Deadly Heat

ELEVEN

Heat stayed with the body until Lauren Parry arrived to do the preliminary postmortem. The medical examiner had been at Jersey Boys when she saw the text alert after the show and responded that she would handle it herself, since she was merely seven blocks from Roosevelt Hospital. But the real reason didn’t need to be articulated, the part about knowing the deep significance to her friend, Nikki.

“Dr. Parry, now, you double check to make sure he’s dead,” said Rook as the ME pulled a surgical gown over her evening dress. “Use a wooden stake if you have to. This one has a nasty habit of coming back from the grave.”

While the medical examiner went to work, Heat closed the door to an empty exam room and briefed Agents Callan and Bell on what she had been told on the ambulance ride.

Bart Callan asked the same questions they all had. “Was he specific? Did he say what kind of terror event? Did he say when? Or where? Did he say who was behind it?”

“It’s not like I’m holding back,” said Heat. “Wynn flatlined before he could give it up.”

Rook chimed in, “So annoying. This guy always does that. Gets you all sucked in and then dies before he finishes the story.”

Callan began texting as he spoke. “This just popped to a new level. I’m getting NYPD Counterterror in on this right now.”

“Is Tyler Wynn even credible?” asked Agent Bell. “I mean, come on, look at this guy’s history.”

“Really?!” Heat whipped her head to Yardley. Maybe it was the stress of it all. Or the raggedness of this ending and its denial of closure. But something roared inside Nikki. “Are you really going to stand here and pretend to tell me-tell me-about this guy’s history?”

Instead of pushing back, Agent Bell gave her a passive stare. Then she broke it off and sauntered to the door, speaking coolly. “Agent Callan, I’ve got work to do.”

When she walked out, Callan said, “Let’s take a breath. It’s been a crazy day. I’m going to set up a task force debrief down on Varick Street first thing in the morning. I want you there with us.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Come on, don’t let some petty friction keep you outside.” They both turned and watched Yardley Bell thumbing her BlackBerry outside Triage. “Nikki, I could use you.” And then, reading her reaction to the personal tone of his appeal, he added, “Oh, and as far as that other thing I mentioned? That’s off the table. This is a new game.”

Nikki said, “Thanks, anyway. But I’ll be in touch if I learn anything. You do the same.”

On their way to the exam bay to check with Lauren Parry on Wynn’s prelim, Rook said, “Nikki, a task force. We could be on an actual task force.” When she didn’t acknowledge him, he asked, “What was Callan talking about? What other thing?”

“Rook, do you really want to help me?”

“Name it.”

“Blow that off, OK?” Then she tugged a Velcro strap loose from his body armor. “And lose the stupid vest.”

Heat never went home. She kissed a reluctant Rook good night, caught a radio car uptown to West 82nd, and napped on the cracked leather couch in the bull pen break room. After a brief but deep slumber, she made some coffee and drank it sitting in her rolling desk chair in front of the Murder Boards. Her grogginess actually helped her think. Before the snooze, her brain had been a primate house at the zoo, chattering with details; rowdy thoughts slinging on ropes and jumping from high to low. The solitude of the bull pen helped Nikki shoo the monkeys. By the time Raley, Ochoa, Rook, and the others gathered for their early roll call, she had some new ideas to share with her crew. One of them felt big.

“Tyler Wynn is dead,” she began, then had to pause when Detective Hinesburg thought it would be cute to applaud. She did so alone, then stopped in the nakedness of silence and stares. Heat continued, “This time, it’s verified, but we are far from resolved. In fact, a dying declaration he made to me not only leaves this case open, it kicks off a new phase that’s going to require doubling our efforts.”

While they stirred their first cups and bit off bagels, they also made notes as Heat recited the last words of the dead spy. “As frustrating as it is to get left with more questions than answers, at least he gave us something. It’s up to us to turn that into enough.” Preemptively, she voiced the questions she knew they were asking-the same ones Bart Callan had asked her in the ER a few hours before-the same ones she had been asking herself all night. They were already numbered on the whiteboard behind her: (1) What kind of terror event? (2) When? (3) Where? (4) Who is behind it?

“Let’s start with what we know, starting with where.” She block-printed the initials “NY” beside number three. “Pretty general, but it’s a start. As for the type of event, calling it bigger than 9/11 and involving mass death broadens the scope beyond shooters, a car bomb, or the like, although nothing can be ruled out. I have a notion here that I’ll come back to.” She made eye contact with Rook, who smiled slightly, knowing she was percolating something.

“Who’s behind it? Who knows? I’ve already briefed the counterterrorism unit, which tracks foreign and domestic groups. They are on it, but we can’t kid ourselves. We have our work cut out for us there.” She capped the marker.

“You didn’t address when,” said Rhymer.

“And that is the part that scares me. Let me share some thinking I’ve been doing.” She came around to sit on a table in front of the boards and dangle her legs, looking to each of them as they looked back in rapt attention. “It’s safe to assume the death of my mother came as a result of her uncovering two deadly things: the existence of some terror plot, and Tyler Wynn’s involvement as a traitor to the CIA.” She paused to allow the predicate sink in. “Although she was killed, my mother’s efforts must have been disruptive because it appears she turned a mole in the terror group, a biochemist, who himself died suddenly weeks later. We’re awaiting a new autopsy on him, but I’m working from the assumption of an execution. Everyone on board the ride so far?” They assented. She slid off the table and walked to the front of the room. “So this plot got derailed for years. We don’t know why or how.”

Rook said, “Maybe Ari Weiss’s death put a freeze on things. He was definitely a key man if he’s having secret meetings in cars with Tyler Wynn’s cronies like we saw in that PI’s picture. That happened a lot in revolutionary groups I’ve covered. One of the leaders dies or goes to prison, and they have to shut down to regroup or re-recruit.”

“Quite possible. Especially if it’s a small terror group, infighting and membership changes can knock them off balance.” Heat saw Ochoa’s hand. “Miguel?”

“So can scrutiny. I saw it tons when I worked gangs and rackets. You bring some surveillance, do a little nosing around, the bad guys go into sleep mode.”

“Yes.” Nikki pointed at the detective with fervor. “That’s exactly where I am going. I know we’ve all worked this together, but indulge me while I bullet-point: My mother’s killed, but she has a close friend and fellow CIA agent named Nicole Bernardin.”

“The frozen lady in the suitcase,” said Raley.

Nikki relived the successive shocks: being on Columbus Avenue that day, thinking she was investigating a routine homicide, a body in a suitcase; then reeling when she recognized the suitcase as one that had been stolen from her mother’s apartment the night she was killed; then feeling stunned again when the victim turned out to be her mother’s best friend… and CIA spy partner.

“That’s correct. Like my mom, Nicole Bernardin was part of Tyler Wynn’s network. And something that Nicole had discovered got her killed, too. Also by Tyler Wynn. But recently. After a decade-plus gap.”

Heat walked back behind the table and picked up a manila folder. “Let’s look at some highlights from Nicole Bernardin’s case file. First, residue found on her body came from a potent medical lab solvent. Next, we never got a tox report on Nicole because Salena Kaye-Tyler Wynn’s accomplice-sabotaged her toxicology lab test. And before the medical examiner could rerun the test, some mystery person ordered Nicole Bernardin’s cremation.”

Nikki looked up as she turned the page. She had their total focus. “Wynn had another accomplice. A crooked cop named Carter Damon. When we located Damon’s van, Forensics not only found a blood match to Nicole Bernardin, they also found traces of the same lab cleaning solvent.” She paused, marking her place in the folder with a finger.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about a murderer cleaning a dead body with lab solvents. Why? To clean what? And going to such lengths as to sabotage a toxicity test. Then destroy the body so no test can ever be run. Why would somebody do all that?” She scanned the room, seeing everyone’s eyes locked on hers. “It suddenly dawned on me that Nicole Bernardin must have come in physical contact with something while she was investigating Tyler Wynn’s secret activities. And I can only think of one reason to erase all traces of it so rigorously.”

She closed the file and turned to the whiteboard. She had just uncapped her marker when she sensed the group behind her back drawing the same conclusion she had. Somebody-it sounded like Roach-muttered a long “Fuuuck.”

And then she caps-printed her hypothesis beside “Type of Event” in a single, horrifying word: BIOTERROR.

When she turned from the board, Captain Irons spoke from where he stood at the back of the room. “Heat? A moment?”

The precinct commander closed the door when she stepped into his office, but he didn’t bother to waddle around behind his desk, so neither of them sat, which suited Nikki’s preference for a drive-by meeting. “Good briefing,” he said. “I was a fly on the wall for most of it.”

“Yes, sir, I noticed.”

“Be nice to get a heads-up next time, so I don’t have to be lucky.”

“Absolutely,” she lied.

Thinking that was that, she took a step to go, but he said, “Tough going on Tyler Wynn. You got your man, but he still left a bucket of worms to claw through. However, on the sunny side, now that that’s closed, I can have you full-time on Rainbow.”

“That’s far from closed, Captain. You were at my debrief. It’s a bioterror case now.”

“Which DHS is running. Got to tell you, Detective, if Rainbow was tying colored strings to my picture, I’d be all over it.”

“Sir, let me reassure you, I am capable of handling both.”

His ears reddened and plum blotches mottled his cheeks. “I am anything but reassured. Now, you may have all the big magazines and primo TV interview shows courting you, but this is still my precinct. And my order is, you got Wynn, this now goes to the feds. If not, well, I suspended you once before. Do we need to revisit?”

Heat flopped at her desk, barely containing her temper. Strictly speaking, Wally Irons stood on solid ground. The scale of her case had escalated beyond a murder. The skipper’s demand that she attend to the police work of his precinct-of the homicide squad she led-made sense. But Nikki didn’t want to make sense; she wanted to see it through. Thousands of lives in New York City were at stake. Heat asked herself which motivated her more, her obligation to stop the terrorists or the responsibility she felt to finish her mother’s work?

She decided they were one and the same, then went to her desk to make the call she didn’t want to make.

“Nikki Heat, I couldn’t be more pleased,” said Bart Callan. “On behalf of DHS, I am so glad you decided to join us after all.”

“Well, you sure put the home in Homeland, Special Agent Callan.” Nikki hoped using his title would quell the effusiveness before things got out of hand.

“Whatever I can do,” he said. And then Heat told him what that was.

Soon Nikki heard the muted phone ring across the bull pen and watched through the glass of the precinct commander’s office as the federal card got played. Wally Irons nodded like a dashboard doggy to his caller, but he didn’t appear happy. That was all right by her. She’d try to be happy enough for both of them.

An hour later, Detective Heat stood before a joint Bioterrorism Task Force in the basement bunker of the United States Department of Homeland Security, six reinforced floors under Varick Street in Lower Manhattan. Facing a mixed conference table of military, police, and intel officers, including Callan and Bell, she briefed them on her path into the investigation, via an eleven-year-old cold case, and the developments of the prior month that led her to Tyler Wynn’s dying declaration on his last ambulance ride.

It all lived in her head, so she spoke without notes, fundamentally repeating the download she had given the squad that morning up at the Twentieth. She didn’t use a whiteboard, and felt a bit startled when her peripheral vision caught the large LED screen behind her filling with text as she spoke. One of the secretaries in the back of the room was keying in an instant PowerPoint of her report. Resources, she thought. This is what they mean by resources.

The group questioned her afterward, mainly for details she had decided to spare them, and she answered everything candidly, holding only one thing back: the code.

When Nikki sat, Cooper McMains, the commander of the NYPD counterterrorism unit, said he bought the logic of her clue construction that pointed to a bioterror event. The rest agreed. Without any dissent beyond the prudent caution to keep open minds for other possibilities, gears shifted to practicalities. Special Agent in Charge Callan reclaimed the lectern and outlined the basics. “Top priority, we need to know the what, when, and where of this strike. I’ll ask all of you to ramp up your eyes and ears with informants and to re-scrub all your data with this threat in mind. Obviously, we want hard focus on State’s designated groups on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, starting with al-Qaeda and all its cousins, plus Hezbollah, Mujahideen, FARC, Shining Path, and so forth.”

“What about the domestic watch list?” asked a brown-suited man with an academic’s goatee and bow tie.

“Wouldn’t rule it out. Especially if there’s some new alliance we don’t know about that’s forming, but Tyler Wynn’s CIA background tugs my sleeve to foreign. However…” He pointed a finger for emphasis and added, “Let’s not neglect the splinter cells. We’ve all seen how a pair of foreign exchange students with a chemistry set and a list from the hardware store can be a threat.”

“That’s a wide spectrum,” said the prof.

“Then we’d better be good,” he said. “And quick.”

As the Situation Room emptied, Heat met up with Callan at the door and said, “Now that we’re agreed on bioterror, there’s a thread I’d like to follow, and I’m telling you in advance because, as you’ll recall, it was an issue before. Vaja Nikoladze.”

“Forget Nikoladze, Detective,” said Yardley Bell, shouldering her way into the conversation. “He’s a nonstarter.”

Nikki’s expression appealed to Callan to intercede, but he seemed cowed by the other agent, so she engaged her. “Not to me, he isn’t. Let me count them off for you, Agent Bell.” Heat held her gaze and numbered with her fingers. “Nikoladze is a top biochemist. He’s a foreign national, a defector from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.”

“Do you think I need a primer on Vaja Nikoladze?”

“And,” continued Heat, undeterred, “he was being spied on by my mother.”

“Here’s all you need to know about Nikoladze,” said Agent Bell. “He’s been a credible and productive informant in our system for years. Plus, our biochemist is in a disarmament think tank that promotes the demilitarization of science. If anything, your mom was using Vaja as an expert source.”

“You were the FBI liaison with my mother back then,” said Nikki to Callan. “Was that the relationship?”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you one way or the other.”

“Then I want to find out.”

“No, you want to be right and me to be wrong,” Yardley said. “Stop wasting time.”

Bell stalked out of the room. Callan said, “Heat, maybe there are more productive lines of investigation to focus on.”

“Sounds like an order.” The DHS man didn’t answer, except to smile. Nikki said, “Silly me. Here I was afraid if I joined your team I’d find it full of infighting and dysfunction.”

Captain Irons made a show of turning his back on Heat to stare out at 82nd Street when she returned from the DHS meeting. Somehow, she’d be able to live with that. She got to her desk, woke up her monitor, and began clearing accumulated e-mails. There were a few progress updates from the squad on the serial killer, but most of her inbox brimmed with statements taken throughout the five boroughs from Rainbow pretenders. Nikki concentrated on the reports from her own detectives while she stirred the strawberry compote from the side cup into her two-percent yogurt.

“I had a real lunch,” said Rook as he sauntered over. She moved some files from her desktop before he could sit on them-and just in time. “No yogurt on the fly for this man.”

Roach came over, passing a basketball, a long-standing brainstorming habit of theirs. Ochoa said, “Writer Boy’s been a sulky boy.”

Rook ignored them and went on about his lunch. “I took myself for a chilled seafood salad over at Ocean Grill on Columbus.”

Raley caught Ochoa’s pass. “He’s all bent because you went to the DHS deal without telling him.”

“A white tablecloth and real silverware.” He leaned toward her. “Excuse me, is that plastic spoon cracked?”

“Rook,” she said, “are you really bugged?”

“No, why should I be bugged?”

“Trust me, we had to listen to him. He’s bugged,” said Rales, who then passed the ball to Rook, who flinched instead of catching it.

While Ochoa shagged the ball from under a desk, Rook blurted, “All right, I didn’t go to Ocean Grill. I lost my appetite. A task force, Nikki. How could you go to the DHS Task Force without me?”

“Because it’s restricted.”

“Like that’s ever stopped me.” From anyone else, it would have seemed like an empty boast.

Detective Ochoa said, “My partner and I have been tossing around the idea of this van, the one that had Nicole Bernardin’s blood and traces of lab cleaning solution in it. No sit-down lunch for us, either.”

“What did you come up with?”

“OK, follow this,” said Raley. “Let’s suppose, like you said at the briefing, that Nicole Bernardin picked up some sort of biological toxin on herself while she was checking out whatever Tyler Wynn was into. Whoever caught her snooping around and killed her must have worried her body might register telltale contamination.”

Ochoa picked up. “Which is why they scrubbed her corpse before they dumped it. They didn’t want to set off any alarms.”

“And since Carter Damon’s van had both Nicole Bernardin’s blood and traces of lab cleaning solvent,” continued Raley, “I think it’s a good bet that van got used to transport her body from where she was stabbed and scrubbed to where she got left in the suitcase. So our thinking is, if we can figure out where Damon’s van traveled the night of her murder-”

“-We might just find the bioterror lab she discovered,” said Heat. She added a “might” but liked this feeling, the little spark that could possibly kindle a break.

“But how could you ever learn where the van traveled?” asked Rook.

Detective Feller chimed in from his desk. “Doesn’t Homeland Security have cameras that scan license plates at key intersections and toll plazas so they can track suspicious vehicles that enter and drive around the city?”

“They do. They’d have video archives,” Raley said. “So would NYPD.”

Heat thought about the experience she’d just had in the bunker and said to Roach, “Start with NYPD.”

“Your task force meeting was that good?” said Rook as Raley and Ochoa moved off to work the new lead.

“Shut up,” she said, hiding her smile in her yogurt. “Let a gal enjoy her lunch.”

“Sure. And while you do, let me share some thinking I tossed around with my partner. I’ll admit it’s an imaginary partner, which is why I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Rook, are you having a reality break, or does this have a point?”

“My point,” he said, “is that if Tyler Wynn had so many foreign connections, why didn’t he get out of Dodge instead of hanging around a month after you put the APB out on his traitorous ass?”

“Simple. To see the plot through.”

“That’s where I bump. What was the first thing Wynn said to you after the blast?”

“He asked me if Salena Kaye did it.”

“No, exact quote, please, Detective.”

Heat pictured the old man down on the kitchen floor. It all replayed like a movie. “He said, ‘Was it Salena? Did Kaye find me?’ ”

Rook said, “See, now that’s not just big, that’s an XL.”

“He’s right.” Randall Feller couldn’t resist joining the spitball and came over. “The ‘find me’ part sounds like Wynn was hiding out from his own accomplice.”

Rook continued, “And if Salena Kaye turned on him, and he was still hiding in New York, it suggests that his own organization cut him off and he lost the resources to flee these borders undetected. I’ve seen this before with my European spy friends. One day you’re center car of the motorcade, the next you’re hiding in Dumpsters, afraid to show your face and unable to board an airplane.”

“The question is, why did they all of a sudden want him dead?” asked Feller.

“I hope to find that out,” said Heat. “Maybe because I compromised him by surviving. When I came out of that subway alive, Uncle Tyler got on somebody’s hit list because if we captured him, he might give up his co-conspirators.”

“Good a reason as any,” said Rook. “It also tells you why Salena hung around. To finish him off.”

“And me,” said Nikki.

“There she goes.” Rook winked at Feller, then turned to Nikki. “It’s all about you, isn’t it?”

“Do you think Salena Kaye killed him?” asked Sharon Hinesburg. Randall Feller wasn’t the only detective unable to resist joining the brainstorming session. But such engagement was rare for Hinesburg. Maybe she was trying to turn it around, after all.

“Kaye would certainly top the list,” said Heat.

Feller crinkled his brow. “But isn’t poison her MO of choice?”

Nikki said, “Best choice is the one that’s effective.”

“And we’re sure he wasn’t building a bomb and it went off on him?” asked Feller.

Heat shook no. “There weren’t any bomb-making materials in his apartment.”

“Please,” said Rook in mock indignation. “This is Sutton Place we’re talking about. The condo board wouldn’t have it.”

“Concierge records indicate a package delivered to his apartment,” Heat explained. “Local messenger service, no trace. Probably bogus.”

“So if he wasn’t right beside the blast,” said Rook, “the package probably wasn’t rigged for opening.”

“That leaves a timer or a remote detonation.” Heat did another e-mail scan. “I’m still waiting to hear that determination. Forensics and Bomb Squad are both on that.”

“You’ve got a lot on your plate,” said Detective Hinesburg. “How about if I follow up and see what gives?” Nikki approved of the weak link trying to redeem herself and said sure.

Whether it was old-fashioned Heat Guilt or just to prove to herself that she could juggle it all, Nikki spent the rest of the day chipping away at the Rainbow case. She had finally surrendered to calling it that, which, hours later, constituted the only movement in the entire investigation. Satisfied that her squad remained diligent and engaged in the hunt for Rainbow, Heat allowed herself an indulgence. Like scratching poison ivy, she couldn’t restrain herself, even though she knew the act would likely do more harm than good.

“Hallo, this is Vaja,” said the man on the other end, whose soft voice and Eurasian inflections made her picture him in a Tbilisi coffee house reciting poetry.

“Dr. Nikoladze,” said Heat in a cheery tone, keeping it casual, “Nikki Heat. How’s dog business?” She could hear the breeze off the Hudson against his mouthpiece and the distant kennel sounds of his Georgian shepherds. “Am I going to be seeing you this winter at Westminster?”

“We had this conversation already, Detective. Good evening.” The phone rustled, a dog barked, and the line went dead. “Call Ended.”

She looked up from the blank glass of her iPhone screen, shaken out of her preoccupation by Rook, who had pulled on his sport coat and slung his Coach messenger bag over his shoulder. “I’ve got at least another hour or two to go here,” she said.

“Yeah, I figured.” He adjusted the wide strap of his bag to lie against the soft of his neck at the collar. “I got a call and have a meeting. Cocktails, and it’ll probably turn into dinner.” Nikki’s solar plexus tweaked. In an irrational flash, she envisioned him and Yardley Bell in one of their spots. Boulud, Balthazar, or Nobu. Or, worse, one of the old Jamie-Yardley haunts from when they were a couple. “It’s more magazine business,” he said.

“Good stuff, I hope.”

“We’ll see. My agent has set me up with some movie execs from Castle Rock. Just exploratory, but they want to talk about optioning the Heat pieces for film.”

Nikki would almost have rather it were candlelight and mutually fed strawberries with Yardley. Well, maybe not, but close. “Are you kidding me? A movie? Based on my… pieces?” She spat the word. The bull pen had mostly cleared for the night, but she kept her voice down anyway.

“Come on, this is nothing. You meet, you discuss. It’s a dance. Nothing is set-or will be-without talking it over with you. You have my word as a member of the press.” He laughed, trying to lighten the load with that.

She dismissed it with a hand wave, just to have it go away for now. The whole notion still chapped her, but Nikki made a tactical surrender because she couldn’t bear the strain of one more ounce of conflict in her life. But she knew this tin can was only getting kicked down the road. “I get it. Fine, really.” She stood and hugged him. “After spending a night on the couch here, I’m going home to turn in early, so why don’t I see you in the morning?”

He leaned in. She gave him an office-appropriate kiss, watched him go out, and sat five minutes just to meditate herself calm.

Nikki came home with a to-go bag from Duke’s around the block. During a comfort supper of Ma’s Macaroni and KC Sloppy Ribs, Heat caught some baseball on TV. After her bath, the fans were just getting to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and she cocooned on the couch wrapped in a throw blanket while she battled sleep trying to stay awake for the late innings. Sleep won.

The phone woke her. She muted the postgame report and picked up her cell. The ID said “Unknown Caller.”

“You had to know you’d be next,” said the Darth Vader voice.

Rainbow.

Jolted, her heart pounded. She stood, pulling her bathrobe around herself, a primal reflex. “You’re calling after office hours,” she said, trying to mask the vulnerability she felt with some edge. The home call to her personal cell had done its job. He’d spooked her.

“Maximizing time,” he said. “Who knows how many hours you have left? Well…” He chuckled. “Actually, I do.”

“You’re going to be disappointed.”

“Could be,” he said. Even through the electronic scramble, she could hear the earnestness of his admission. “You’re a challenge, Heat. Like I said, you’re smarter than the others.” He paused slightly, then added, “But know what? It makes me wonder.”

“What do you mean?”

“That you still don’t know. That’s what I mean.” Then he hung up.

Heat felt like she should do something, but what? If she called to report this to Irons, he’d smother her with a protection detail or, worse, sideline her entirely, as he had a month ago with the enforced psych leave. Calling Detective Feller came to mind, as did Raley and Ochoa-all of whom had shown at one time or another what it meant for one cop to have another’s back. But she didn’t want to set off alarm bells or distract them from their work chasing leads. Same with calling her local precinct. The Thirteenth had covered her front door before with a blue-and-white, but once again, that could send ripples back to Captain Irons. Rook? She checked her watch. Almost 11 P.M.

She speed-dialed him, knowing he’d be more company than protection, but company would do nicely. He picked up on the third ring. “Hey, what’s going on?” Rook spoke in a low voice, subdued, the way she had seen him take calls when he was somewhere he couldn’t really talk.

“This a bad time?”

“No, not at all.” She could hear silver clanging and table conversation, something like “Nathan would be perfect casting, if he’s available.” Nikki sensed his palm cupped around the mouthpiece. He said, “Just doing some spitballing with the Castle Rock folks. Can I call you in ten or fifteen? You gonna be up?”

“That’s OK, stay on your meeting. I just wanted to say good night.”

“Good night to you, too.” She could hear the way he tried not to sound stilted-and his disappointment that he did nonetheless.

“See you in the pen in the A.M.,” she said. Just hearing his voice had soothed her nerves. She made a double-check of her front door and all the windows, then went to bed with her Sig Sauer unholstered on the floor by the nightstand.

Sweet exhaustion took her, and she floated in a luxurious descent into the rabbit hole. An e-mail ping on her phone woke her at seven. Nikki twisted up on one elbow to check it. Agent Callan requested a conference call that morning. She tapped in a yes, then flopped back and stretched, drawing in a long, refreshing chestful, wishing she had asked Rook to come over. She turned to look at his pillow and sat up, quaking in alarm at what she saw resting there.

A coil of orange string.