“Fuck yeah!” said Maloney.
All Nikki could say to herself was “Fuck.”
“We’ll have to see.” Backhouse spread his arms wide to frame the vast crash hall. “I came up with doing this here for a couple of reasons. First was just panic, I’ll admit that. I couldn’t have bodies or residue of same at my rental in Queens. But this place…” He surveyed the space again, this time with too much attention on that car on the launch mechanism. “This could be a win-win.”
“That, I’m not getting,” said Heat.
“It won’t be your problem. But since you wonder,” he wiggled the fingers of his blue gloves. “I was never here tonight. I’m going to tie your crash to Tangier Swift.”
Rook asked, “How?” Then he braced for another shoulder blow that didn’t come.
“Not sure. For now, I’m thinking that drone back at my place is somehow going to turn up hidden on Swift’s yacht. Or maybe in his car.”
Maloney’s face lit up. “I can make that happen.” Nikki tried to mask her disdain for the ex-cop who could probably do a TED Talk on how to salt crime scenes with phony evidence.
“Seems viable,” said the professor, more to himself than anyone else. “And if it doesn’t nail Swift, I tried.” He shrugged. “You improvise, you get solutions. It’s the power of instinct.”
Backhouse left them to wait in Maloney’s charge while he dashed off to the control booth. From the sure moves he made up there, Heat could tell he had observed or even supervised test launches before. Certainly, at least one—Fred Lobbrecht’s earlier in the week. Backhouse left the booth and knelt behind the car at a cream-colored steel patch bay that had an octopus of cables running from it, then down through holes in the floor, accessing the hydraulic propulsion system in the basement. After he had connected several leads and snapped four toggles in succession, he stood. The forensic engineer spoke matter-of-factly, but his voice echoed across the immaculate white floor of the hangar. “Locked and loaded,” he said.
The muzzle of a gun, either her own 9mm or the Smith & Wesson M&P Compact .40 Heat saw in Timothy Maloney’s shoulder rig, poked hard enough into her back to make a bruise. “You heard him. Let’s get this done.” Beside her, Rook stumbled forward from the rough shove he got as encouragement.
The twenty yards to the gold car gleaming under the industrial overheads felt like a gallows walk during which time had stilled. Even the reverberation of their footfalls in the cavernous hall seemed to be dampened, and all Nikki could hear was the liquid whoosh of her own blood rhythmically marking the cadence of her fear.
She tried to not let it freeze her thinking. Every second between then and launch needed to be a focused, primal hunt for opportunity. Worrying about Rook, wondering if it would hurt, or envisioning Lobbrecht’s brain spatter would only distract her. Heat willed herself to be an animal. To be ruthless and survive.
“In,” said Maloney. When Nikki stiffened her body to resist, making herself more difficult to move, Maloney swept a leg against the back of her knees and tripped her. She hit the deck hard, landing on her shoulder with the air knocked out of her. He holstered and yanked her up by the handcuffs, then manhandled her into the driver’s seat, grunting a string of curses.
He shoved the door, and the slam thundered to the rafters. She massaged the skin where the metal edges of the handcuffs had cut at her wrists. The pain gave birth to a new tactic. Flailing, for sure, but she’d try anything. Her side window was down, and she said, “You are an idiot. No wonder you washed out.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who’s gonna be a bug on a windshield.”
Heat had one last desperate idea and worked it. She licked away a clot of blood on her upper lip and said, “It’s like I was telling you, he’s setting you up. Jeez, Tim, you were a grade-three detective, and you can’t see what he’s done?”
“Tim, let it go,” said Backhouse. “Load him, and let’s do this.”
It’s in the job description of a paranoid person to be oversuspicious that someone is gaming him. Nikki exploited that—by gaming him. “Yeah, let it go.”
Her dismissal troubled him.
“OK, what.”
“Never mind.” She gave him a wink. “You’ll find out.”
Heat had gotten into Maloney’s head. His gaze darted to Backhouse, then to her.
“Want me to paint it for you?” she said.
Backhouse cleared his throat. “Now would be good.”
Nikki inclined her head toward her arms secured behind her. “Were you wearing those gloves when you cuffed us? No. So when CSU works this scene, whose fingerprints and DNA are going to be on these? Yours. I told you he was setting you up.”
“She’s right,” said Rook. “You don’t think they’re going to go all out for a dead captain?”
“We’ll fish them out after,” said Backhouse. “Let’s move.”
Nikki smelled an opening and continued to press. “There’s a fun job. And what if you can’t find them?”
“Or find all the pieces,” added Rook for good measure. “All it’s going to take is a partial, and they’ve got you.”
Maloney turned to Backhouse. “I’m taking their cuffs off.”
“Are you nuts? We should be out of here by now.”
“See?” said Heat. “They’re not his fingerprints.”
“I’m not asking, I’m telling.” Maloney handed Nikki’s Sig Sauer to Backhouse. “Just keep it on her.” Then he fished out his cuff key and opened Heat’s door. She didn’t wait for an invitation. Nikki twisted her back toward him, and he unlocked one cuff, then the other, and took them off. He stepped back quickly and slammed the door again. “Chill, Wilton. Under control.”
He yanked Rook around to the other side. When Rook started to resist, Maloney jerked his wounded arm to bring him under control and stuffed him in the passenger seat. Rook presented his handcuffs, but Maloney’s gloves were clumsy and he dropped the key on the floor. While he bent to retrieve it, Rook whispered to Nikki, “Smart move. What’s your plan?”
“Hands free. Beyond that…?” She shrugged.
Rook’s eyes worked back and forth in urgent thought. Then he said, “Stand by.”
The subcompact rocked to one side as Maloney put a knee on the threshold. “Hold still,” he said. Rook’s right shackle popped free, but instead of waiting for the left to be unlocked, he whipped that arm into the center of the car out of Maloney’s reach. “Fucking asshole,” he muttered. “Gimme that cuff.” And he stretched across Rook to grab his arm.
Heat sprang at him with both hands. With one, she jerked his thumb back toward his wrist, and with the other, clawed for his shoulder holster. But it was wedged underneath his left arm, which was trapped between him and Rook’s chest. Nikki pushed with all her might, trying to break his thumb. Maloney yowled in pain, but his nitrile glove kept slipping and she couldn’t get enough purchase to match his strength. “Get his gun!” she shouted. “The holster!”
“I’m trying!” Rook’s left arm was trapped under Maloney’s body. Rook pushed against him to make a gap wide enough to reach the Smith & Wesson. The bullet wound in his right shoulder weakened his leverage, though, and when he did manage to pry open a space, Maloney forced himself back against Rook, closing it.
“Shoot her!” called Maloney. “Fucking shoot her!”
Backhouse fired. But in his frenzy, he fired wild. Nikki heard the 9mm slug sizzle past and slam into the dashboard in front of Rook. “Get closer, dickhead!”
Nikki caught movement to her right as Backhouse stepped up to the window to position himself for a point-blank shot. She let go of Maloney’s thumb, unlatched the door, and shoved it into Backhouse. The Sig went off as it flew from his hands, landing with a clatter somewhere across the crash hall floor. Backhouse landed on the deck, too. She saw him looking over at his shotgun across the room and started out after him. But Maloney snagged her from behind and drew her in, trying to clamp a chokehold on her.
While she cl
awed at his forearm, trying to break the powerful lock he had on her, she watched Backhouse stumble to his feet. Satisfied that all three were fully engaged in the car, he bypassed his shotgun and darted out of sight in the direction of the control booth.
A klaxon sounded a triple alarm and the lights of the crash hall came up to full brightness. Backhouse had started the launch sequence.
Gasping, trying to butt Maloney with the back of her head and failing, Heat hollered, “Rook, get out! Get out now!”
“I can’t, he’s got me pinned!” Rook started punching Maloney’s back, but with his weak wounded arm, he might as well have been pounding a bag of cement.
The prerecorded voice of a woman who sounded a lot like Siri echoed throughout the hangar. “Caution: Stand clear. Stay behind yellow lines. Commencing test launch sequence.” Another sharp klaxon sounded, and the announcer continued, “Launching in thirty seconds.”
Heat twisted, kicked, and struggled, but couldn’t break the armlock around her neck. “Maloney,” she gasped, “we need to get out.”
His response was to drag her deeper into the car as he tried to crawl back out over Rook.
“Launching in twenty seconds,” said the dispassionate voice.
Maloney’s movement gave Rook an opening to move just a bit. Despite the searing pain in his shoulder, he worked his right hand down into his side coat pocket and fumbled with something inside.
“Launching in fifteen seconds.”
“Rook, get yourself out! Please!”
“Launching in ten seconds.”
Rook’s hand came up from his pocket, clutching his Hemingway Montblanc in his fist—with the cap off—its radiant new nib exposed. He plunged the sharp point into Maloney’s ear. Immediately, his entire body recoiled and he screamed in agony, pulling the hand that was applying pressure to the chokehold on Heat away to grab at the fountain pen embedded in his eardrum.
“Launching in five seconds.”
The instant Maloney’s grip slackened on Heat, she rolled out of the driver’s side just as Rook rolled out the other door. Inside the car, blood pouring down the side of his face onto the seat, Maloney stared at her with the pleading eyes of the doomed. She didn’t hesitate. Nikki reached out both hands. He took them and she pulled to drag him free.
“Launch.”
A high-pitched whirr filled the room, then the catapult fired with a shrill hydraulic wail.
The car exploded off the catapult, zooming instantly to seventy-five miles per hour with Maloney stuck inside. His pathetic knowing stare on departure, as he left his empty blue gloves in her hands, would haunt Nikki’s nightmares for the rest of her life.
She spared herself watching the impact. His screams followed by the thunderclap of the collision told her all she need to know.
Rook, ass planted on the deck, struggled to his feet. “You can’t have too many of these,” he said, and tossed her the Smith & Wesson .40 that he had stripped off Maloney during his bailout.
Nikki checked the chamber indicator, saw brass, and ran to the control booth. She braced flat to the wall outside the door and called for Backhouse. Then she saw that the Mossberg was gone. A door slam reverberated from the far end of the hangar.
She told Rook to call 911, scooped her Sig Sauer from the floor on her way past, then sprinted to the exit. Instead of stepping out, she kicked the door open. A blast from the shotgun peppered the steel where she would have been standing. She rolled out, prone, ready to fire before he could rack another shell, but all she heard was two feet pounding across asphalt into the night.
The exit Backhouse used was on the opposite side of the hangar from the door they had come in through, so Nikki’s run took her around one corner, then another, before she got to the front of the building. From behind the parked eighteen-wheeler they had used for cover, she heard a car door slam, then saw headlights as Backhouse fired up the Police Interceptor.
Even riding an adrenaline rush, Heat knew her limits. In her weakened state from blood loss and the death struggle with Maloney, her legs had labored just to bring her this far around the building. Nikki calculated the distance to her Taurus and smelled a getaway. So, as the car backed out of its hiding place between the big rig and the wall, she didn’t even try to go after it. She cut the shorter distance across the parking lot to get ahead of it.
If Maloney had been half the cop he thought himself to be, he would have backed into the space for a rapid nose-first exit. But he wasn’t and he hadn’t. Now, forced to inch out of the narrow slot in reverse, Backhouse lost time and Nikki bought precious seconds in her desperate race to head him off.
Once Backhouse got clear of the tractor-trailer, rubber squawked once on the damp blacktop as he slammed the car into drive with too many rpm’s. Then he floored it, fishtailing from his standstill, tearing toward the gate. The V8’s roar broke through the night fog like the cry of some beast from a Gothic horror film.
Lungs rasping, legs leaden, Heat poured on all she had, willing her knees to kick high, putting her oxygen debt out of her mind. She didn’t want to lose speed by turning to look, but she could see from the flare of his headlights in her peripheral vision that Backhouse was gaining on her. Nikki stopped hearing her breath; stopped feeling like quitting; stopped doing anything but becoming a machine herself.
When Heat got to the guardhouse, she was going so fast, she slammed against it. The car was now fifty yards away, and hauling. She drew a gulp of air and stepped out right into the driveway, her Sig Sauer in one hand, the Smith & Wesson in the other. She made out Backhouse, in silhouette from the orange fog illuminating the parking lot behind him. He stopped and tried to bring up the shotgun. But the length of the Mossberg prevented him from clearing the dashboard to point it at her. He dropped the gun, hit his brights, and punched it.
Heat aimed, took a steadying stance, and fired both pistols at once, spraying a hail of bullets into both front tires of the oncoming car. When they popped, the police-tuned suspension kept it from going out of control, but the Interceptor shimmied and Backhouse had to wrestle with the wheel. Nikki jumped aside as he veered weakly past her. She put another round in the closest rear tire, which put an end to his attempted getaway.
Nikki rushed to his side window with both guns on him before he could get any ideas about the Mossberg again. “Engine off! Hands on the wheel—now!” Backhouse complied, then looked up at her, defeated.
She pulled him out and deposited him facedown on the roadside. Heat pressed her Sig to the base of his skull and said, “Now who’s the dummy?”
The first thing Rook saw was Nikki’s face when he came out of sedation from his surgery at Bellevue that night. She gave his hand a squeeze. He smiled and said, “Diamondback.”
“Hey, it’s me. You’re in Bellevue.”
“Diamondback.”
Heat’s eyes went to the nurse taking his temperature. “You’d be surprised some of the things they say when they’re out of it.”
“I can hear you, and I’m not out of it.” He squeezed Heat’s hand in return. “I was dreaming about our honeymoon. We were at a dude ranch I heard about in Diamondback, Arizona. Nik, that would be so much fun.”
“Keep dreaming. You want me to go on a honeymoon in a place named after a poisonous snake?”
“Not a selling point, perhaps. But maybe it’s like Iceland. A lovely Nordic island so named to discourage Vikings from visiting and plundering.”
“And he’s back,” said Heat.
“You did great, Mr. Rook.” Nurse Seton finished taking his temp and updated his chart. “You were lucky. No blood vessels hit, no fragmentation or bone or nerve damage. The doctor extracted a .22 bullet that, fortunately, stopped close to the surface.”
“That’s because before it hit me, it deflected off a hard surface.” He peered at Nikki and pointed at the gauze on her brow. “By the way, you’ve got a thing there.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, his and hers scars. Oh, by the way, nice job with that Montbl
anc.”
He couldn’t disagree. “Hemingway would have been proud.”
When the nurse left, Heat told him she was planning to interrogate Backhouse first thing in the morning. “Looking like that? You should maybe wear a scarf or a veil or something.”
“I’ll see if I have anything that matches Neosporin. Meanwhile, you rest here. I’ll fill you in after.”
“Oh, no.” He struggled to sit himself up higher. “You think I’m going to lie here and miss bringing the story home for my Pulitzer?”
“What was I thinking?” she said. “It’s the bullet. It must have addled my brain.”
At eight o’clock the next morning, Wilton Backhouse held the guest of honor seat in Interrogation One at the Twentieth Precinct. His attorney, a family friend who had more experience in patent law than criminal justice, sat at his side. Considering the multiple murders and the other serious charges he would be facing, Heat had a feeling he would be upgrading his lawyer very soon. For now, she was happy he’d brought in a dabbler from suburban White Plains.
“My client is invoking his right not to self-incriminate. Therefore, he will have nothing to say at this meeting,” said Ethan Watts.
“Thank you, counselor. However”—Nikki indicated Rook beside her with his arm in a sling and her own bandaged forehead—“as may be evident to you, we’ve gone to a lot of effort to bring your client to this meeting, and a meeting we shall have.”
She turned then to the client, who had exchanged his too-cool-for-engineering-school geekwear for inmate coveralls. After a long silence, Heat began quietly and methodically. “Lon King. Fred Lobbrecht. Abigail Plunkitt. Nathan Levy. And now, Timothy Maloney.” Nikki let that sit there. Backhouse shifted. He was having a hard time with eye contact. “We know you did it. What I’d like to hear from you—”
“My client is not admitting any responsibility for these unfortunate deaths.”
“Don’t make me laugh, counselor,” Heat said, tweaking the lawyer. “Unfortunate deaths are what happen when E. coli gets into the spinach. We’re talking homicide. Multiple homicides. And just so you know? I don’t need him to admit responsibility. We have enough physical evidence to make the DA’s case.”