Rook kept a fixed grimace, the proximity of this event to his own mortality episode hitting home. Beside him Nikki whispered, “Come on,” and then, when the screen flatlined and the signature monotone of no heart activity filled the room, she urged him again. “Come on, Tyler, come on.”
But the flatline tone continued stubbornly. The doctor ordered more joules of electricity. “Au loin.” The team cleared. Tyler jerked on the mattress again. Nikki watched the tiny screen for any spike in the green line. Nothing.
Another shock was administered to his chest. The medical team didn’t talk, but their eyes spoke of diminishing hope. Heat realized her fingernails were digging into her palms and unballed her fists. The doctor increased the joules again, but the next shot did nothing. As did the one after that.
Heat and Rook looked on sadly and helplessly as the man they had just met and were growing to like remained unresponsive, with the key answers to Heat’s most significant questions locked inside the head he had so playfully finger-tapped just minutes before.
Following multiple attempts, first the doctor, then his team, glanced up at the wall clock. The doc wrote down the exact time. One nurse switched off the defibrillator and wound the cords of the paddles. The other reached out for the heart monitor and flipped down a toggle.
The piercing tone ceased and the flatline disappeared, leaving behind a green, horizontal ghost fading from the screen. The nurse regarded Heat and Rook sympathetically, no translation needed. Then she turned to cover the corpse of Tyler Wynn.
Slowly, delicately, the nurse drew the sheet over him. For Nikki, it felt like the steel door to a vault slamming in her face.
ELEVEN
“It seems that Paris is also the City of Lights Out,” said Rook as they got into their taxi outside the hospital.
“Nice. Mr. Sensitivity strikes again.”
“What? I didn’t kill him. You did. You killed him.”
“Would you please stop saying that?”
“But you did. You killed Uncle Tyler.” He arched a brow at her. “I hope you’re happy now.”
Heat turned away and stared out her window at the grove of blooming horse chestnuts across the highway in Bois de Boulogne. The smooth acceleration of the Mercedes pulling onto the A-13 back to Paris created the illusion that it was not the car that was in motion but the flowering orchard of trees with their sunlit white blossoms seeming to roll past her like radiant spring clouds.
Of course she hadn’t killed Tyler Wynn.
Of course part of her thought she had. The nag of responsibility tugged at her. She envisioned some Notre Dame gargoyle coming to life, and could hear its devilish voice rasping, “He died because of your visit. It was too much for him. You should have ignored the old man when he begged for more.” The plainclothes detective who had arrived at Hopital Canard to interview her in the aftermath had dismissed that notion. Naturally, he asked her what had transpired before the cardiac arrest, and Heat, avoiding specifics about her mother, shared the detective-to-detective version: Tyler Wynn knew the victims of two murders she was investigating. He engaged voluntarily, which the uniform on post had corroborated. When Wynn started showing agitation, she had tried to break it off, but that made him even more upset, so she thought the better course was to give him the information he pleaded for and then end the interview, ASAP.
“Who knew?” the French inspector said with a shrug, and handed back her credentials. “I have already spoken to the doctor, who says it was not your visit but three bullets and something called aortic valve stenosis that killed Tyler Wynn.”