As bolstering as Lauren Parry’s well-intended words had been, they were really just a nudge. The actual wake-up call that prompted Nikki to turn the emotional corner came in bed that morning, and from herself. And it came in the same apartment, the same room, and the same bed where, over a decade before, she had begun another climb, a struggle from the depths of a bottomless hole following her mother’s murder. Back then, Heat had come to realize that it was not enough to stay positive: She had to do positive.
Actions carry great, sometimes mystical power, and back at the start of the new millennium, after Nikki had passed a lost, miserable week cocooned under those covers, the decision to do something rather than wallow had led her to become a police officer. Today, her saving act was to secure Rook’s fountain pen—perhaps not as emphatic a life choice as altering her entire path to be a detective instead of an actress, but in one way not so different. Both worked as concrete steps. The one thing Dr. Parry had gotten right was when she had told her to be Nikki Heat.
Nikki Heat was all about action, not wallowing.
On the second level of the parking garage near City Hall, as she remote-clicked the locks on her car and opened the door, she heard a man speak her name softly from somewhere up the ramp. She dropped the Fountain Pen Hospital sack on the driver’s seat and turned, ducking into a crouch between her car and the one beside hers, resting her hand on the grip of her Sig Sauer.
She waited, listening.
The only sound came from the morning rush out on Broadway and the annoying buzz of a flickering lamp in the entry to the stairwell. Then he spoke again. Calm, measured, matter-of-fact. “You won’t be needing that gun, Captain, I promise you.” The echo against concrete in the cavernous space made it hard to pinpoint his location. Heat duckwalked back against the wall in case he was directly above her. No sense creating too much opportunity. “I wouldn’t advise you to pull it, anyway. It would not go well.”
She chanced engaging him, hoping to draw him into view or give her a ping on his location. “Is that a threat?”
A full minute passed before he spoke again, and by that time he had relocated. He was now nearer, it seemed, but his calm voice was still diffused in the reverberations of the space, defying any attempt at triangulation from her defensive spot, where she crouched between two engine blocks. “I’m not here to threaten or harm you. I’m here to talk to you about Jameson Rook.”
Heat’s stomach hit the spin cycle. Oh, shit, she thought, is Rook dead? Is he here to tell me Rook’s dead? Nikki fought the urge to bolt out into the open ramp and try for a look at this guy. Or to take him. If he knew something about Rook, she wanted it—now. “What about Rook? Tell me!” In contrast to his measured tone, her blurt sounded eager and needy. Because she was.
“I thought you’d be interested, and I can hear that I have your attention. Which is good, because what I am about to say to you is very important.” He paused again. Taking his time, running the table his way, and only making it harder on Nikki, who was coping with a turbo pulse and wondering what the fuck was going on. “I need to issue you a caution to stop overreaching in your homicide case. Not only are you trying to go places you shouldn’t go but doing so would be harmful to Mr. Rook.”
His words smacked Heat with alarm and hope. “Oh, my God…” she muttered. “He’s alive…” She couldn’t help herself and shot to her feet, calling, “He’s alive?” She got no reply and this time shouted it loud enough to hear her own voice ring back at her in the concrete cavern. “Don’t screw with me, is Rook alive?”
Another pause, and the voice came from farther away, as the unflappable baritone with a hint of accent—maybe Oklahoma?—resumed. “I urge you to listen. I know this is very difficult because it runs against all your training and, to be certain, your emotional investment.”
“Damnit, tell me. Is. He. Alive?”
In that same soft-spoken tone, he said, “Yes…so far.”
Her cop wheels started turning. If this guy was telling the truth—if Rook wasn’t dead in a gutter somewhere with a bullet in his head—this guy might be able to lead her to him. She stepped from between the cars and shouted again. “Who are you?” Nikki got her iPhone out and texted her location and a 10-13.