“Go right in,” said the officer, “if you’re all set.”
Nikki couldn’t have felt less so. The trauma of the week was enough to put her gut on the spin cycle. Now, adding to her anxiety, came this staggering news that Rook had been the source of a leak to Tam Svejda. And who was this reporter bimbo to Rook? With all these jagged fragments of distraction swirling in her head, making her very much want to turn and run, Heat put up her firewall. She focused on the promotion waiting on the other side of the door and, with it, her chance to take over the Twentieth and, finally, wrest control of the Graf case and run with it. She nodded to the cop and said, “Set.”
* * *
There was no promotion committee waiting for her. There was only one person in the room and it was Zach Hamner, seated at the far side of the conference table, facing her as she entered. The other fifteen chairs in the room were empty, but she could see from the scattered evidence of coffee rings on napkins and the unaligned swivel chairs that there had been a big meeting there recently.
The next major tell that something was amiss was his flat expression. Plus, he didn’t invite her to sit. Instead, he laced his fingers together on the tabletop and said, “Nikki Heat, you are hereby relieved of duty, until further notice.”
Blindsided, Nikki felt herself coming undone. Her eyes fluttered, and she began to have the sensation of tumbling, of losing her balance after being hit by the force of the shock. As she tried to gain her equilibrium, the side door opened and Lovell and DeLongpre, the Men in Black from IA, came in and waited. The Hammer said, “Please turn over your shield and gun to these men.”
ELEVEN
When Nikki rested a hand on the back of the executive chair in front of her for steadiness, it rocked on its swivel hinge and the result was only to increase her sense of disorientation. She had entered with confident strides to assume her promotion and all that came with it, but in the mere crossing of a threshold she found herself cast adrift. Veering into a sickening emotional slide, Heat went spinning like one of the cars she had passed on the way there: tractionless, grappling for control, hurtling for the inevitable crash.
Detective DeLongpre wanted her shield. Nikki willed herself to reclaim her center and straighten herself up. Then she complied. His IA partner, Lovell, stood on her other flank with his hand out. Heat didn’t even look at him. She withdrew her Sig from its holster and handed it over, grip first, but with her eyes locked on Zach Hamner’s. “What’s this about, Zach?”
“It’s about you being suspended from duty while you are under official reprimand. Clear enough?”
Implications crashed over Nikki all at once and she felt her knees weaken. “A reprimand . . . ? What for?”
“For starters, going to the media. You have a problem, you talk to us. You don’t go outside the family.”
“I didn’t talk to the media.”
“Bullshit. Yesterday you get all up in my ass about Montrose’s funeral, and when you don’t get your way, you threaten to go public. And then, this.” He held up a copy of the Ledger that was marked up with comments in red ink. “This is the commissioner’s copy.”
“I was upset. I lost it.” Nikki lowered her voice to convey the rationality he didn’t witness the previous day. “But it was an empty threat. I never should have said it.”
“The time to think was back then. You dragged this department down, you disgraced yourself, and you blew a once-in-a-career opportunity. You think you’re going to get promoted now? You’ll be lucky if you come out of this with a job chalking tires. How the hell are you going to be trusted to lead if you can’t be trusted?” He let that sink in and said, “Look, these are the bigs. Ambition is not a dirty word. But never, ever, at the expense of this department, Heat. Because one thing that is not tolerated here is disloyalty. You betrayed us.”