Cynthia Heat’s penmanship was always very distinctive.
“Thank . . . thank you,” Heat said, accepting the envelope, hoping the man didn’t notice that she had suddenly lost color.
Heat skipped the elevator, walking with a slight wobble toward the back stairwell, where she could have some privacy. She sat on the second step and stared at the envelope again, looking at that style of cursive she hadn’t seen in seventeen years.
When she opened the envelope, whatever small doubts Nikki might have still harbored that her mother was the author of the missive inside instantly disappeared. Cynthia Heat had always written to her daughter in longhand. Nikki recognized not only her lettering, but also the spacing between lines; the cream-colored heavy stationery that Cynthia preferred; the way she heavily dotted a period; the way she capitalized the first letter of a sentence a little higher than any other capital letters.
If the fleeting glance in the bus shelter and the contents of the urn didn’t confirm it, this did. Cynthia Heat was alive.
Nikki felt tears rolling down her cheeks already. She dabbed at them with her uniform sleeve, took a deep breath, then started reading:
My Dearest Nikki,
After seventeen years, I’m not sure how to even begin this letter. I know you must be angry with me. And I don’t blame you. I’m angry with myself, too. More than you could possibly understand. I’ve missed so much of your life.
But the fact is I didn’t miss everything. Your college graduation? I was there, three-quarters of the way back, by that magnificent elm tree. I saw you taking pictures afterwards with your friends, in that white dress with the blue trim. Your captain’s promotion ceremony? I rented an NYPD uniform and dyed my hair brown for that one. It was one of the proudest days of my life. Your wedding? I’m sure you didn’t realize the caterer had a new dishwasher. I loved the looks on everyone’s faces when that lovely husband of yours announced you were going to Reykjavík for your honeymoon.
Beyond those occasions, you were never far from my heart, even when the rest of me was quite distant. In seventeen years, there hasn’t been a day when I didn’t think about you. I have had many homes during that time, some for years, some for no more than a few weeks. The first thing I unpacked in every single one of them was my framed pictures of you.
I can’t believe, after all the times I’ve dropped in on your life—to check on you, to make sure you were okay, to see you with my own eyes—you spotted me in that bus shelter. It was clumsy of me. I guess I must be losing my touch in my old age.
But now that you know my secret, I have to beg something of you: Forget that I exist. Forget that I ever existed. Your life will be much happier and safer that way.
Long ago, I had to die so you could stay alive. Nothing has happened over the last seventeen years to change that. If certain people become aware I’m alive, you will be in grave danger. The threat is even greater now than it was back then. Maybe there will be some day when I will be able to come out of hiding. But that day is not now. And I’m very sorry to say it is not close.
In the meantime, please do not try to find me. I know that runs counter to the instincts you’ve developed as a detective, but I’m begging you: Leave this whole thing alone. I’ve already thrown away a big chunk of my life because I couldn’t do that. Please don’t throw away your life, too.
Love always,
Mom
Nikki sat hunched in the stairway and reread the letter three times. Her emotions took a cross-country journey as she did so, from anger to sadness, from joy to yearning.
The anger was that her mother had not only abandoned her in the first place, but that she now refused to come out of hiding for more than these brief cameo appearances. The sadness was that Cynthia felt she couldn’t. The joy was knowing her mother had not, in fact, suffered an agonizing death. The yearning was to be with her again, whether it was to bake a pie with her, as they used to enjoy doing, or to share the simple pleasure of a mother-daughter coffee.
Eventually, however, Nikki arrived at frustration. And determination. The frustration was that Cynthia wouldn’t just come forward and help Nikki help her. Reveal where the bills were. Say how she got them. Help unravel the mystery.
The determination was to do it even without her mother’s assistance.
There were now two very loud voices that were telling Nikki Heat not to dig into her mother’s past. First The Serpent—whoever that was. And now Cynthia herself.
They were having the opposite effect. It went to Nikki Heat’s doggedness—which she had inherited from Cynthia—and from a basic fact of her psychological makeup. The more she was threatened, cajoled, or beseeched not to do something, the more it became the thing she most wanted to do.
Maybe that made her too stubborn for her own good.
But it was also a big part of what made her Nikki Heat.
* * *
Once she had taken enough deep breaths to compose herself, Heat stood. She tucked the letter in her jacket. She dried the tears off her face carefully, so she wouldn’t smear the makeup the media relations people had insisted she slather on her face for the press conference.
Then she lifted her chin and completed her walk up to the detective’s bull pen.
As she pushed through the door at the top of the landing, she told herself she was going to be all business that day. Nothing would distract her. Not her mother’s letter. Not the very intriguing—and excessively public—offer from Lindsy Gardner.
First she’d dispatch with the lingering issues in the Legs Kline case. Then she’d power through the mound of paperwork that was being so fruitful and multiplicative on her desk.
Then, when Derrick Storm gave her the name of who sprang Bart Callan, she would throw herself into following the trail until it arrived on the Shanghai Seven’s doorstep.
She was ready for anything.
Just not what actually awaited her as she rounded the corner.
Jameson Rook was wearing one of his best bespoke suits, an elegant gray pinstripe outfit from Gieves & Hawkes in London. He paired it with a lavender Christian Lacroix tie and an Hermès silk pocket square that had been a six-month anniversary present from Heat.
He was surrounded by dozens of roses in different hues, enough that the bull pen—whose aroma normally approximated what you’d get if you moved a coffee shop into a locker room—suddenly smelled like a florist’s convention.
When he saw her, Rook leapt to his feet so forcefully the chair with the wonky wheel—the orphan chair that always seemed to be left over for him—wobbled into the desk next to it with a jarring bang.
During their last conversation, Heat had told him she needed to take a break from their marriage. She couldn’t be with him as long as her mother was somewhere out there. She knew how obsessed she got with ordinary cases, much less when the subject was her mother. Beyond that, she could sense how dangerous the search was going to be. She couldn’t involve Rook in any of that.
Her exact words were, “I have to get my head right so we can have a happily ever after.”
She had since blocked his phone number so he couldn’t send her texts or call her, and she had rigged her in-box to route his e-mails straight into the spam folder, so she wouldn’t be tempted to read them as she went through the rest of her mail.
But there was nothing she could do to block the man himself. Rook wasn’t going to give up on the woman he loved, the woman he had patiently wooed over the course of years until he had worn down her every objection. Rook had fought for her love before. And Heat could see he fully intended to do it again.
“Rook! What are you—”
“Wait,” Rook cut her off. “Before you say anything, I need to show these roses how beautiful you are.”
Looking scrumptious in his perfect suit, he started plucking bouquets off the desk.
“This,” he said, starting with the red ones, “signifies my love for you, and the enduring passion we share for one another.”
&nbs
p; Then he handed her the yellow roses. “These are because, in addition to being lovers, we are also best friends who put our caring for one another at the center of our relationship every day.”
Next he went orange. “This is for the admiration I have for you and how you approach everything in your life with full and total effort. And even when the thing you’re approaching is trying to kick me to the curb, I still admire you.”
Then it was on to purple. “I’m not actually sure what these mean. But doesn’t it remind you of the purple marshmallow in Lucky Charms? I guess that accounts for the ‘natural’ in ‘natural and artificial flavors.’ ”
He finished with white. “And this, of course, represents peace. So please understand I come in peace. And while I respect everything you said last night, I just want another chance to talk with you about this. When I married you, I signed up for ‘in sickness and in health’ but also ‘in the event someone totally unexpected resurfaces after seventeen years.’ We didn’t say that last part out loud, but I swear it was in the legal disclaimers at the end.”
Then he fished a white card out of his pocket. “But I’m not done,” he said, as if this were an amazing TV offer that was just about to get better. “Because I’ve also booked us for the Island-Hopping Special with Captain Tyler’s Airborne Escapades.”
He handed her what she now saw was a gift card.
“The Island-Hopping Special?” Heat asked.
“That’s right. Captain Tyler is my friend Gregory Tyler. He’s a corporate law burnout who now takes his former clients and their superrich Wall Street buddies on adventures. He claims to be the only sea skydiving operation in the New York area, though I’m not sure anyone has ever checked him out on that. The Island-Hopping Special is one of his packages for couples. You and your loved one jump out of his specially modified seaplane—with a prepackaged picnic lunch that includes champagne, of course—and parachute gently down to the uninhabited island of your choosing. You have your picnic. You enjoy your afternoon. Then a few hours later, he comes back and picks you up. How cool is that?”
“Rook, I—”
“Wait, don’t answer. I got a little excited and went off script. I’m not done yet.”
He closed in and took her hands in his. “Look, I know you’re going through some stuff right now. But I can help. That’s what we’re about. That’s what marriage is about.”
Heat glanced to her right, aware she had an audience. Detective squad coleaders Miguel Ochoa and Sean Raley—who went by the mash-up nickname Roach—were watching carefully. They probably thought this was just some kind of marital spat. She knew they would be cheering for Rook. And he didn’t need any more encouragement.
All she wanted was for Rook to go away. She thought about making up some wild story about how Rook had cheated on her with a Russian bimbo named Svetlana. Roach would forcibly throw Rook out of the precinct once they heard something like that. If they believed it. She doubted anyone would.
So she cleared her throat and said, “Can you come into my office, please?”
As soon as the door was closed behind him, he went to kiss her. But Heat, afraid she wouldn’t be able to resist him, fended him off with a stiff arm.
Rook looked appropriately wounded. “Nikki, seriously, what’s this about? I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“Neither do I,” Heat admitted. “My head is a mess. I just . . . I can’t focus on our marriage right now. I feel like all my energy needs to be on my mother.”
“Okay. I get that. There are times in a marriage when the relationship takes a little bit of a backseat. And that’s fine—as long as I get to be in the front seat with you while it happens.”
“No. No, I can’t involve you like that.”
“Involve me like what? Nikki Heat, I am your lawfully wedded husband. It’s too late to not involve me in your life. You’re not making any sense.”
“I know I’m not,” Heat said. “It’s deeper than anything I can explain.”
“Can’t you try?”
Heat took in a large breath. “When I was growing up, my mother was . . . She was the safe port from which I launched all my adventures. I could go out and explore with confidence, knowing I always had her to come back to, and she would always help me comprehend what I had discovered. When I thought she had been killed, I was suddenly just this grief-stricken teenager who couldn’t understand anything anymore. That’s why solving her murder consumed me the way it did. It was the only way the world was going to make sense again. I knew I wasn’t going to have the luxury of thinking about my own happiness or being in a real relationship—or even taking a normal breath—until she got justice. Then, finally, I thought she did. Petar Matic was dead. Bart Callan was in jail. Carey Maggs was in jail. And that’s when I was able to marry the most wonderful man alive.
“But now? It’s like everything has been ripped apart again. I can’t breathe normally anymore. I can’t think about happiness or a relationship. On some level, I’ve gone back to being that grief-stricken teenager who doesn’t know how to make sense of anything. And I know you want to help me find my center again. But the fact is, I have to make that journey alone. That’s how I did it last time. And that’s how I’m doing it again. I’m sorry.”
She rose on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “Now, please. Just go.”
Heat walked behind her desk, sat down, and pointed her nose down toward her paperwork. She kept it there even as she felt Rook’s eyes boring into her.
It was only when he started to leave the room that she allowed herself a brief glance at him. He looked utterly lost.
She felt terrible about it. But it was how it had to be.
SIX
STORM
Derrick Storm’s last act as Michael Jackson was to take two passes by the corner office of Mason Wood, the associate director of the Bureau of Prisons.
Wood was standing, talking on a headset, not paying any particular attention to the man walking quickly by his office.
In those two passes, Storm imprinted into his memory everything he needed to recognize Wood: the short-cropped white hair, the jowly face, the bags under the eyes, the belly that bulged against the constraints of the suit pants, the loafers with tassels.
This was the man who signed the order to transfer Bart Callan to a medium security prison from which he could more easily escape. And Storm could guess there was likely a large and fresh pile of counterfeit bills, courtesy of the Shanghai Seven, hidden somewhere in the Wood household because of it.
It was the kind of bribe perfect for a cautious, conservatively minded career civil servant. You couldn’t use bricks of twenty-dollar bills—no matter how perfectly forged—to buy a Bentley or purchase a second home in the Caribbean. It would attract too much attention, inviting a scrutiny someone on Mason Wood’s income wouldn’t be able to withstand.
But you could use those twenties to go out to dinner whenever you wanted. Or to scalp tickets to whatever ball game or concert you felt like attending. Or to pay for gas and groceries so you could use your legitimate income to buy a slightly nicer car, the kind that wasn’t too flashy or too noticeable.
Yes, Mason Wood probably thought he had done things just about right, setting himself up for a comfortable existence. And all it cost him was his signature.
If anyone asked, he probably had a story at the ready: It was just a mix-up; he meant to sign a different inmate’s order; how was he supposed to know screwing up one digit in the inmate’s ID number would have such disastrous consequences?
Maybe he’d get suspended for a little while. But he now had more than enough cushion, one near-flawless twenty-dollar bill at a time, to survive for as long as he needed.
Michael Jackson had it all figured out as he departed the Bureau of Prison’s offices, spilled out onto 1st Street in Northwest Washington, DC, dumped the fake ID badge into one street-side trashcan, then ripped off the ridiculous porn-stache and fake sideburns and deposited them into
another.
Now that he was Derrick Storm again, his first act was to text Nikki Heat and tell her he had found their man. Next he waltzed into a clothing store on D Street and grabbed some more Derrick Storm-like clothes. Not wanting to take too much time, he just grabbed whatever stuck out at him on his way back to the dressing room. Storm had one of those fortunate bodies that off-the-rack items fit perfectly.
He got his first text from Heat right around the time he was pulling a snug black T-shirt over his head.
GOT HIM. MASON K. WOOD. LIVES AT 182 CALHOUN LANE, BETHESDA, MD. CAREER BOP EMPLOYEE. UNDERGRADUATE AT JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY. MASTERS FROM GEORGE MASON.
Storm continued dressing, ditching his khakis in favor of a pair of jeans that, he knew from experience, would have women checking out his ass all afternoon. Such was his cross to bear.
MAKES $121,780 A YEAR AS ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR. LIEN ON HOUSE FROM MORTGAGE. TWO CAR PAYMENTS. THREE CREDIT CARDS, TWO WITH ZERO OUTSTANDING BALANCE. ONE MASTERCARD WITH DEBT TOTALING $14,050.
Credit card debt? That was strange. As he threaded a wide black belt through the loops on his jeans, Storm wondered: Why would a man with Wood’s access to cash be racking up credit card debt? Unless it was in an effort to throw off someone doing exactly what Heat was doing. Anyone who suspected fraud would pull up Wood’s financials, looking for signs of hidden wealth. Credit card debt would be a red herring taking an investigator in the opposite direction.
WIFE AMANDA WORKS IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY SCHOOLS, MAKES $72,010 AS A SCHOOL COUNSELOR.
Which, again, made the credit card debt strange. Why would a couple making close to two hundred large a year be so stupid as to let a credit card company charge them such usurious interest rates when, in theory, it would only take a small amount of fiscal discipline for a few months to get rid of it?