As soon as the elevator door closed, Nikki said, “Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.” And then he smiled and added, “About a Nikki Heat book . . .”
The car stopped at the ninth floor and several people got on. Heat noticed that Rook had turned himself to the wall. “You all right?” she asked. He didn’t answer, just nodded and scratched something on his forehead, covering half his face for the rest of the ride down.
At the ground floor, he let the elevator clear before he slowly got off. Nikki was waiting for him. “Did you get bitten on the face by something?”
“No, I’m fine.” He turned and speed-walked ahead of her, crossing the lobby at a fast pace. He had just put his hand on the door leading out to Fifth Avenue when Nikki heard a woman’s voice echo across the marble.
“Jamie? Jamie Rook, is that you?” She was one of the women from the elevator, and something in the way Rook hesitated before he turned from the door to face her told Heat to hang back and watch this play out from the near distance.
“Terri, hello. Where’s my head? I didn’t see you.” Rook stepped to her and they hugged, and Nikki saw a blush come to his face and blend with the scratch marks he had just excavated on his forehead.
When they separated, the woman said, “What are you doing coming here and not saying hello to your editor?”
“Actually, that’s just what I was going to do, but then I got a call for an assignment I’m working on so I figured, next time.” He looked up and caught Nikki watching and stepped around, presenting their backs to her.
“You’d better,” said the editor. “Listen, I have to run, too. But you saved me an e-mail. Your manuscript is due back from copyediting next week. I’ll ship it as an attachment as soon as it comes in, OK?”
“Sure thing.” They embraced again, and the woman ran off to join her companions, who were holding a cab at the curb.
When Rook turned back toward Nikki, she was gone. He scanned the lobby, and his stomach tightened as he saw her over by Security, reading the building directory.
“You have an editor here?” she said as he approached. “I see a lot of book publishers in the building, but I don’t see a listing for First Press magazine.”
“Ah, no. They’re in the Flatiron.”
“No Vanity Fair, either.”
“They’re in the Condé Nast. Off Times Square.” He touched her elbow. “We should get up to the precinct, huh?”
Heat ignored his prod. “So why would you have an editor here if it’s all book publishers? Do you write books?”
He rocked his head side to side. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Now, that woman, Terri—your editor—got on at the ninth floor, as I recall.”
“God, Nikki, do you always have to be such a cop?”
“And according to this”—she ran her finger along the glass covering the building directory—“the ninth floor is Ardor Books. What would Ardor Books be?”
The security guard at the counter beside them smiled and said, “Ma’am? Ardor Books is a romance fiction publisher.”
Nikki turned back to Rook, but he wasn’t there. He was speed-walking to the Fifth Avenue door again, thinking he had a chance in hell to escape.
Chapter Twelve
Coming into the bull pen with Rook twenty minutes later, Nikki thought there must be a SWAT operation or another suspicious vehicle discovery the way everyone was crowded around the TV. But that didn’t seem likely, because she would have certainly picked up the chatter on the TAC frequencies during the drive up from the publishing house.
“What’s the big news?” she asked anyone in the room. “Somebody else get fed up with the strike and set their trash on fire?”
“Oh, major story,” said Detective Hinesburg. “All the TV choppers are on it. ACC has a coyote cornered at the north end of Inwood Park.”
“That critter gets around,” said Raley.