Nikki Heat: Deadly Heat Part 28

"Can't believe I just whiffed." He got on his feet, and shook his head at getting skunked.

"Didn't you say Maggs was clean?"

He forearmed some sweat off his brow. "Database doesn't catch everything."

"Guess not," she said. He tried to shoulder-tackle her at the waist, but she rolled with it and landed on top of him. She hopped to her feet. While he bounced to his, she said, "Got a question for you about the helipad, the other night."

"Heat, are we here to spar or talk?"

"How did you know to get there first?"

"I told you, Yardley Bell told me." He moved for her right side. She expected a fake, but he committed and clotheslined her down.

She said, "Rook said he never told her."

"How else would I know?"

"Hinesburg, maybe?" She got to her feet, watching him closely.

"Hinesburg? Why would I be talking with Hinesburg?" They came at each other at the same time, locking up their arms. Standing at a stalemate. They broke apart and danced a circle sideways, facing each other.

"Weird thing," said Heat. "When we searched Hinesburg's stuff, we found her backup gun. At home."

He side-danced some more. "So she had another. What the h.e.l.l is this?"

"And my friend, the ME, caught up with me over the weekend. She found trace metals and powder burns on Hinesburg's entry wound."

"What can I say? My cannon barks." He made a move for her, but pulled back when she got ready to counter. Then, when she let down, he rolled her across his hip onto the mat. He put out a hand and pulled her up.

"Another thing in that message of my mother's? In addition to nailing Maggs, she also had something interesting to say... About the Dragon." She paused. "How much was Carey Maggs paying you?" Callan's fist lashed out so rapidly, it stunned her. With no time to block it, he clocked Nikki's jaw so hard that she flew off the mat and landed sideways on the hardwood. Before Heat could clear her head, he turned and raced to the corner where he'd left his stuff. He reached down into his gym bag and brought out his service weapon.

But Heat had speed he didn't count on. Before Callan could come around with it, she dropped him from behind with a tackle that whipped his face into the cinder blocks just above the floorboards. He twisted around, blood streaming from his nose, and locked her head between his knees. She felt his arm coming down toward her with the gun. She reached up, flailing blindly, caught hold of his wrist, then kicked hard onto the floor with her heels and kipped her body up. Her momentum carried her feet in an arc up and over her head so that her kneecaps came down, pile-driving his torso. He cried out and his leglock slackened. Nikki sprung to all fours and flipped him over facedown, her one hand still clamped onto his right wrist to hold the gun up and away.

The man was strong and struggled hard against her grip, but Heat held fast. At last Nikki felt him start to give in. But then, in a sudden move, Callan thrust his head upward. The back of his skull smacked her sharply on the chin. Her head rang and her vision darkened at the edges. Then she blacked out.

It couldn't have been for more than a second or two, but when her brain cleared and she jumped to her feet, Callan was on his, too, bringing the Sig Elite up on her.

She braced herself for the shot, but he hesitated. "I didn't want this," he said. It sounded like an appeal. "When you accidentally ended up at the heart of this thing, I kept steering you away. And the deeper you dug, I tried to steer you away again and again." Callan swiped the flow of blood from his nose with the back of a wrist while his other held the gun steady. "Nikki, I cared about you. I did everything I could... But now I have to kill you."

"You don't." But they both knew he did. She measured distance. Close but risky. To Heat, the muzzle of the pistol looked as wide as a tunnel.

"Don't even," he said.

"At least tell me why." She looked into his eyes and saw conflict. Even sadness. So she held the gaze and made an appeal of her own. She used his first name. "Bart, if there was ever anything between us, at least let me go to my grave knowing why." Nikki could see him considering. "Bart, please? I know who. Don't I deserve a why?"

He wristed his nosebleed again, thinking about it. His eye went to the door. Then back to her. "You figured it out already. The bioterror plot funded by Maggs."

"He paid you?"

"Yes."

"And Tyler Wynn? How did Maggs turn him?"

"I turned him. He was ripe. Cla.s.sic profile. An obsolete agent with expensive needs."

"But why Wynn?"

"European recruiting. After Ari Weiss became a problem, he did a search for a biochemist with workable morals."

"Tyler found Vaja?" Callan didn't answer her. Didn't need to. "And that's why this plot went to sleep for eleven years? Just to find one biochemist?"

"Not just. Maggs also needed to set up his pharma company. Then get the government contract. Distribution capability. That took time. Years. The promise of a couple billion buys a lot of patience."

A motorbike ying-yinged on the street and it spooked him. Before he changed his mind, Heat fired another question. "Why kill Nicole Bernardin?"

"Vaja lit up her radar when he started making trips to Russia recently to get the smallpox strain. That's what we were waiting for. The last piece of the puzzle. Getting the virus so he could brew it and weaponize it. Nicole got too good at her job, and..." He let it hang there. The sentence carried deadly implications for Nikki.

Callan didn't seem eager for the next step, either. "Bart," Nikki said, personalizing again. Trying to sound sensible instead of pleading. "Have you thought this through? If you kill me, you still have to run. You can also choose to not kill me and still run."

He shook his head. "Not in the cards."

"Or you could cut a deal. Turn evidence on Maggs. Come on, we do it for perps all the time. You've done it, I've done-"

Heat thought the loud bang was the gunshot, but it was the metal door slamming open against the gym wall. Nikki turned and saw Yardley Bell holding a pistol. Callan spun toward Bell with his Sig Elite. Nikki lunged for him, clamped a hand around his gun wrist, and pointed the weapon to the ceiling. The pistol shot thundered and paint flurried down on them as Heat jerked his left arm behind his back until she heard a nauseating gristle snap inside his shoulder. Callan's scream echoed through the gym, and his Sig Elite clattered onto the floor.

Nikki dropped him on his face and put a knee in his back as Agent Bell rushed over to cuff him.

Heat turned to her and said, "You're late."

Nikki Heat and Yardley Bell stood together on the sidewalk outside the gym while the paramedics in the back of the ambulance braced Callan's dislocated shoulder and cleaned the blood off his nose and chin. Heat said, "Think he'll give up Maggs for a deal?"

"He's already laying track." Bell studied Nikki. "You don't mind hanging it out there, do you?" asked Bell.

"I had to. My mother's note only said she suspected Callan was the Dragon, but couldn't prove it. I wanted to smoke him out and see how he reacted."

"And?" They both chuckled at that. Then Bell said, "I always had concerns Callan might be dirty. All the way back when he was FBI and running your mother's case, but they were too flimsy to justify, and I was just a rookie."

Heat remembered Algernon Barrett telling her how he eavesdropped through the peephole on her mother and the lady who looked like a cop, and now she figured that must have been Bell. "Nice of you to tell me, Agent."

"You mean like you told me about your mother's code, Detective?"

Nikki had to give her that and said, "Fair enough."

Bell continued, "After Nicole Bernardin got killed on Callan's watch, I called in a chit with the director to send me up here to collaborate on the case. But really, it was so I could get inside and stay close to him."

"Callan thought you were there to Bigfoot him."

"And you thought I was the Dragon. Or at least the mole. Come on, you did." And when Nikki didn't answer, she said, "Or maybe you just hoped I was."

Nikki smiled. "Let's say that I consider all options viable until proven otherwise."

Callan cried out as the EMT tried to maneuver his arm into a brace, and both women turned to watch. Bell said, "What put you onto him?"

"You know how it goes, things acc.u.mulate. Initially, I suppose, it was his interference in my case. Like you-no offense-Callan was very disruptive. But the major giveaway for me was the helipad. All the inconsistencies. And Hinesburg, shot in the temple like that."

"Close range."

Heat looked again in the ambulance. "Sharon probably thought he was going to rescue her. But she was working for him and he had to shut her mouth."

"You do know he wanted you."

"You mean to join the team so he could keep me on a leash?"

"Come on, Heat, I saw the way he looked at you. You didn't pick up on it?"

Nikki had done enough interrogations to smell bait being cast in the pond. She played it down. "I never bought it. I mean, none of what he said ever really felt romantic."

Yardley said, "Maybe you just weren't receptive."

Heat paused then looked Rook's ex in the eyes. "Count on it."

Rook unlocked the door to Heat's apartment and dropped his carry-on by the umbrella stand. And he waited. "h.e.l.lo? Back from the coast. No greeting?"

"In here," she called.

He draped his jacket on a chair back and made his way to the living room, where he found Nikki reclining on the floor atop a tropical-patterned beach blanket. She held a rum punch in one hand, and in the other a copy of Sizzling Sixteen. "So, this what you had in mind?"

"Sort of." He sat on the blanket beside her. "You're naked."

"As can be."

"I see." He looked around the room. "Just what kind of island is this?"

"Fantasy."

She set the drink and book down and reached her arms out to him. Rook got on his knees, hovering over her, and they kissed softly. He lowered himself to her and she drew him close, feeling his weight drape over her skin, the warmth of their bodies melting them into each other, even through his clothes. Soon the heat of their connection filled them with an urgency that grew into a powerful need. They teased and touched each other, and they joined each other deeply. The release from responsibility, the closeness of their bodies, and the hunger each brought to that moment cast them aswirl, into the heart-pounding, frenzied dimension created by their pa.s.sion.

Later, enfolded in a lazy tangle of limbs in her bed, they dozed, skin to soul. Nikki's fingers caressed his two-day beard, and her breast rose and fell in rhythm with his placid breathing. Her cell phone double-pulsed and she dutifully checked the text, then put the phone back on the nightstand.

Without opening his eyes, Rook said, "Please, not another murder."

"Worse. Yardley Bell wants to have lunch tomorrow."

He blinked open. "You going to go?"

"I don't need a new best friend."

"You should go."

"I don't like her."

"You don't know her."

"I know all I want," said Heat. "And I know what I like."

"So do I."

"Show me."

And he did.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

This is a very big occasion for your humble author. Oh, right, I finished this book today, sure, but I'm talking about something bigger. I am talking about today being one of only two days a year when we jaded New Yorkers stop in our tracks and marvel at the astronomical phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge! What. Am I the only geek here who knows that at precisely 8:15 this evening the setting sun will perfectly align itself with the grid layout of Manhattan's streets and beam celestial eye candy down every single east-west street like a laser beam? Sweet! Take that, Stonehenge!

You will excuse me if I have one eye on my loft's west-facing window as I also acknowledge how the stars also miraculously aligned to make this novel happen. And the brightest in that firmament is a heavenly body known as Kate Beckett, who fills my heart with motivation, encouragement, and the awesome power of her elegant life example. Thanks also to the rest of the crew at the 12th Precinct. Javier Esposito and Kevin Ryan have generously made me a training partner, teammate, and, I hope, friend. Captain Victoria Gates sets a high bar-but somehow lets me sneak in under it. Don't tell her, but I believe she secretly likes me.

Down at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Lanie Parish reels me in when I get my head too far in the clouds. I appreciate her tolerance as much as her expertise.

My mother Martha keeps me mindful that every sunrise is a cause for celebration, even though she never sees them thanks to that sleep mask she got from Kitty Carlisle on some 1950s game show. My collegiate daughter Alexis has found healthy independence, but I am ever grateful she chooses to stay in my orbit.

Earthbound as I am, I look up in awe at the empyrean G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses that are true stars above. I speak of course of the amazing Nathan, Stana, Seamus, Jon, Molly, Susan, Tamala, and Penny.

The folks in the Clinton Building at Raleigh Studios continue to conjure astral magic. They know what a journey measured in light years means and have my deep respect.

Terri Edda Miller gleams like Aurora Borealis. Radiant and warm, she holds my heart in her hands. As it always shall be.

Jennifer Allen catches moonbeams in a jar and makes me feel like I am indeed swinging on a star. There is no shoulder I would rather rest my head on watching an orange moonrise over the Sound.

A big salute to Elisabeth Dyssegaard, editor-in-chief at Hyperion Books, who smoothed the way, start to finish. Melissa Harling-Walendy and her team at ABC provided wonderful support once more.

Sloan Harris at ICM Partners has represented me in books from the very beginning, setting his spygla.s.s on the horizon and seeing all with a clear eye.

Once again Ellen Borakove at OCME proved invaluable in autopsy research. She continues to combine pa.s.sion and compa.s.sion in her work plus a unique tolerance for ignorant questions.

Special recognition to Alton Brown for providing both the culinary consultation and the pen warmed up in h.e.l.l with which I wrote this book. Good Eats, Great Guy.

Poker buddies Connelly, Lehane, Patterson, and the late Mr. Cannell still keep me on my toes.

Thanks so much to the extraordinary Janet Evanovich for the shout out on the Today Show. And to top-flight blogger Ken Levine for all the nice words.