Concerned about tying up resources on something so iffy, Heat decided she and Rook would wait in the barge hold alone. To be prudent, however, she had had Detective Feller follow them as backup, and he was parked a block away in the staging area they had used to rescue Rook just a few days before.
Nikki made another check of her Omega. Twenty-five minutes of dank eternity to go. Rook touched her shoulder. But she had already heard it—the scrape of a shoe topside. She hand signaled him to move back out of the dull light that was filtering down through the overhead ventilation grate.
The next footfall was softer but closer, on the corrugated steps leading down from the hatch.
Heat stepped back into the shadows opposite Rook and eased her Sig out of its holster. She held it against her thigh, pointed at the floor. She counted five more footfalls on metal, and then whoever it was stopped, probably at the bottom of the stairs.
Then the footsteps resumed. Once again, a soft tread, but definitely drawing closer. Heat brought her gun up, then cupped and braced against a steel stanchion. A dark shape emerged from the blue shadows into the dusky light and stopped.
Yardley Bell had answered the text.
In the hollow silence that followed, broken only by another moan of steel plates chafing against the wharf, Heat studied Bell, keeping her gun sight on the secret agent’s torso while she scanned for a weapon. As she did, Yardley fanned her arms out from her sides. At first Nikki thought it was a freak of timing, but when Yardley spread her fingers to show that her hands were empty, Heat knew it wasn’t a coincidence at all. Yardley Bell did little by coincidence. This was pure situational aptitude.
“Jamie, Nikki, I know you’re here.”
While Heat processed how to play this, Rook emerged from his hiding place against the far bulkhead. He got just to the edge of the dim spill of overhead sunlight and stopped. “You? You’re Black Knight?”
“Rook, step back,” said Heat, holding position. “Yardley, keep them where I can see them, just like that.”
Rook stayed where he was. Agent Bell did as she was instructed and even pivoted a few degrees in the direction of Nikki’s voice, presenting her the widest possible target, in full compliance. “My piece is staying where it is,” said Bell. That could be interpreted that two ways: either as a warning not to take it, or an assurance that she wouldn’t bring it into play. Or both.
Heat read the moment and moved into view. She lowered her Sig Sauer but didn’t holster it.
“When I got the text message, I thought about ignoring it.” Yardley regarded her ex, who still hadn’t absorbed the surprise. “Then I figured I owed it to you after all you’ve gone through…to let you know it’s over. And that you’re safe.” The faraway sound of a motorcycle rumbling past on the street drew Bell’s attention, and she turned her chin over one shoulder. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Funny, I thought the same thing about four in the morning when I woke up with rats racing across my pant leg.”
“None of that was my doing. I heard about the operation after the fact.”
“If not you, then who did it?” asked Nikki. Now that Rook’s text bait had panned out after all, she was determined to exploit the opportunity all the way to an arrest. If not of Yardley Bell, then someone.
“It’s classified. I can tell you that there has been some internal strife at the agency, and—”
Heat jumped in, hoping solid pushes would get Bell to loosen up. “Which agency?”
“One I can’t name. Or acknowledge. You know that.”
“Not good enough. Kidnapping? I need more.”
Rook recovered enough to get his head engaged and joined in. “If you weren’t involved, why was Gallatin calling you?”
“He wasn’t. I’m not Black Knight. Black Knight is neutralized.”
“You killed him?”
“Please. We don’t operate that way.” For emphasis, she added, “We don’t. He’s been reassigned. He went rogue with an illegal op and paid for it.”
“Was he the guy with the Okie accent?”
“I’m not able to say.” Which was the same as a yes.
“And George Gallatin?”
“After Black Knight extracted him, he was also reassigned.”