Woah."

"Those are nice lookin' titties," Jerry asked. "What do you figure, 34c?"

"C cup, but probably a thirty six."

"She don't look that big, even in that tight top."

"She's wearing a sports bra, man. They don't push em out like normal bras. They squeeze em in."

"How do you know?"

"What the fuck else would she be wearing to jog? Man, that's nice. I love the way that girl fills out a tank top."

"What I wouldn't give to fuck her," Jerry sighed.

"First, you're twice her age. Second, that is one very fit girl. So even if by some miracle she let you, she'd probably kill you."

"Yeah, but what a way to go!"

"Third, if she didn't kill you, your wife would."

"Only if she found out."

The redhead stopped stretching and started jogging again, back in their direction. They couldn't see her backside anymore, but the front side was plenty interesting too. He zeroed in on her chest, looking for a sign of the famous nipple rings.

There was a double rap at the rear doors. Mike put down the binoculars, moved over and opened it, and two men climbed inside.

"You guys are late," Mike said, checking his watch.

"Traffic."

"Bullshit, Rossi, you stopped off at the doughnut shop first. Shit man, you're just starting your shift."

"A guy needs energy," Paul Rossi said in annoyance.

"What you need is a diet. You look like a fuckin' blimp," Jerry said, reluctantly pulling his eye from the scope at last.

"Eat me, Forbes."

Dean Evans sat on the small stool and looked through the spotter scope, made a face, and adjusted the settings to back down the magnification.

"What the fuck you trying to do, count her nose hairs?" he grumbled.

"Not exactly where he had it aimed," Jerry said with a laugh.

"Oh, nice," Dean said. "This is the chick from Midtown South?"

"Yeah. McCloud. Jerry's in love with her ass."

"Can't say I blame him on that one," Dean said, turning up the magnification again. "That's some kinda ass. This might be called entrapment."

"I don't see a lawyer trying to make that case in court."

"Okay, you guys get the fuck out of here. I'm getting claustrophobia," Paulo said.

"That's because you fill up the van all by yourself," Jerry said.

"Fuck you twice, Evans."

The two outgoing cops grabbed their things and headed for the rear door.

"She's coming over here," Dean said. "Is she ending her shift now too? I hope not. We got no one in the precinct that is gonna attract perverts like this girl."

"She just started, and we already grabbed up a guy for sexual touching and another for harassment. We got her for half the shift, then she goes back to Midtown South."

"Good news. Not many out jogging by then anyway."

Jerry and Mike climbed out of the back of the van, and then a moment later Dean and Paulo climbed down, too, Paulo with some difficulty, cursing mildly. They all turned and straightened their shoulders as the redhead jogged up, not evidently winded or out of breath.

"Hey," she said by way of greeting."

"Jamie, this is Paulo Rossi and Dean Evans. They're taking over. We're going off-shift."

Paulo thrust his hand forward eagerly and she took it and shook it in a perfunctory manner. Dean did the same, trying to be cool about it, and trying very hard to keep his eyes above her shoulders.

Not that there wasn't a very nice view there. She was a pretty girl, with bright green eyes. Her hair was loosely tied behind her in a pony tail, but loose strands spilled across her forehead.

"Yer underwear is showing, you know," Jerry said with a grin.

She didn't look down, just raised her eyebrow.

"I'm trying to attract perves, right? So I'm sweetening the bait."

"Uh, good idea," Dean said.

His eyes flicked down but hurriedly back up.

"Probably unnecessary," Mike said with a faint smile.

She shrugged. "Can't hurt. Two would be too obvious. One is maybe a mistake."

"Right."

"You want me to keep jogging here? I'd at least like to get some exercise in.

"What'd you have in mind? Dean asked.

"Just do the full circuit of the running track, all the way around the reservoir."

"We'd have to move the van," Paulo said.

She looked at him and her eyes widened slightly.

He flushed.

"What I mean is, people might wonder why we was driving along the bridle path."

"Maybe, but lots of park vehicles need to use it to get somewhere."

"We can follow you," Dean said.

She nodded.

"I think this area is too open. We want something with a little more in the way of bushes trees to make them feel brave."

"As long as we can see you," Dean said. "But don't go too far for us to reach you quickly if you need help."

She nodded and turned her back on them, walking back to the path.

All four dropped their eyes on her ass, and licked their lips, either mentally or literally, or both. Then she started jogging away.

"Man, what an ass," Dean said.

"You seen those pictures of her in a thong bikini?"

"What the fuck?!" Paulo demanded. "You're shitting me."

"Nuh huh. She was doing an undercover job as a fashion model and someone got some pictures of her from the shoot."

"I got to see these!"

"Love to see that ass with nothing on at all," Mike said.

"You and me and every male in New York," Jerry replied.

Rossie and Evans got back into the van while the other two headed off to where the car had been left to head home. Evens started the van and Paulo took his place at the spotter scope as the redheaded girl started jogging.

The van lurched forward, following. The bridle path, like the runners track, circled the reservoir, but few dozen yards further out.

***

Jamie picked up the pace now that she wasn't limited to a slow circuit. She wore what looked like an iPod on her arm, with thin white wires leading to the earphones in her ears. It was actually a radio with a microphone sensitive enough to pick up her words if she spoke them softly.

"You hear me, Jamie?" she heard.

"Yep," she said.

"Just testing the equipment."

She didn't reply. She knew the routine by now. She'd been making trips to the park off and on for several days now, recruited for a series of bait jobs after female joggers had been groped in Central Park.

The Reservoir was over a hundred acres in size, with a billion gallons of water in it. It was no longer used as a reservoir out of fears some crazy terrorist might poison it. Now it was just a great backdrop for pictures and for the running track that ran around it, in the middle of Central Park.

She had to carry her Glock in a fanny pack, strategically placed near her right hip. She wasn't expecting to use it anyway. You rarely needed to confront gropers at gunpoint. Besides, she was six feet tall and had a black belt in Jiu-jitsu. She rarely had trouble making arrests, even without backup.

If she had her way every cop would have to have a black belt. She thought the lack of training cops got in hand to hand combat or even in how to disarm someone with a weapon was ridiculous. The NYPDs position was if someone had a weapon you should take out your firearm and shoot them if they wouldn't drop it. Jamie preferred to have more options.

She kept an eye on the van out of her peripheral vision, catching glimpses of it through the greenery as it followed her.

She didn't really put much effort into what the cops watching her might be thinking. At twenty two she had a fairly good grasp by now of how men's minds worked, and given what she was wearing, she really didn't need to make a lot of guesses.

That sort of thing might have embarrassed her or made her feel self-conscious a few months ago, but she'd had a lot of pretty wild experiences since then which had radically altered her view of herself and her sexuality. Not to mention the need to disguise the latter, or at least, pretend she didn't realize what she looked like and what people were thinking when they looked at her.

Eye candy was perhaps the nicest of the terms she'd heard. And that was when she was dressed normally. Maybe she was just sweeter eye candy in the tight jogging outfit with her thong strap showing.

But she didn't mind. Let them look. She actually had to work at keeping her sense of ego down nowadays, at reminding herself she was no damn princess, even if men kept treating her like one.

Well, except her boyfriend Danny, who treated her like his sex slave, and who had done a creditable job in removing most, if not quite all of her inhibitions about sex, sexuality, and her naked body. And if her family had even the slightest idea of the kinds of things he'd done to her, or persuaded her to do, he'd be found floating in the Hudson.

With certain valuable pieces missing.

They were headed into the main time period for after-work joggers now, but there weren't yet many of them on the track. She kept her situational awareness careful, not letting her mind drift too far into other things that she didn't notice who was around her.

She noticed the guy leaning against a bench as she jogged past, and she noticed when he stopped leaning and followed her. That could just be coincidence, or it could be he wanted to jog behind her and study her ass (which had happened many times), or he could have more in mind.

She wasn't jogging particularly fast - perverts were not noted for the discipline to establish a strong physical fitness regimen - and he quickly drew alongside her. He turned and looked at her as he ran alongside, his eyes looking down at her breasts, then up at her face, then down at her breasts again.

He wasn't salivating at her, though. He was glaring at her angrily, indignantly, his face looking outraged. Then he began to talk to her in a low voice, using an extremely hostile tone. It wasn't English, though, and she had to guess at what he was saying.

From his tone of voice it wasn't flattering. She stopped running.

He ran on a few steps then stopped and came back at her, gesticulating as he pointed at her, as he yelled at her - all in whatever language he called his own. She could see the two cops trotting across the lawn out of the corner of her eye but wasn't at all sure any law had been broken.

"Go the fuck away," she said, wanting that on the record.

Then she turned to jog in the other direction. She wanted him to demonstrate persistence, because that changed the charges, assuming there were any. There were various charges for harassment, from violations to misdemeanors to felonies, and this guy was seriously annoying her.

As she'd expected he would, he jogged after her, gesticulating and angry. She gave him an insolent look and then her middle finger.

That drew exactly the response she was hoping. He grabbed her arm to stop her and swing her around, shouting in her face. She brought her knee up between his legs and followed almost instantly with the heel of her palm into his diaphragm. He fell backwards, trying very hard to breath, but without much success.

Rossie and Evans hurried up just then, falling on him as he struggled to breathe. Jamie propped herself against the cast iron fence and watched, letting them roll around with him. Though since he looked Arab and she suspected his issue was her brazen sluttishness in displaying her body she was sorely tempted to jump down there and rub her breasts against him.

She resisted the temptation.

By the time a patrol car had arrived he was able to breathe sufficiently to get to his feet, angrily telling the cops he hadn't done anything at all, and that he'd simply been walking around minding his own business when 'the prostitute' had propositioned him.

"Well that was a nice break and all," Evans said as he was driven away, "but not really the fish we're aiming to catch."

"Still worth removing him from the pool," she said. "I'll just continue on with my jog, if you don't mind."

"Sure."

She headed off and they went back to their van and followed. She moved about halfway around to the other side of the running track when a black teenager ran up behind her and grabbed her ass in a very firm, full squeeze, then laughed and dodged past her, crossing the greenery to the Bridle Path and running past the van parked there.

Until the door opened and Evans jumped on him.

They had enough time, after he was driven off, for her to resume her jogging. About a quarter mile further along, another black kid ran up behind her. This one swept his arms around her, roughly groping her breasts and swinging her around to throw her off to the side, probably so he could make his break.

She had hold of his right wrist, though, and when he tried to pull away she twisted sharply enough that he wound up screaming in pain and doing a sideways flip to land on his belly on the ground.

"Police, you little asshole," she snapped.

"Man, they're biting hot and heavy this evening," Rossie said, breathing heavily as he hurried up.

"This bitch attacked me!" the teenager cried as they began to pat him down.

"Not yet, but don't tempt me," she growled.

Dean led him off to the van and Rossie shook his head.

"Too fuckin' close to Harlem for babes like you to be running around, McCloud."

"I'll run around like this on Lenox Avenue and shoot every motherfucker who objects," she said, glaring at him.

He put his hands up in surrender. "Don't get mad at me. Just stating the obvious."

She sighed. She understood him, but didn't like listening to it.

And it raised all sorts of conflicting thoughts in her head, pitting the old her, who was indignant whenever anyone disrespected her and treated her like a sexual object, against the new her. That was the monster slut Dannie had created, who loved showing off and being seen as hot and sexy.

She had always gotten a certain amount of harassment as she walked on the streets of New York. Particularly in Manhattan. There was something about the size and crowds that lent men a sense of anonymity to behave however they liked - as long as they didn't break any laws.

She, and virtually every young woman she knew had gotten rude stares, catcalls, whistles, and obscene comments beginning when they were teenagers. That had been something she'd had to deal with when her job had become one of basically walking around downtown Manhattan.

It had gotten worse, though, as her clothing choices had become less conservative. Men's eyes were, predictably, drawn to form fitting clothes, and shades and colors that accentuated her figure. It wasn't that she was dressing slutty by any means - at least, not while on duty. But she was putting very little effort into appearing asexual, which she'd once focused on.

And of course, off-duty, her clothes were even more eye-catching. Not that she dressed slutty in her off duty hours either. Except when she was with Danny. But even so, the cat-calls and invitations and come-ons and leers and jeers and obscene comments were more common now.

And yet she liked being noticed and thought of as hot! She enjoyed it when men looked up as she walked by or entered a room! She never used to, but now she did. As long as they weren't rude about their... approval. And that was usually the case. And when it wasn't, well, she could deal with that.

She continued jogging. The numbers were picking up now that most people were getting out of work. She was propositioned several times by male joggers, but they were polite about it and took a polite 'no' for an answer easily enough.

A couple of others were less polite, but more cocky than threatening, basically flattering her body as if she'd appreciate that. She kind of did but kind of didn't appreciate the disrespect.

She passed a group of Hispanic teenagers sitting on a bench and her alertness tweaked up when they all started to jog down the path after her.

She wasn't the least bit surprised that most of those she had trouble with were non-white. The NYPDs crime stats said that whites were a suspect in about 10%-12% of sex crimes. The rest were mostly Black and Hispanic. That was roughly true of other crimes, too but these ones weren't driven so much by economics as by, she thought, the rather greater degree of arrogant, macho culture of the Black and Hispanic communities.

"What do you want to do?" she heard one say in Spanish.

"We could just yank her pants down and grab her," another said.

"I wanna grab her tits!" another one said enthusiastically.

"You wanna do a strip?" another voice asked.

"Too many people around for that, man."

That perked her up considerably. There had been a problem in the late evenings both here and in the Bronx with a small group of males in their late teens and early twenties (according to witnesses) getting their jollies by literally stripping women naked in the parks, groping them and then running off gleefully - with the woman or girl's clothes along with any other items of value like iPods and cell phones.

The attacks never lasted more than a minute, and usually less than that, but they'd certainly been terrifying and humiliating for the victims. If these were the guys she would love to take them off the streets.

"I'd like to put it to her," another voice said. "I never done no redhead."

"Too many people," another replied.

Jamie saw a bushy area ahead, with a lot of trees. There were a lot of joggers on the path right now. They were right about that. But if she moved off into that bushy area - towards the bridle path - they'd have more cover. Maybe they'd even try to do a 'strip'. And if that was what she thought it was she'd have four felony arrests and make a lot of women happy.

She turned off the paved path and onto the grass, and slowed, acting as if she was winded, then headed into the trees.

She couldn't hear them as clearly because they'd dropped back, possibly so as to not spook her. She turned her head a little to the left and a little to the right, her peripheral vision skimming as far around as she could.

"Jamie? What are you doing?" she heard Rossi ask.

"Reeling in fish," she said softly.

She sensed the quick movement before she heard it and dodged to the side as one of them ran forward to grab her. He couldn't adjust fast enough, overbalanced while trying to stop, and fell. Another one grabbed her from behind, his arms around her, his hands on her breasts. He was laughing, while another grabbed at her legs.

She didn't put up as much of a fight as she could have.

Proving what people intended to do in the face of their earnest denials was a lot harder than proving what they had done. So she was prepared to accept a certain amount of indignities, like one of them yanking her jogging pants down.

The fourth one grabbed the bottom of her tank top and tried to yank it up, but the other guy's hands were on her breasts. She let the guy at her pants yank them off to free her legs up, then kicked him in the face - hard. She brought her heel back and slammed it into the knee of the guy behind her, who howled in a shrill voice and let go of her breasts, then she brought the same leg forward, slamming her knee into the crotch of the guy grabbing her tank top.

The guy she'd kicked in the face got up, his mouth bleeding, fury in his eyes, but he ran right into Rossi's bulk. Then the fourth guy threw a punch she managed to get an arm block up in front of. It hurt, though, and when he turned to run she ran after him - not far, leaping up onto his back and letting her weight swing him around and down so she landed atop him.

A quick punch to the throat took much of the fight out of him as his hand grabbed at his throat. She slammed her knee into his crotch a couple of times, then shifted to the side grabbed his leg and rolled him. She had to punch him in the ribs to get his right arm back so she could cuff it, then did the same to his left.

Rossi and Dean had two of the others. The third, the one she'd kicked in the knee, had snuck off somewhere. But probably not very far. And they'd called for backup.

"Uhm, here," Dean said, uncomfortably.

He held her jogging pants in his hand while he ostentatiously tried to not look at her below the waist. Jamie thought that was cute. She took them and patted his cheek, then casually slipped them on.

She'd stripped in clubs on amateur night. She sure wasn't embarrassed about a few people seeing her in a thong.

"We're real sorry we didn't get here sooner, Jamie," he said anxiously.

"No worries. I've worn less to the beach," she said. "Besides, I'm not unhappy. I heard them talking about they wanted to do and I figured this might be the group stripping women. I wanted to give them a chance to prove it."

"You speak Spanish?" he asked in surprise.

She nodded. Nobody seemed to expect someone who looked like her to speak anything but English - and maybe Gaelic.

It was near enough end of her borrowed time here in Central Park, and they had enough paperwork to do with the three she'd just arrested, and the two others from earlier to head back to the station. Central Park station, that was.