Naked heat

Chapter Seven

To keep herself from getting swept away in a current of panic, Nikki Heat clung to her training. Fright wouldn't get her out of this alive. But fight would. She needed to be opportunistic and aggressive. She pushed her fear away and focused on action. She repeated silently to herself: Assess. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

Whoever was arranging the metalware was nearby. Maybe two yards away. Was her captor alone? She listened, and it seemed so. And whoever it was seemed very busy with the small-sounding tools.

She didn't want to call attention, so, without making overt movements, Heat flexed her muscles, slowly tensing herself against her bonds, knowing she couldn't rip free of them, but testing them, hoping for some sort of give, anything that would betray some area of weakness in the duct tape. All she wanted was a little slack somewhere, anywhere-at her wrist, at her ankle-just a quarter inch of play to give her something to work at.

No luck. She was bound efficiently to her chair at the upper forearms, wrists, and at each ankle. As she ticked off each point of restraint, she replayed her memory of Lauren Parry indicating each place on Cassidy Towne's autopsy template. Her own were identical to that diagram.

So far, the assessment of give sucked.

Then the sorting stopped.

A foot scraped, and she heard two hollow heel strikes on uncarpeted floor as someone came near. The footfalls could have been the heels of a woman's shoe, only they seemed more substantial. Nikki tried to remember the layout of Rook's loft-if that was even where she was. He had rugs everywhere except the bathroom and kitchen, but that flooring was slate. This sounded like hardwood. Maybe this was the great room where he held his poker games.

Cloth rustled beside her, and she could smell Old Spice aftershave right before she heard the voice in her ear. It was a man, forties, she guessed, with a Texas drawl that would have been appealing in other circumstances. It was a crisp, simple voice that would make you feel comfortable about buying the man's church raffle tickets or holding his horse. Gently, calmly, he asked, "Where is it?"

Nikki made a small mumble against her gag. She knew she wouldn't be able to talk, but maybe if the Texan thought she had something to say, he would remove the gag along with her hood and shift the dynamic at least that much. Heat wanted to create an opportunity she could capitalize on.

Instead, he said in his smooth, relaxed tone, "Talking's going to be an issue for you just this moment, isn't it? So let's do this. Just nod if you'll tell me where it is."

She had no idea what the man was talking about, but she nodded. The flat of his hand struck her immediately on the tender spot where her head had met the front door, and she whimpered more in surprise than pain. Heat detected motion and tensed for another blow, but instead she got a strong whiff of Old Spice. And then the voice. Quiet as before, and even more chilling because of its calm folksiness.

"Sorry, ma'am. But, see, you were fibbing, and even in New York City, that dog's not gonna hunt." This Dr. Phil act was all about dominance, and Nikki had a response. She shot her head in the direction of his voice and butted some part of his face. She braced again, but no blow came.

The man simply cleared his throat and took two steps away from her on the hardwood. The hollow-sounding heels made sense to her now. Cowboy boots. She heard a clank of something metal, and the boots approached her side. "Now, I believe you need a reminder about the reality of your situation," he said. Then she felt something like the point of a pencil come to rest on the flesh of her left forearm. "This'll help you along those lines."

He didn't break the skin, but with the needle-sharp point he scored a line along her skin until he reached the duct tape binding her wrist. He held it there, applying just enough pressure to cause pain without puncturing her. And then he removed it and stepped away, only to come back and stand close to her. Something clicked, and a small motor like a dental drill, or one of those cordless tools they sell on infomercials that cuts nails in half, revved in a high-pitched whine bedside her ear. Nikki jumped and instinctively jerked away from it, but he clamped her in a headlock with his muscular arm. He slowly brought the tool closer and closer to her ear. When it touched the cloth of her hood, vibrating, spinning, chewing fibers, he shut it off. Silence. He put his mouth close to her again.

"You think about that till I get back, now. And when I do, no lies, ya hear?"

She heard the bootfalls again, but this time they went in the opposite direction. When they hit rug, they softened but kept going until they faded away, disappearing into a back room, she guessed. Heat listened, wondering how far the man had gone. Then she bent as far forward at the waist as she could and flung herself upright, feeling her hood inch upward from the momentum of her rise. Before she attempted another flip, she stopped to listen. The boots were approaching again. They clomped when they reached the hardwood, and she felt her slacks rustle as he went by. He paused, and she wondered if he had seen the slight rearrangement of her hood.

Apparently not, because next came the jingle of keys, and then the hard soles crossed the stone of a kitchen floor. From that aural sequence she pictured herself definitely in the great room off Rook's kitchen. She got confirmation when the front door in the entry off the kitchen was unbolted and closed and she heard the teeth of the key insert into the lock. As soon as the tongue of the deadbolt shot, Nikki went to work twisting her head to get the hood off.

It wasn't moving. The cloth was loose but hung too far down onto her shoulders to work off without the use of her hands. She stopped, held her breath, and listened.

The elevator hummed distantly and whined with a slight squeal when it came to a stop. When she heard the metal accordion doors open and close, she went to work wildly shimmying her upper arms. Concentrating her efforts on her right side, she pinched a fold of cloth between her chin and her shoulder, then extended her neck to push upward with the top of her head, slipping the hood up an inch. It was only an inch, but it worked, and so she repeated it until an inch more moved up. After three reps, light started to show underneath the hem. Nikki wished she had access to her mouth to grab it with her teeth, but this would have to do.

She bent for one more flip, and that one succeeded in raising the hood above her eyes, as if she were wearing a hoodie. Nikki shook it off her head and rested while she looked around. Her chair was positioned in open space between the kitchen counter and the oriental rug and the dining table where Rook held his weekly poker nights.

Nikki's heartbeat leveled off, and she went at the task of getting herself to the counter. Careful not to tip the chair over, which would only strand her turtled on the floor, she bucked her body side to side and created enough momentum to shift the chair across the floor a few inches. Heat started to worry she would run out of time before the Texan came back, and she threw more weight into her next motion and started to tip. She almost went over, but managed to get all four feet of the chair down with a slam. It was enough of a scare to settle her into more even movements. Think inch, not inches, she repeated, creating a rhythm. Inch, not inches.

When Nikki reached the counter, which was even with her jawline, seated as she was, she began to rubbing her cheek sideways along its edge. On one of her strokes, her face actually squeaked along the polished granite. The friction made her cheek burn. But it was also causing the ragged edge of the duct tape to catch where it met her skin and curl slightly with each pass. To shut out the pain of the abrasion she thought about the prize that waited on the countertop, inches away: the cordless drill and a half dozen picks and dental tools.

The tape started to give on the left side where she had been working it. Nikki used her tongue, her jaw, and her face muscles to work at it between strokes until she had created a small opening at the corner of her mouth. When she had freed enough tape to create a loose flap, she extended her neck and twisted until her cheek was just above the countertop. Angling slowly, carefully, Nikki lowered her cheek onto the counter and pressed. The tack on the sticky side of the fold of duct tape held to the granite. Keeping her face pressed down hard on the cold surface, Heat swiveled her head left to right, and when she came up, the entire strip of her gag had peeled off and was stuck to the counter.

Her arms and ankles were bound to the chair, but she was not belted down so she was able to rise up and chin her way across the cool granite to the tools. The nearest was a small pick. The drill was farther away, but that was the one she wanted. That was the time saver. She made a lunge for it and slammed her shoulder into the edge of the counter and bounced back into her seat. She torqued herself in the chair until it squared more to the counter and rose up again, not lunging this time but yoga-stretching herself over the smaller tools to the drill.

The handle was cylindrical but had small rubber feet so that the power button presented itself on top. Nikki rested the tip of her chin on the button and pressed once, twice, three times. On the fourth try the drill started to whirr. Her back muscles were crying out, protesting against the strain of holding herself up, contorted, over the counter, but she held steady, concentrating on the handle of the drill as she grabbed it in her lips and then clenched it between her molars.

Evenly distributing her weight between her elbows, she sat herself down gently so she wouldn't knock the drill from her mouth and then leaned over to cut away at the tape that bound her right wrist to the wooden arm of the chair.

Nikki worked fast. By curling her wrist upward, she created tension on the cutting surface, and the fabric peeled apart where the bit of the drill met the tape. Once her right wrist was free, she transferred the drill from her mouth to that hand and was able to cut the bonds on her left wrist even faster. She wanted to get her ankles free so she could move if he came back, but with her upper arms still strapped to the armrests, she couldn't reach down that far, so she began cutting at the right upper. When that came free, she heard something and turned the drill off.

The hum of the rising elevator.

Heat leaned over and, first, cut her right ankle loose, then went to her left. In her rush, she poked herself on the lower shin under her pant leg and winced. But she pushed the pain aside and did her job. She had less than a minute to get loose and had to keep cutting. Her left ankle came free and she stood up just as she heard the elevator's muffled squeal, signaling its stop at Rook's floor.

Nikki was still attached to the chair at her left elbow when the accordion gate opened. She made the decision to turn off the drill so the Texan couldn't hear its whine through the door and be warned.

She couldn't find the seam of the duct tape with her nails to peel it back and the dental tools were all precision points, no good for cutting. The front door key chunked into the lock. In the kitchen there would be knives. The deadbolt shot open. She picked up the chair and carried it with her around the counter. The wooden knife holder was too far to get to. But there. Beside the sink right in front of her: a bottle opener beside a bent bottle cap. Heat grabbed it as the knob turned and she heard the front door creak open around the corner in the foyer.

She backed herself and the chair into the great room, crouched down below the counter to buy a few seconds and some cover, and started to cut herself free with the sharp point of the opener. The boots stepped onto the slate kitchen floor and stopped.

Nikki was still cutting at the tape when the Texan bounded over the counter and landed on top of her.

The force of his tackle knocked Heat sideways under the dining table. His hands clutched her throat in a choke from behind and she couldn't do anything about it. Her right arm was pinned under her side, trapping her hand and the bottle opener under her own weight, and her left was strapped to the chair, which had been dragged along like a slipped boat anchor.

She tipped her body backward and rolled on top of him, pinning him under her back. He responded by strengthening his choke grip on her throat, but with her right hand now free, she plunged the bottle opener down. He yelled when the point sunk into his upper thigh, and his grip loosened. Nikki rolled off him and sprung to her feet, frantically cutting away at the duct tape to free herself. He was on his feet quickly, out from under the table, lunging at her.

Heat used the damned chair to her advantage, swinging her left arm outward as he approached. He put up his arms to deflect, but the wood still smacked him enough to drive him off center. He shot past her, his near arm getting hooked in the stretcher bar between the chair legs, and as he flew by, the last strip of duct tape ripped, and the chair went with him. Nikki was free to move.

She didn't wait for him to recover from his fall. Heat lunged for him, but his reflexes were quick. He spun, using the chair to deflect her. Nikki's church key flew out of her hand and across the room, clanging into the radiator before it fell. She thought of going for it, but the Texan was already up and coming at her. Heat sidestepped a few inches, clamping his throat with her right hand as he arrived, jerking his chin up while she palmed the top of his forehead with her left to push down and backward. Her Krav Maga move buckled his knees, and he toppled onto his ass.

Nikki spotted her blazer on the floor under a window and, sticking out from under it, the butt of her gun. She turned to rush for the weapon, but the Texan had obviously also had personal combat training. He spun on his hips and scissored Heat at the knees, locking up her legs and flipping her down hard, face-first onto the floor. From her workouts with Don, she anticipated a grapple from him to tie her up, so she flailed an elbow at his approaching face, caught him in the cheek, and when he recoiled, she broke free, delivering a rib kick on her rise.

The Texan came to his feet, reaching into his sport coat and pulling out a knife. It was a scary piece of business, one of those military-issue combat blades with a knuckle guard and twin fullers, or blood grooves, running along each side. Nikki's unhappy thought was how comfortable it looked in his hand. He looked at her and actually smiled. Like he knew something. Like he was holding The Game Changer.

Training and experience told Nikki that the only fight you want to be in is the one you win-and fast. Don had drilled her on the mantra just that morning, as he had every session: Defend and attack at the same time. And now, here she was, empty-handed in a fight against an experienced assailant with a combat knife.

The Texan didn't give her much time to reflect on strategy. This man was also trained to end fights quickly, and he came for her right away. Having height on Nikki, he lunged at her from above, bringing the point down at her as he stepped in. Defend and attack, she thought, and jumped right in to meet him, slapping his wrist away to the outside while moving in close to deliver a knee to his groin. It doesn't always go like in training, though. He anticipated the knee and countered his body to the side. Not only did Heat miss, he used his free hand to shove her, taking advantage of her momentum to whisk her right past him.

Nikki stumbled but didn't let herself fall. Instead, she spun to brace for his attack, which she knew would be immediate. It was.

This round he came in low and up, going for her belly. Nikki didn't try to slap the arm to the side. It was time to get the knife away from this asshole and now. As he came in, she clutched his wrist, pulling his arm to the outside and not letting go. At the same time, she brought down a hammer fist on the weak spot she had exposed by pulling his arm to the side: his collarbone. Heat felt and heard it crack under the force of her blow, and he cried out.

But his knife had that knuckle guard, so it did not fall even though his grip was weakened. While he was overcome with pain, she reached with both hands to pry it from him, but he brought his fist down on the back of her neck and knocked her to the floor, dazed. She was on her knees on all fours, her vision tunneling to black, when she heard him scramble across the slate of the kitchen. Nikki shook her head and drew a deep breath. The stars started to clear and she got to her feet. Feeling slightly nauseous, the detective stumbled to the wall, felt under her blazer, and got her gun.

He would be out the front door by the time she made it through the kitchen. Counterintuitively, Nikki rushed to the other side of the great room, where there was a portion of the foyer visible through the kitchen entry. She knew that from her poker night the summer before, when she kept eyeing that door, longing for a chance to leave.

When she saw him, the Texan was just opening the door, but pausing to pick something up off the hutch, a large manila envelope. The same one she'd had locked in her trunk. Heat braced on the counter and called, "Police, freeze." He didn't freeze, but slid quickly into the doorway. Nikki fired off one shot in the narrowing sliver of the opening as the door shut behind him. Detective Heat kicked open the door to the stairwell off Rook's penthouse floor and entered with her gun up in an isosceles brace. When she had made sure the Texan wasn't hiding on the landing, she considered his options: up one flight to the rooftop or down seven to the street. Then below her, Nikki heard the bark of a big dog and boots descending the painted concrete steps.

As she flew down the stairwell, two steps at a time, and past the third floor, the dog barked again from inside his apartment. Good work, Buster, she thought, as she raced by. That was when Nikki heard the echo of the door slam come up from street level beneath her.

Heat paused briefly with her hand on the door before she jerked it open and made her defensive exit, gun ready, out onto the sidewalk. The Texan was not there, but he had left something behind. A spatter of blood on the sidewalk, visible in the pool of light shining down from the sodium lamp above the service door.

The sidewalks in Tribeca were busy with the cocktail and pre-dinner crowd. Heat made a quick survey and couldn't see her cowboy, and there were no nearby blood droplets to track. And then the detective heard a woman talking to the man she was walking with. She was saying, "I swear, honey, that looked like blood on his shoulder."

Nikki said, "Police. Which way did he go?"

The pair looked at Nikki. The woman said, "Do you have some kind of ID or a badge?"

Time was wasting. Nikki looked down, but her badge wasn't on her hip. "He's a killer," she said and then she showed them her gun, pointed upward, unthreatening. They both immediately pointed across the street. Nikki told them to call 911 and ran.

"Up Varick toward the subway," called the woman.

Heat ran full-bore north on Varick, dodging pedestrians, looking at both sides of the street and in every vestibule and open storefront she passed. At the triangle intersection where Franklin and Varick met up with Finn Park, she stopped at the corner and scanned the windows of a coffeehouse to see if her man had mixed in with the customers. A diesel pickup truck clattered by, and when it had passed, Nikki jogged across the crosswalk to the concrete island surrounding the Franklin Street stop for the southbound 1 train. Beside a bank of newsstands and plastic boxes full of free handouts for singles clubs and the Learning Annex she saw more blood. Nikki turned across the square, toward the steps leading to the subway. She saw the Texan illuminated by the light coming from underground. He made her just as his head disappeared down the stairs.

A train must have been due, because the station was full of people waiting to go downtown. Nikki vaulted the turnstile and followed the commotion. People were getting shoved aside along the platform to her left, and that's where she went. She wove her way through the commuters, many of whom were swearing or asking one another, "What's with that guy?"

But when Nikki reached the end of the platform, he wasn't there. Then she heard someone behind her say, "He's going to get killed," and she looked on the track. The Texan was down there in the darkness, climbing across to the northbound side. His right shoulder was tilted lower on the side where she had broken his clavicle, and a line of rusty red traced down the arm of his tan sport coat from the same shoulder, where it looked like he was also carrying her 9mm slug. His free hand clutched her manila envelope, which was now finger-painted with his blood. She braced against the wall, hoping for a shot, but bright light filled the platform, a horn blasted, and a 1 train screeched into the station, blocking her.

Heat raced back to the exit, to beat the passengers getting off the train, and ran up the stairs and across Varick to the northbound station, almost getting creamed by a taxi. The blood drops at the head of the stairs told her she was too late. She went down into the station just to make sure he hadn't doubled back on her as a feint, but the Texan was long gone.

Detective Heat had one consolation prize for her efforts. As she turned to come back up the stairs, something caught her eye on the dirty tiles at the foot of the bottom step. A single typewriter ribbon cartridge. The couple she had encountered must have made that 911 call, because the street was filled with blue-and-whites and plain wraps when Nikki got back to Rook's block. Detective Heat pressed her way through the onlookers, found a sergeant, and identified herself.

"You were in pursuit?" he asked.

"Yes. But I lost him." Heat gave a description of the Texan and his last-seen to put out on the air, and while one of the sergeant's men did that, she started for the front door, telling him that Rook might be up there. The notion released a strong primal wave of worry coursing through her gut and her vision fluttered.

"You OK? Do you want a medic?" asked the sergeant. "You look like you're going to faint."

"No," she said, pulling herself back together.

Moving through the front door of Rook's loft with a half dozen cops behind her, Nikki pointed out the spray of the cowboy's blood on the jamb as she passed. She led them through the kitchen and past the toppled chair where she had fought her captor and strode to the back of the apartment, retracing the steps the Texan had made before he left the first time. She clung to the hope that his reason for that trip to the back of the apartment was to check on Rook, which could mean he was all right.

When she reached the hall leading to his office, Heat immediately saw the shambles through the open door at the end of it. The cops behind her had their weapons drawn, just in case. Not Nikki. She forgot all about hers and just rushed ahead, calling out, "Rook?" When she got to the door of his office, her breath caught.

Rook was facedown under the chair he was duct-taped to. He had a black pillowcase over his head, just like the one she had been wearing. There was a small puddle of blood collected on the floor under his face.

She got on one knee beside him. "Rook, it's Heat. Can you hear me?"

And then he moaned. It was muffled, as if he had been gagged, too.

"Let's get him up," said one of the cops.

A pair of EMTs came into the room. "Easy," said one of them, "in case his neck's broken." And Nikki felt another twinge in her gut.

They brought Jameson Rook upright slow and easy, by the numbers, and cut him loose. Fortunately, the pooled blood was only from hitting his nose on the floor when he toppled over trying to escape. The EMTs did a check to make sure it wasn't broken, and Nikki came in from the bathroom with a warm facecloth. Rook used it to swab himself clean while he told Detective Nguyen from the First Precinct what had happened.

After he'd left the OCME, Rook had come straight there to his loft so he could type up the day's notes for his article. He grabbed a beer, walked up the hall, and as soon as he arrived at his office, he saw that the whole place had been ransacked. He turned to Nikki. "It was like Cassidy Towne's crime scene, except with electronics from this century. I was just getting my cell phone to call you when it rang, and it was actually you on the caller ID. But as I went to answer, he came up behind me and put that pillowcase over my head."

"Did you struggle?" asked the detective.

"You kidding? Like crazy," said Rook. "But he had the pillowcase around my head real tight and had me in a choke hold."

"Did he have a weapon?" asked the detective.

"A knife. Yes. He said he had a knife."

"Did you see it?"

"I had a pillowcase blindfolding me. Plus, last year I got taken hostage in Chechnya by some rebels. I found that you live longer if you don't ask to see the knife."

"Good call," said Nguyen. "What next?"

"Well, he sat me in this side chair, told me not to move, and started to tape me down."

"Did you ever see him? Even through the pillowcase?"

"No."

"What did his voice sound like?"

Rook thought a moment. "Southern. Like Wilford Brimley." And then he added, "Oh! But not the look-at-that-Wilford-Brimley's-doing-TV-commercials-now Wilford Brimley. Younger. Like from Absence of Malice or The Natural."

"So… Southern." Nguyen made the note.

"I guess that would be easier to fit on the APB than Wilford Brimley's IMDb credits, yes," said Rook. "Southern, it is."

Nikki turned to Nguyen and said with simple authority, "The accent was North Texas."

Nguyen turned an amused side glance to Heat, who smiled and shrugged. He turned his attention back to Rook. "Did he say anything else to you, say what he wanted?"

"Never got that far," answered the writer. "His cell phone rang, and next thing I know he leaves me sitting there and goes out."

Heat interjected, "He must have had somebody outside watching the street who tipped him that I was coming up."

"So we have an accomplice," said Nguyen, making that note.

Rook continued with his story, "While he's out, I try rocking myself over to the desk, where I have scissors and a letter opener. But I tipped over. And there I was, stuck. He came in here briefly and left, then a while after that I heard all sorts of commotion out there. And a gunshot. And then nothing until now."

Rook listened silently as Nikki recounted in detail to Detective Nguyen the story of how she had decided to drop by and pick Rook up, and how she'd gotten ambushed at his front door. And then she described the essentials of the fight in the great room and the pursuit that came afterward.

When she was finished, Detective Nguyen asked if she could come to the precinct to meet the sketch artist. She said she would and he left, leaving Forensics behind for prints and samples.

Waiting for the elevator to arrive and take her and Rook down, Nikki found her badge in her blazer side pocket and clipped it on her hip. Rook turned to her and said, "So. You just came over without my OK? What if I had been 'entertaining' someone?"

They got on the elevator, and as the doors closed, she said, "That'll be the day, you entertain anyone. Anyone but yourself." He looked over at her and laughed, and then she did, too. And when they stopped laughing, they still held eye contact. Nikki wondered if this was going to turn into a kiss, and her mind was racing to figure out how she felt about that when the car reached the lobby and the outer door opened.

Rook pulled the elevator gates open for her and said, "Close call, huh?"

Nikki decided which way to take it. "Yeah. But we'll catch him." The sketch artist was waiting for them when they got to the First. So were Raley and Ochoa, who took the typewriter ribbon from Heat to run up to Forensics. Raley held up the evidence bag holding the cartridge. "Do you think this is what the Texan was looking for?"

Heat could hear that soft drawl asking, 'Where is it?' and the memory of it made her inner ear tickle. The columnist's ransacked office, the missing filing cabinet, the looted trash, and absent typewriter ribbons… Clearly someone was trying to get their hands on whatever Cassidy Towne was working on. And she knew if he didn't get everything he was looking for, he'd kill again.

There were only three remaining sketch artists in all for the NYPD. Nikki's was a detective who did his sketching on a computer using software to cut and paste facial features onto the graphic he was creating. As an artist, he was fast and he was good. He asked Nikki precise questions, and when she was unsure of the most descriptive term she could use to explain some of the Texan's features, he guided her to choices, making use of his experience and his degree in Behavioral Psychology.

The result was a portrait of a lean, groomed man with short gingery-red hair, parted on the left; narrow, alert eyes; a sharp nose; and a look made earnest by thin lips and hollow cheeks.

Heat's sketch result was added to the sheet, with her description of the suspect: early forties, six-one, 165 to 170… (muscular but lean, she thought; more Billy Bob than Billy Ray). Last seen wearing a tan sport coat with bloodstain, dress white Western shirt with pearl buttons, brown dress slacks, and brown pointed cowboy boots. Known to be carrying an eight-inch knife. From the computer database of blades, Heat was able to find a picture of his weapon, a Robbins amp; Dudley 3-Finger Knuckle Knife with a cast aluminum molded grip.

With that done, Rook waited in the lobby while Heat met with the shooting team from Police Plaza. The meeting didn't take long, and she left it still carrying her gun on her hip.

Detective Nguyen had offered them each a ride home in a blue-and-white, and Rook said, "Look, I know we had plans for a drink, but I'd understand if you wanted to bag it for the night."

"Actually…" She looked up at the wall clock in the lobby. It was almost nine-thirty. And then she looked at Rook. "I'm really not up for a bar tonight."

"So, rain check?… Or has the fact that we cheated death made us fated to kick it out privately?"

Nikki saw she had a half-hour-old text from Don, her trainer with benefits. "Still good for tonight? Y/N?" She held the phone in her hand and then glanced up at Rook, who looked just as frayed as she must have from an evening with a killer. But the post-trauma fragility she felt wasn't just from her throw-down with the Texan. She was still recovering from the fear throb she'd felt when she walked down the hall to Rook's office afterward, not knowing what she would find in there.

"We could compare notes on the case so far," he said.

She looked thoughtful. "I suppose we could do that. Take a fresh look at the evidence."

"Do you have wine?"

"You know it." Heat put her thumb on her keypad, pressed the N, and said to Rook, "Not your place, though. I'm not much for yellow tape and graphite dust, either." When they reached the blue-and-white, she gave the uniform the address of her apartment, and they both got in. Heat handed Rook a glass of Sancerre while he stood in her living room, in front of the John Singer Sargent poster he'd given her last summer. "You can't hate me too much, you've still got my Sargent prominently displayed."

"Don't flatter yourself, Rook. It's all about the art. Cheers." They clinked and sipped. Then she said, "Let's keep this informal. You relax, enjoy some TV, whatever. I'm going to get a bath and soak some street chase off me."

"Sure, no problem," he said, picking up the TV remote. "Take your time. I think Antiques Roadshow is in Tulsa tonight."

Nikki gave him the finger and disappeared down the hall. She went into the bathroom, set her wineglass on the vanity, and opened the taps over her bathtub. She was just reaching for her bubble bath when he knocked on the doorjamb.

"Hey, what if I had been 'entertaining' somebody?" she said.

"With what," he said with a sly grin, "a little pony play?"

"You wish," she said.

"Just wondering if you were hungry."

"Now that you mention it, yes." Funny, she thought, how adrenaline shuts that part down. "Want to order in?"

"Or, if you don't mind, I could scrounge your kitchen. No booby traps, I trust."

"None," she said. "Knock yourself out, I'll just enjoy the fact that I'm soaking while you work."

"Love this thing," he said and stepped to her claw-foot bathtub. He rapped his knuckles on it and the cast-iron bonged like a church bell. "If the asteroid ever hits, this is where you should duck and cover."

A half hour later, Nikki emerged in her robe, brushing her hair. "Something smells good out here," she said, but he was not in the kitchen. He wasn't in the living room, either. "Rook?"

Then she looked down on the rug and saw a trail of cocktail napkins leading to the open window and the fire escape. She went back to her bedroom for her slippers, stepped through the window onto the metal stairs, and climbed them to the roof.

"What are you doing?" said Nikki as she approached. Rook had set up a card table and two folding chairs and lit votive candles to light the meal he had prepared.

"It's a little eclectic, but if we call it tapas we'll never know it's just stuff I scrounged." He pulled a chair out for her. She put her wineglass on the table and sat.

"This looks great, actually."

"It is, if you're not too hungry and can't see the burn marks in the dark," he said. "It's basic quesadillas cut into quarters and then there is smoked salmon with some capers I found in the back of your pantry. Out of sight, out of mind, you know." He must have been nervous because he kept on. "Is it too chilly up here? I brought the blanket off the couch if you need it."

"No, it's nice tonight." Nikki looked up. There was too much ambient light to see any stars, but the view of the New York Life Tower a few blocks away and the Empire State Building beyond it were a splendid enough view. "This is brilliant, Rook. A nice touch after the day we've had."

"I have my moments," he said. As they ate, she watched him in the candlelight, thinking, Now what was my issue here? On the street somewhere beneath them a car rolled by blasting classic rock with mega bass. It was before her time, but she knew the Bob Seger song from the clubs. Rook caught her staring at him as the chorus blared out that what they had in common was the fire down below.

"What's wrong, did I overdo the candles?" he asked. "Sometimes I can come off kind of Mephistophelian when lit by flame."

"No, the candle's working." Nikki took a bite of quesadilla and said, "But I do have something serious I need to ask you."

"Sure, but we don't have to do any heavy lifting tonight. I know that was the plan but that can wait. I've almost forgotten how you crushed my spirit this afternoon."

"But I need to know this and I need to know right now."

"OK…"

She wiped her hands on her napkin and looked him in the eyes. "Who has black pillowcases?" Before he could answer, she continued, "It's been bugging me since your office. Were those your black pillowcases?"

"First of all, they aren't black."

"So they are yours. I ask again, who has black pillowcases? Besides Hugh Hefner or, I don't know, international arms dealers?"

"They are not black. They are the darkest of dark blue, called Midnight. You'd know that if you had hung around long enough to see my autumn bachelor linens."

She laughed. "Autumn linens?"

"Yes, seasons change. And by the bye, those sheets are eight hundred and twenty thread count."

"I can see what I've been missing."

"I'll bet," he said, dropping the wiseass from his tone. He paused and added, "You know exactly what you've been missing, and so do I."

Nikki studied him. Rook was not looking at her but into her, the candle flame dancing in his eyes.

He pulled the bottle from a bowl of ice and came around beside her to pour. When her glass was full, she rested one hand on his wrist and put the other around the bottle to take it from him and place it on the table. Looking up at him standing over her, Nikki held his gaze as she took his wrist and drew his hand inside her robe. She tensed with a shiver as his cool palm rested on her breast. And held her, warming.

Rook slowly lowered, bending himself to kiss her, but it wasn't fast enough for what was building inside Nikki. She clawed the front of his shirt roughly and pulled him to her. Her excitement made him come alive, and he fell onto her, kissing her deeply and drawing her close.

Nikki moaned, feeling a spreading warmth, and arched backward as she rose up to him. Then, sliding herself off the chair, she laid herself down on her back on the flat of the rooftop. Their tongues reached for each other, searching in some wild, aching desperation. He untied the sash of her robe. She unbuckled his belt. And Nikki Heat softly groaned again and whispered, "Now. Now…," and moved herself to the long-past beat of the "Fire Down Below."