It was too high for her to reach, so Nikki surveyed the place for something to stand on. She climbed back up the steps, came down with the plastic cooler, and set it on the ground to use as a stepstool.
Nikki’s phone vibrated in her hand, startling her. The caller ID said it was Rook. Damn, she forgot to call Rook. She pushed accept and said, “Hey, guess what? I made it down here, and I—” Her ear filled with the dropped-call beep. She tried to redial him but the lone reception bar faded out and she got the “No Signal” display.
Carefully balancing herself on the cooler, Heat reached up and ran her fingers along the flamboyantly scrolled edges of the “91” faceplate. It felt loose.
It moved.
Nikki set her phone on the ground, positioned the light to shine up the wall, and got back on the cooler, stretching out so that the fingertips of each hand were on either side of the faceplate. Her arms ached from the awkwardness of her position, but she kept prying, feeling the panel coming looser from the wall with her effort.
As she struggled, tugging at one side and then the other, Nikki envisioned her mother working on the same panel ten years before. What did Cynthia Heat find, she wondered, and was it what had sealed her fate? And what about Nicole Bernardin? If Nicole had placed something here in her drop box so many years later, what could that be? And who did she leave it for? And why was it worth killing her over?
Just then the faceplate popped out of the wall and Nikki fell backward off the cooler, landing hard on the floor, still clutching it.
“I’ll take it from here,” said the man’s voice behind her.
Nikki rolled to her knees and reached for her gun, but before she could get to her holster, she got blinded by a strong flashlight beam and heard the action slide on a pistol. “Touch it, and you’ll die right there,” said Tyler Wynn.
Heat dropped her hand to her side. “Lace your fingers behind your neck, please.” She did as he told her and squinted beyond the light to try to the see the old man as he stepped forward from the top of the ladder onto the platform.
“You’re every bit as good as your mother, Nikki. Maybe better.” He swung the light out of her eyes and shined it up on the wall where a tan leather pouch sat inside the recess she had exposed. “Thanks for finding this for me. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to retrieve it.”
“You mean like faking your death?”
“Miraculous recovery, wouldn’t you say? Do you know I actually paid that doctor extra to zap me with low voltage just to be convincing?” He trained the beam back on her face. “Don’t look so disappointed. One thing you learn in the CIA. Nobody is ever really dead for certain.”
“I know one woman who is. And you killed her.”
“Not personally. I had hired help do that. In fact, I think you two know each other.” He called over his shoulder to someone Nikki couldn’t see. “You’d better get up from there, unless you want to get run over. The next train is due any minute.”
She heard footfalls on the metal rungs and a silhouette came up from the tracks behind Tyler Wynn, who said, “Take her gun.”
And when the other man stepped forward into the light and Heat saw who it was, her heart punched all the air from her chest.
NINETEEN
“Petar.”
It was all Heat could manage to say. She had no breath for more, as if the oxygen had been sucked from the tunnel. But those two hoarse syllables spoke volumes. She whispered her old lover’s name as both a question and an answer. And the weight she gave the word articulated a sour array of feelings suspended from it on sharp, cutting hooks:
Betrayal. Sadness. Shock. Disbelief. Blindness. Anger. Hatred.
Petar’s face displayed no shame or regret as he moved toward Nikki. His eyes met hers and she saw in them something like amusement. No, arrogance.
Heat thought of going for her gun. Even if Tyler Wynn hit her, she might get off a shot at Petar. He was armed, too, but holding his Glock sloppily. She could do it.