“I’m going to ask the waiter if he can go in the kitchen to get some foil to
make you a hat. Rook, it’s too convoluted. Kill four people just to get to me? Get
real.”
“Curse you, logic,” he said. “Well, at least we discussed it.”
“Don’t feel too bad. I do agree with one thing. You ask a very smart question: How
could Rainbow know Joe Flynn was connected to me?”
“Rainbow,” he said. “Catchy.”
After their dishes were cleared, she asked Rook if Yardley Bell had ever worked for
Bart Callan. When he said he didn’t know, she told him about her interview with
Algernon Barrett and the argument he said he witnessed with the woman who looked
like a cop.
“First of all, is the Jamaican jerk your most reliable witness? And secondly, what
would that mean, anyway? Is it your turn under the foil hat?”
They both got a chuckle out of that, but she said, “You never know what something
means. You just gather what facts you can and hope they land, eventually.”
“Fair enough. Want me to ask her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Just don’t.”
He paused and said, “You could ask Agent Callan.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? I know you and Bart are on speaking terms. Didn’t you two have cocktails
while I was in France?” She eyed him, and he said, “Relax, I didn’t go all
jealous. People have business meetings all the time over cocktails. Even at hideaway
bars at the Carlyle.”
Nikki felt annoyed and a bit exposed but smiled and said, “But you didn’t go all
jealous.”
The cell phone in front of him vibrated. The caller ID read, “Yardley Bell.”
“Perfect,” said Heat. “Go ahead, take it.”
He picked up the phone but then handed it to her. “These must have gotten mixed up.
This is your phone.”
When Nikki took it from him, the vibration pulsed all the way to her wrist. She
pressed to accept and said, “This is Heat.”
“We found him.”
Nikki’s head swooned. She looked to her martini glass, which was still over half-
full, and knew it wasn’t the cocktail. “Found whom?” The question sounded dumb to
her as the words came out of her mouth—and, damn, sounding dumb to Yardley Bell, of
all people—but Nikki sought grounding; she wanted to hear something concrete while
she sat there with her vision tunneling and the world slowing down. She wanted to be
sure.
Agent Bell said, “We’ve located Tyler Wynn. How soon can you and your people meet?
”
TEN
An adrenaline surge swept through Heat, but she kept her head. Training trumped
emotion, and she flipped the switch from exhilaration to logistics. Before she even
got up from the table, she speed-dialed the radio dispatcher at the Twentieth and
ordered up a blue-and-white to Code Two it to Boulud and meet her at the curb. This
would not be the time to look for a cab.
As they rushed to the door, Nikki stayed on her cell to give Dispatch the list of
detectives she wanted mustered to the staging area that Homeland Security had
already established on the East Side. Heat didn’t have to do much thinking. She
asked for everyone but Sharon Hinesburg.
At the same time, Rook put in a direct call from his phone to Detective Rhymer, whom
he knew was still in the bull pen working their RFID detail. By the time he and
Nikki hung up, the cruiser’s emergency lights strobed the block and its siren
chirped as it cut a U-turn around the median on Broadway to pick them up.
Fewer than two minutes had passed since Bell’s call. To Heat, it felt like forever.