“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 accumulate. 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. “Hello? 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.”