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back as Lopez, drawing a black T-baton tonfa, placed one booted foot on his wrist to prevent him
from using his gun and jabbed one end of the baton into his throat.
    ‘You have the right to remain silent, else I kick your sorry ass further,’ Lopez snarled down at their quarry. ‘Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of
law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney the state will appoint one to you who will most likely be goddamn useless. Do you understand?’
    A weak voice squealed up at her as Ethan approached.
    ‘Who the hell are you?’
    Lopez flashed a badge at the kid on the ground, a silver shield with ‘Bail Bondsman’ emblazoned beneath it.
    ‘You jumped bail, Mickey,’ Lopez said as she turned him over, knelt on his back and cuffed him. ‘You’re going back to jail.’
    Ethan glanced at the vehicle from which Lopez had leapt.
    ‘How’d you get into that jeep?’
    Lopez flashed him a dazzling smile as she jerked Mickey onto his feet.
    ‘Door was unlocked,’ she replied with an innocent shrug.
    Ethan shook his head as Lopez guided Mickey ‘Knuckles’ Ferranto out onto West 26th Street and along the sidewalk to where she had parked their black SUV. He waited until she’d
shoe-horned Mickey into the vehicle and shut the door before speaking.
    ‘You broke and entered?’ he said in disbelief. ‘Jesus, we’re supposed to be finding criminals, not becoming them.’
    ‘Got the job done,’ Lopez replied without remorse. ‘I’d left it to you, you’d both be halfway to goddamn Ohio by now.’
    ‘I was getting there,’ Ethan said defensively. ‘He hotfooted out of the mall the moment he saw me.’
    ‘The job’s done,’ Lopez said, brushing a strand of black hair out of her eyes. ‘Who cares about the small print?’
    Ethan blocked her path as she made her way toward the SUV’s passenger door.
    ‘The police? The attorney’s office? You can’t keep doing things this way, Lopez. What the hell happened to going by the book?’
    ‘It got me nowhere in the force.’
    ‘Yeah, and breaking the rules got your partner killed.’
    Lightning flickered behind Lopez’s dark eyes as they locked onto Ethan’s, and he forced himself not to take a step back.
    Since they had begun working together, Ethan had found out about what had befallen Nicola Lopez’s former partner in the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington DC the previous year,
crumbs of information that had slipped out during conversations. Detective Lucas Tyrell, a long-serving officer, had been shot and killed by his own superior in an apartment way down in Anacostia.
To say that Lopez had taken the hit badly was something of an understatement. Now, despite their partnership, Ethan often felt as though he were running a poor second best to Tyrell. Lopez seemed
unwilling to share directly with him what had happened, as though she hadn’t quite moved on yet. Her casual disregard for the law was a direct and, for Ethan, somewhat unsettling
manifestation of that.
    Ethan had since watched Lopez abandon the moral principles with which she had conducted her work as a detective in favor of bagging the perps by whatever means necessary. Lucas Tyrell had been a
liability to the Metro PD, but he’d gotten results, and Lopez was emulating her fallen mentor just as closely as she could.
    ‘Corruption got Lucas killed,’ she shot back. ‘Justice got him revenge. You gonna get out of my way or do I have to put you on your ass too?’
    Reluctantly, Ethan took a step back. Lopez had a reputation as a short fuse, but since losing her partner she seemed to have relinquished whatever remaining grip she had on her temper. The last
time he’d seen her lose it was when they hunted down a bail-runner to a shabby roadside diner in Battle Creek, Michigan. Three heavyweight bikers from the local chapter of the Devil’s
Disciples had taken a liking to the fugitive and were vaguely amused