A man with a chocolate Lab on a leash passed her and climbed the steps. She followed behind and petted the dog while the man got out his keys. “Name’s Buster,” he said. “The dog, not me.”
“Hello, Buster.” The Lab eyeballed his man for permission and got up to offer Nikki his chin for a scratch, which she was glad to oblige. If dogs could smile, this one was doing it. Buster looked at her in his bliss and Nikki flashed back on her encounter with the coyote and its defiant stare-down in the middle of West 83rd. She felt a sudden chill. When the man opened the front door, the dog moved by reflex to go with him. She was just reaching for Rook’s door buzzer when the man said, “You look trustworthy, come on.”
And she followed him in.
Rook had the penthouse loft. The man and his dog rode as far as three and got off. Nikki didn’t like the idea of surprising men in their apartments or hotel rooms, having had one poor experience resulting in a tearful flight home from Puerto Vallarta one spring break. Tearful for him, that is.
She reached for her phone to call Rook again, but by then the car was at the top of the shaft. She put her phone away, pulled the metal accordion doors open, and stepped into his vestibule.
Heat approached his door quietly and listened. Nothing to hear. She pressed the button and heard it buzz inside. She heard a footstep, but realized it wasn’t coming from inside the loft but from behind her. Someone had been waiting in the vestibule. Before she could turn, her head slammed into Rook’s door and she blacked out.
When Nikki came to, it was in the same blackness she had just left. Was she blind? Was she still unconscious?
Then she felt the fabric on her cheek. She was wearing some kind of sack or hood. Her arms and legs wouldn’t move. They were duct-taped to the chair she was sitting in. She attempted to speak, but her mouth was duct-taped, too.
She tried to calm herself, but her heart was pounding. Her head ached above her hairline where it had banged into the door.
Calm yourself, Nikki, she said to herself. Slow breaths. Assess the situation. Start by listening.
And when she listened, what she heard only made her heart pound louder.
She heard what sounded like dental instruments being set out on a tray.
Chapter Seven
To keep herself from getting swept away in a current of panic, Nikki Heat clung to her training. Fright wouldn’t get her out of this alive. But fight would. She needed to be opportunistic and aggressive. She pushed her fear away and focused on action. She repeated silently to herself: Assess. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
Whoever was arranging the metalware was nearby. Maybe two yards away. Was her captor alone? She listened, and it seemed so. And whoever it was seemed very busy with the small-sounding tools.
She didn’t want to call attention, so, without making overt movements, Heat flexed her muscles, slowly tensing herself against her bonds, knowing she couldn’t rip free of them, but testing them, hoping for some sort of give, anything that would betray some area of weakness in the duct tape. All she wanted was a little slack somewhere, anywhere—at her wrist, at her ankle—just a quarter inch of play to give her something to work at.
No luck. She was bound efficiently to her chair at the upper forearms, wrists, and at each ankle. As she ticked off each point of restraint, she replayed her memory of Lauren Parry indicating each place on Cassidy Towne’s autopsy template. Her own were identical to that diagram.
So far, the assessment of give sucked.
Then the sorting stopped.