Out there in the middle of a dark Hudson Valley pasture, she felt an odd sense
of relief from the Rainbow case. Normally, the hunt for a serial killer constituted
a race against time to prevent the murder of his next victim. Ironically, since Heat
was his next victim, she’d bought herself a time-out. Also, what better way to feel
safe than being surrounded by law enforcement at a crime scene? Nikki couldn’t do
this every night, but for now, not going home and adhering to her usual patterns
offered her a measure of safety.
She closed her eyes and replayed the fight she’d had with Yardley Bell after the
collision, and cursed herself for losing her cool. Heat could have chalked it up to
fatigue; the hours, the stress, and the intense pull of two major cases certainly
gave her license to be on the raw side. But no, Nikki blamed herself for not
controlling her temper. Simply put, she slipped her chain when the paramedics gave
up on Vaja and Yardley’s response was to turn to Callan—and shrug.
People talked about seeing red. Heat saw a blaze of white, the way an electric spark
touched off the magnesium powder in an old-time photographer’s flash lamp. The
anger and frustration that had been building up during the week since she met
Yardley Bell exploded. Nikki’s first words could have been more inspired, but
shouting “How dare you?” right in the woman’s face got her off to a pretty good
start at releasing her caged fury. Hours later, Heat still could see Bell’s
expression and enjoyed the fact that she had brought her own dose of shock and awe
to the day.
Rook and Roach must have feared Heat would hit her because they took hold of her
shoulders and dragged her back a few feet from the agent, even as she continued to
unload. It all came out: Bell’s smug intervention; forbidding Nikki to return and
talk to Vaja when he was a legitimate person of interest; wasting critical time
busting Algernon Barrett when the real suspect—“a freaking biochemist”—sat right
there, untouched. “And then,” Nikki added, scolding her, “if that’s not enough,
you not only spiked my plan for the raid—”
“I told you,” Bell shouted back, “it was a tactical clusterfuck to walk in.”
“Then what do you call driving in with all the cars committed so there’s no
vehicle perimeter?”
“A fucking car wouldn’t have done any good when he headed for the woods,
Detective.”
“And yours wasn’t much good when it came to capturing him alive, Agent.”
“Oh, please.”
“You recklessly caused the death of the one person who might have told us how to
stop this terror plot. Vaja was twenty yards from heading into our roadblock. Why
the hell didn’t you just let him go?”
“Because I am not going to—and never will—leave anything to chance. He dealt the
play. I brought him down.”
“You certainly did. And now where are we?”
“Easy to throw blame, huh? Especially when you start to believe your own press. You
think you have the smarts to figure it all out, but you can’t, so you disrespect
me. Heat, you need to remember what every good investigator knows: You cannot get
the whole picture—ever. There’s always going to be something that surprises you.
Something you never saw coming. Or believed possible. Better pray it doesn’t kill
you.”
Heat shrugged herself loose from her protectors and walked away to cool off.
With their prime suspect too dead to interrogate, the investigation suffered a
forced reboot into forensic mode. The best of the best from Homeland Security showed
up in a caravan of unmarked white panel trucks. Callan shooed the Staties and locals
out of the area, fearing they’d probably trample more evidence than they found.
Heat cut her own detectives loose to head back to the Upper West Side and keep
working the Rainbow case. Certainly the looming catastrophe of a mass bio attack had
tacitly dwarfed the serial killer investigation, but it had not set it aside. Death
goes on.
“You don’t need to stay, either,” she told Rook.
“You going to be all right?”