“I didn’t want to say anything about it, but I know you sort of got the vibe,” he said, then waited for her to respond. She didn’t, so he continued, “I sure got it from you.”
And there it was. The second wave, the blindsider. Had she flirted? She sure didn’t feel she had. Did she have a few “what if” thoughts? Who didn’t? As she regained her center, Heat knew exactly what she had to say. “Bart, you need to know something.” She made sure the eye contact left no ambiguity. “I am in a relationship now.” She didn’t elaborate. Didn’t tell him he was a nice guy or anything that might leave a door open or be subject to interpretation. For good measure, she added, “It’s important to me.”
He nodded and said, “I hear you.”
She smiled. “Good.”
Then his gaze swept to the hallway where Yardley Bell stood in close conversation with Rook. “But let’s keep in touch.” He looked back at Nikki and said, “You never know.”
As soon as her surprise company departed, Heat jumped back into the pressing business of hunting the serial killer. It wasn’t until nine that night, in the back of the town car he had ordered to drive them to his loft, that they were able to connect. “What did you and Agent Yardley talk about?”
“If you’re wondering if I mentioned The Thing, I didn’t mention The Thing. Give me some credit.”
“Maybe some,” she said, wrapping it in a tease. “But seriously, you did make a quick pickup of my Eugene Summers meaning.”
“Hey, I can be as duplicitous as the best of them. Except with you, of course. With you I am an open book, especially between the covers.” He wanted to be playful. Heat wanted to be reassured.
“Then what did you two talk about?”
“Well, per her request, I gave her a quick primer on my Tyler Wynn project.”
“How much?” Heat chafed at this interference in her case. Callan called it: Bigfoot.
“Enough to find out I may be chasing my tail. Like you, Yardley pointed out he used numerous aliases, plus the fact that he might be doing his shopping through some third party.”
“So that’s her contribution? To basically piss on your investigation?”
“No, actually, she was quite helpful. Nikki, she gave me this brilliant new strategy to follow.” If Rook had a clue how much his exuberance chapped her, he didn’t let on. “Yardley says more and more retailers are using RFID technology.”
“Educate me.”
“Radio frequency identification. You know how your E-ZPass lifts the gate at a highway toll booth, or a security tag on a leather jacket sets off an alarm in a department store? Those are transponders that emit radio signals. Well, technology has now shrunk them down to chips smaller than a grain of rice, and manufacturers and retailers are planting them in their products for inventory control and consumer research. And how do they do that?” He paused to frame the significance. “They electronically track the chips to see where their products are distributed geographically.” He slapped her thigh to punctuate his excitement.
“You’re scaring me, Rook, going all geek on me.”
“I can’t help it. Don’t you see? Of course you see. If we find enough products on the Tyler Wynn list that have RFID chips embedded in them, the little transponders could lead us right to his door, no matter what name he used.”
Begrudgingly, reservedly, but, in the end, objectively, Heat admitted Yardley Bell’s idea had merit. She told Rook she would assign more manpower and resources to the task first thing in the morning.
“And can you call it a task force?”
“No.”
“I’ve always wanted to be on a task force.”
“You’ll have to save it for that video game you play in your boxers.”
He turned away, watching Bryant Park go by his window. “Why do you hurt me?”
Upstairs in Rook’s kitchen, he put some flame under a pot of water for angel hair to go with his scampi while she poured the Sancerre. Without naming it, they had taken to eating meals in more since the poisoning attempt. On high alert was not the way either wanted to live, or admit to living. “How you holding up?” he asked.
“Not exactly brain-dead. But I’m working on it.”
He lifted his glass. “Here’s to the living brain-dead. Makes you almost a zombie.” After they toasted, he said, “If you want to kick back and take a shower, I’ll keep busy sweating some garlic and sautéing these shrimp.”
“You know what I’d really like to do?” she said.
“I do. You want to take another shot at The Thing.”
“Rook, we’re alone. We can call it the code.”
He put on a mock pout. “Oh, you mean the code. I was hoping when you said you wanted another shot at The Thing…”
“You disgust me,” she said with a laugh.
As she walked to the back hall, he called out, “I hid a copy in my office. It’s in the top filing cabinet drawer under ‘Nikki’s Top Secret Code.’ ” And then she could hear him laugh.
Wide awake at 4 A.M., Heat eased out of bed, pulled on some gym shorts and a workout top, and slipped out of the room. Minutes later, she walked barefoot across Rook’s rooftop and sat on the wall to stare at the city that also didn’t sleep much.
The spring thunderstorms forecast for that morning hadn’t arrived yet, but ominous clouds rolled in from the west, swallowing the ambient light of New York City and spitting it back the color of spilled blood.
Nikki fought despair. Out there in those concrete canyons a serial killer roamed free. So might the man responsible for her mother’s murder. Not to mention his accomplice, who almost killed her. Heat looked all around, felt vulnerable, then told herself she didn’t care. She almost believed it.
So far, Heat had managed to rescue one target of the serial killer, but still had no solid leads-nothing she’d call traction. Her quest for Wynn and Kaye remained stalled, with the added attraction of federal meddling: Bart Callan, vigorous, competent, and misguidedly personal; Yardley Bell, disruptive to Nikki’s case and threatening to her relationship.
Downstairs in Rook’s bed, Heat had tried to clear her mind of these demons. Since she couldn’t sleep, she decided to be productive and mentally projected the lines, dots, and squiggles of her mom’s code on the pale canvas of the ceiling. The solve still would not come.
So she changed the scenery. Resting a bare heel on the ornate scrollwork of the frieze beneath her, Heat listened to her breathing instead of the taxi horns, night sirens, and the doop-doop of garbage trucks at work. She let her eyes gloss over until she no longer saw the iconic Empire State and Chrysler Buildings looming out of the cityscape. Instead, her vision fused with the thin curtain of urban haze in the middle distance. Piano notes from her childhood songbook appeared and merged with the blurred apartment lights in the high-rises before her. Then those strange pencil notations surfaced like watermarks. Nikki could see the characters as clearly as she had on the page where they were written, so embossed were they in her mind’s eye.
But whether studied on paper, a ceiling, or the crimson Tribeca skyline, they still told her nothing.
“How long have you been at this?” came the voice behind her. Nikki had wedged the access door open and didn’t hear Rook come out on the roof.
She tilted to her right where dawn tried to muscle through the stubborn sky. “A couple of hours, maybe.”
“Not tonight. I mean total.” She didn’t answer because he knew damned well how long. So he said, “Almost a month, Nikki. It’s time.”
“No.” Heat said it so sharply pigeons flew. Much more measured, she added, “I’m not taking this to Homeland. Or Yardley.”