The spring thunderstorms forecast for that morning hadn’t arrived yet, but
ominous clouds rolled in from the west, swallowing the ambient light of New York
City and spitting it back the color of spilled blood.
Nikki fought despair. Out there in those concrete canyons a serial killer roamed
free. So might the man responsible for her mother’s murder. Not to mention his
accomplice, who almost killed her. Heat looked all around, felt vulnerable, then
told herself she didn’t care. She almost believed it.
So far, Heat had managed to rescue one target of the serial killer, but still had no
solid leads—nothing she’d call traction. Her quest for Wynn and Kaye remained
stalled, with the added attraction of federal meddling: Bart Callan, vigorous,
competent, and misguidedly personal; Yardley Bell, disruptive to Nikki’s case and
threatening to her relationship.
Downstairs in Rook’s bed, Heat had tried to clear her mind of these demons. Since
she couldn’t sleep, she decided to be productive and mentally projected the lines,
dots, and squiggles of her mom’s code on the pale canvas of the ceiling. The solve
still would not come.
So she changed the scenery. Resting a bare heel on the ornate scrollwork of the
frieze beneath her, Heat listened to her breathing instead of the taxi horns, night
sirens, and the doop-doop of garbage trucks at work. She let her eyes gloss over
until she no longer saw the iconic Empire State and Chrysler Buildings looming out
of the cityscape. Instead, her vision fused with the thin curtain of urban haze in
the middle distance. Piano notes from her childhood songbook appeared and merged
with the blurred apartment lights in the high-rises before her. Then those strange
pencil notations surfaced like watermarks. Nikki could see the characters as clearly
as she had on the page where they were written, so embossed were they in her mind’s
eye.
But whether studied on paper, a ceiling, or the crimson Tribeca skyline, they still
told her nothing.
“How long have you been at this?” came the voice behind her. Nikki had wedged the
access door open and didn’t hear Rook come out on the roof.
She tilted to her right where dawn tried to muscle through the stubborn sky. “A
couple of hours, maybe.”
“Not tonight. I mean total.” She didn’t answer because he knew damned well how
long. So he said, “Almost a month, Nikki. It’s time.”
“No.” Heat said it so sharply pigeons flew. Much more measured, she added, “I’m
not taking this to Homeland. Or Yardley.”
“I agree.”
“Then what?”
“You trust me, right?” he asked. “I mean really, really trust me?”
“What.”
“I know a guy. A code breaker.”
Heat didn’t say no this time. She just continued to stare out at the city slowly
coming to life. Then she nodded almost imperceptibly and turned to him for the first
time as he stood there on the roof. “Rook?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not wearing any clothes.”
Rook found Keith Tahoma where he knew he would at seven in the morning. In Union
Square playing simultaneous games at a pair of Parks Department chess tables. And
winning both.
Nikki watched the skinny old guy in sunglasses, with the George Carlin whiskers and
gray ponytail, dancing from game to game, talking smack and busting some blatantly
OCD moves. Through a taut smile she muttered to Rook, “Are you kidding me?”