"Before every action ask yourself. Will this bring more monkeys on my back? Will the result of my action be a blessing or a heavy burden?"
-Alfred A. Montapert

Disclaimer: I don't own them. I just like to toss them in the air every once in awhile and see what kind of crap falls out of their pockets.

Warning: I'm tossing the characters in a world that might not be comfortable for some, so read at your own risk.

Chapter 1: The Chambers

She felt dead on the inside out and knew nothing could scrub it from her senses. Her mouth tasted sour, every breath she drew smelled like decay. Her ears heard a constant ringing and there was clamminess to her skin that made her feel as if she borrowed it from one of the cadavers at the morgue. Her body was not her own. Her mind? She didn't what to go there...

She took a deep breath and counted to twenty. It was over. At least it was going to be over. As over as it could ever be. As sure as she knew the sun was going to rise tomorrow, Jordan knew it would never truly be over. The evidence she had would go a long way to exonerating her...but at what cost?

Was it all worth it?

Even though there wasn't a visible sign of it, she still felt like she had some of JD's blood on her...in her hair, under her fingernails. No matter what she did, she could still smell it, taste it, feel it. It was heavy, like guilt, and she knew it would follow her forever. JD was still dead and her life would never, ever, be the same again.

Jordan slipped the tiny recorder inside the cup of her bra. Once it was secure she took quick once over of the room to make sure she was indeed alone. She bit her lip and picked up the payphone. The tiny voice in her head said it was too dangerous to make this particular call from The Chambers, but Jordan overrode her natural instincts and dialed his number anyway.

Tomorrow it might be different but at that moment she didn't care if she was caught...or silenced. She just wanted it over. All she cared about was the dozen whispered words she had sold her soul to get.

'...Pollack bagged for his little bitch's life. It was the least I could do.'

Forty days and forty nights.

That's how long she'd been gone.

When Jordan chose to disappear she could fall off the face of the map. He had to admit there was some small comfort in that. She's done it before and it didn't take a detective to know she could do it again. So that fateful night, when she returned one of his many phone messages, he knew it was just a call to say she was leaving.

He asked her to stop and think about what she was doing. He told her to sit tight, that it wasn't as bad as it looked. She saw straight through the lie. He begged her not to go, but knew in his heart she was already gone.

As a cop, Woody learned pretty quickly that there was an "us" and a "them". Jordan may be many things...some of them not very pleasant...but she was never a "them".

And for the first time in his career he didn't know if he considered himself an..."us".

He asked her to meet him in front of the empty pharmacy. The day he had use his firearm for the first time. The same place his innocence started to fade. The meeting was brief, more of a face to face goodbye. He handed her all the cash he could get his hands on and told her to stay in touch. Jordan didn't make any promises, he made none in return.

In the end, they both knew what they had to do. Woody went to a wedding to go to and Jordan a plane. So, when his phone rang at three in the morning he wasn't all that surprised it was her.

"Hey..."

It was lightly drizzling when his plane landed at Reagan International. He drove his rental straight to the address he had on a scribbled sheet of paper. Jordan's late-night call was frustratingly short. She said she had the proof she needed and asked him to run interface with Walcott for her. She'd return to Boston as soon as she knew she'd have an open-minded ear in the DA's office and a very visible one on the six o'clock news.

She'd be in touch.

Thank God for star sixty-nine.

It took him ten tries, in as many hours, to get someone to answer the extension. The cleaning woman that picked up the phone's English was as halting as Woody's Spanish but after a few seconds he had the information he needed.

He ran the address. The Chambers was located in an upscale section of downtown DC...right in the heart of the acres of office space that housed the pencil pushers of high government. The perfect location to offer a little escape from the trials and tribulations of mastering the free world. It may be low key; it maybe exclusive; it may even be on the Registry of Historical Buildings, but it was what it was.

On the outside, it was an unassuming brownstone located just northeast of the Capital. Another time Woody would have just walked past not knowing that it was the kind of place you read about in the pages of Maxim, GQ and Playboy.

How she found herself there he'll probably never know. All he cared about was making sure she was alright...and to bring her home. The case, the leads, the sheer unbelievably of the whole situation was hard to stomach. The half empty bottle of Maalox in his bag was proof of that.

The door whooshed as the rain soaked weather stripping caught on the polish-brass doorjamb. Woody's membership card came in the form of two hundred dollar bills slipped to the doorman. Once inside he was instantly engulfed in the blue haze of black market Cubans, power broker aftershave, alpha male greed, all with an underlying stench of illicit sex. He checked his coat with the silicone-based Barbie look-alike at the door and went in search of the main lounge.

One look around the space couldn't hide the fact that The Chambers Room offered the same goods as any other titty-bar did. It just was more discreet about it. He paid for his required three drink minimum and found a table toward the back so he could watch the room. He let out the breath he was holding when he saw the sloe-eyed dancer on the abbreviated stage wasn't her. Maybe the address was wrong. There was a part of him that hoped it was.

It was just before ten o'clock when he saw her.

The blonde hair and artificial tan threw him off for a second, but there was know denying those legs. He'd know them anywhere. It was all he could do not to run over to her and...

Do what? Tell her that they were one step behind her. She needed to trust him. Evidence or no, it would be just a matter of time before they found her and put her behind bars. Or just simply shake some sense in her, wrap her in his jacket, and get her out of there. He wanted to ask her what. What was it she found? And selfishly why. Why was she in a place like this?

He set there, watching. Blue eyes taking inventory of every curve obviously on display in the tight fitting dress.

She moved among the men at the bar like a practiced hustler. Touching them here, brushing them there, whispering close to their ears...flirting just out of their reach. He felt like someone had just kicked him in the gut.

"Beautiful isn't she?"

Woody didn't turn to look at the owner of the drunken slur, he didn't dare. He was afraid he'd wrap his hands around the pricks neck and squeeze until there was nothing left. The last few weeks had taken its toll on the shaky power he had over his self control. He simply mumbled something intelligible and took a deep draw on his draft.

"She calls herself Brandy, but I don't think that's her real name."

Woody allowed himself to look at the drunkard at the table next to him. Seeing he finally had an audience, the zipper-head sat up, giving Woody a leering grin. "She started here a few weeks ago. A little older than the usual girls, but damn...look at her."

Woody did. He watched as she draped her arm casually over a white-haired man's shoulder. He could hear her husky laugh all the way across the room.

"Would you look at that mouth? I bet she could suck an olive through a straw."

Woody was well aware of what that mouth could do and it had nothing to do with an olive. He must have made a noise deep in his throat because his cheery welcoming committee quickly shuffled his chair a few inches away and hovered over his drink like a vulture over fresh road kill.

Jordan calmly extricated the lobbyist's hand from beneath the hem of her skirt. Puckering her painted lips, she waved her finger in the air at him, giving him a tsk-tsk. She knew it was like waving a red flag, but she was so close to the end she could feel it.

It took weeks before she had names to go along with the hieroglyphics she could glean from Pollack's notes. The bloody Aussie was so worried about protecting his sources, he inadvertently protected his killers.

Now that she had what she needed, Jordan was greedy. She may have JD's killer, but she couldn't ignore his legacy. The story that got him killed. She not only wanted the trigger man, she wanted the person that ordered the hit. And wanted to give him enough rope to hang himself.

For the first few days after leaving Boston, Jordan lived in an uncomfortable middle... staying one step ahead of the law chasing her and one behind those who killed JD. She started with a quick search of JD's DC apartment. Luckily, she found it before the feds.

It was small, even by her standards..but that was JD. It was one of the things that attracted her to him. He had no concept of home. He didn't need ties. Or so she thought. He lived out of a suitcase and needed only a place to lay his head.

She knew his computer was in the custody of the Boston PD...but not everything. It didn't take her long to find it. A matchbook. JD didn't smoke. It led her to The Chambers...and the men who patronized it.

There was only two ways a female could get inside. Jordan was between a rock and a hard place and it was her only lead. She didn't have any other choice. She was desperate. It was only temporary and frankly it would take care of her immediate finances. By the end of the day Brandy was born and a fraction of Jordan's self-respect was dead.

The cost was high...but the rewards were great. Jordan found herself on the inside. It was only a matter of time before she had what she came for.

And it did.

She called Woody. He was the only person in the department she could trust. What she had would be damning too many very powerful people. A layman always assumed police corruption only came from the streets. From experience, Jordan knew that shit flowed both ways. She needed someone she could trust to watch her back.

As if she could conger Woody up out of thin air, Jordan looked across the room. Her eyes locked with his. Her gasp was audible.