“See? That’s why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d go to the bad place.”
“And this doesn’t do it?”
“In hindsight, I’ll admit I may not have exercised my best judgment.”
“What did you exercise?”
“Come on, you know me better than that.”
“You, I know. She’s another story.”
“I told you, Yardley and I are past history.”
“To you. But I know her type.”
“And what type is that?”
“Obsessive old girlfriends who can’t let go. You know what I’m talking about. The
ones who drive across the country wearing NASA diapers and have tasers and duct tape
in the trunk. Or who write thirty thousand e-mails with veiled threats to rival
lovers.”
“Yardley sent you an e-mail?”
“No! She doesn’t have to. She can hop on a federal Gulfstream to France and
rendezvous with you in fucking Nice.”
“Where she provided invaluable support setting me up with Fariq Kuzbari. You should
be delighted by that.”
“Yeah, look at me. Couldn’t be happier.”
“You were happy when I told you. Until you found out she was there.”
“That’s the other thing. Rook, I have been on a mission to keep the feds away from
me and out of my case. I’ve dealt with them a hundred times on a hundred other
cases. Their so-called resources come with a price tag. I refuse to let them screw
it up with their departmental politics or sell me out in the name of diplomatic
expediency. I’ve kept DHS at arm’s length,” she said, deciding not to bring up
Bart Callan. “Now Agent Heartthrob is sticking her nose in it—and using you to do
it. Or vice versa, what’s the diff?”
Rook tried to slow things. “Hey? Nikki?” He brought his pitch down and rested a
hand on her knee. “This is so not you.”
All of it, not just the past few days, but eleven years of it boiled over. She
despised it whenever her emotions spilled out, but it was too late to stem this
tide. In spite of herself, taciturn, compartmentalized, stoic Nikki Heat blurted her
raw vulnerability to him. “I feel alone on this. Everything’s coming at me at
once. I can’t do it by myself.”
“Then why don’t you want help?”
“I do. Just not from everyone. I can’t trust everyone.”
“What about me? The idiot who jumped in front of a bullet for you. Do you still
trust me?”
There it was. The kind of moment an entire life pivots on as surely as the needle of
a compass.
Nikki didn’t answer yes or no. She did something else. Something bigger than she
could ever speak. She showed it. Without a word, she rose from the couch and walked
to her mother’s piano bench to get the codes.
Rook listened intently as Heat told him everything. About the night three weeks ago
when she had finally been able to bring herself to play her mother’s piano for the
first time since the murder. How she opened the music bench after eleven years and
took out the music book, the one she had been taught from as a girl. And how, while
playing it, she saw something unusual. Small pencil notations between the notes of
the songs. He leaned over the book to examine them, squinting, turning his head,
trying to make sense of the marks, and she told him what she believed, and, in doing
that, answered his question about trust.
Nikki told Rook she believed that these markings were a secret code left by her
mother. And that whatever information the symbols hid was the reason she had been
killed. “And because all the signs say whatever conspiracy Tyler Wynn is involved
in is heating up, I also believe if the wrong person found out we had this code, we
’d both be killed, too.”
“Swell,” he said with a deadpan. “Thanks a lot for dragging me into this.” And
then they fell into each other’s arms and held tight.
A few seconds passed. With her face still buried into him, Nikki said, “You’re
dying to get at that, aren’t you?”
“It’s killing me.”