“Oh, nice, very nice.” She bow-tied the liner’s gray drawstrings and cinched the bag extra tight. “How can you stoop to glibness at a time like this?”
“I see we have gone from foot-dragging to diversion tactics.”
Nikki leaned a hip against the range and crossed her arms. “All right. You want to deal with this? Look around. This isn’t just real estate to me.”
“Nik, as far as I’m concerned, I can be happy wherever we settle down. Hell, we could even get side-by-side bathtubs on a lake just like in that commercial.” He grinned, but when he saw how deeply she was dug in, he came around the counter to join her. “If this is about your freedom, your independence is something you never have to worry about. Not with me. You do know that, right?”
“Sure. Of course. Look, can we put a pin in this subject? It’s all been a bit of a drain, especially with Maloney all paranoid that I’m out to get him.”
“Which, of course, you are.”
“I am now.”
At a quarter to six the next morning Heat left her building with two fingers looped around the hook of a clothes hanger that held her captain’s uniform in dry-cleaning plastic. The outfit wasn’t going to Rook’s loft but uptown with her to the Twentieth, where she could keep it handy in her office with the other backup clothes she kept stashed there. But they were civvies, same as she was wearing again that day, held at the ready in the event of the inevitable coffee spill or bloodstain. It made sense to keep her uniform handy just in case her duties unexpectedly required it. She and the other detectives used to bad-mouth the late Wally Irons, the Camera-Ready Captain, for always keeping a fresh uni on his coatrack in hopes of a press conference or photo opportunity. Now, here was Nikki, doing it herself. “‘And we become what we hate,’” quoted Rook on their elevator ride down.
“Nietzsche?” she asked.
“Screeching Weasel, Chicago punk band.”
Both had their heads on a swivel after the previous night’s incursion, and when they crossed the street toward her car, Rook noted the black SUV parked in front of it and said, “You’re starting to rate, Nikki Heat. It appears you not only got a car spotting you, it’s an undercover detail.”
But caution rose in Heat, and she slowed to a stop. “Something’s not right.” All four doors of the Ranger Rover HSE popped simultaneously. She turned to survey the area for cover and slid her free hand to her holster. “Stay close.”
Nikki directed Rook between the trunk of one car and the grill of another, figuring they could at least put some metal between themselves and the men in suits getting out of that SUV. But then she recognized one of them. So did Rook. “Kuzbari,” he muttered, ID’ing the security attaché of the Syrian Mission to the UN. Heat didn’t know whether to feel relieved or more concerned.
“Captain Heat, please wait,” Kuzbari called with a hand raised.
Just then the NYPD blue-and-white posted on her block roared up. The siren burped, the car screeched to a halt, and the officers bailed out and braced drawn weapons atop their open doors. “Freeze!” they shouted, and “Nobody move!” But the security beef protecting the security attaché took its role seriously, too: security. All three went for their weapons.
In the maelstrom of shouts and threats from both sides in different languages, Nikki tossed her uniform to Rook and waded into the mêlée. “Stand down!” she called first to the police officers. Then to the foreign protection detail, she added, “You, too. Everybody back off. Now.”