“He’s not answering for me, either,” called Rook from the kitchen. “Although, truth be told, not the first college professor who stopped taking my calls.”
Nikki marked her place with a Post-it flag and crossed to the counter. “Did you have a particularly tough prof in school?”
“No, she was easy. It was when we stopped sleeping together that things got ugly.” He double-flicked his brows and picked up his whisk. “You ready for some of my famous Morning-After Hotcakes? Or is this the night before? That’s the beauty of life, you never know.”
Nikki went to town on those pancakes. He had added bananas and macadamia nuts in the shape of a smiley face to his recipe and swapped out maple in favor of coconut syrup. The effect was a comforting experience that tasted like vacation in Maui. For now, that was as close to a respite as she was going to get. She swallowed a bite and said, “So I got confirmation from Hudson University that Backhouse no-showed his scheduled lecture this afternoon. Feller says he also blew off a mandatory staff meeting tonight at Forenetics without any notice, something he has never done.” She pressed her Home button to check for text badges; there were none—same as her last check two minutes before. “Nobody answered at his apartment. Since we have probable cause for concern about his safety, the super let detectives Rhymer and Aguinaldo in, and he’s not there. Opie said that in the hall closet there’s a gap among his suitcases, and all his toiletries are cleared out of the bathroom.”
“What about checking with Backhouse’s friends, colleagues, associates?”
“One of whom ‘hit the wall’—literally—and the other two have bullets in their heads, which is what he is trying to avoid—in a very ill-advised manner.”
“By going off the grid? I don’t know…If I thought I was on somebody’s list of inconvenient truth tellers, I might pull a Dick Cheney myself and hunker down in an undisclosed location.” Something in what he said rekindled the latent thought she had been trying to access. It still teased her from afar. He studied her. “What?”
“Just thinking.”
“You’re beautiful when you do that. Even more so when you tell me what it is.” She picked up her phone again and touched Redial. “You’re not going to share, are you?”
“Soon as I have something to. Unlike others, I don’t hide information in this relationship.” She put the phone to her ear, heard Wilton’s outgoing message again, and ended the call. “This guy’d better hope we find him before they do.”
“‘They’ being who we think it is?”
And can’t prove, thought Nikki. At least not yet.
After too many hours of paperwork, they cleaned up the kitchen together to Nightline, which included a special report on the ongoing cyber attack on New York City. Rook, who said he was tired of living it and didn’t need to see it on TV, too, wanted to switch to some Bourdain. Any Bourdain. But Heat’s sense of needing to know all she could won out, and they left it on.