“Roach. The BOLO on our silver minivan hasn’t turned up crap. Call in an extra shift of blue-and-whites to get out there and supplement existing patrols. Screw the overtime, I want eyeballs on the streets. Now.” Raley rushed to his desk to make the call. Heat turned to Ochoa. “Miguel, air support. Verify how many copters they have working this. If there is even one chopper sitting on the ground, let me know, and I’ll call the chief personally. We’ve already got two bodies, we are not going to let this man be a third.”
As Heat continued barking out assignments, everyone sprang to action; no one was bothered by the hard edge she had brought into the station house with her. Rook had been violently abducted. Rook. One of their own. Their friend. Her damn fiancé. Every detective knew this was no time for niceties; these were the critical hours to beat the bushes for leads. Everything else was wasted energy that could cost him his life.
“FBI for you, Captain,” said the night switchboard op from the hall. “I put it through to your office phone.”
She lunged across her desk to grab the phone. “This is Heat, who have I got?”
“Captain, it’s Special Agent Jordan Delaney, FBI.”
“I called you people twice.”
“I’m in my car now heading to Federal Plaza to meet my task force. I just got the case. And I’m with you. We don’t want to burn any time.”
“Then let’s not.” Nikki was redlining at top rpm’s and wasn’t about to slow for anyone, not even the FBI. She bulleted Delaney through the event as it had gone down, detailing the before, during, and after of the 3rd Avenue street grab along with all the descriptions she had, including two of the abductors and the partial plate she had been able to spot from the gutter. “Detective Raley from my precinct is en route to the restaurant at this very moment to secure their speakeasy cam video.”
“I want it, too,” said the agent.
“Done. You’ll have a copy within the hour.” She then filled Delaney in on the measures they had taken so far: the BOLO, the canvassing for eyewitnesses near the intersection where the grab had gone down, the extra manpower on the streets, plus the frequent calls they kept making to Rook’s cell phone. “I’ve assigned a detective to go to his loft to get his laptop so we can activate the Find My iPhone feature.”
“Save him the trip. We’ve already pulled Jameson Rook’s cell number and run our own ping on the StingRay network,” said the FBI agent. “Nothing. Apparently his SIM card’s been disabled or removed from the device.” The implications of that shot a lightning bolt of fresh panic through Nikki. She nearly had to sit down but clamped a lid on that shit and kept it together. “Captain, are you there?”
“What about street cams?” She came back with extra bite in her voice—trying not to see the mental picture of those goons wrestling Rook’s cell phone from him. “The cyber attack has rendered our cams NG. Do you feds have any visual tracking capability?”
“No.”
“Or aren’t you cleared to tell me?”
“I understand your frustration.”
“Like hell you do.”
Either this guy Delaney was an experienced agent or he had no pulse. He paused to absorb her rebuke, then continued evenly. “It’s put us in a box, too. I understand you have a close relationship with Mr. Rook, am I right?”
“He’s my fiancé.”
“Damn. Then let me assure you, Captain Heat, you have my word—this is family—I’m not going to hold anything back.”
“Thank you, Agent Delaney.” Her conciliatory tone barely masked the flames of urgency blazing underneath.
“You got it.” He paused, and she could hear his turn signal before he continued. “Your fiancé is quite well known and, unfortunately, journalists are big targets these days, and not just on foreign soil.”
Heat’s patience for a what-if dance of potential scenarios was zero, so she interrupted. “Let me save us both some time here and get to it. This was not some symbolic jihadi grab of a reporter. I know exactly what triggered this.”
“Go,” said Delaney.