“We don’t do that here.” Lieutenant Marr’s comment came out as an observation rather than a reprimand. Like everyone else, he knew the stakes and understood the need to get information—and quickly; however, the field commander’s ethics were not situational. Even so, Detective Feller’s eyes probed Heat’s in silent appeal. Before she could reply, everyone’s two-ways crackled.
“K-Nine Four. Hostage located.”
Heat was already sprinting back up the sidewalk and making her turn at the gate by the time the transmission was repeated by the dog handler. Ahead she saw officers starting to gather around the farther of the two barges, and seconds later Nikki bypassed the gangplank, leaping from the dock to the gunwale, and disappeared down the open hatch into the bulkhead below deck. ESU officers had lit halogen lamps to illuminate the metal hold that rimmed the cargo box like an underground tunnel, with about the same dimensions of a mineshaft. She moved forward, ducking her head under the crossbeams, to where the K-9 sergeant was moving his dog out of her way. When the German shepherd moved aside, she gasped.
Rook was sitting on the deck with his legs splayed out in front of him and his head slumped forward over a bloody shirtfront. His hands were behind him, handcuffed around a steel truss, and one of the officers was crouched there setting to work on the lock. Relief swelled inside Nikki when Rook heard her footsteps and brought his face up and smiled. “Guess I’ll need to change shirts,” he said. “This definitely falls outside the P. J. Clarke’s dress code.”
He made her laugh, as he always did, and she brought her fingers over her mouth in case the emotion welling below turned into a wail. “Are you hurt?”
“You mean all the blood? My bad. I made the mistake of going heroic and trying to head-butt one of my captors. The one who looks like an Orc.” He pointed with his chin over his shoulder at the cop. “Sir, are you going to get me out soon, or do I have to rip these shackles off so I can hug my fiancée?”
Heat could no longer restrain herself. She knelt and pulled herself to Rook, squeezing him, then pulling back for a deep kiss. When they parted, he said, “Um, a little Fifty Shades, wouldn’t you say?”
“No,” she said firmly with a side-glance at the other cops. And at the dog. “I definitely wouldn’t.”
“Oh, right.” He arched one brow and nodded toward his lap. “Awkward.” Then he turned to the others. “But you guys have seen just about seen it all over the years, right?…No?” Then the cuffs came off and he folded his long arms around her. They clung to each other while his rescuers wordlessly left them alone for their reunion.
Topside, while Rook refreshed his lungs with sea air and let his eyes adjust to the sunlight, Detective Feller took Heat aside. “What are we going to do with Beckham?” The goon who soccer-kicked Heat now had a nickname. Across the wharf, paramedics called in from the staging area were bandaging razor-wire cuts from his failed escape.
“Kidnapping’s federal,” she said. “FBI’s going to want jurisdiction.”
“What do you want?”
“To interrogate him myself, of course.”
The detective turned to face her. “I don’t see any wrinkle-free suits around here, do you?”
“Then I think it’s time you hustled Becks across the river and let him wait in our interrogation room. I’ll be right behind you.”
Randall set off, then turned to her as he walked backward. “Should I red-card him?”
“Enough. Just go.”
When she felt she had a sufficient head start on the Bureau, Heat phoned Special Agent Jordan Delaney to inform him of the raid. Vying for first dibs on an interrogation was one thing; Nikki’s sense of responsibility wouldn’t let her ignore protocol and allow agents and resources to remain tied up on a case she had already closed. Delaney thanked her for the information and asked how she had managed to locate him.
“The New York Public Library,” she said, then waited for his long pause.
It came. Then the agent said, “No, really.”