Heat was focused on other ramifications. “Can you tell who installed this RDA?”
“No, it’s heavily encrypted. Whoever hid this on the hard drive really has skills.”
“Rook was out of the country recently, could it have happened then?”
Magoo shook his head. “This was installed the other day. Anybody been in your loft? Maybe you left your laptop somewhere unattended?”
“Mm, no. I’ve had it with me at all times. Working at her place.” The same thought came to Heat, but Rook voiced it. “The water on the bathroom windowsill. Whoever it was didn’t break in to steal something. They broke in to probe me. Well, my computer. I feel so . . . violated.”
“Listen,” said Magoo, “I could try to break into it and see who it was. In fact, I’d love the challenge. But you have to know something. If I crack it, I may set off an alert to tell whoever it is that they’ve been busted. You want me to do that?”
“No,” said Nikki. Then she turned to Rook. “Get yourself another computer.”
* * *
Magoo left with a check that included a fee for his services plus the cost of a new, clean laptop he promised to return with inside the hour. As soon as the door closed, Nikki said, “I am so sorry I doubted you.”
Rook made a small shrug. “I don’t see it so much as doubting me. I think it was more like pouring sulfuric acid on my character and virtually shredding me as a human being.”
She smiled. “So we’re good now?”
“Way good.” Then he said, “Damn. I am so easy.”
She moved close and put her arms around him, pressing her groin against his. “Hey? I’ll make it up to you.”
“Count on it.”
“Later.”
“Tease.”
“To work.”
“Too bad.”
* * *
Heat began with her Priority List on the presentation pad. First in order was Sergio Torres. She might not have had the assets of the NYPD at her disposal, but she did have resources at the FBI. A few months before, while tracking down the serial killer from Texas who duct taped her to a chair in that very room, Nikki had contacted the Bureau’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime at Quantico, Virginia. During the process of investigating that case, she had forged a friendship with one of the NCAVC analysts. Heat got on the phone to her.
The beauty of a professional relationship in law enforcement is that little needs to be said to conduct business. Nikki supposed it was the residue of the code, attributed to John Wayne, of “Never complain, never explain.” Heat said she was working a case on her own and wanted to run a name without going through NYPD. “Mind if I ask your interest in the subject?” asked her analyst friend.
“He tried to kill me and I took him out.”
“Give me everything you’ve got, Nikki,” she said without pause. “We’ll run this SOB so you even know his favorite ice cream flavor.”
Heat fought off an unexpected well of emotion at the gesture and with coplike understatement thanked the analyst and said she’d be interested in whatever she learned.
Riding a sense of goodwill from the kindness of others, Nikki opened her cell phone to Recents and scrolled to Phyllis Yarborough’s number from the call she had made that morning. “I’m taking you up on your offer. I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
“That guy who tried to kill me in Central Park the other day. His rap sheet undervalues his skill set. If it’s not ethically compromising to you given my job status, I was wondering if you could run him through your RTCC database and see if anything pops.”
As with her FBI contact in Quantico, Phyllis Yarborough did not skip a beat. “Give me the spelling of his name,” was her reply.
* * *