H.E.A.T. Book Bundle (H.E.A.T. Books 1-3)

by Nicola Claire

  Silence followed that statement and it was me who took an inadvertent step towards Damon this time. His head whipped ‘round to look at me, a soft smile forming slowly on his lips. I stopped mid-step, and offered a small smile in return.

  My heart ached.

  A click sounded out behind us, breaking the moment, making me realise we’d been staring at each other for a very long time. Because the guy and girl from the garage had arrived at the control room door and were being let in by Nick.

  “Ben Tamati and Abi Monaghan,” Nick advised. “HEAT Investigator Damon Michaels and Detective Lara Keen. You both know Pierce.”

  The guy lifted his chin in the universal greeting of all males and wrapped a proprietary arm around the blonde. His possessiveness and stake claiming actually made it easier to look past her prettiness and see the intelligent eyes behind the gorgeous façade.

  “So, what are we doing?” Abi asked.

  “Dinner date with Damon at Angelo’s, then you go your separate ways,” Nick offered. “Need a prop to maintain routine. But you’re friends, he wouldn’t jump out of the frying pan and into the fire so soon after splitting from Keen.”

  My eyes widened. It was a little unusual having this man know so much about our private lives and speak so plainly about them to complete strangers. I was aware Damon’s eyes were on me, but I couldn’t look at him. Unsure if he’d show amusement at Nick’s incorrect words. Or confirm them with a steady and pertinent gaze at me.

  Pierce cleared his throat. “So, we’re all go. Booking made?” he asked me.

  “Angelo’s expecting you,” I offered, looking at the woman. Still unable to look at Damon. “He thinks you’re a friend of mine, so he’ll no doubt mention me.”

  “Why am I a friend of yours?” she asked.

  I did look at Damon then.

  “Because you’re trying to convince him I’m worth a shot,” I said, my words for Damon, really, and no one else. “That he’s made a mistake. He just has to keep a little faith in me.”

  Damon’s face softened. He let a deep breath of air out as though releasing long held tension.

  “Shouldn’t be hard,” Abi muttered. “He hasn’t stopped looking at you once since we walked in here.”

  “Red,” her partner, Ben, said. It was a warning, but made little sense.

  “Just saying,” she quipped, not even blinking at the reprimand. “Talk about heating the room up.”

  Nick snorted. Pierce closed his eyes. And Damon beamed.

  I had no idea what Ben was doing, I was trapped by Damon’s grin.

  “All right, let’s do this,” Nick finally barked.

  “What you’ll expect in there, is anyone’s guess,” Pierce added, looking at Damon, who had reluctantly turned his attention to him and away from me. “Play it cool. Try to have fun. Otherwise they’ll wonder what the fuck you’re doing there. From what we can tell, the front of the club is just that. A front. We want you in the Irreverent Inferno part, wherever the fuck that is. We want a better understanding of what this place is about. In particular, we want to know if there is potentially something illegal going on.”

  “My sister,” Damon started.

  Pierce held up a hand to forestall him. “If she’s there, and unharmed when you spot her, all I ask is you play this out and try to get info before you extract. We have no desire to stop you getting your sister out, if the opportunity arises. But if you could act as though her presence is a surprise, an unpleasant one at that, because she’s interrupting your pleasurable pursuits for the night, we might just be able to salvage something out of this, if we need you to go back in.”

  “My main concern is Carole,” Damon argued. “After I have her out…”

  “Hey!” Pierce said, bristling. “You agreed to help us. You’re Keen’s partner. This may not be a HEAT case, but damn it, man, this is her case.” Pierce pointed at me. Damon followed the action, looking me in the eyes. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He was hiding behind an indifferent mask.

  His worry over Carole must have been acute. I hadn’t seen Damon act like this in a long time.

  “Did Keen tell you her informant is tied up in this place?” Nick suddenly said, gaining both Damon’s and my attention.

  “Which one?” Damon asked, but from the set of his features I was sure he’d guessed.

  Nick looked at me, making Damon’s head swing back as well.

  “Eagle,” I offered. Damon closed his eyes.

  “OK,” he said, eventually. “I’ll play nice.”

  For me. Oh, I was sure if he spotted Carole he’d do everything in his power to get her out right away. But he’d stick to his role while doing it. For me.

  Because Damon knew what Eagle meant to me. An informant, for sure. But one I would lay down my life for, if need be.

  “All right, let’s do this,” Nick repeated, and Ben and Abi filed out of the door, holding it open for Damon, who took one long legged stride and came abreast of me. Then halted.

  I had no idea if everyone was watching, or if Pierce and Nick had turned to the street camera footage of Karangahape Road and Viaduct Quay, where Angelo’s was located. Or if Ben and Abi were too busy looking at each other, to concern themselves with us. I had no idea, because Damon reached out and fingered my shirt.

  Right above the coffee stain.

  “Coffee,” he whispered. Then smiled. It was sad, full of regret. “I bet that’s reminded you of my office all day.”

  I looked down at the stain, saw the healing scars on his knuckles as he held onto my shirt, and forced a smiled.

  His lips connected with my forehead in a soft, lingering kiss, and then he was gone.

  Trust Damon to notice. Trust Damon to see me.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Tricky things spiders. They hunt with patience. They sit and wait for their prey to come to them. You should try it, Keen. Sometimes you can catch the spider as he spins his own web.”

  There was no point wasting the battery life of the button camera and microphone bug on Damon while he and Nick’s agent were inside Angelo’s. So we watched the outside of the restaurant from Police CCTV footage, unable to hear what Damon and Abi were saying.

  We weren’t the only ones hacking the street cameras, though. Nick confirmed that a wireless feed was going to Sweet Hell as well. Kyan’s security team proving quite capable, but nowhere near in Nick’s league.

  “Can they tell you’re hacking it too?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at basically nothing.

  Damon and Abi had been inside eating for over an hour.

  “Amber, one of my tech team, has written a code that covers our tracks,” he explained. “We were pretty much stealthy before when we did this. Now we’re the invisible man.”

  “That’s not legal,” I pointed out.

  Nick looked up at me, big smile on his face.

  “You gonna tell?” he asked.

  I bit my tongue. Making an enemy of Nicholas Anscombe probably wasn’t a good idea. Besides, he received, no doubt, various dispensations from Auckland Police, when assisting on operations such as this. He’d only deny hacking the CCTV system outside of sanctioned jobs. And proving otherwise would be damn near impossible, I was betting.

  These guys were big news. Good or bad, I still couldn’t tell.

  But they were the least of my problems right now. We had nothing. Not really. This was a fishing exhibition, and we were handcuffed and blindfolded while we did it. If Sweet Hell was involved in Samantha Hayes’ murder it would be difficult to prove, unless Damon came up with something tonight.

  As for Eagle and Carole. I had my doubts they were there unwillingly. If they were there at all.

  My gut churned and roiled. Forensics had come up with nothing at the murder scene. The medical examiner had confirmed asphyxiation by strangulation as cause of death, but had discovered nothing else that would aid in singling out who had done it. Samantha was well liked, well courted by her elite customers, and from all acco
unts, well furnished with sexual conquests.

  Maybe this had just been a liaison gone too far. Her boyfriend had admitted to what could only be called kinky bedtime pursuits, including erotic asphyxiation, or breath control play. Exactly what her murderer may have been doing to her at the time of death.

  But on the street? Not even down a side alley? But across the road from a venue which was having an open night, well past normal business hours for clubs on Karangahape Road.

  Coincidence? Hard to say.

  Kinky could include exhibitionism. It might have all been a game.

  But then there was the doctored video surveillance footage. My gut said connection. On paper the case said circumstantial evidence at best. The camera had been playing up for three weeks. Computer Forensics couldn’t prove the damage was intentionally done.

  Sabotage to hide a crime? Hard to say.

  Last but not least was Rooster. Where did his reaction in Eagle’s alley fit in?

  I let out a long breath of frustrated air and then abruptly sat forward in my seat when I spotted Damon and Abi emerge from Angelo’s on the screen. I was the first to notice them. Which was ironic. Because I was the one who had been off inside my head while Pierce and Nick talked quietly about the case, about politics, about which rugby team would win the Bledisloe Cup.

  It took them a few seconds to catch up, but in that time nothing untoward had appeared on the multiple camera angles we were monitoring. Damon and Abi parted ways in the front of the restaurant, the diminutive blonde offering him a hug and peck on the cheek.

  He didn’t even know her, and he was receiving an intimate farewell.

  I snorted internally at my ridiculous flare of jealousy. It was a job, an act. They were both playing the part to perfection.

  Intelligently, I knew why trust came hard to me. Realistically, it was damn near impossible to overcome it.

  I am a product of my upbringing, mixed up with a good dose of post traumatic stress. I’ve seen things, done things, survived things that a normal person wouldn’t. And all in the name of the job.

  The Emergency Services is a hotbed of hazards, interspersed with an obstacle course of emotional strain. It takes a strong constitution to avoid the pitfalls. But even though I am the daughter of a cop, the granddaughter of a cop, I am also myself.

  And “myself” can’t seem to file things. Deal with them, tuck them away out of sight, and move on. I obsess. I remember. I dissect. And I tell myself I could have done better.

  I could have saved Carl.

  I could have helped Damon.

  Then neither would have let me down in the end. Broken my trust.

  “He’s on his way now,” Pierce said, watching Damon drive off from Viaduct Quay towards Queen Street. The most direct route up to K Road.

  “What’s happening at Sweet Hell?” I asked Nick.

  Several camera views were shifted to the main screen, where moments ago an image of Angelo’s had been. There was a crowd outside the club. A line of hopeful attendees. The open night had obviously drummed up some interest, but whether they’d get inside the building was another thing. Members only tended to mean exclusive, and this crowd seemed your typical run of the mill nightclubbing hopefuls and nothing else.

  I checked the other view angles. Down the driveway was a dark sedan waiting for access to the locked carpark at the back.

  “License plate on that vehicle,” Pierce demanded, pulling out his cellphone as Nick rattled off the digits just visible in the murky light.

  Pierce began talking to Comms, requesting a Query Vehicle, while Nick and I simultaneously watched Damon park his car down nearby East Street, close enough to the entrance of Sweet Hell.

  “That Lexus belongs to a David Gordon of Remuera,” Pierce announced, swiping at the screen of his smart phone. “And look at this,” he added. “He’s the CEO of Bainbridge’s.”

  Nick and I both arched our brows at him.

  “Interesting,” Nick offered. “Your vic’s employer.”

  And the plot thickens.

  “Perhaps a visit to his address tomorrow might elicit something,” Pierce suggested, looking at me.

  “Married?” I asked.

  “Yes. No kids. And his name wasn’t on the membership list ASI have provided.”

  “I should think a lot of names aren’t,” I agreed. “There were only a dozen on that list.”

  “I never said it was complete,” Nick offered. “But I’ll have Eric and Amber work on it over the weekend. See if we can flesh it out a little.”

  “We don’t want to show our hand,” I warned.

  Nick looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. “Detective, have a little faith.”

  His words were intentional. Chosen with care from my speech to Abi earlier. I held his smirking face with a level stare. I might have trust issues, but I could see a dangerous opponent when he grinned at me.

  “OK,” Pierce announced, breaking our staring match. Well, for me it was staring, for Nick I think it was a game. “Damon’s approaching Karangahape Road now.”

  “His camera and microphone have just come on line,” Nick advised, adjusting dials and switches and swiping at the tablet that controlled the sound.

  “This is it,” Pierce said, as my heart rate sped up and my palms became moist with nervous sweat. Nervous for Damon. Nervous for so many reasons I couldn’t count.

  “What the fuck?” Pierce suddenly said.

  Both Nick and I swung our gazes toward him.

  “What did you see?” Nick asked, flicking glances back at the screens to try to determine what had just made Pierce go a mottled shade of red.

  I looked toward the screen he’d been staring at myself. There were so many people milling around the entrance to Sweet Hell it was difficult to tell at first.

  But then I spotted him, just as Pierce pulled his cellphone up to his ear and started to dial.

  “Wait!” I said, my mind racing, nerves replaced with the adrenaline of a hunt.

  “He shouldn’t be there. He could ruin the sting,” Pierce explained. “He has no idea we’re sending Damon in tonight. He’s just trying to get a drop on the case and kiss up to Hart.”

  “Just hear me out,” I said, holding up a finger to make him pause.

  I stared at Joseph Cawfield on the screen, my eyes darting from the focused expression on his face, to the dark club appropriate clothing he was wearing, to the circle of space he’d managed to acquire around him, indicating he was there alone.

  My mind whirred, connecting dots, lining up possibilities, trying to think of a motive.

  “Out with it, Keen,” Pierce ordered, the cellphone still sitting in his hand ready for him to call Cawfield off.

  I pulled my gaze away from the screens and looked at him.

  “Why would he be there?” I asked. “A night out on the town and you go to a scene potentially linked to a crime?” I shook my head. “And buttering up Hart? I don’t buy it. That’s not how Cawfield works. He’s more a schemer, a behind the scenes chess player. He likes to be in the know,” I conceded, “but everything he knows he keeps close to his chest until it can blow something apart.”

  “Sweet Hell,” Pierce pressed. “Why the fuck Sweet Hell?”

  I held my senior officer’s gaze for a very long time. Let him work it out. Let him come to the conclusion I’d been toying with for a while now.

  Finally Pierce lowered the cellphone and let out a devastated breath of air.

  “You peg him for...” He didn’t finish the question. We had an audience, and CIB’s problems weren’t up for public debate. “What have you got on him?” he asked instead.

  I looked back at the screen and watched Cawfield as he surveyed his terrain. He was there for a reason. My gut told me it wasn’t to impress Hart. But to hide something from the Inspector?

  “I’ve got nothing,” I admitted.

  “Just your gut,” Pierce said, not sounding as convinced of my instincts as he’d been earlier.

/>   I shook my head.

  “Not even your gut?” he guessed.

  My eyes closed and I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose. I couldn’t tell what was what anymore.

  “He’s there for a reason,” I said softly. “A club we’re investigating in relation to a murder and the disappearance of two people. Why?”

  “I’m still going with arse kissing,” Pierce offered.

  My eyes opened and I looked blankly at the screen. It took a moment for me to put it all together. To register the fact that he was looking in one direction only. At one thing only. Aware of his surroundings, as any decent detective would be, but focused, in particular, on one thing. On one person.

  “He’s watching Damon,” I said, on a breath of shocked air. Why was he watching Damon?

  “Jesus Christ,” Nick said, the first time he’d spoken since Pierce and I had gone into freak out mode. “She’s right. He’s target locked on your man.”

  “What the fuck?” Pierce repeated.

  “You can’t call him off,” I said quickly. “If he is who we think he is, he’ll go to ground.”

  “He could blow this sting wide open,” Pierce argued. “Damon. Carole Michaels. Your informant.”

  I swallowed thickly, watching as Damon was allowed into the club before any of the wannabe attendees lined up outside. And as Cawfield slunk off into a shadowed corner out on the street to wait.

  “He’s not going in,” I said, mind racing. “He’s on a stake out.”

  “Why?” Pierce pressed.

  Another head shake. “I don’t know, but we won’t find out if we ask him.”

  I turned to look at Pierce again.

  “You know this, Ryan. Push him and we’ve got nothing. Maybe it is innocent.” I laughed at that. It wasn’t in amusement. “But if it isn’t, we have to ask ourselves why? Why here? Why now? Why Damon?”