“Sorry about that, Chief.”
Heat held up her hands to the squad, the palms separated by inches. “I was this close to telling you anyway. So now I’m this close.” She brought them together. “But with all the leaks around here lately, I need your pledge that this stays in this group and doesn’t go beyond you.” Every single one, without prompting, raised his right hand.
So Nikki made a leap of faith.
Sometimes risks pay off. If Heat had not opened up to her squad, she never would have found herself in Midtown with Rook an hour later waiting for an elevator in the lobby of the prestigious Sole Building and feeling her first excitement at a potential lead since spotting Nicole Bernardin on her mother’s old recital video.
Nikki had given her detectives the cut-down version, editing out the Russian kidnapping, the Homeland Security encounter, and the most private parts. Nikki was not prepared to give up family secrets—especially not the nasty rumor that her mother had turned traitor at the end. Roach might piece that together if anything came of the hidden bank account, but she’d deal with that then. Meantime, filling the squad in on the Nanny Network, Tyler Wynn, and the CIA had given them plenty to digest. She’d finished by admonishing them again not to share and also to make sure to tell her immediately if anyone contacted them about the case.
Feller asked, “You mean CIA? FBI? One PP?”
“I mean anyone.” Nikki didn’t explain further, and as surely as she had in her Paris photo reenactment at Point Zero, she once again found herself in her mother’s footsteps, becoming cagey and strategic rather than open.
One practical advantage of her briefing was that she could now make assignments, like having Rhymer check out the alibi for the reality TV butler, Eugene Summers. But beyond mechanics, it also allowed her to mine the thoughts of her team, even if only for validation of her own ideas. Reynolds said, “First place I’d go is to those folks your mother spied on.” Which Heat, of course, had already considered.
“The problem is, where to start?” she said.
Rook opened his Moleskine to a dog-eared page. “I did some research on the North Vietnamese family from that box of photos—the family whose son your mom tutored before the Paris Peace Talks. The dad was prominent, so he was on Wikipedia. Both parents died in the eighties, and the son has been in a monastery since.”
“Not that Wikipedia isn’t the investigative journalist’s best friend, Rook,” said Randall Feller, putting a bit of stank on it, “but my gut says we’re smarter to focus in person on her mom’s most recent activity before the murder.”
“Agreed.” Detective Malcolm swung one of his work boots up on a chair back. “I’d say fuck it to the old gigs and start with her U.S. spy work. The old European stuff is going to be hard to trace and you’re going to end up doing a lot of wheel-spinning, sifting through forty years.”
His partner Reynolds said, “True that. Old scores are harder to trace and not likely to carry motives unless they are some mighty epic grudges. I’d start with those last targets she was snooping.”
Heat, already feeling better for their input, said, “Yeah, but how do you do that if you don’t know who her clients were?”
Rook got the lightbulb look and jumped up. “I know how.”
And he did.
The elevator let them out into the forty-sixth-floor offices of Quantum Retrieval. The receptionist was ready for them and ushered Heat and Rook to the corner office so immediately that they were still clearing their ears from the elevator ride when she gestured them in to meet the CEO.