At first, Nikki thought it was a hallucination. The stress she’d been under,
the crazy hours she’d been keeping, things like that could bring on an episode. She
rolled her chair to peek around her computer screen. Across the bull pen, inside
Captain Irons’s glass fishbowl, it looked from the back like… Yes, it really was…
DHS Special Agent Callan shaking hands with Wally. Wally, rising wide-eyed from his
desk. Wally, whose jaw had gone slack and whose mouth gaped like an oxygen-starved
goldfish, to complete the full aquarium effect of his office. Then both men turned,
and the captain’s face shaded crimson, as he extended a hand to greet the lovely
female guest, Agent Yardley Bell.
Frozen, Heat could only stare back when Irons gestured through the glass wall to the
bull pen and the two federal agents turned her way. Nikki watched both of them smile
at her. At least Bart Callan’s seemed genuine.
A minute later Nikki sat in a guest chair in the fishbowl with Irons standing beside
her looking superfluous. “If you need me for anything,” said the captain.
“No, just your office will do it.” Callan looked around. “Unless you’ve got some
other place we can meet privately.”
Wally added, “There’s Interrogation, you could use that.”
“We’re good here,” said Yardley Bell. They waited for Irons to read their
silence. He gave a two-finger salute and left. Bell closed the door and leaned on
it. Callan dragged a guest chair closer to Nikki’s and sat.
“Am I becoming old hat?” asked Heat. “Because carjacking me to your warehouse in
Queens felt a little more special.”
Bell said, “Don’t feel ambushed. Agent Callan and I were in the area and thought
we’d just drop in.”
“Golly.” Nikki borrowed her credulous grin from Joey on Friends.
“Wanted to ask you about Eugene Summers,” said Callan. “You and Jameson Rook
spent some time at his apartment in Chelsea, and we were wondering why.”
“Are you interrogating me? Seriously?”
“Not at all. This is purely informational. We just like to close all the loops in
our investigation.” He grinned. “Belt and suspenders.” He sounded about as
credible as Bell’s claim about being in the neighborhood. Clearly, with this
effort, they wanted something, and Heat told herself she’d better focus. As a
skilled interrogator, she knew she needed to put her head in theirs and be them.
What would she be after?
The code.
Could it be they were looking for the code? Or evidence one existed?
“We obviously know Summers was once run by Tyler Wynn,” continued Callan.
“So what did you talk about?” asked Bell.
“Did you ask him?” Heat asked.
“Kind of asking you,” she replied. Yardley gave Heat a soft stare, but the moment
crackled with meaning. About dominance in the interview. And maybe about something
else, too.
“Naturally, I wanted to know if Summers had heard from him.”
“And?”
“He hadn’t.”
“And what else?” Bell’s gaze didn’t waver.
She knew the best strategy was to tell the truth. Since Nikki would never give up
the code, she did the next best thing. She told a truth. “Tyler Wynn has very
specific tastes, and we wanted to get a track on him through his consumer trail. We
didn’t know how far to trust Summers, so Rook used the cover of picking his brain
for a magazine article to get the specifics we needed.” Heat stopped there. She’d
seen so many people over-talk when they were on thin ice, when the best thing to do
is get off it—and fast. She sat back in her chair and let them work.
“So this would be Rook’s version, too?” asked Callan.
Nikki shook her head derisively. “Version?” She stood and asked them to follow
her.
The pleasure Heat hoped to get out of putting it in the agents’ faces by leading
them inside Rook’s retail tracking center was quickly offset by his reaction to
seeing Yardley Bell. And hers to seeing him. Nikki couldn’t write a clear caption
to their expressions. Was it just the way old lovers looked at each other, or were
these the smiles of unfinished business? She stepped right between them and said, “
This is the makeshift command post Rook has set up with Detective Rhymer to pick up
Wynn’s consumer trail.”
“Quaint,” said Agent Bell.
Heat said to Rook—and pointedly, “I was telling the agents how you and I met with
Eugene Summers for the purpose of getting this enterprise going.”