Chapter One

 

Kenzie pointed her Glock at the bird and glared down the barrel. The bird was on her window sill, thirty-seven floors up. It was tapping at the glass, blissfully unaware of the possibility of impending death. Kenzie had never liked birds, nor, for that matter, cats, dogs or any other species, though she had a soft spot for tigers.

She wanted to kill the bird. It was irritating her. The problem was she'd have to replace the window, which would take an annoying amount of time and attention. She'd have to break out more of the glass to hide the bullet hole to avoid questions. She'd have to deal with people she didn't want to deal with and it would all be dreary and annoying.

She considered all this in a brief second as she stared at the bird, then put the gun back on the bedside table.

She very much wanted to kill the pigeon. This was the third morning in a row it had been tapping on her window, and it seemed to be in the process of building a nest. She was simply not going to stand for that. Turning the other cheek was not a character trait anyone would ever ascribe to her. Not even with pigeons.

But shooting it through the window was going to cause her too much future annoyance. She was not the type of person to do things thoughtlessly and cause herself future grief. She was not the person to do anything thoughtlessly. Kenzie considered everything first.

Naked, she padded across the hardwood floor to the bathroom.

The bathroom was done in black and white. The floor was white marble. The ten foot long counter was black granite, and the mirror ran its full length and rose almost to the ceiling. The white cabinet literally glistened. The wall behind it was textured black stone. The white bathtub to the right was topped by the same granite as the counter. The shower cabinet to the left was smooth glass from floor to ceiling, the wall black.

Warm and cozy it was not. But then, Kenzie was not a warm and cozy person.

There were few bathrooms with digital clocks on the wall. Hers was one. Punctuality was her watchword. She glanced at the clock then pressed the button to start the shower. The water took seconds to reach its programmed temperature, and she stepped in.

Eight minutes later she stepped out, toweled herself off, then brushed and dried her hair before leaving the bathroom. Her clothes were laid out neatly on the otherwise spotless dresser, black G-string on top, followed by black bra, black socks, black jeans, and gray turtleneck.

There was a digital clock on the wall and she glanced at it, then clipped her holster onto the left rear of her belt, thrust the Glock into it, and turned and stepped into the walk-in closet. She took a black blazer off a hangar, slipping it on before heading to the front door. There she sat on a black buttoned leather stool while she slipped on her black leather sneakers.

She set the alarm and stepped through the door, then turned and locked it with the high-security key, turned and strode to the elevator.

Kenzie lived on the thirty-seventh floor of a luxury condo in south Manhattan. She had 'found' the money for it in various places on the internet, and taken it from people and groups she thought were unlikely to miss it much. The money had been funneled into numbered accounts, used to buy bitcoins, which had then been resold and the money put in other numbered accounts before being used to buy the condo.

Kenzie had no real sense of morality, as such. She had neither guilt nor empathy.

She had, however, tried to learn, at least insofar as it would allow her to fit into society.

Not that she particularly liked people any more than she did cats, dogs and pigeons, but there were a lot of them and they were hard to avoid unless she spent all instead of just most of her time online.

She stood ramrod straight in the elevator as it slid smoothly downstairs. Others got in but she ignored them. She had no desire to make the acquaintance of anyone she lived around and who might then consider that they had the right to strike up conversations with her in future.

Most people were idiots and she had little time for them.

Men especially.

She strode across the marble floor under glistering chandeliers, ignoring the man behind the desk. She gave a brief nod to the doorman who hurriedly pulled it back, and stepped out onto the street, turning right and heading up the street.

Around the corner was the subway station. She walked down it, being careful to touch nothing, especially the handrails. She flashed her pass at the machine to get through the turnstiles then headed downstairs, ignoring, as much as possible, everyone around her.

She hated subways. They were full of people.

***

The blonde was tall and slender, dressed in tight faded jeans and a turtleneck under a stylish black hip-length jacket. She had black leather shoes, and carried no purse.

What Lewis paid the most attention to, however, was how deliciously her breasts swelled out under the tight sweater. The jacket was unbuttoned, and from his angle he could see that her breasts - well, one of them - looked... firm! It looked full and firm! And with that oh-so-thin sweater stretched across it he felt himself tremble with excitement at how inviting it looked!

The blonde hair was nearly as inviting. It seemed impossible it could hang so perfectly for it appeared carelessly maintained. It was parted in the middle and spilled down around her pretty face, half covering one eye, and curving in a few inches under her chin.

Lewis loved to touch blonde hair, and normally he'd have made his way up close just to touch it. Hers was a bit short for his taste, but he knew he could come just by rubbing it between his fingers.

But those breasts! They taunted him! He stared at the one he could see from his angle, licking his lips, feeling his breathing tightening. He needed to feel it in his hand! It looked like the perfect size! It wasn't fat and heavy, but was big enough to easily fill his hand! It would feel so soft under his fingers!

He sidled closer. The blonde was looking idly out the window of the subway car, as motionless as a statue. She was probably listening to music. He couldn't see under that white-blonde hair, but she probably had those new ear-pod things.

All the better, he thought. Just keep still, slut.

He knew she was a slut. They were all sluts, especially the blondes. And arrogant and stupid. They thought they were worth something, thought they were so special. They were just cunts!

He sidled up beside her, gulping anxiously, fighting to control his breathing, then he slid his hand out casually. The motion was hidden behind the back of a man standing in front of him, and he curved his body so as to hide it from anyone behind

His hand slid into her open jacket and cupped her breast firmly!

God, it felt incredible! So soft! So firm! How could it be both!?

He squeezed it, holding it in his hand, then squeezed it again. He'd forgotten to breathe, so filled with heat and wild pleasure was he! His cock was hard as a rock and tenting out the front of his pants as he squeezed it a third time, moaning low in his throat.

But then something strange happened. She didn't jerk back in shock, didn't scream, didn't flush red with embarrassment. She didn't even try to ignore him out of fear and embarrassment, as so many of them did. Her head turned a little, and those blue, blue eyes narrowed as they looked at him.

Lewis had been groping girls and women for years - decades now. He'd never had a reaction like this. Those eyes weren't afraid nor did she seem the slightest bit embarrassed. She didn't even seem angry or at all upset! Instead those blue, blue eyes seemed to study him, watching him sweat and pant and gulp, watching his flushed face.

Uncertainty filled him, and then anxiety, spoiling his arousal. He eased his hand back, confused.

What the fuck!?

She looked at him as if he were a bug - not a menacing bug, nor even a particularly disgusting one, just a bug, and was considering whether he was worth the effort to step on.

Those eyes were very blue, but aside from that they seemed not only to have no emotion but to have never held any emotion.

But those breasts! He caught sight of the one he'd just been groping and wavered, moaning low in his throat again. He thrust his hand out. He had to feel it again!

The blonde didn't seem to move, but suddenly his wrist was caught in her hand, startling him. He looked down and saw a slender stainless steel band slipped around his wrist. He had a moment to recognize it, for he'd seen its like often enough, then she pulled his other wrist up, not roughly, and slipped the other cuff around it.

She didn't say anything. She pulled a notepad out of the jacket and seemed to be writing a note. The train came into the station, and she pressed it against his back, turned and walked out.

Lewis stared after her, then at his wrists, handcuffed together on either side of the metal bar which went from floor to ceiling. As others left and new people entered, people noticed, but no one said anything.

The train didn't move for several minutes. Then two men entered. One was overweight, the other short and Asian. They pulled the note taped to his back off, laughed at him, uncuffed him, then cuffed his hands behind his back after frisking him. They marched him off the train and up the stairs and out to a patrol car.

Lewis was resigned to it. He'd been arrested more times than he could remember. It was worth it anyway. That had been the best breast he'd ever groped! But he remained confused, and more than a little frightened. A reaction like that was unnatural! Maybe she'd been some kind of alien!

***

Captain Michael Frost had a lot of stress in his life. As head of the NYPD Major Case Squad he was expected to deliver on the often high-profile crimes he was assigned. Those cases stretched across all five boroughs, and the interest of his squad overrode both local precinct and borough detectives - which pissed a lot of those people off.

His employees were all 1^st-grade detectives, most with decades of experience who didn't need to care what anyone thought of them - including him. They had the connections and proven history to work anywhere in the department they wanted, which made discipline sometimes difficult and delicate.

He thus had pressure from above to solve cases, resentment from other units, and a staff that didn't give a shit whether he was annoyed at them and often thought they knew better than he did about where to take investigations.

And then there was Morgan McKenzie, alias M&M, alias Kenzie, alias that hot psycho blonde in the corner of the office.

He looked out through his glass windows at the open office. The desks all had low dividers so the detectives could talk to one another and throw questions around more easily. All except her desk, which had five-foot-high cubicle walls around it, as well as a privacy panel in the doorway.

The only way to tell if she was even in there was to stick his head inside. And he was sure she'd hidden a camera somewhere, because every time he did it she was looking at the doorway before she should have known he was even there.

A normal employee would have pretended to be surprised by his sudden entry into their cubicle. Not Kenzie. She didn't give a shit if he suspected she had a camera somewhere. He'd casually looked but hadn't found one, but that meant nothing. She was spooky good with electronics - which was why she was here.

She had her privacy ostensibly because she handled online investigations for the unit, as well as other units in the Special Investigations Division, including the Joint Terrorism Task Force. But mostly she had her privacy because otherwise too many of his men, who goddamn well should have been old enough to know better would spend half their day staring at her and daydreaming.

Technically, she didn't work directly for him, even though over half the work she did was for his squad. She worked for Assistant Chief Mitch Donnelly, head of the Special Investigations Division. He wasn't entirely sure why she'd been stuck down here.

Rumor said she'd punched out a member of the Chief's staff, some officious Inspector who had annoyed her. He wasn't sure whether he believed that or not. But she was certainly capable of it. She had the brightest blue eyes he'd ever seen on a human, and they could turn so icy it put his name to shame.

He was reasonably sure she had major pull from someone very high up. Not that she wasn't a genius at pulling information out of the computers, and out of the internet, and out of, he suspected, places she had no legal business getting into. But he couldn't imagine how she could have even gotten into the department, let alone become a detective 1^st grade with her... attitude.

She didn't talk much, except about business. And then she spoke in a very clipped, efficient, and unemotional way. She didn't talk about her home life or history at all, with anyone, so far as he knew. She didn't socialize with any of the other detectives, and those cold eyes stopped any attempt to engage her in social talk.

She was a mystery, a gorgeous blonde mystery in a roomful of detectives. Which meant there had been a lot of efforts made by skilled detectives to find out more about her. So far as he knew they'd all failed. No one knew where or with whom she lived, what, if any hobbies she had, or who her rabbi might be - a rabbi being the unofficial term used in the NYPD for an upper-level supervisor who helped influence, promote and protect the career of a lower level cop.

Whoever it was had to be damned high if she could get away with flooring an Inspector. A 1^st-grade detective was the equivalent of a sergeant in the rank structure, four ranks below Inspectors. The NYPD didn't put up with that sort of thing any more than the military did.

Furthermore, she was by far the youngest D1 he'd ever heard of. You needed to be twenty-one to be hired as a cop, and then usually needed a couple of years' experience to become a detective third grade. In the normal course of events, a D3 could expect promotion to D2 in several years, if they did good work. Promotion to D1 could take much longer. He'd never met a D1 under thirty. Mackenzie was definitely under 25. How much under was something everyone wondered about.

He sighed and got up, opened his door, and walked through the office to the front, then over to her cubicle. He looked inside, but she wasn't there.

Her desk was a higher quality than the rest of the detectives, and she had two very large flat screen monitors, her own laser printer, several external drivers for memory, and some other black boxes he couldn't even begin to understand. She also had a high backed executive chair which cost a thousand dollars, and was not available for ordering by anyone below the rank of Deputy Chief.

He knew. He'd liked the look of it and tried to order one.

As always, her office was immaculate. There were no papers on the desk. There was nothing out of place. Everything was as clean as if it had just been scrubbed down. Her monitors were turned on, with her usual screen-savers in place - a big red pictograph which warned of radiation, and which glowed eerily.

That was not a screen-saver the department allowed. Nor could anyone load any screen-savers or desktop wallpaper onto departmental computers except administrators. Then again, he'd yet to discover anything she couldn't do with a computer. She could get them to sit up and beg for her much like she could men.

It was a flaw in the male DNA, he thought, that they all wanted to impress beautiful women, regardless of whether they had the slightest chance with them. Mackenzie was undeniably beautiful, with a delicately molded face, high cheekbones, and that incredible blonde hair.

Business-wear was the required dress for detectives. That was a rule she routinely ignored. Female detectives wore business suits in dark blue, gray or black, and usually as androgynous as possible. Mackenzie wore tight designer jeans, sometimes leather jeans, leather sneakers, and a variety of sweaters, none of which did anything to disguise the fact she had the body of a Playboy centerfold.

And according to the female detectives, or so he'd heard, that body was even better undressed.

He turned to go, only to find her standing there so close it startled him and made him stumble back.

"Dammit, Mackenzie," he growled. "Wear a damn bell or something."

"You wanted something, Captain?" she asked quietly.

She had a deeper voice than usual for a woman, with a strange little furry burr to it

"You have a report written on that arrest you made on the subway this morning? Manhattan North just called about it."

"I sent it by email, with a printed copy in the interoffice mail," she said.

"You know, Detective, it's normal procedure to wait for the uniforms to arrive before you leave the scene. Handcuffing a suspect to a train and leaving him behind as a present tends to piss off the precincts."

"I left a note," she said.

"Next time wait for the responding officers. Clear?"

She nodded.

"And how do you intend to get your handcuffs back?"

"I told them to send them to me by interoffice mail."

"And is there some reason you couldn't wait around and switch cuffs with the patrol officers?"

"I had to be at a meeting with JTTF at Nine."

"And suppose your suspect had run off in the interim?"

She raised an eyebrow. "He's got eighty-seven arrests, all in the same precinct. He wouldn't be hard to find."

She shrugged.

"Did you find out anything on Black's case?"

She nodded.

"Anything you'd care to share?" he asked sarcastically.

"It's a little complicated to explain without charts and diagrams. I was going to show him and Melroy in one of the meeting rooms when they get in."

"Invite me."

She nodded and he turned and left with a mental sigh of relief.

He'd gotten only a brief look of her shape in that sweater, and it had been enough to pull on his eyes like lead weights the whole time he'd spoken to her. Only raw determination had kept his eyes from sliding down off her face as they'd talked.

He couldn't talk to her about her outfit, either. She didn't work for him, and his suggestions to the Assistant Chef's office fell on deaf ears. Since she spent all her time on the computer anyway, he was told, it didn't matter what she wore. Which was idiotic. The civilian office staff upstairs wore suits and ties too.

He glared at several detectives who had clearly been watching, and they all looked away - now that she'd slipped back into her cubicle.

***

"That girl fills out a sweater better than anyone I've ever met."

"Uh huh."

There was no need to specify which girl. Joe Quinn and Aiden Rossi had been partners for two and a half years. They were both in their late forties. Quinn was still tall, broad-shouldered and fit, but Rossi had developed a paunch around when he'd lost his hair.

"I swear they don't move, no matter what she does. They have to be fake."

"Rachel says they're real."

"She's probably lying. Women stick together. Real tits aren't that firm."

"She's like, twenty-three or four at most."

"So?"

"And toned as hell, according to Rachel and Emily. That girl puts serious exercise in."

"You could bounce a quarter off that ass."

He held his phone out with the picture he'd discretely taken of her talking to Frost, then zoomed it in.

"That is one fine ass," Rossi said. "Just don't let your wife find it on your phone."

"If you don't zoom in it just looks like two people talking. I could say it's a surveillance photo"

"She's met Frost."

"Oh right"

Tyler Black came into the room and veered immediately towards her cubicle. They watched him enter it, then emerge, as calm and laid back as he always was. He yawned hugely as he made his way over to his desk, then fell into his chair.

"Where you been?" Rossi asked.

Black pulled open a drawer and took a bag of popcorn from it, then removed the clip and began to munch.

"Jerking off. Why you wanna know?"

"Boss was asking about you."

"Fuck him."

"How long till retirement again?" Quinn asked with a smirk.

"Nine months unless I get tired of babysitting and quit sooner. You counting down the days?"

"You're a sarcastic bastard, Black, anyone ever tell you that?"

"Yeah. So?"

""You enjoying working with Kenzie?"

"You don't work with Kenzie, Joe. You consult her, the same as you would a computer. In fact, sometimes it's hard to tell where the computer ends and the girl begins."

"Computers don't have tits like her."

He shrugged. "When you get to be my age you stop worrying about hot girls."

"I'm not talking about worrying so much as admiring."

"She's not even half my age and as cold as a Popsicle. No thanks."

"I bet I could warm her up."