Deadly Heat

  Why, she wondered, would someone work so hard to construct a coded message that, essentially, didn’t reveal information? Her mother was more practical than that. No wasted effort, everything for a purpose. The apple didn’t fall far.

  Nikki slid the papers out of the tube and laid them out before her. Then she stacked them and held them to the light, getting the same message as before: Unlock the Dragon.

  As she had done, ad nauseam, she considered the significance of each word. Nikki focused on “Unlock” because that felt like a call to action—one she hadn’t taken. That’s what kept her persevering. Nikki had not unlocked anything.

  She had spent eleven years going around that apartment searching for locks or secret boxes. Her father had let her go through some of their things that he had brought to his condo in Scarsdale, and she had found nothing there. So no more house searches.

  Heat stared at the message until her eyes glazed. Then she spread the four pages apart, kicking herself for going back to square one like that. But she did.

  Why was this so difficult? What had Puzzle Man said? That the hardest code to crack was the one that’s only known by two people? The sender and the receiver.

  If Nikki were the intended receiver, she wondered, why choose her? When her mother was murdered, Heat was a theater student at Northeastern, not a cop, and with no hint of becoming one. Or maybe her mom knew more about her nature than she did. Or simply trusted her completely.

  “So, Mom,” she said aloud, “what’s just between us here?”

  She tried not to picture the mother of her nightmares sprawled on the kitchen floor. Her gaze fell across the room, and the ghost of her recent dream came to her: Cynthia playing the piano in the corner, saying, “You know…”

  It began to seep through as she laid her eyes on the four pages again. Nikki removed her focus from the coded marks themselves and contemplated the sheet music they had been written on. A recollection drifted to her on a trail of time’s smoke.

  Those four pieces comprised one of Nikki’s piano recitals when she was sixteen. She rushed to the piano bench and dug out the old program. There they were on the list. Those four songs, and no others.

  Why choose them for the code?

  That recital lived clearly in her memory. She recalled her stage fright, and making only one mistake in her fingering, which (for the first time) she had not let shake her confidence. And what else? Oh, yes! Her mother was so proud of her that night she celebrated by taking Nikki out for dinner—and letting her have her very first drink. They’d gone to the Players, where her mom was a member. The club sat only a few doors from their place but carried a grand history and specialness to Nikki. Her mother asked the bartender to go in back and unlock her private wine locker for a special bottle. When he uncorked it and left, Cynthia drank down the water from Nikki’s glass then poured her daughter some of the celebration wine. Her mom only allowed the sixteen-year-old a half glass. To Nikki, it was brimming.

  Heat checked her watch and stood. The new warmth that flowed through her came from something more than revelation, more than closure. She felt a connection.

  Nikki put on her coat and stepped out.

  The bartender’s hair had gone white over the years but he still remembered Miss Heat, same as he recalled everyone who ever had been a member or honored guest at the Players. If George had been working the Grill Room when Samuel Clemens knocked cue balls around the billiard table that still lived there, he would have memorized every shot, quip, and bawdy curse from Mr. Twain.

  He got his keys off the hook above the bar sink, and as he led Nikki to the back, he said, “I still see your dad come in from time to time. Although not so much since…” George’s brow fell. He left it there.

  In the back of the room, past cases of hard liquor and house wines, built-in cabinets filled a wall. “Here we go,” said George, “the private stock.” Each cupboard, the size of a small gym locker, was marked by an oval brass plaque etched with the member’s name. Nikki recognized a lot of them; most belonged to famous actors, but a few to composers, journalists, and novelists. They weren’t arranged alphabetically, but the barkeeper knew where each stash resided, by heart. He fit the key into the door of the locker labeled “Cynthia Heat” and stepped back. Discreet to a fault, George smiled and said, “I’ll leave you to do the honors,” then melted away to the Grill Room.

  Heat opened the door and found no wine. All the locker housed was a solitary bottle of beer: Durdles’ Finest Pale Ale. A banner on the label read, “Now crafted in America at Brewery Boz, South Street Seaport.” Nikki lifted the bottle and saw her name on the envelope it had been resting on.

  She ran the pad of her forefinger over her mother’s handwriting and opened the envelope flap, which Cynthia Heat had left folded but not sealed.

  The note to Nikki was short. She absorbed it with surprise, at what it said and at the unexpected sense of closure she’d always believed could never come. The words under the signature at the end of the note made her eyes cloud with tears: “Always remember Mom loves you.”

  She left the beer, took the note, and departed with one fewer loose end, and then some.

  Nikki’s quad protested as she stretched on the mat at her gym early the next morning. The soreness from the physical ordeal of the past weeks, coupled with skipping workouts and sleep, made her feel like an out-of-shape slug. Heat smiled through her grimace, thankful she belonged to the only gym in Manhattan without mirrors.

  When Bart Callan came in, he was grinning, too. “You weren’t kidding, Heat. This facility is bare-bones. I expect to see Rocky Balboa working a side of beef.”

  “I like it this way. No frou-frou, no posers. It’s come to work, or stay out.”

  “Is that why we have it all to ourselves?” He dropped his gym bag in a corner then stripped off his sweats down to his basketball shorts and a Homeland T-shirt with the sleeves hacked off, revealing seriously ripped upper arms. She wondered if he had altered his tee just for her.

  Heat and Callan double fist-bumped in the center of the mat to signal readiness. Nikki shifted her weight back and forth on the balls of her feet to get a read of him, and in an instant, she got her assessment. He made a feint left and a lunge right, grabbing her waist and sending her to the mat. “Finally,” he said. “Contact.”

  “Man.” She got up and said, “Rusty.”

  This time she went for him. As she came forward, he dropped to a knee and flipped her over his back, and she came down with a thud on the mat. “Remember, you called me,” he said. “You sure you’re up for this?”

  “We’ll see. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “The arraignment?” He waved the air dismissively. “Don’t sweat that.”

  They circled each other, throwing decoys and fakes, nobody committing yet. “I’m fine with the arraignment. I was awake because I finally broke a coded message my mom left me.” She threw a low shoulder, straight to his waist. He didn’t react in time and he went down. This time, she helped him to his feet. “She definitely busted Carey Maggs.”

  “A little late now that we closed the case, but congrats.”

  Heat shook her arms to keep limber. “Bart, when I asked you to check Maggs out, didn’t you send me an e-mail clearing him?” He must have thought she had her guard down. He suddenly dropped to his seat and made a leg sweep toward the backs of her knees. But Nikki jumped his move like a double-Dutch, landed on her feet, then danced in place, letting him haul himself up this time.

  “Can’t believe I just whiffed.” He got on his feet, and shook his head at getting skunked.

  “Didn’t you say Maggs was clean?”

  He forearmed some sweat off his brow. “Database doesn’t catch everything.”

  “Guess not,” she said. He tried to shoulder-tackle her at the waist, but she rolled with it and landed on top of him. She hopped to her feet. While he bounced to his, she said, “Got a question for you about the helipad, the other night.”

&
nbsp; “Heat, are we here to spar or talk?”

  “How did you know to get there first?”

  “I told you, Yardley Bell told me.” He moved for her right side. She expected a fake, but he committed and clotheslined her down.

  She said, “Rook said he never told her.”

  “How else would I know?”

  “Hinesburg, maybe?” She got to her feet, watching him closely.

  “Hinesburg? Why would I be talking with Hinesburg?” They came at each other at the same time, locking up their arms. Standing at a stalemate. They broke apart and danced a circle sideways, facing each other.

  “Weird thing,” said Heat. “When we searched Hinesburg’s stuff, we found her backup gun. At home.”

  He side-danced some more. “So she had another. What the hell is this?”

  “And my friend, the ME, caught up with me over the weekend. She found trace metals and powder burns on Hinesburg’s entry wound.”

  “What can I say? My cannon barks.” He made a move for her, but pulled back when she got ready to counter. Then, when she let down, he rolled her across his hip onto the mat. He put out a hand and pulled her up.

  “Another thing in that message of my mother’s? In addition to nailing Maggs, she also had something interesting to say… About the Dragon.” She paused. “How much was Carey Maggs paying you?” Callan’s fist lashed out so rapidly, it stunned her. With no time to block it, he clocked Nikki’s jaw so hard that she flew off the mat and landed sideways on the hardwood. Before Heat could clear her head, he turned and raced to the corner where he’d left his stuff. He reached down into his gym bag and brought out his service weapon.

  But Heat had speed he didn’t count on. Before Callan could come around with it, she dropped him from behind with a tackle that whipped his face into the cinder blocks just above the floorboards. He twisted around, blood streaming from his nose, and locked her head between his knees. She felt his arm coming down toward her with the gun. She reached up, flailing blindly, caught hold of his wrist, then kicked hard onto the floor with her heels and kipped her body up. Her momentum carried her feet in an arc up and over her head so that her kneecaps came down, pile-driving his torso. He cried out and his leglock slackened. Nikki sprung to all fours and flipped him over facedown, her one hand still clamped onto his right wrist to hold the gun up and away.

  The man was strong and struggled hard against her grip, but Heat held fast. At last Nikki felt him start to give in. But then, in a sudden move, Callan thrust his head upward. The back of his skull smacked her sharply on the chin. Her head rang and her vision darkened at the edges. Then she blacked out.

  It couldn’t have been for more than a second or two, but when her brain cleared and she jumped to her feet, Callan was on his, too, bringing the Sig Elite up on her.

  She braced herself for the shot, but he hesitated. “I didn’t want this,” he said. It sounded like an appeal. “When you accidentally ended up at the heart of this thing, I kept steering you away. And the deeper you dug, I tried to steer you away again and again.” Callan swiped the flow of blood from his nose with the back of a wrist while his other held the gun steady. “Nikki, I cared about you. I did everything I could… But now I have to kill you.”

  “You don’t.” But they both knew he did. She measured distance. Close but risky. To Heat, the muzzle of the pistol looked as wide as a tunnel.

  “Don’t even,” he said.

  “At least tell me why.” She looked into his eyes and saw conflict. Even sadness. So she held the gaze and made an appeal of her own. She used his first name. “Bart, if there was ever anything between us, at least let me go to my grave knowing why.” Nikki could see him considering. “Bart, please? I know who. Don’t I deserve a why?”

  He wristed his nosebleed again, thinking about it. His eye went to the door. Then back to her. “You figured it out already. The bioterror plot funded by Maggs.”

  “He paid you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Tyler Wynn? How did Maggs turn him?”

  “I turned him. He was ripe. Classic profile. An obsolete agent with expensive needs.”

  “But why Wynn?”

  “European recruiting. After Ari Weiss became a problem, he did a search for a biochemist with workable morals.”

  “Tyler found Vaja?” Callan didn’t answer her. Didn’t need to. “And that’s why this plot went to sleep for eleven years? Just to find one biochemist?”

  “Not just. Maggs also needed to set up his pharma company. Then get the government contract. Distribution capability. That took time. Years. The promise of a couple billion buys a lot of patience.”

  A motorbike ying-yinged on the street and it spooked him. Before he changed his mind, Heat fired another question. “Why kill Nicole Bernardin?”

  “Vaja lit up her radar when he started making trips to Russia recently to get the smallpox strain. That’s what we were waiting for. The last piece of the puzzle. Getting the virus so he could brew it and weaponize it. Nicole got too good at her job, and…” He let it hang there. The sentence carried deadly implications for Nikki.

  Callan didn’t seem eager for the next step, either. “Bart,” Nikki said, personalizing again. Trying to sound sensible instead of pleading. “Have you thought this through? If you kill me, you still have to run. You can also choose to not kill me and still run.”

  He shook his head. “Not in the cards.”

  “Or you could cut a deal. Turn evidence on Maggs. Come on, we do it for perps all the time. You’ve done it, I’ve done—”

  Heat thought the loud bang was the gunshot, but it was the metal door slamming open against the gym wall. Nikki turned and saw Yardley Bell holding a pistol. Callan spun toward Bell with his Sig Elite. Nikki lunged for him, clamped a hand around his gun wrist, and pointed the weapon to the ceiling. The pistol shot thundered and paint flurried down on them as Heat jerked his left arm behind his back until she heard a nauseating gristle snap inside his shoulder. Callan’s scream echoed through the gym, and his Sig Elite clattered onto the floor.

  Nikki dropped him on his face and put a knee in his back as Agent Bell rushed over to cuff him.

  Heat turned to her and said, “You’re late.”

  Nikki Heat and Yardley Bell stood together on the sidewalk outside the gym while the paramedics in the back of the ambulance braced Callan’s dislocated shoulder and cleaned the blood off his nose and chin. Heat said, “Think he’ll give up Maggs for a deal?”

  “He’s already laying track.” Bell studied Nikki. “You don’t mind hanging it out there, do you?” asked Bell.

  “I had to. My mother’s note only said she suspected Callan was the Dragon, but couldn’t prove it. I wanted to smoke him out and see how he reacted.”

  “And?” They both chuckled at that. Then Bell said, “I always had concerns Callan might be dirty. All the way back when he was FBI and running your mother’s case, but they were too flimsy to justify, and I was just a rookie.”

  Heat remembered Algernon Barrett telling her how he eavesdropped through the peephole on her mother and the lady who looked like a cop, and now she figured that must have been Bell. “Nice of you to tell me, Agent.”

  “You mean like you told me about your mother’s code, Detective?”

  Nikki had to give her that and said, “Fair enough.”

  Bell continued, “After Nicole Bernardin got killed on Callan’s watch, I called in a chit with the director to send me up here to collaborate on the case. But really, it was so I could get inside and stay close to him.”

  “Callan thought you were there to Bigfoot him.”

  “And you thought I was the Dragon. Or at least the mole. Come on, you did.” And when Nikki didn’t answer, she said, “Or maybe you just hoped I was.”

  Nikki smiled. “Let’s say that I consider all options viable until proven otherwise.”

  Callan cried out as the EMT tried to maneuver his arm into a brace, and both women turned to watch. Bell said, “
What put you onto him?”

  “You know how it goes, things accumulate. Initially, I suppose, it was his interference in my case. Like you—no offense—Callan was very disruptive. But the major giveaway for me was the helipad. All the inconsistencies. And Hinesburg, shot in the temple like that.”

  “Close range.”

  Heat looked again in the ambulance. “Sharon probably thought he was going to rescue her. But she was working for him and he had to shut her mouth.”

  “You do know he wanted you.”

  “You mean to join the team so he could keep me on a leash?”

  “Come on, Heat, I saw the way he looked at you. You didn’t pick up on it?”

  Nikki had done enough interrogations to smell bait being cast in the pond. She played it down. “I never bought it. I mean, none of what he said ever really felt romantic.”

  Yardley said, “Maybe you just weren’t receptive.”

  Heat paused then looked Rook’s ex in the eyes. “Count on it.”

  Rook unlocked the door to Heat’s apartment and dropped his carry-on by the umbrella stand. And he waited. “Hello? Back from the coast. No greeting?”

  “In here,” she called.

  He draped his jacket on a chair back and made his way to the living room, where he found Nikki reclining on the floor atop a tropical-patterned beach blanket. She held a rum punch in one hand, and in the other a copy of Sizzling Sixteen. “So, this what you had in mind?”

  “Sort of.” He sat on the blanket beside her. “You’re naked.”

  “As can be.”

  “I see.” He looked around the room. “Just what kind of island is this?”

  “Fantasy.”

  She set the drink and book down and reached her arms out to him. Rook got on his knees, hovering over her, and they kissed softly. He lowered himself to her and she drew him close, feeling his weight drape over her skin, the warmth of their bodies melting them into each other, even through his clothes. Soon the heat of their connection filled them with an urgency that grew into a powerful need. They teased and touched each other, and they joined each other deeply. The release from responsibility, the closeness of their bodies, and the hunger each brought to that moment cast them aswirl, into the heart-pounding, frenzied dimension created by their passion.