Deadly Heat

A voice behind her shouted, “Heat, gun!” Nikki hit the deck at the same time

she heard the distinctive crack of a .40-caliber. She rolled, presenting the

smallest target to the shot direction, and braced to fire. But she held.

In the shadows, she recognized Special Agent Callan standing over Sharon Hinesburg,

who was sprawled on the blacktop under the nose of the copter. “Clear,” he called.

Strobing lights from police cruisers and plain wraps flashed outside the gate and

reflected off the badges of unis rushing toward them. Heat got up, dragged Glen

Windsor away from the river’s edge, and dropped him hard. Then she ran to Callan,

getting there just as he kicked a pistol away from Hinesburg’s hand. In his own he

held his P226 Elite. Nikki could still smell gunpowder.

“She was going to back-shoot you,” he said. “You’re fucking lucky I made it.”

Heat told the uniforms, “Get paramedics, two down. Hurry.” She knelt beside

Hinesburg. She had a fat hole in her temple.

Her eyes looked just like Salena Kaye’s.




Dry lightning sparked to the north when Heat finished her debrief with the shooting

team. Lauren Parry had wrapped up her exams of Salena Kaye and Sharon Hinesburg,

preliminarily finding both causes of death obvious, but worthy of follow-up. The ME

told Nikki she’d pull an all-nighter and perform the postmortems so she could have

the findings first thing in the morning.

She found Bart Callan sitting with his elbows on his knees on the short wooden ramp

that led from the tarmac to the boarding area of the modular. He stared blankly at

the sheet over Hinesburg’s body and the numbered yellow marker the shooting team

had placed beside his ejected casing. He didn’t acknowledge Heat. She stood beside

him and followed his gaze, then said, “Tough to take someone out. Especially a cop.



He held up the evidence bag with the pistol inside it. “Hinesburg’s backup piece.

Mini Glock Twenty-six. Nine millimeters to spoil your day.” He set the bag down on

the ramp between his shoes. “I can live with the kill. Lose a cop, save a cop.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

He gave the shortest nod and said, “Guess you had your hands too full to pat her

down.”

“You could say my attention became somewhat divided by his escape attempt.” She

realized her palm still rested on him and drew it away. “You got here fast, thank

God. I’d barely put out the ten-thirteen.”

“I was already en route.” When he saw her reaction, he said, “Soon as I heard

about your meet, I thought I’d better get over here and cover your idiotic butt.

Any complaints?”

“None.” Then she asked, “Heard about it how?”

“Yardley Bell told me.”

“Agent Bell? How did she know?”

He picked up the evidence bag and stood. “Didn’t ask. I just assumed she heard it

from your boyfriend.”




Rook spun through the revolving door at the entrance to Bellevue Hospital and

shouted her name as the door spit him out into the lobby. “Nikki!” echoed in the

cavernous atrium renovators had built five years before, encasing the old stone

hospital in glass like a living museum display. When he reached her, Rook grabbed

Heat in his arms, clinging tight, whispering in her ear, “Holy shit, Nik, sometimes

you scare the hell out of me.” When they kissed, he sensed her reserve and studied

her. “You OK?”

She considered a moment and let it go at “Been a hell of a night. Glen Windsor is

upstairs getting his calf sewn up. Soon as he’s out, he’s mine to interrogate.”

They found a couch to wait on in the Hospital PD Squad Room near the ER, and she

bulleted the sequence of events, first going back to how she knew from the sound of

Salena Kaye’s phone call something was up; how she sounded either drugged or under

duress, and how she’d even slipped Heat a hidden message.

“But what gave you the idea to connect her to Rainbow?”

“That by itself would have been a Jameson-esque leap, but it’s been bugging me how

quickly Kaye just vanished off the street when I chased her out of that deli.”