I watched intently as Lieberman gave hushed directions, gesturing with two fingers. Something either Mario or I should have been doing. Since he'd deemed me unfit to lead an operation after the warehouse, I let him.

Joke's on him. I hit my target. It just wasn't the one he had in mind.

I made sure to school my features so as not to rile the rest of our eight-person team. Mario did the same.

I pressed myself against the stained wall, gripping onto my handgun tightly. What I assumed to be white paint had turned beige over time and pollution. I had no doubt they smoked around these halls. The ashes on the discolored floor confirmed as much.

No matter how deep I tried to breathe, my lungs needed more. There was a lot riding on this mission and I wasn't sure how many failures my ego could take.

"NYPD!" Lieberman kicked the door, nearly splitting it in two.

We poured in and spread out in a barrage of warnings. I immediately took notice of how empty the apartment was and what little of it looked ransacked. A wicker chair lay strewn on the worn carpeted floor. Not far off was a single boot. A suspicious brown streak stood out in the narrow hallway that led to the kitchen.

I had no doubt it was blood.

One by one I could hear my unit yell out "clear" after a thorough search of each area as I zoned in on the steam wafting from the pot on the stove. On instinct, my finger moved to the trigger as my eyes scanned possible hiding places. The pantry was partially shut with a gap big enough to see through to the space.

I moved out of view as Jacobs entered the room.

"Clear!" I exclaimed for effect, jerking my head towards the pantry.

Hope bloomed in his eyes at the chance that it might be Stew. A lot was riding on that raid for him more than just finally capturing the Pinstripe. We exchanged looks as I took my position a few steps from the pantry and he grabbed the knob. I raised my gun, poised to shoot if necessary.

He nodded and yanked the door open, revealing a trembling man with his hands raised in the air. Bloodshot eyes stared at us, darting between the two guns pointed at him. His disheveled hair stuck out in all directions like he'd just rolled out of bed. Or forced out of it. I despised how his pants rode down the bottom of his ass. Even while on the ground that was difficult to miss.

It wasn't Stew.

"Please. Don't shoot," he squeaked as several footsteps started charging towards us.

"Where's Stew?" Jacobs asked before I could, his gun pointed at him.

"They took him," he eventually said through the tremor in his voice.

"Who?" Jacobs took a step closer. I worried he might do something stupid. He was a highly trained cop but he was human, too.

"Uh—rich-looking guys. And-and...r-red wig."

Betrayal soured my stomach and mixed with the adrenaline in my veins. The cocktail proved dizzying. I hated how my mind instantly pieced together how they could have beat us to him. I hated how the one important factor might still be lying comfortably in my bedroom.

Or was she? I couldn't know for sure.

I hated the uncertainty.

Jacobs moved to cuff him, Smith and Dana immediately by his side.

"What are you doing? I ain't done nothing wrong," he protested but his body was compliant. He'd be stupid if he tried to get away.

"I doubt you were trying to bake a cake with the powder on the table." Jacobs pushed him against the wall next to him, parting his legs to immobilize him further. He then went on to say the standard Miranda warning.

I holstered my gun as I watched them escort him out. I wasn't prepared for the utter frustration that would assault my ego. I had the highest closed case in the department. One of the best marksmen. And I wasn't shabby at hand-to-hand combat.

Those weren't enough to erase the failure slapped across my forehead at how utterly botched the operations against the Pinstripe had been.

Fuck.

"I need to talk to Sara," I absently told Mario while reaching for my phone.

-

I parked my car along the side walk, right next to the chain link fence smothered with vines. I looked around in search for my CI while pretending I didn't feel naked against the glow of the daylight. I'd never wandered this far without the cloak of darkness.

Beneath it, my identity was easier to conceal.

At the risk of my own safety, I needed to be there. Several of my cases have been closed because of her.

I spotted her slender frame from the right side mirror. She shaved her head and a nose ring was hanging off her septum.

"What's up, Lauren?" she said as she ducked in to sit on the passenger seat. She rubbed her hands together, a habit she hadn't grown out of and grinned.

I greeted her with a quick upward jerk of the head. "Staying out of trouble?"

"Course I am," she sassed. She then smirked, her gaze riddled with accusation. "Can't say the same about you though."

I scoffed.

"Come on. We don't talk except when you need something."

She was right. I didn't know if I should feel guilty for not checking on her as much as I did. But by the look of her, I didn't have to. I was grateful her cheeks weren't hollowed anymore and her sunken eyes beamed brighter than ever. Sara looked healthier than the gaunt teenager I picked up for possession of illegal substance many years ago and several other times for theft.

She finally looked a lot like a woman in her early twenties. Not an worn adult in a child's body.

I forged on anyway.

"What you got on the Pinstripe?" I continued to look around, still wary of my surroundings that it took me a while to see the horror in her eyes and the weight of her silence. "What?"

"Don't ever want to mess with that one." She shook her head, almost as if dissuading me from ever pursuing them. "They silly for dressing the way they do but what can I say? They get shit done."

"They're criminals," I pointed out albeit weakly.

"They don't kill nobody for no reason."

"What do you mean?"

"Come on. I don't lie to you."

"You have." I adjusted my body to fully face her, raising my brows like a condescending parent. And I watched as her whole demeanor changed, metaphorically laying brick after brick to keep me away.

I might have poked a sore spot.

"Shit's different." She crossed her arms and her jaw clenched. "They come at you if you come for one of their own. They don't come for none of those bodegas. They don't touch no women."

"And yet you're scared of them."

"It is what it is." Sara shrugged like there was no other way to describe it.

In a way, I agreed with her.

She knew something. But she was not going to tell me. Unlike every other time I'd spoken to her, Sara wasn't an open book. It was almost as if she was protecting them. By the looks of it, she wasn't even in the Pinstripe.

The longer I sat on that thought, the more I was convinced she was right. The guy they left at Stew's apartment would have been dead had it been any other gang. They risked a witness instead of leaving a dead body. A part of me knew we wouldn't get anything out of him either.

In their business, loyalty was important.

And damn it, the Pinstripe had managed to tame even the wildest of scalawags.

-

I returned to the precinct with no leads and more complications to my conundrum. If anything, I gained perspective. The black and white world I'm forced to see as a police officer was starting to bleed through and become one whole grey area.

I wasn't even sure if I wanted the Pinstripe to go down. Because if that ship went down, the captain goes down along with it.

And their captain was my wife.

Restless, my legs brought me down to the gym that was thankfully empty. Any other time, my nose would have revolted against the smell.

I managed to snag a water bottle before I started beating the hell out of the punching bag in the middle of the room. Pain soon radiated from my fists to my wrists, my muscles burning with every strike as the rest of my body warmed with overexertion and anger.

All I could hear was the ringing in my ear, isolating me from the rest of the empty room occasionally broken by the sound of the gloves colliding with the bag.

My momentary isolation was shattered at the sound of a voice I was beginning to despise.

"You should work on marksmanship and gun handling, Sergeant." There was no mistaking the disdain dripping from that title that had made me the target of his ridicule.

I took a breath as Lieberman steadily approached, strapping on his own gloves. He stopped in the middle of the padded mat, his insinuation loud and clear.

Under different circumstances, I would have left the gym altogether. But my state of mind had morphed into a bloodthirsty predator and it wanted its prey.

I ambled my way to him, a leisurely pace that was a far cry from the urge to simply pummel him. I bumped gloves with his outstretched one and assumed a fighting stance. Without breaking eye contact, we circled the mat.

And just like the blabbermouth that I knew he was, he continued talking.

"Don't go easy on me, Serge," he taunted as he let go of a cross jab I managed to block with my gloves.

God he talked too much.

I threw a jab and he managed to dodge it. He retaliated with an upper cut, hitting me squarely on the chin. His initial shock wore off as quick as it came, and I could tell he rejoiced in his premature victory.

Lieberman couldn't help it. He smiled. It stoked the flame scorching my body. At the moment, he was the enemy and he was the target to all my fury and frustrations.

I shook it off. I reveled in the pain, the kind I could endure. Everything else swarming the forefront of my mind was torturing my heart, and it was starting to make me feel helpless.

He landed another hit on the side of my head and then another on my shoulder. And finally, on my side, just at the perfect spot to force a breath out of me. I recoiled, jerking my head from side to side and shaking my arms.

I extended a fist to resume the spar and Lieberman was quick to bump it. And even quicker with his attack.

I let him rain punches left and right and I kept my eyes on him, barely throwing any myself. It was almost poetic. His punches were the stream of snide comments he'd lobbed at me. And just like every time I predicted he would speak, I was beginning to see a pattern in his assault.

It was almost erratic but it was there.

"Come on! You're making it too easy for me." Frustration bled into his winded voice, revealing more of his physical and mental state. He drew a lot of his desire to defeat me somewhere.

I knew its source and I knew it very well.

The moment he opened his arms as he prepared to send a hook, I found an opening. My gloved fists landed squarely on the upper region of his belly, right by the last of his ribs. And I inhaled as if I could absorb the grunt that left his lips as fodder to my bruised ego.

I was done failing.

I didn't allow him to reorient himself. My right fist collided with his nose and in the next instant, my left struck his jaw, leaving him strewn on the ground like the wicker chair in Stew's apartment. I stood over him, pity at the fringes of the waning high of victory.

"Work on defense tactics." I commanded, leaving no room for argument. I began to leave the room and stopped mere steps from him. "That's an order."