Frozen Heat

SIX

FROZEN LADY THAWS C–C-OLD C–C-ASE LEDGER

Insider Exclusive

By Tam Svejda, Senior METRO Reporter

As if last week’s grim discovery of a woman’s frozen body inside a reefer truck on the Upper West Side wasn’t enough to get New Yorkers’ teeth chattering, now the gruesome case has taken an even more chilling turn. Exclusive Ledger sources with knowledge of the investigation confirm that the unidentified stabbing victim has not only been identified as Nicole Aimee Bernardin, a French national with an Inwood address, but that the suitcase police found her in once belonged to a similar stabbing victim from a 1999 case that remains unsolved. The two killings struck an even more bizarre note yesterday when investigators learned Mademoiselle Bernardin knew the prior victim, Cynthia Trope Heat, who was stabbed in her Gramercy Park apartment on Thanksgiving eve ten years ago. Ms. Heat’s daughter, NYPD Homicide Detective Nikki Heat, the modelicious cover cop in a recent magazine article on our Finest, has been assigned the lead role on the case by Precinct Commander Wallace “Wally” Irons, whose savvy choice of Heat has already brought fast results. Are these double DOAs an odds-breaking coincidence or cold serial? Capt. Irons was not available for comment, but this reporter can suggest one: When it comes to cold cases, warm globally, thaw locally.

Heat folded the tabloid in half and slapped the seat with it. Rook didn’t often hear Nikki swear, but this might be an occasion. “Well this just sucks,” she said. Her jaw muscles knotted and her lips whitened from flexing them together.

He should have known better, but Rook said, “Well, it is factual, at least.”

“Don’t even,” she said. Then a thought came to her and she gave him an appraising look. And he knew why. They’d been down that road before with this reporter.

“No, I did not source that story to Tam Svejda.” Her gaze stuck, and it made him uncomfortable the same way he’d seen her make hardened suspects come unglued in the interrogation box. “First of all, when would I?”

“During your Google session in the wee hours this morning?”

“Ha!” He took the Ledger from her and examined the top of the front page. “Past deadline for this edition.” He handed it back to her. “Plus, why would I?”

That slowed her down but didn’t end it. “Well, you and this Tam Svejda, your bouncing Czech…”

“… Have a history, I know. Just because I slept with her a couple of times doesn’t indenture me to source all her stories.”

“You told me it was once.”

“True.” He smiled. “Meaning once upon a time. In a galaxy far, far away.” When she seemed partially mollified, he said, “Want me to call her?”

“No.” And then, after reflection, “Yes.” But her look said not really.

The earthquake was still managing to keep the city scrambling. The latest infrastructure fail forced their car to detour onto the Queensborough Bridge to get across the East River, because the Midtown Tunnel had been shut down by the Bridge and Tunnel Authority. The driver turned on 10–10 WINS, which reported that the closure was due to slight water ponding mid-tunnel from a mystery leak. “Leaks. Seems to be the theme of the morning,” said Rook. Nikki didn’t appear amused.

After dropping Rook curbside in front of the Midtown offices of the New York Ledger, Heat continued on to the Two-oh, where she entered to the buzz of her squad working its assignments. She spotted Sharon Hinesburg hastily closing an Uggs shopping window on her computer, boss-buttoning the screen to the fingerprint database homepage. “Missed you yesterday, Detective Hinesburg.”

“So I hear. It’s what I get for not plugging in my phone Saturday night.”

“No, it’s what I get, which is one of my detectives out of reach, and that cannot be. Are we clear?” Hinesburg answered with an overblown military salute, which, like most of what she did, irritated the piss out of Nikki, but she let it slide, point having been made. She assigned her to follow up on Nicole Bernardin’s phone records for any leads and moved on to her own desk.

To her disappointment, the pitch of activity in the bull pen was just the sound of wheels spinning. Every update she got-on fingerprints at the Inwood town house, on tracking her headhunter business to get a tax ID, on sports clubs, on credit card statements-all came up either empty, delayed, or devoid of useful leads. On any other case, she would have called on her wisdom and experience gathered over the years to remind herself that it’s impossible to see the trail until it reveals itself. She would remember that crimes got solved by hard work and patience. But this was not any other case. Even though she had succeeded in not only ID-ing the victim but finding a huge connection to her mom’s cold case, Nikki wanted to capitalize on the momentum, and immediately would be nice. A decade was a long time to be patient.

Rook came in with a grin to go with her latte. “You find out who leaked to Tam?” she asked in hushed tones after she drew him into the kitchenette.

“I did. And I didn’t even have to sleep with her to find out. I just tricked her by pretending I already knew. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Tam Svejda’s not the smartest one in the room, even when she’s the only one in it.”

“Very witty, Rook. Save it for your next article. All I want to know is who.” She scoped the area for privacy. “It’s Irons, right? So obvious.”

“Well now, there you go, running off on one of your cockamamie conspiracy theories.”

“OK, let it out; have your fun.”

He stroked his chin theatrically, relishing the opportunity to feed the great detective some of her own words. “I prefer to deal in hard facts rather than indulge myself with a mere crumb of a hunch.”

“Do you want to wear this coffee?”

“It was Sharon Hinesburg.”

Heat was still weighing how to deal with that information when Captain Irons called her into his glass office for an update. Even knowing he had a short attention span and simplifying her briefing to the broad strokes didn’t stop him from wandering off-topic, and early on. “Since I called you from Boston yesterday to tell you about what Rook and I learned about our Jane Doe and her connection to my mother, we’ve been focusing on anything we can learn about Nicole Bernardin.”

“Did you get any seafood up there?”

“Excuse me, Captain?”

Irons leaned back in his leather chair and his weight caused the springs to groan. “Man, I loves me my Boston chowdah. Legal Seafood’s a must on every trip.”

“Yes, they’re quite well known,” she said, but only to keep him engaged while she continued with the business of a double homicide investigation. “So, now that we have the Bernardin ID, we are tasked with following a series of new avenues. We have limited forensics leads from her town house, but we can track other aspects of her life through her banking, business and personal. These haven’t borne fruit just yet, but-”

“Was Rook doing any writing on your getaway?”

“Sir?”

“Any new magazine pieces in the mix?” Irons sat up in his chair to the twang of sprung metal protesting. “It’s just he mentioned the other day he might be doing something to follow up the other article, and I was wondering if he’d been on that, or not.” Maybe Irons didn’t have a short attention span. Maybe his attention was just stuck on other things. “You see my mention in the fish wrapper this morning?”

“Yes I did. In fact, sir-”

“You ought to show it to Rook. Let him see other reporters are nibbling at this, too.”

It wasn’t lost on her that Irons’s take-away from the piece was his own mention. “Rook is not only aware of the article, but he knows it was sourced by a leak, sir. Inside our squad.”

“Someone here slipped that to the Ledger?” Irons tilted his head and peeked over her shoulder through the big window that looked out onto the bull pen. “Know who?”

For anyone else, Heat would have claimed ignorance. “Detective Hinesburg,” she said.

“Sharon? You sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Huh. Well, they had to get it from somewhere.” He took a pull from his coffee mug, seeming unfazed by the leak, and then confirming it after he swallowed with a loud gulp. “Probably a good thing it’s out there.”

“I disagree, Captain.” Heat didn’t like the look of self-amusement she saw after she said that, she but pressed on. “This case is at a stage where we don’t want it played out in public and have to deal with the circus that comes with that. Not before we have a chance to run down all our investigative threads.”

“Yeah? And how’s that going, Detective?” His smile made the wisecrack worse, in her view. It wasn’t just dismissive, it illustrated a closed mind-set.

“As I was just telling you-so far, it’s slow going. But to be realistic…” she said, then paused to give it emphasis, recognizing that her commander’s background was administration. His police experience came from quiet offices on floors numbered by double digits instead of street-level investigation. So she offered a version of the speech she’d given herself minutes before. “… to do this properly, we need to be patient, work it tenaciously, and understand that it’s still very early in this case.”

“Ha. This case has been ten years of stall.” He flicked his copy of the Ledger so it slid across his empty desk toward her. “The paper has it right. This thing ain’t cold, it’s frozen.” He stood, signaling the meeting was over. “Let’s air it out and see what a little publicity brings.” Sure, thought Nikki. Like his fifteen minutes of fame.

Sharon Hinesburg’s phone rang as Heat passed her. She heard the detective say that she’d be right in and saw her hurry into the captain’s glass cube, closing the door. Nikki sat to read a file at her desk, but couldn’t resist swiveling her chair so she could look over the top of it into Irons’s office. Roach came over to her.

“Just to let you know,” said Ochoa, “I came up zip on stalker complaints by Nicole Bernardin. Same with orders of protection. Nothing. Her hairdresser has Monday off, but he’s happy to meet, so I’m heading to his place in the West Village now to see what dish he has that might be useful.”

“Good, keep me up,” she said. But then the partners lingered, so she waited.

Raley cleared his throat. “I know you don’t go for gossip.”

“You’re right.”

“But this, you need to know,” said Ochoa. “Tell her, pard.”

“They’re sleeping together,” Raley said in his lowest whisper. He didn’t turn, but he let his eyes flick toward Irons and Hinesburg. Heat let her eyes drift to the pair in the office and saw Irons wagging a finger at Detective Hinesburg, but they both seemed to think something was funny. “On the way in this morning, I saw Wally drop her at the far corner down on Amsterdam so they wouldn’t walk in together.”

Heat remembered how she and Rook used to put on charades like that before they were a public item, but she said, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“They kissed each other before she got out. And it was full-tonsil exploratory.”

Sharon Hinesburg falling off the grid Sunday and the media leak that had made Irons the hero now made sense in a way that got Heat angry. Angry at being saddled with Hinesburg in the first place. Angry that Irons had crossed the line with a squad romance. Angry that, as a result, a toxic dynamic had been created in her unit that jeopardized her case. And angry, most of all, at herself for not having seen it coming. But she took a beat and said, “You two know how I feel about gossip. So this goes no further.” And then she added, “But keep me posted.”

As Roach moved off, Rook came to her desk. “Did you tell him it was Hinesburg?” She nodded and he said, “Think he’s going to give her a tongue-lashing?”

“Oh, count on it.”

“Listen, Nikki, one more thing about this leak.” And then he spoke the worry that had been nagging her from the moment she read the article in the car. “I imagine your dad reads the papers and watches the news, huh?”

She nodded solemnly, got her cell phone from her pocket, and then surveyed the openness off the bull pen. “I’ll be outside,” Nikki said. “I need to make a personal call.”

Heat came back into the bull pen ten minutes later smelling like fresh air and asked Rook if he wanted to take a ride to Scarsdale. He didn’t say any more than “Sure,” lest she change her mind about bringing him to meet her father. But by the time their gold unmarked crossed Broadway heading toward the West Side Highway, he felt his seat was adequately secured and said, “Can I tell you I’m surprised you asked me along?”

“Don’t feel too flattered. I’m using you.” Nikki’s comment came without eye contact because she was making a show of putting her attention on the road instead of him. “You’re my rodeo clown to distract him so things don’t get too mired.”

“A high honor, indeed. Thanks. Mired, how?”

“With any luck, you won’t have to know.”

“That bad between you two?” Her shrug didn’t satisfy him, so he asked, “How long since you last saw him?”

“Christmas. We see each other birthdays and major holidays.” Rook let silence work for once. Sure enough, nervous spaces need filling. “We’re sort of living the cards and calls relationship. You know, e-gifts instead of gifts. Seems to work for both of us.” She ran a dry tongue across her lips and focused on the road again. “Or seemed to.”

“Didn’t you want that on-ramp?” he asked. Heat blew an exhale through her teeth and circled the 79th Street rotary back to the entrance she had passed in her distraction. Rook waited until she settled into her lane. Out her window, to the west, he watched thunderheads building into giant cauliflowers across the Hudson. “Were you two always arm’s length?”

“Not so much. Didn’t help that my parents got divorced while I was away on my semester abroad in college. They didn’t tell me until I got back and he’d already moved out by then.”

“That was the summer before the…?” He left it unsaid.

“Yeah. He got one of those corporate extended-stay apartments. The Oak, on Park Avenue. Then, after Mom got killed, Dad couldn’t deal. Quit his job, left for the burbs, and started his own small real estate business there.”

“I’m looking forward to finally meeting him. This is kind of a big deal for me.”

“How so?”

“I dunno… Let’s call it future relations.”

Now she did look over at him. “You slow it down, there, bucko. This visit is strictly to tell him firsthand about the new developments in the case. It’s not… I don’t know what.”

“ Father of the Bride?”

“Stop right there.”

“Part Four. Diane Keaton puts Steve Martin on a colon cleanse right before the wedding. Anything can happen, and does.”

“I could let you out right here and you could walk back.”

“Hey,” he said, “you wanted a rodeo clown, you got a rodeo clown.”

Twenty minutes later, they pulled into the driveway of a gated condo complex about a half mile from the Hutchinson Parkway. Nikki punched some numbers into the security keypad and waited, running the fingers of both hands through her hair. A sharp buzz vibrated the tiny speaker on the kiosk, and as the gate rolled aside, thunder growled in the distance. Rook said, “Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain!”

“Seriously, Rook? You’re meeting my dad and quoting King Lear?”

“You know,” he said, “there’s no bigger pain in the ass than a literate cop.”

To Rook, the Jeffrey Heat who waited for them standing in his open front door held only a faint resemblance to the photos he had seen in the family album. Sure, many years had passed since those pictures captured a more robust version of the man, whose life had been under his own command and whose future loomed brightly, but at sixty-one, time hadn’t aged Jeff Heat, life had. The thousand blows of grief had tempered his kindly, jovial face into a guarded replica, one that had come untethered from trust itself and permanently inclined downward, braced for the next jolt. When he reached to shake Rook’s hand, his smile qualified as a best effort; not fake, just unable to access anything inside that passed for simple pleasure. Like the hug he gave his daughter, it was all about getting it as right as he was able.

His condo had a beige feel. Not just clean, but orderly and male. All the furnishings had the same vintage, circa Y2K, including the beached walrus of a big screen TV, the predictable indulgence of the new bachelor. He asked if they would like anything to drink, and it struck Rook that Nikki seemed almost as much a guest there as he was. They declined, and her father took the leather easy chair, establishing himself in his command center flanked by side tables bearing his phone, TV remotes, a flashlight, a portable scanner, newspapers, and a short paperback stack of Thomas L. Friedmans and Wayne Dyers.

“You home for lunch, Dad?”

“Haven’t gone in yet. Everything you’ve heard about this real estate market? It’s worse. Had to let one of my agents go yesterday.” He reached down to hike up his socks. One of them was black, the other navy.

If her father felt any slight at first reading of the latest on his ex-wife’s murder case in the tabloid at his elbow, he didn’t let on. Instead, he listened quietly as Nikki filled him in on the particulars of the case, the only spike in his emotions coming when she recapped their lunch with the former lead detective, Carter Damon. “Ass,” he said. “And useless. That clown couldn’t find sand at the beach.”

“Tell me something, Dad. Everyone says Mom and this Nicole Bernardin were such good friends. But I never heard of her.” His expression remained neutral, so she said, “Kind of strange, don’t you think?”

“Not really. I never liked her, and your mother knew it. Bad influence, let’s leave it there. After we moved back here to the States about a year before you were born, Nicole Bernardin was out of our lives. Good riddance.”

Nikki filled him in on the visit to the New England Conservatory and described the video of her mother’s recital. “I knew Mom could play, but jeez, Dad, I never saw her like that.”

“Wasted gift. That’s why I nagged her the whole time we were in Europe that she was squandering her talent.”

“So you two knew each other a long time over there?” Rook asked. “When did you and Cynthia meet?”

“1974. At the Cannes Film Festival.”

“Were you in the film industry? Nikki never mentioned that.”

“I wasn’t. After business school I got hired by a big investment group to be their man in Europe. My job was to find small hotels to buy and remodel as elite boutiques, basically copying Relais et Chateaux. I’ll tell you, it was a plum job. In my twenties, full of my own bullshit, bopping around Italy, France, Switzerland, West Germany-that’s what they called it then-all on an expense account. You sure you don’t want a soda? Beer, maybe?” he asked hopefully.

“No, thanks,” said Rook. He noticed the wet ring on the coaster beside Jeff’s chair and it saddened him to see how badly he longed to put a fresh glass on it.

“Anyway, one of our investors also put money in films, and he took me to this incredible cocktail party the famous director Fellini threw. There I was with big movie stars like Robert Redford and Sophia Loren. I think Faye Dunaway was there, too, but all I cared about was the hot American girl near the bar, playing Gershwin while everybody ignored her and drank free champagne. We fell for each other, but Cindy and I were both traveling a lot. We got more serious, though, and I started to work my itineraries around wherever she was doing her thing.”

“Playing at cocktail parties?” Rook asked.

“Some. Mostly she’d be spending a week here or a month there as live-in music tutor for rich families at their ritzy vacation homes. Like I said, a waste of a gift. It all would have been so different…” A somber quiet fell, punctuated by a rattle of thunder and rain plinking on the windowsill.

Nikki said, “We should probably head back.” She started to rise, but Rook had other ideas.

“Was she scared of the spotlight, maybe?”

“No way. I blame Nicole. The party girl. Every time I felt like I’d finally convinced her to get serious again, Nicole showed up like the devil on her shoulder, and, next thing I know, Cindy’s off to St. Tropez, or Monaco, or Chamonix, paying her way by selling her talent cheap.” He turned to his daughter. “Things got better when you came along. We had the place in Gramercy Park, your mom settled down into raising you, and loved that. She loved you so much.” When he said that, some of the old Jeffrey Heat found his face and Rook could see in it the same jawline he saw in Nikki’s whenever she smiled.

“It was a very happy time,” she said. “For all of us.” Then she reached for her keys.

“Those things don’t last, though, do they? When you turned five she went back to the old habits. Tutoring kids of rich New Yorkers, sometimes gone weekends with their families or keeping strange hours, nights even. And never talked to me about it. Said she needed her independence and just did her thing. Shut me out.” He paused as if making a decision, then said, “I never told you this, but I even got paranoid your mother was having an affair.”

Nikki shifted the keys to her right hand. “OK, well, maybe this isn’t the time and place to get into this.”

Rook asked, “Did you ever tell the police you suspected that?” and caught a slight elbow from Nikki. He ignored it. “Seems they’d want to know.”

“I didn’t mention it.”

“Because you had already divorced?” This time the elbow came a little sharper.

“Because I already knew she wasn’t.” He closed his mouth and sucked in his cheeks. Then he continued, with his lower lip trembling. “This is awkward for me, especially after what happened.” Nikki slid forward on the couch and reached a hand to rest on his knee. “I’m ashamed now-but I hired a private detective to, um, follow her.” And then, regaining himself a bit, he added, “Came up with nothing, thank God.”

Lightning struck with a simultaneous cannon crash in the woods behind the condo complex, hurrying their jog back to the car. When they got in, Heat checked her cell phone and found a text invitation from Don, her combat trainer. “Whip yr ass 2nite? Y/N.”

Rook asked, “Something new on the case?”

She shook her head, texted, “N,” and fired up the ignition. He must have read her mood, because, for a change, Rook respected her silence the whole ride back to Manhattan.

The squad worked the case diligently, but their results still didn’t move the needle on the case. The French consulates in both New York and Boston had no recent dealings with Nicole Bernardin, she had no record of a landline, and her cellular calls were mundane take-out orders and mani-pedi appointments. Ochoa came back with confirmation of two, uncharacteristically last-minute color-and-cut cancellations made from the cell. Her stylist, who grieved the loss of one of his best clients, said she was a very nice, albeit private lady who seemed scattered lately. Neither of much use in furthering the hunt for her killer. Rook took a cab back to his place, leaving Heat to update the murder boards. Unfortunately, that amounted to writing check marks beside each bullet instead of entering new information.

The elevator doors opened for Nikki in the lobby of Rook’s building that evening and a massage table rolled out on two wheels followed by Salena, the rehab babe. “Hiyee!” she said, finger waving with her free hand, making her triceps ripple. “He’s all yours.”

“Gee, thanks. Appreciate that.” The last thing Heat saw was that row of perfect white teeth as the door shut, making her ruminate the whole ride up about Cheshire cats and how she’d seen grins without airheads but never an airhead without a grin.

By the time Rook came out from his shower, she had plattered the antipasto ingredients she had picked up at Citarella and poured them some wine at the counter. “Thought we’d stay in and do some grazing tonight,” she said.

“Fine with me.” He looked at the wine label and said, “Ooh, Pinot Grigio.”

“Yeah, perfect accompaniment to tea tree oil and pheromones.” They clinked. “I passed your naughty nurse on the way up. How was your ‘rehab’? And yes, those were air quotes.”

“Sadly, my last one. But I needed it after those rib shots I took from your elbow this afternoon.”

“Really?” She forked a slice of prosciutto and rolled it around a ball of bufala mozz. “It didn’t seem like you were even aware of them. Remember, you were supposed to be the rodeo clown, keeping my dad from getting mired?”

“Yes, it was quite a role reversal, wasn’t it?”

She set her food down and dabbed her fingers with her napkin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I was prepared to run interference for you, but you weren’t asking any questions. So I did.”

“Rook, we didn’t go there to ask questions. I went as a courtesy to my father to fill him in on the case because it ended up in your old girlfriend’s tabloid.”

“Let’s ignore that second jealous comment you’ve made in under a minute and focus on the visit with your dad.” He nibbled the meat off an olive and placed the pit on the side of his plate. “Yes, we went there for one purpose, but he kept sharing things that made me want to know more. His suspicion about the affair was too big to just let pass. When you didn’t say anything, I assumed you were too busy absorbing it emotionally and I picked up the slack. He never mentioned it to you?”

“You heard him. He said no.”

“And you had no clue?”

She took another sip of wine and watched the ripples on the surface as she swirled the stem. “Can I share something with you?”

“Anything, you know that.”

She paused to ponder, mirroring her father’s tortured expression, hours before. “Yes. I suspected my mom might be having an affair, too.” She took another drink from her glass. “Not until I was older, in my teens, but I started noticing the same things my dad brought up today. Gone a lot. Sometimes a weekend or nights, out late. You know, when you’re in high school, it’s all about you, and you feel angry and lonesome. And then I started to wonder if there was more to it. Also the tension between my parents was a big elephant in that apartment. I even started trying to get to our mail before she did so I could look for any letters from men or anything. It’s crazy, but it’s what it became.”

“Was she seeing someone?”

“I never knew.”

“And you never talked to her about it directly?”

“Like I’d do that.”

“And she never confided in you? Not even a hint?” Nikki gave him a derisive sniff. “Hey, just asking. I got the impression you and your mom were close.”

“In our own way, yes. But my mother had this very private side to her. It was a bone of contention between us. Even the night she was killed. Know the reason I was gone from the apartment for such a long time before I went to the market? I needed to take a walk because things were tense between us about her… what should I call it…? Separateness. Don’t get me wrong, my mom was warm and loving to me, so I’m not invalidating that. But… there was a part of her that she kept totally to herself. As close as we were, she had this wall that divided us.”

Understanding now why Nikki had balked at digging into her mother’s past, Rook said, “There’s no shame here. We all have our private areas, right? Some people erect a little more protection around theirs than others. What did my man, Sting, call it, ‘A Fortress Around Your Heart’?” He ate a marinated artichoke with his fingers and added, “You, of all people, should know that.”

Nikki frowned and studied him. “Meaning?”

He swallowed wrong, coughing on some vinegar as he realized his mistake. Trying to contain the damage, he said, “Nothing. Forget it.” But it was out there.

“Too late. What exactly should I know that you have now somehow become an expert on from listening to Classic Rock?”

“Well… OK, look, we all have aspects we inherit from our folks. I have my mother’s brash theatricality and adorable impulsiveness. As for my dad, I have no clue. Don’t even know who he is.” He hoped that sidetrack would end that thread of discussion, but he was wrong.

“Spit it out, Rook. Are you saying I’m inaccessible?”

“Not at all.” He felt himself trapped in a sparring match he didn’t want to be in and that everything he said was the wrong thing. Such as stupidly adding, “Not all the time.”

“And at what times am I inaccessible?”

He tried to dodge. “Not most of the time.”

“When, Rook?”

Seeing no way out, he chose the Robert Frost path and went through. “OK, sometimes, when I want to broach certain subjects with you lately, you do ice me.”

“You think I’m cold?”

“No. But you do know how to freeze me out.”

“I freeze you out, is that your point? Because that’s ridiculous. You’re the first person I’ve ever heard say that about me.”

“Actually…”

She had started to take another sip of wine, but the color left her face and she clanked the glass down on the cold stone countertop. “You’d better finish that.” Already feeling up to his neck, Rook’s brain clawed for a way out, but all the passages were marked “No Exit.” “I mean it, Rook. You can’t lay something out there like that and retreat. Finish it.” She fixed him with that unblinking X-ray stare he’d seen her melt bull-necked sociopaths with during interrogation.

“All right. The other night in Boston, Petar and I were talking and-”

“Petar? You were talking to Petar about me behind my back?”

“Briefly. You went to the loo, and I was just minding my own business-I mean, what do I have to say to Petar? Anyway, he brought up the notion-Petar did-that-his words, now-that you had a protective wall.”

“First of all, I think it’s cheap of you to throw Petar under the bus like this.”

“He brought it up!”

She ignored him, swept up in her anger and the release it was giving her. “And second, I would rather have a slightly cautious, slightly controlled side that values privacy and discretion than be a reckless, immature, self-centered jackass like you.”

“Look, this came out all wrong.”

“No,” she said, “I think it just finally came out.” She grabbed her blazer off the back of her bar stool.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure. I suddenly feel the need to have a wall between us.” And then she left.

Don took the brunt of it. Seeking an outlet to subdue the riot coursing through her veins, Heat had texted back her combat training partner, and thirty minutes later the ex-Navy SEAL landed facedown on the gym mat with the air knocked out of him. He drew himself up on all fours, gasping, but Nikki smelled the fake. He sprung at her shoulder-first, his long arms octopussed out to wrap up her legs for a takedown. Before he got there, she dropped to a crouch and hooked the inside of her elbow into his armpit, then kicked herself upward off the mat, lifting and flipping him midair. Don crash-landed on his back with her on top of him for the pin. Nikki hopped to her feet, panting, blowing sweat droplets off the tip of her nose, as she danced side to side, ready for more. No, craving more.

At the close of the hour, both drenched in sweat, they bowed and shook hands, center mat. “What got into you?” he asked. “Fierce tonight. Did I piss you off somehow?”

“No, it’s not you. Got a lot on my mind. Sorry if I made you my punching bag.”

“Hey, anytime. Keeps me sharp.” He dabbed the perspiration off his face with the belly of his shirt and said, “Got enough energy left for a beer or something?”

Nikki hesitated. The “or something” meant bed, and they both knew it. He made it sound casual because it was. Or had been once. Before she met Rook, Nikki and Don had no-strings sex on a semiregular basis for two years. They both got the same thing out of it, which amounted to a full-contact, no-commitment, physical relationship without the emotional hangover or jealous inquiries when one or the other passed. When they both wanted to, it was fine. When not, same deal. It never interfered with their jujitsu sessions, and Don hadn’t pressed or sulked once in the months since she’d chosen to remain exclusive to Rook, who knew nothing about her arrangement with her combat TWB. “Beer would be nice,” she said on impulse, feeling a flutter in her rib cage that might be guilt. But hell, it’s just a beer, she decided.

“Wouldn’t mind a shower first,” he said, plucking the wet shirt from his skin. “No hot water here. They shut it off after the earthquake, and I guess the city’s backed up on inspections.”

The flutter rose again, but she ignored it and said, “You can get a shower at my place.”

Heat stayed in her gym clothes but changed into a dry tee shirt while Don hit the shower. She checked her cell phone again for case updates from the squad and got nothing but three more voice mails from Rook she didn’t listen to. In the refrigerator she found a six-pack and tried to decide whether to drink there in such proximity to the bedroom or go out to the Magic Bottle after Don made himself presentable.

She washed her face in the kitchen sink to rinse the sweat salt from her eyes. As she dried herself with a paper towel, Nikki tried to figure out what she was doing with Don back in her apartment. Was she seeking escape? The mere company of a friend? Or was she testing the old waters of independence again to see what that would feel like? She told herself, if any more did come of the evening, that it would not be to spite Rook.

Then why did she take that extra step to invite Don over? Was it because their relationship was shallow enough that he wouldn’t be asking her too many questions or try to go deep when she didn’t want to? Was she looking for mind-numbing sex as an escape?

What bugged her about Rook wasn’t so much that he had pushed a hot button with the accusation about her wall-and then hidden behind her old boyfriend. It was that he insisted on poking around in places he had no business. Dragging her back over family secrets she wanted to be done with. Quizzing her father like he was in the interrogation box up at the precinct… And then, tonight, pushing her to talk about her relationship with her mother. How could Nikki explain something like that-and all it encompassed-to him or to anyone? And why should she have to? Did she have an obligation to share with Jameson Rook the way her mom made her feel when she bandaged her skinned knees? Or how she dropped everything and took her right out to a Broadway show when her junior prom date stood her up? Or how she taught Nikki the joys of Jane Austen and Victor Hugo? And that practice, whether it was for the piano or anything else in life, should be a journey of discovery. Not just about the music but about herself.

She couldn’t tell him all that. Or wouldn’t. These, and the hundreds of thousands of other random memory slideshows, were journeys to the places Nikki seldom ventured herself. Like the lid of the piano across the room, those were doors too painful to open. Maybe Rook was right. Maybe her defenses did constitute a fortress wall.

Was it one just like her mother’s?

And if so, was that really a character deficit, or simply one more valuable life lesson Cynthia Heat taught her daughter by example? Like demonstrating how to let the spaces between notes breathe, because they are music, too.

The shower water shut off, forcing Nikki to ask herself what this moment was all about, because she could not deny she had put herself at a crossroads. Why? But, as the bathroom door opened, Heat knew that wasn’t the most pressing question. The immediate issue was what she would do on this night full of risky impulses.

He came up the hall with his skin glistening and nothing but a towel around his waist. “I believe you mentioned something about a beer,” he said. Before she could agonize over it too much, she grabbed the pull handle on the fridge, popped open a pair of bottles from the six, and set them on the counter between them. They side-clinked necks and each took a sip. “Gonna be hurtin’ for certain tomorrow,” he said.

There was a soft knock at the door. “Expecting anybody?” he asked as he stepped toward the entryway.

Rook had a key, but maybe he was learning to be discreet for a change, so she whispered, “Don’t say anything, just look.” She came around the counter trying to figure out how to handle the introductions as Don’s towel slipped and it landed on the floor before he could snag it. He turned to her with a wink and impish grin and then leaned forward to look though the peephole.

The shotgun blast punched a hole clean through the door and threw Don backward with such impact that he landed headfirst at Nikki’s feet. A seemingly endless flow of blood rivered out of him where his face had been, and pieces of his brain stuck to the front of Heat’s legs and shirt.