Free Doing It Right by MaryJanice Davidson

If you mean I don’t have the ability, you’re wrong. If you mean my moral code won’t let me, you’re wrong. If you mean I’ll go to jail, you’re wrong again.”
    “If I mean it’s rotten, I’m right. Put it back.” She moved to tuck the necklace away and he grabbed her wrist. She raised an eyebrow at him and looked pointedly at his hand, but he didn’t loosen his grip. “Look, you’ve made your point. I see what you do now.”
    “Do you?”
    “You’re terrible, awful, evil, a real blight on society, I should have listened to you back at the apartment, blah blah. But don’t steal from these folks just to prove me wrong.”
    “Open the last drawer on the left,” she said quietly. “Use your shirt sleeve, don’t leave prints.”
    “Look, I don’t care how much jewelry they—”
    She pried his fingers off her wrist. “Just open it, please, Jared.”
    He did. At first his eyes wouldn’t translate what he was seeing. When they did, he blindly put his hand out for something to lean on, certain he was about to be sick. Kara was there, not letting him touch anything, letting him sag against her.
    “Those men—”
    “And children, yes.”
    “Filthy goddamned perverts!”
    “Yes, and they’re having terrible luck,” she said sympathetically. He stared at her; she sounded genuinely sorry for them. “The film from their last drop-off was intercepted by the cops. And now they’ve been robbed. When the cops come, they’ll find … this.”
    In a flash, he saw her brilliance, saw the trap she had lain for the pedophiles. “The police can’t search without a warrant,” he said slowly, “but if there’s a robbery … and they happen to find pictures, say, all over the hallway …” He paused. “But you’re never caught.”
    She grinned at him. “We’re going to trip the alarm on the way out. Cops’ll be here in about five minutes.” She opened another drawer full of filth and waved a spare pair of surgical gloves at him. “Want to help?”
    “That was fun,” he said half an hour later, feeling more deeply satisfied than he ever had. Saving lives was fabulous, but preventing the further bru-talization of children was even better. “Now where are we? Is it time for ice cream?”
    “Pross house,” she said shortly, getting out of the car and striding, unafraid, through the worst neighborhood in the city. There were more streetlights out than on, more shattered store windows than whole, and entirely too many rough-looking men giving
his
Kara the once-over. Jared could feelhimself bristling and singled out the meanest-looking one for a good glare. “Keep up, please.”
    “I don’t like the looks of those guys,” he said, nodding to a gang of thugs clustered under a broken streetlight. “You want I should rough ’em up for you?”
    She laughed. “Aren’t you cute. Jared, trust me. Worry about the ones you
don’t
see.”
    She bounded up the steps to a battered brown-stone, nodding politely to two teens—either of which could have given your average beat cop a run for her money—and ringing the buzzer. The teens appeared to completely ignore her, but Jared noticed they both made way. He reached out and snagged Kara’s elbow just as she was buzzed in. “I’m with her,” he told the teens, who ignored him as they had Kara, “and don’t get smart or I’ll have her whup you both.”
    Inside, he was pleasantly surprised to find a homey entryway. Shabby, but dignified. “Well, this is something,” he said, looking around. “First, the Playboy Mansion. Then the fence—that’s the guy who cashed in the necklace, right? Now we’re … I have no idea where. What’s a pross house?”
    “This isn’t a pross house,” a warm, pleasant voice said. Jared jumped and spun; Kara turned unhurriedly toward the voice and Jared realized Kara had known they weren’t alone in the hall. “That’s a place where prostitutes, ah, ply their trade. This is a shelter for soiled doves trying to