Heat Rises

  That night, after the drubbing she gave him, before they parted for their respective locker rooms, he asked her again. And this time, for the first time in a long time, Nikki was tempted. No, more than merely tempted. She came very close to a yes.

  On the walk back to her apartment, she sorted through her feelings. Close as she had come to saying, “My place,” she had taken it right up to the line in her imagination and declined. The month without Rook had been a long one emotionally and physically. She could have easily had a night with Don, and neither he nor Rook would have had a say in her choice. But her no came from the same place as all the ones that preceded it. But why? Was she in a committed relationship now with Rook? She might have answered that differently before he went away. And certainly it loomed as a bigger question after the Le Cirque shot and all it meant. The issue for her was what kind of relationship, if any, she would have with Rook when—if—they did see each other again. Sleeping with Don that night would have been revenge sex. Which Don sure wouldn’t care about, even if he knew. But she would. That wasn’t her reason, though. Her no to Don had been about postponing a definition.

  Or perhaps it was more transparent than that. Maybe she knew the last thing she wanted was to have one more complication added to the stress of her life. Hell, of her day. What she needed was a night of letting go, of lightening up.

  She already had the bath in mind, lavender bubbles for sure. One more thing would give her the head break she needed. On Park Avenue South, Nikki stopped at the newsstand at the end of her block and snatched up tabloids and celebrity mags. Hok, the news vendor, gave her a special hello, the one with the wink he started giving Heat the day she was on the cover of First Press with Jameson Rook’s exasperating story, “Crime Wave Meets Heat Wave.”

  Counting out the change for Hok, who smiled brightly when he got exact change, Nikki smelled fumes from an idling engine. “Hok, how do you stand that?” He made a face and fanned the air in front of his nose. She looked in the direction of the exhaust. It was coming from a big SUV a few paces down the sidewalk. She turned back to give the vendor his coins when the phrase “penis car” entered her thoughts. She turned again toward the SUV. It certainly looked the same as the one she had encountered on her walk to Andy’s Deli—graphite gray with wide tires—but something was different. The plates. She had clocked those plates as Jersey. This had New York State tags. Hok offered her a plastic bag, which she waved off. She stepped from the newsstand and was surprised to see that the SUV was gone. Nikki stepped to the curb in time to see its headlights disappear as it backed down the street against traffic and disappeared into a side street.

  Backward?

  Nikki turned in a circle, getting a look at her surroundings. She saw nothing unusual. Nothing else unusual, that is. She was only a block from her place. Heat unfastened her coat, took off the glove on her right hand, and started walking with her eyes and ears on alert.

  Her street was quiet. No cars at the moment, and in the stillness of the sub-zero night, she paused briefly to strain her hearing for any sense of a low engine rumble. Nothing. She moved quickly up her front steps to the vestibule, keys already in hand.

  Vestibule, clear.

  Heat unlocked and let herself in. Following an instinct not to get trapped anywhere, she bypassed the elevator and climbed the stairs to her floor, pausing occasionally to listen and then moving upward.

  On her floor, she swept the length of the hallway in both directions. It was empty. She let herself into her apartment, threw the deadbolt behind her, and exhaled. Nikki quizzed herself. Was this paranoia? Stress response at the end of an exponentially crap day? Or did she have a tail? And if so, why? And who?

  At the hall closet, looking for a hanger for her coat, she heard a noise from around the corner in the kitchen. A small sound. Perhaps the squeak of a shoe?

  Heat unholstered her Sig. Holding it in her right hand, she moved forward, carrying her coat in her left. Nikki stopped, drew a slow breath, mentally counted three, then whipped the coat around the corner. She followed it in a low crouch with her gun braced in both hands, calling, “Police, freeze.”

  The man wrapped up under her coat stopped struggling with it and raised his hands up inside it. Heat knew before he even spoke. Nikki pulled the coat off his head, and he smiled sheepishly. “Surprise?” said Rook.

  FOUR

  “Drop your hands, Rook, you look ridiculous,” said Heat. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “Racing to your loving arms. At least I thought I was.”

  “I could have shot you, do you know that?” she said as she holstered her Sig.

  “It just occurred to me,” he said. “That would have put a damper on my homecoming. Not to mention meant a ton of paperwork for you. I think we’re both better off you didn’t.” He made a step from the kitchen to embrace her, but when she crossed her arms, he stopped. “You saw the paper.”

  “Of course, I saw the damn paper. And if I hadn’t, half of New York City was very happy to keep shoving it under my nose. What the hell is going on with you?”

  “See, this is why I came over. So I could explain this face-to-face.”

  “This ought to be good.”

  “OK,” he said. “My agent and I had a very important business dinner last night. A major studio has optioned my piece on Chechnya for a movie.” When Nikki didn’t seem so excited by that, he continued, “So . . . since I had just gotten back to town . . . we went to dinner so I could sign the contracts. I had no idea anybody was going to take a picture.”

  “And when exactly did you ‘just’ get back?” she asked.

  “Yesterday. Late. I trailed that money and the arms shipment all the way from Bosnia to Africa to Colombia to Mexico.”

  “Good for you,” said Heat. “Now, that covers the last thirty days beautifully. What about the last thirty hours?”

  “My God, once an interrogator . . .” He chuckled and met an ice wall. “I can tell you about that.”

  “I’m all ears, Rook.”

  “Well, you know about the dinner.”

  “At Le Cirque, yes, go on.”

  “The rest is simple, really. Mostly I crashed. I think I slept thirteen, fifteen hours straight. First real bed in weeks.” He was talking faster then, eliminating pauses that made him vulnerable. “And after, I’ve been writing like crazy—phone off, TV off—writing. Then I came right here.”

  “You couldn’t call?” Nikki hated the cliché even as it flew out of her mouth, but then decided if ever anyone had license to say it, she did right then.

  “See, that’s what you don’t know about me. This is my process, you know, to sequester myself. Get it all down while it’s still fresh in my head and my notes still make sense to me. It’s how I work,” he said, equal parts explanation and justification. “But this evening when I finally saw the newspaper, I knew how you’d feel, so I dropped everything to rush to you in true ain’t-no-river-wide-enough fashion. All right, maybe instead of a handmade raft it was a taxi, but doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “Not so sure it’s enough.” She picked up her coat and draped it on the back of the bar stool, buying time to sort her thoughts out. The fact was, for Nikki, it did not erase the month of isolation and the emotional burrs and raw abrasions that came with her journey. But the grounded side of her, the grown-up of the pair, was looking at the horizon to the days and weeks and whatever that came after this moment.

  Rook cleared his throat. “There’s one more thing I need to say to you. And I know there’s no way we can move forward until I get this out.”

  “OK . . .”

  “I want to apologize to you, Nikki. Not just, ‘hey, sorry,’ but really. Apologize.” He paused, either to let her absorb it or to find his way, then he went on, “This is all still new to both of us. You and I came to each other with full lives, past baggage, careers, the works. Both of us. And this trip of mine, this was the first time since we got together that you’re see
ing what my real work is like. I have the advantage of having gone on ride-along, so you—I get your life, inside and out. Me, I’m an investigative journalist. If I’m doing it right, I’m spending big stretches of time in places nobody else has the balls to go and under conditions most reporters wouldn’t put up with. That explains why I fell off the radar on my story. I told you I might before I left. But it’s no excuse for not calling you when I got in the clear. The only explanation I can give may sound flimsy, but it’s the truth. When I come off assignment, I have a routine. I sleep like the dead and write like the devil, in seclusion. It’s the way I’ve always done it. For years. But now—I realize something’s different now. I’m not the only one involved.

  “Now, if I could take back the past twenty-four hours, I would, but I can’t. What I can do, though, is say when I look at you now and see the hurt in you—the hurt I caused by being insensitive—I see pain I never want to bring to you again.” He let that sit there, then said, “Nikki, I apologize. I was wrong. And I am sorry.”

  After he finished, they stood there like that, facing off in her front hall, silently looking each other over from barely a yard away—one hoping the rift was behind them, the other trying to decide—when the warmth that suddenly stirred inside Nikki swelled and made a decision of its own. It took control, radiating within her until the spreading heat rose and wouldn’t be stopped, making the “right here, right now” bigger—and more powerful—than anything else.

  Rook sensed it in her, or maybe was feeling it in himself, too. It didn’t matter—any more than who flew to the other first, open mouth on open mouth, hungrily reaching, searching to get closer, closer. Without looking, she one-handed her holster onto the counter. Still kissing, pressing himself to her, his fingers undid her blouse.

  When they finally gasped for air, every breath became a shared lust, giving as well as taking; a quest of passion, of sealed lips and urgent tongues. He started to lead her to the bedroom by small steps backward. But Nikki had one more takedown in her that night. She rolled Rook over the back of the sofa and landed on top of him. He reached behind her, drawing her by the small of her back to him. She pressed forward, going with him. Then Nikki rose onto her knees and began to unbuckle his belt.

  And then it was all about breathlessness again.

  Nikki slept afterward, allowing herself a luxurious drift into the ozone, sinking deeply into the couch cushions, her naked thigh draped over Jameson Rook’s magnificent ass. She awoke slowly about an hour later and lazed a few moments watching him as he sat at the counter working on his laptop in only his untucked shirt and Calvins. “I didn’t even feel you get up,” she said. “Did you sleep?”

  “Too wired to be tired. Don’t even know what a time zone is anymore.”

  “Does sex help your writing?”

  “Sure doesn’t hurt.” He stopped and rotated to face her with a grin, then went back to his computer. “But I’m not actually writing-writing. I’m just downloading and saving some attachments I e-mailed myself. Won’t be a sex—I mean sec. . . . Or do I?”

  “You e-mail yourself? Rook, if you’re lonely, I could e-mail you.”

  He continued working keystrokes as he explained. “I always back up my iPad docs and smart phone notes by e-mailing them to myself. That way, if my iPad takes a dip in a swamp or my phone gets confiscated by some former Eastern Bloc gun runner . . . or I leave it on the R Train like an idiot . . . I don’t lose all my work.” With a flourish, he double-tapped the track pad. “Done.”

  After they made love again, of all places, in the bedroom, Heat and Rook held each other in the dark. A trickle of sweat ran across one of Nikki’s breasts and she wondered—his or hers? She tracked the sensation of its slow, meandering course between them and smiled. After a month apart, how wonderful to be close enough that she couldn’t tell whose sweat was whose.

  When they both decided they were hungry, she wondered aloud who was still delivering after midnight, but Rook was already at his suitcase fishing out a pair of sweatpants. “You’re not going out,” she said. “10-10 WINS said it’s in minus temps tonight.” He said nothing, just handed Nikki her robe and led her to the kitchen. He opened the door to the refrigerator and came out with a half dozen takeout trays.

  “Rook, what did you do?”

  “Hit SushiSamba on the way over.” He set a container of each on the counter. “Let’s see, got your Samba Park roll, your BoBo Brazil, your Green Envy . . . ,” he paused to purr like a tiger, “. . . your tuna sashimi.”

  “Oh my God,” said Nikki, “and you got yellowtail ceviche?”

  “Do I know you? Margarita, señorita?”

  “Sí.” She laughed, remembering how long it had been since she’d done that.

  Rook set the pitcher he had mixed on the tiles and, as he salted two glasses, said, “Consider the potential irony. Four weeks surviving nighttime jungle landings in the cargo bays of unmarked planes, multiple detentions by corrupt border guards, getting roughed up in the trunk of some paranoid Colombian drug lord’s El Dorado by his crackhead flunkies, only to be gunned down in my girlfriend’s apartment.”

  “No laugh, Rook, I was feeling jumpy. I think someone was following me tonight.”

  “Seriously? Did you see who?”

  “No. And not a hundred percent sure about it.”

  “Yes, you are,” he said. “Should you call Montrose?”

  There was a time that’s exactly what she would have done. Detective Heat would have let her captain know and then vehemently declined his offer to park a cruiser out front (which he would have done anyway, ignoring her protests). It wasn’t the uncertainty about the tail that stopped her, though. It was the uncertainty in the face of him questioning her judgment and leadership. Plus her own awkwardness dealing with the captain with so many suspicions swirling. “No,” she said. “It’s too weird with Montrose now. Kind of tense.”

  “With Montrose? And you? What’s going on?”

  The day had been such a grind, and this respite was such a welcome oasis, she said, “Way too much to get into now. I’m not shutting you out, but can we leave it until tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely.” He held up his glass. “To reunions.”

  They clinked salut and sipped. The taste of a margarita would always remind her of the first night they had sex in the summer heat wave. “Hope you learned your lesson about sneaking in here without a heads-up.”

  “You gave me a key. And what kind of surprise would that make, if I called?”

  “The surprise would have been yours if I’d had company.”

  He served the food, placing the cut rolls of sushi on her plate and then his with chopsticks. “You’re right. That would have surprised me.”

  “What?” she said, “You mean, surprised if I had been with someone?”

  “You wouldn’t be.”

  “I sure could.”

  “Could, yes. Would? No. That’s not who you are, Nikki Heat.”

  “A little presumptuous.” She ate some of the ceviche, and as she tasted the citrus and cilantro, relishing how it made the fish even fresher, Nikki reflected on how close she had come to bringing Don home with her that night. “And how do you know that’s not who I am, Jameson Rook?”

  “It’s not about knowing. You can never really know someone. It’s really about trust.”

  “Curious. We’ve never really defined our . . .”

  “. . . Exclusivity?” he said, finishing for her.

  She nodded, “Yeah, that. And yet you trust me?” He chewed a Green Envy and nodded back. “And what about you, Rook, am I supposed to trust you?”

  “You already do.”

  “I see. And how far does this trust extend?” she asked, chopsticking a dab of wasabi for her next victim. “What about travel? What’s it called? The Hundred Mile Rule?”

  “You mean the one that says you can do whatever—meaning whoever—you want if you’re more than a hundred miles away? The variation on the ‘What Happens in Vegas??
? Rule?”

  “That’s the one,” she said.

  “Since you brought it up, the places I’ve been, situations do present themselves. Do they ever. And yes, I absolutely subscribe to the Hundred Mile Rule.” She set her chopsticks on the side of her plate, parallel to each other, and studied him. He continued, “But here’s the thing. According to Rook’s Rule, no matter where I am in the world, a hundred miles or a thousand, Mile Zero starts here.” He poked two fingers on his chest.

  Nikki thought a moment, then picked up a piece of sushi with her fingers. “When I finish this Samba roll? I want you to pretend Mile Zero is a beach in Fiji. . . . And we’re on it alone.” She popped it in her mouth in one bite and flicked her eyebrows at him while she chewed.

  The next morning “brisk walk” took on a literal meaning as she and Rook picked their way over ice patches on the way to the subway in minus-two degrees Fahrenheit. At least the smack of cold in her face helped wake her up. Heat had to tear herself out of that toasty bed with him to make her breakfast meeting on time. He helped by getting up with her and brewing coffee while she showered. When she stepped out, he was packing up gear so he could get to his loft in Tribeca and a day of writing. The deadline for his arms smuggling article loomed, and he told her that on its heels he owed the proofread galleys for his ghostwritten romance novel, Her Endless Knight.

  “I feel like I just had one of those,” she said as they kissed at the stairs leading down to the 6 train at 23rd.

  “Any complaints?”

  “Only one,” said Heat. “It is about to end.”

  Nikki made one more survey of Park Avenue South and was satisfied she wasn’t being followed. And as Rook stood holding the cab he had hailed, waiting in the street while he watched her, his pause confirmed Nikki’s suspicion that his early rise to get to work was an excuse to escort her without saying so. The sidewalk rumbled like distant thunder below, and she could hear the screech of the subway braking as it slowed at the station. She gave him a head nod and hurried down to meet it.