Deadly Heat

“Yeah. Just too bad you can’t talk to him.”


When his name came up three weeks ago, Heat and Rook had discovered that Dr. Ari

Weiss had died of a blood disorder. But Nikki felt energized now and wasn’t giving

up. There still might be a way to get more information about the dead doctor. Even

while she paced, she was looking through her notes for the number of the person

whose family Ari had stayed with. Maybe he would know if Weiss had any connection to

Tyler Wynn or his accomplices. Then, to make sure the sound of her gratitude for the

new lead carried across the Atlantic, she repeated, “Hey, Rook? This is very big.”

“Thanks. It’s kind of a whirlwind. I haven’t even been to bed since I left New

York, but I feel so pumped.”

“Well ya done good. This Kuzbari stuff is a coup. He’s so hard to pin down, how

did you manage to make contact?”

“Professional courtesy, I guess. You know, the spy quid pro quo. Like most Mideast

governments, Syria’s heading for the rocks, and I think he’s trying to make nice

with our intelligence in case he needs an escape hatch.”

Nikki stopped pacing. “Don’t you mean Russian intelligence? I thought Kijé set

this up.” Sounds of traffic and a distinctly European siren rose up and filled Rook

’s long pause. “Who set this up for you?… You there?”

During his hesitation she heard a female voice she recognized in the background.

“Rook, come out here and see, it’s a car fire.”

Heat said, “Really? She’s there with you?—in Nice?”





FOUR





Nikki fought the urge to hang up on Rook and instead listened to him squirm. He

hemmed. He hawed. He backed. He filled. And then had the nerve at the end of her

silence to ask, “Is everything OK?” She told him she had to get to work and left

him to hold a dead phone in his stupid hotel room overlooking the stupid

Mediterranean. Then she cranked the shower as hot as she could stand it and stood

under the jet. “Fucking Nice,” she said to the steam. “Fucking stupid.”




Shouldering the glass door of the bodega open, Heat burst out onto the sidewalk on

Pearl Street ripping at the orange Reese’s wrapper with extreme prejudice. She

stood by a trash can near the curb, shook one of the two peanut butter cups out,

tore away the brown paper enfolding it, and popped the entire disk into her mouth.

She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the sky while she chewed, feeling the

tiny sharp ridges of the chocolate coating scrape the roof of her mouth while the

salty, grainy succulence of the peanut butter center mixed with the melting sugars

on her tongue. Bastard, she thought. Stupid boy. Her breath whistled through her

nostrils as she munched, eating not for pleasure but as an act of aggression. That

part done, she swallowed, feeling the delicious indulgence tamp out the fires of her

rage.

She looked at the package. Still one peanut butter cup left. Nikki decided to save

it and shoved it in the side pocket of her blazer. She might need it later, if the

idiot called again.

Heat elbowed aside her anger at Rook for going to France with his ex-girlfriend and

walked on. She had better things to dwell on. For the first time in weeks Nikki felt

like she found a real trail that could lead her to Tyler Wynn, and as she strode

along, she started rolling everything she knew. If Fariq Kuzbari’s version of

events were true, was it possible that her mother used the Syrian as cover to get

into that symposium in the Berkshires to spy on Ari Weiss? Following that premise,

could that be the same reason her mom got herself a tutoring gig later in the home

of the brewing magnate Carey Maggs—to keep tabs on Weiss while he stayed with his

former Oxford classmate and his family? She hoped to find out in a few minutes when

she met with Maggs.