They all spun at once when they heard it. Like a foot crunching broken glass. The door to the room where it came from was closed, but light was shining on the polished linoleum under the crack. Heat worked out the likely floor plan in her head. If that was the kitchen, then the door she’d seen at the back end of the dining room would also lead to it. She pointed at Raley and signed for him to go around to that door and wait for her move. She pointed to her watch and then made a chop on it to indicate half a minute. He checked his wrist, nodded, and went.
Detective Ochoa was already spotted at one side of the door. She took the opposite and held up her watch. On her third nod, they burst in large and loud. “NYPD! Freeze, now!”
The man sitting at the kitchen table saw three guns coming at him from two doors and shrieked as he thrust both hands high in the air.
As the flash of recognition hit her, Nikki Heat called out, “What the hell is this?”
The man slowly lowered one of his hands and pulled the Sennheiser buds out of his ears. He swallowed hard and said, “What?”
“I said, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” said Jameson Rook. He read something he didn’t like on their faces and said, “Well, you didn’t expect me to wait in there with her, did you?”
Chapter Two
As the detectives holstered up, Rook breathed a sigh. “Man, I think you took ten years off my life there.”
Raley came back with, “You’re lucky you still have a life. Why didn’t you answer us?”
Ochoa piled on. “We called out to see if anyone was here.”
Rook simply held up his iPhone. “Remastered Beatles. Had to get my mind off the b-o-d-y.” He made a wince face and pointed into the next room. “But I found that ‘A Day in the Life’ wasn’t the most uplifting diversion. You guys crashed in on me at the end, just on that big piano bong. For real.” He turned to Nikki and smiled meaningfully. “Let’s hear it for timing, huh?”
Heat tried to ignore the undercurrent, which to her ear wasn’t very much under anything. Or maybe she was more sensitive to it. As she scanned Roach for reactions and didn’t see any, she wondered if things were more raw for her than she’d thought, or if it was just the shock of seeing him there, of all places. Nikki had crossed paths with old lovers before, who didn’t? But usually it was in a Starbucks, or a chance glimpse across the aisle at the movies—not at a murder scene. One thing she was sure of. This was an unwelcome distraction from her job, something to be pushed aside. “Roach,” she said, all business, “you two clear the rest of the premises.”
“Oh, there’s nobody here, I checked.” Rook raised both his palms up. “But I didn’t touch anything, I swear.”
“Check anyway” was Nikki’s answer to that, and Roach left to sweep the remaining rooms.
When they were alone, he said, “Nice to see you again, Nikki.” And then that damn smile again. “Oh, and thanks for not shooting me.”
“What are you doing here, Rook?” She tried to remove any hint of the playfulness that she used to hang on his last name. This guy needed a message.
“Like I said, waiting for you. I was the one who called in the body.”
“Not what I’m trying to get at. So let me ask the same question another way. Why are you at this crime scene to begin with?”
“I know the victim.”
“Who is she?” All the years on the job, Nikki still found it hard to go to the past tense when referring to a victim. At least not at the hour of discovery.
“Cassidy Towne.”
Heat couldn’t help herself. She half turned to look into the study, but from where she was standing, she couldn’t see the victim, only the post-tornado effect of office supplies scattered around the room. “The gossip columnist?”