Three city cops kicked in the wrong bedroom, planted drugs in the wrong purse, and only realized too late that the half-dressed woman in handcuffs had spent her whole career waiting for men like them to get sloppy.
The door exploded inward so hard the frame snapped like dry bone.
Wood sprayed across the floor. A lamp crashed. Glass skipped under heavy boots.
“Hands up! Now!”
Claire Bennett jerked awake in a tangle of sheets, her heart punching once, hard, before her face went still. A flashlight burned white across her eyes. She threw one arm up against the light and sat up in nothing but a gray tank top and black underwear, hair loose over one shoulder, sleep still clinging to one side of her face.
Three men in dark uniforms stormed into her bedroom like they owned the place.
The first one was broad in the shoulders and breathing through his mouth. Detective Tom Kessler. He had the hard, mean confidence of a man who had been getting away with things too long.
