There it was again. The elephant had joined them on her Gramercy Park rooftop. In a small voice she spoke her reality. “I think I can kiss off my chances with that task force.”
He shrugged. “Could be a blessing in disguise.”
A fuse lit deep in the back of her skull. “Rook. Are you saying that blowing a promotion is a good thing? Or good for you?”
“No, for us. —Hey, I’m not saying I want that.” He raised his brows in thought. “Although…”
“What.”
“That job would mean gi-lossal lifestyle challenges. But all open to discussion, right?” Trying to keep it casual, he poured her a shot. “Think I got your last one.”
Nikki didn’t want another drink. Adrenaline and bile had made her suddenly sober. “This doesn’t feel like it’s about lifestyle challenges, not anymore.”
“I know what you’re going to say. Fair’s fair, and that I travel, too.”
“Fuck logistics.”
“Huh. So not what you were going to say.”
Heat smacked her palm down on the table. “Will you stop? Just stop being cute for once and deal with me?” He corked the bottle. She had his attention. “Tell me how this is all open to discussion? It never got there. You’ve seen to that.”
There. It was out. Nikki had held it down for days. Denied it. Avoided it. Ate it. At last she’d given voice to the beast, and there was no reining it in.
“You’re going to have to explain that to me.”
“Rook, please. The moment you found out about my offer to be on that task force you started picking away at my evidence.”
“I did not.”
“What do you call it?”
“Investigative journalism. Kinda what I do.”
“Know what I call it? Sabotaging my case. Either because you’re pissed that I didn’t tell you about the promotion—”
“—That’s ridiculous—”
“—Or so you could keep me from getting it. Or both.”
“You know, Nikki that is so not me.”
“What else can I conclude? That’s when it started. You didn’t just get contrary. Contrary, I can deal with. You dug in. You got destructive.”
“By looking at other possibilities in the case?”
“By undermining me. First by cozying up to Gilbert’s aide; then you poach my limited resources — Raley and Ochoa, even Rhymer — to act as your personal research assistants. Which planted doubts with them, and now look. You heard Roach. They’re pulling the opposite way now because of you.” Nikki had lost all restraint. She knew she should count to three or walk it off, but the fuse sizzled and burned toward the powder keg. “Even tonight, you can’t stop. You have to keep grinding with the restraining order against his mistress.”
“I’m sharing my discovery. I’m collaborating.”
“What did you call my case, a burning pyre?”
“I’m sharing evidence. Which you choose to ignore. Like the airplane Roach called about.”
“Do you expect me to believe some crop duster flew into Manhattan and dropped Beauvais over the Upper West Side without showing up on radar?”
Rook said, “Radar isn’t perfect.”
“I want to believe in perfect radar.”
“Just for argument’s sake, let’s rule out Sliney’s brother and his plane. How then did Keith Gilbert manage to drop the Haitian from the sky without detection?”
Nikki’s beast fed off anger; Rook’s from sarcasm. “Oh, I know. Gilbert is sailing pals with Sir Richard Branson. Maybe he asked Richie to cruise Fabian Beauvais up to the Kármán Line on his Virgin Galactic spacecraft and launch him from under a wing.”
Heat’s hand found the shot glass in front of her and flung the tequila in his face. “Go.”
Liquor dripped off his nose and chin and onto his shirt. He made no move to wipe it. Rook stared at her, speechless, astonished, hurt. Nikki already felt a tide of shame begin to rise, but her anger remained stronger. Before the balance could shift, she repeated more quietly but still firmly, “Go.”
Still stoic, Rook stood. He hesitated, perhaps wondering if he should say something healing or righteous. While he waited, Heat saw the outline formed by the small square box in his jacket pocket. The wave of anger then mixed with the backwash of shame. The swirl created a sort of undertow, dragging Nikki down. Helpless to do anything but founder, she watched Rook turn and go. An impulse to call out to him came and went because the feeling to attach to the words never materialized.
She had gone too far.
Whatever the evening was to have been, it would now not be. Could not be. That was her dark thought watching him descend the fire escape and disappear rung by rung out of this moment, and perhaps, she wondered, out of her life.
TWELVE
eat got there early and paced the hallway. At 7 A.M. most practices in the medical and professional building weren’t open yet, and when the elevator up the hall finally chimed, it broke the dead silence like a fight bell. Lon King, Ph.D., a psychologist who offered services through the NYPD counseling program, didn’t usually have office hours until nine, and Nikki thanked him for agreeing to meet her. After unlocking his suite, he asked her to hold in the waiting room, then disappeared behind his closed door to prepare as if some magic would be lost if the switching on of lights, the hanging of a jacket, and the adjustment of blinds should be witnessed.
“It’s been a while,” said the shrink when she took her seat on the couch and he settled into his easy chair on the other side of the coffee table.
“Almost two years, I think.” Heat listened to the pillow-soft sounds of York Avenue drifting up twelve floors while she thought about where to begin. She never felt comfortable here. It wasn’t him, she liked Dr. King enough. It was the whole idea of counseling. She had originally come to him against her will when Captain Irons used psych leave as a tool to suspend her without all the nasty paperwork.
Painful as that had been, Nikki found it helpful, and had come back a few times when she felt her compass spinning and needed some guidance. Or solace. As was his way, he sat passively and waited for her. Nikki delivered the opening line she had formulated in the taxi ride uptown. “I’m dealing with a bit of a challenge.”
“I assumed so. If you, of all cops, would ask for this time in the midst of your usual caseload and preparation for a hurricane, it must be quite a challenge.”
“It’s why I hoped to see you early.”
“To fit it in.” He smiled. “Nikki, you do know that I can’t solve your life in fifty-five minutes.”
“Give me sixty. I’m a quick study.”
“Why don’t you begin by telling me about the trigger for this session?”
The shame stirred again. The shame that had become her stalker and kept her tossing in bed until it enveloped her and found its way inside now shifted like a serpent whose scales etched her damaged soul. “I threw a drink in my boyfriend’s face last night.”
King’s reaction was muted. A listener first, the shrink’s countenance matched the ambience of his office: buttery light, placid tones and textures. A neutrality designed to evoke. Personally, he fell on the scale somewhere between taciturn and meditative. But he knew her and, therefore, the significance. “That’s profound. You have spoken in here before about how you prize self-control.”
“I lost it.” She had been eyeing the box of tissues and snatched one.
“Let’s try to understand why.”
“Where do I start?”
“I think you know where.”
And she did. At least she thought she did. So that is where she began, with finding the receipt for the engagement ring and her candidacy for the international task force. “I hid the promotion from him, I guess, because of the proposal I thought was coming, and I knew my travel would be an issue.”