“I didn’t do it.”
“Someone sure did. Do you have any idea the problems you have caused us?”
Nikki thought carefully. Pointing to Rook wouldn’t be much help and would only make the leak appear more orchestrated. Even Tam Svejda assumed Heat was utilizing Rook as a back channel. The Hammer would go there before she finished her sentence. So she repeated the truth. “It wasn’t I.”
“You stick to that, Heat. See how much it comforts you while you sit at home.” Zach stood to go.
“But I’m on a case.”
“Not anymore.” And then The Hammer left the room with the two men from Internal Affairs.
* * *
Nikki was in such a daze, so lost in her own mind, that she meandered through the snowfall right past The Discourager’s blue-and-white. Harvey called out to her from his driver’s window, using the title she technically no longer bore. She turned back, wobbling on unsteady feet, feeling like she couldn’t pass a field sobriety test, and got in. “Shit’s really coming down,” he said. It took Heat a second to realize he was describing the storm. “Even you couldn’t see through it.” He hit the wipers. They scraped heavy, wet clumps to the sides that stuck, but the windshield filled, becoming clotted again before the next pass. The weather was becoming just like her life. It just kept coming down. Nikki wanted to be out in it. She wanted to wander in the snow and disappear.
“Where to?” he said. “Back to your squad?”
His innocent question slapped her with the New Reality. Nikki Heat did not have a squad. She turned her face away, making a project of smearing the condensation from her passenger window so he wouldn’t see the tears pooling. “Home,” she said. “For now.”
* * *
Rook raced to meet her, skidding on his socks as soon as she opened her door. “You are not going to believe what I just learned.” If he had waited, maybe taken a breath, he would have sensed it, seen the damage, downshifted and cocked his head and asked what was up. Instead, she got his back, retreating to the laptop on her dining table, shooting power fists in the air and roaring, “Yesss!” Nikki drifted into her apartment behind him, not hearing or even feeling her own footfalls. The sensation was as if she were floating or, dare she say—suspended.
Nose deep in his MacBook Pro, Rook crackled with energy. “It’s been eating at me. I remembered hearing something about Lancer Standard—Lancer Standard: Mercenaries to the Stars.” He turned to her to laugh, but Heat startled him by slamming down the lid of his laptop.
“Why’d you do it?” she said.
He searched her, frowning. “. . . Nik?”
“You can quit the act. Tam Svejda told me.”
He looked puzzled. “Tam? You talked to Tam? About what?”
She moved to the counter and came back brandishing the copy of the Ledger. “This. The article that just got me suspended because they think I leaked it.”
“Oh, my God,” Rook shot to his feet, “they suspended you?” He took a step to her.
“Don’t!” She put up both palms to stay him and he stopped. “Just . . . keep away from me.”
His mind was racing, so it took him a few seconds to piece things together, and by then, she was striding to the kitchen. He hurried to follow, catching up to her as she opened the fridge. “You really think I had something to do with this?”
“I didn’t have to think it. I was told. By your bouncing Czech.” She still had the newspaper in her hand and tossed it at him. By reflex, he caught it.
“Tam? Tam told you I sourced this?” Rook realized he still had the offending Ledger in his hands and tossed it into the other room. “No way.”
“Great. Now you’re calling me a liar?” said Heat.
“No, no, I believe you. I just don’t understand why she would say that.” He felt it all spinning out of control and said, “Nikki, listen to me. I did not leak this to her.”
“Yuh, right. Like you’re going to admit it now.”