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

by Nicola Claire

  I closed my eyes and tipped my head back, staring at a smoky sky. The house still smoldered and heat swept across the road in persistent waves, but the flames all appeared to be doused. I took one last look at a shrouded sky and then forced myself to my feet.

  Damon was before me by the time my vision had settled.

  “We need to talk,” he said levelly. No rechecking that I was all right. No explanation for beating the shit out of Cawfield. Nothing but a monotone voice.

  “OK,” I said, just as Pierce came up beside us.

  “Your thoughts, Keen?” he asked. “I’ve heard what Cawfield has to say, I want your take.”

  Damon’s jaw tensed, his back was rigid, but he didn’t say a word.

  I shook my head. It pounded.

  “It happened too quickly to have caught anything prior. The house blew up. The shock wave knocked us to the ground. Cawfield landed on top of me, covering my head and face with his arms.”

  Damon’s fists clenched and unclenched. Neither Pierce nor I missed the movement.

  “Any unusual smells or sounds beforehand?” Pierce asked.

  “Just whisky.”

  “Whisky?” both men said.

  I offered a smile. “Eau de parfum,” I explained. Pierce smiled. Damon just scowled.

  “He bought it?” Ryan asked, lowering his voice.

  “Hook, line and sinker.”

  “Who bought what?” Damon asked. Yes, we needed to have a talk.

  “Won’t give his source up,” I said to Pierce, saving confronting Damon until later. Putting off as much as I could right now.

  “But he definitely has one?” Pierce queried.

  “Yep. And my gut says he’s being played.”

  “Are you sure? That’s quite a turn-around,” Pierce pointed out.

  I shrugged, looking over at Cawfield as he talked to Flack, second in command to Damon’s HEAT Investigation team.

  “I’m getting mixed signals from him.” Damon shifted on his feet. I could practically feel his eyes boring into me. “He has no idea we’ve been watching the Irreverent Inferno. No idea we knew what happened tonight.” Damon stilled, all motion ceased. “And is determined to nail this thing on Damon.”

  “Excuse me?” Damon asked. And maybe there were better ways to “talk” about this. But it was getting complicated. Multiple suspects. No hard evidence. And now a bomb at Cawfield’s house, while I was there, dealing with tip-offs Joe had been receiving that looked like a frame-up of my boyfriend.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” I said, wanting to pace, knowing if I took a step away, I’d probably fall over.

  “Talk us through it,” Pierce encouraged.

  I felt sick. Exhausted. Hungry because I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. Nauseated because this was getting lethally dangerous now. One person murdered. Another assaulted to within an inch of his life. And now an explosion in a police detective’s home.

  I’d almost been killed tonight.

  I swayed, I think. I’m unsure. But the next thing I knew Damon had me in his arms and was walking fast towards the back of a waiting ambulance. I struggled when my wits returned. Feeling mortified to be held like a baby in amongst a plethora of my colleagues and peers. But his arms were bands of steel and his face was set hard. And underlying it all his eyes looked terrified.

  I let a breath of frustrated air out and stopped fighting his determined hold. He lay me down on a stretcher, said, “Out!” to the paramedic inside, and then slammed the doors in Pierce’s face.

  Ryan thumped a hand on the rear window, but Damon ignored him. Settling himself onto the stretcher opposite mine and running a hand over his head.

  Silence spread out between us. Filled with so many unsaid words.

  He looked as bad as I felt. Worn out. Bone tired. Lost.

  “What the hell is going on?” he whispered. His head shook, his hands - those knuckles bleeding slightly - fisted. His jaw was hard as granite. “I can’t get anything out of that disgusting, vile place they call a club. I can’t find my sister. Nothing makes sense and now you almost got killed.” His eyes finally found mine. They were haunted. “Should I assume Carole is already gone?”

  Carole. It was always Carole. Even now when he was being set-up for a murder he didn’t commit, when his girlfriend had just escaped death at an explosion, his first thought was of his sister.

  “I don’t know,” I finally said, because I didn’t know anything anymore. I didn’t know where we stood. I didn’t know where the case stood. And I sure as fuck didn’t know jack shit about his bloody sister.

  I wanted to sleep for a week and pretend none of this was happening.

  I wanted to rewind the clock to before Friday morning and never let Damon out of my bed that day.

  I wanted Carl back.

  I wanted a childhood that hadn’t been so fucking lonely.

  I wanted a fairytale and fairytales don’t exist.

  But in none of it did I want Carole Michaels back in her brother’s life so she could fuck with it.

  God, there was something wrong with me.

  “Cawfield has a snitch,” I said into the strained silence. “He’s been feeding him information about you.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  I stared at the back door, at Pierce’s shape outlined in flashing red and blue lights on the other side of the tinted window. He was either guarding us, or waiting until we let him in.

  As he wasn’t a particularly patient kind of guy, I was going with guarding. Which meant he suspected someone was here who wanted access to Damon. Which meant Pierce was taking this set-up seriously.

  And how could he not? What with Cawfield’s house blasted to smithereens.

  I blinked. The dots connecting, but still missing big gaps. How did this tie in with Samantha Hayes?

  “Lara?” Damon called, drawing my attention back to the ambulance. “What’s going on?”

  “What time did you leave my place on Friday morning?”

  “The day of the Sky Tower climb?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Four o’clock. Why?”

  I let a slow breath of air out.

  “Did you go straight to the station?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Where did you go?”

  “What aren’t you saying, Lara?”

  “I need you to have an alibi.” The words were out before I could stop them.

  Damon stared at me, his face a shade paler all of a sudden.

  “Fucking hell, Keen. You still doubt me?”

  I shook my head too vigorously. It hurt, and the back of the ambulance swum, but I forced the nausea back down.

  “Just tell me,” I pleaded.

  “I’m tired of this,” he said, the words flung harshly, but his voice hadn’t even risen in volume. “Of giving and giving and giving just a little more and you hold it all back. You won’t give an inch. It’s so fucking black and white. Never grey. Never shadows of fucking grey. I don’t know how to reach you and I don’t know if I can keep giving all of myself like this anymore.”

  So many thoughts tumbled through my mind. So many emotions choking off my air. I could feel my pulse racing in the pounding of my head. I reached up a shaking hand to rub my temple, but ended up staring at the tremors in my fingers instead.

  Fuck this!

  “And you don’t hold back when you drop everything for Carole?”

  “Jesus, Lara. She’s missing. What would you have me fucking do? Take you out for a romantic dinner while my sister might be unconscious somewhere at the mercy of a drug dealer? What do you take me for?”

  “It’s not just this,” I growled. “It’s every single time she can’t sleep or she feels a craving she doesn’t understand or she has sex with a stranger and wants you to pick her up from an address she’s never been to before. It’s every single day you check and recheck on her health status. You obsess over her living arrangements. You lose the train of our conversation because you see a waif-like girl who re
minds you of your fucked up sister.”

  God, this was going all wrong. The words were like sharp knives I was flinging at his heart and head. He flinched with each one. But I couldn’t seem to stop them. I was exhausted from it all too. Emotionally spent. And when your emotions have been worn down to such a base level like this then it’s harder to think before you speak.

  Carl had taught me that.

  I didn’t want to hurt Damon. I wanted to protect him. I wanted to ensure his name didn’t get dragged through the mud by some psycho who was using Cawfield for an agenda that didn’t yet make sense. I wanted to hold him, love him, tell him everything would be all right. Do for him what he had done for me for the past three weeks.

  Unfailingly.

  Sure, his sister interrupted our days and nights. Sure, she was a constant worry, always on his mind. But never once had Damon truly let me down when my world had been spinning out of control.

  Not once.

  I was a bitch. And it was a part of me I found increasingly difficult to turn off.

  “You have no heart, Lara,” Damon said, voice uneven and roughened around the edges. “Cold as ice.” I closed my eyes. I’d been called that many times by Cawfield. “You don’t feel things like a normal person does.”

  I did. I fucking did. I just didn’t know how to express them.

  “I keep waiting for you to get it,” he whispered. “I keep hoping today will be the day she opens up. Lets me inside. I think I glimpse it and then you freeze over. You push me out. I don’t think you know you’re doing it.”

  I do. I see it. I can’t seem to stop it. But I do see it.

  “Maybe this was a mistake,” he added, looking at his ruined knuckles, flexing his fingers while he talked. “Maybe you and I can never meet in the middle. I need a sign, love.” His eyes came up to mine. Still haunted, but now a little empty. “I need a sign you’re never going to give.”

  He stood up, having to duck his head slightly as the roof of the ambulance was not high enough for his six foot plus frame. He walked to the door and hesitated.

  “Whatever Cawfield has on me I’ll deal with Pierce about it.”

  He was shutting me out. He was walking away.

  The door opened and he stepped down beside Pierce.

  I looked at his broad shoulders, at the soft curls lying on the nape of his neck. I saw the flashing beacons out in front of him, the multitude of emergency services personnel criss-crossing the scene. I smelled the burned house and dusky whisky off my shirt. I heard Pierce ask Damon if he was staying to overlook the scene.

  His head shook.

  He was leaving.

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “This is me.”

  “So, we know it’s an intentional explosion,” Pierce was saying. Hart just nodded his head for him to go on.

  We were back at CIB. It was six in the morning. I hadn’t slept for well over twenty-four hours. I hadn’t eaten for almost as long. I was showered and clean, dressed in a spare beige trouser suit and cream blouse from my locker at Central Police. But I was barely here. Barely present.

  I was back in that ambulance. Back facing my worst nightmare.

  I have a problem. I know this. I’ve lived with it for twenty-six years.

  I fear being alone.

  Oh, I can be by myself. I don’t need a lover or a boyfriend. What I need is to be busy. To have the illusion of not being alone. Work with a partner. Part of a team. Long hours. Be a part of something bigger than my lonely lifestyle. Walk out of my quiet house and into a busy city and not look back. Surround myself with other emotions. View the world through someone else’s pain.

  I do live with ice around my heart. But not by choice. Because I’m scared. Scared to let it melt and realise I feel so very alone.

  “Have you had a chance to corner your father regarding this banquet?” Hart suddenly said. And it was only my strict upbringing that had me seamlessly shifting back into the conversation without either man knowing I’d been inside my head.

  “I haven’t yet, sir. I’ll phone him again after this meeting.” The fact I’d tried my father last night for an entirely different reason was irrelevant. It meant I wasn’t necessarily lying when I spoke right now.

  “You’ve got less than seven hours to change his plans,” Hart pointed out.

  “I’ll get into the banquet one way or another.”

  “Good. This is dragging on too long and we’ve got nothing to show for it. Pressure to solve Samantha Hayes’ murder means anything Cawfield brings to the table the assistant commissioner will consider.” Hart looked directly at me again. “Does Michaels have an alibi?”

  I kept my face neutral, but inside I was melting.

  “If he does, I don’t know it, sir.”

  “We need to know it,” Pierce advised. “It doesn’t ring true. Cawfield swears by his informant, but he hasn’t actually met the man.”

  “So, it’s a man?” I asked. “How does he get the tip-offs?”

  “Phone calls. Photos dropped in his mailbox.”

  “So, the informant has been to his house?” I queried.

  “Where are you going with this?” Hart demanded.

  “I don’t know yet, but I find it a strange coincidence that his house happens to blow up while I’m standing outside discussing the information Cawfield has on Michaels. Which in turn calls the HEAT Investigation team on call to that address.”

  “And the HEAT Investigation team on call contains Michaels,” Pierce concludes.

  “Exactly.”

  “It could still be a coincidence,” Hart pointed out.

  “I believe in those less and less.”

  “What do you believe in?” Hart asked.

  “I believe Damon’s being framed.”

  “That’s becoming more and more plausible,” Pierce advised, pulling a sheet of paper out of a folder resting on the Inspector’s desk. “Preliminary on-site reports show the accelerant used to aid the explosion at Cawfield’s house was the same type used in a shed fire on HEAT Rescue member Andrew (Stretch) McIntyre’s property in Henderson. It also matches the accelerant used in a bush fire next door to HEAT Prevention member Malcolm Whiting’s Titirangi property. It’s the same one used in a fire bomb that killed several sheep on HEAT Investigation member David Spencer’s Kumeu lifestyle block. And it is identical to that found in a garage fire at HEAT Prevention member Marc Holland’s Westmere home.”

  Silence followed all of that. It wasn’t something I didn’t already know. That file was in fact mine.

  “It’s too obvious,” I said.

  “What? A house explosion being linked to a series of unsolved arson attacks directed at HEAT members?” Hart queried.

  “Cawfield is not a HEAT member,” Pierce said carefully. “But he has been a thorn in your side.”

  “My side?” I looked at Pierce. “What are you saying?”

  “Damon threatened to kill him when Cawfield sexually harassed you yesterday afternoon.”

  “And we’ll be having a talk about that incident at a later date, Detective,” Hart exclaimed.

  I was thinking the talk involved why I hadn’t informed the Inspector myself. Why he had to hear from Pierce and not me.

  I wasn’t stupid. I’m the daughter of a cop. I didn’t even look at Hart when he spoke. Keeping my eyes on Ryan Pierce I said, “So he rushes to Cawfield’s house and plants a bomb. A bomb he had made up already for just such an occasion in a house that has a state of the art security system.”

  “No need to be facetious, Keen,” Hart grumbled.

  “Sir,” I said. “This is a set-up.”

  “Of course it is!” he almost shouted back. “But a clever one.”

  “Clever?”

  “The devil’s in the details, Detective. Or lack thereof.”

  “It’s simple,” Pierce added. “It’s clean. Not enough evidence to convict. But enough to cause suspicion.”

  “Enough to cas
t doubt,” Hart finished for him.

  My stomach plummeted. It’s exactly what Damon had thought I’d felt. Doubt.

  I didn’t doubt his innocence. This arsonist was not the man I cared for. But I did doubt everything else.

  “So, what now?”

  “Now we need to find out if this has any bearing on Samantha Hayes’ murder and the Boardman Lane assault,” Hart provided.

  “Did we get the CCTV footage of Boardman Lane yet?” I asked.

  “Missing,” Pierce replied, holding my raised eyebrow with one of his own.

  “The cameras at Sweet Hell were doctored. A Police CCTV camera in Boardman Lane is missing coverage. That’s a hell of a coincidence,” I concluded.

  “And you don’t believe in coincidences,” Pierce shot back.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Then find the connection,” Hart ordered. “There has to be one. Sweet Hell. Boardman Lane. Both security cameras interfered with.”

  “So, we’re going with Sweet Hell’s being purposefully blurry?” I queried. “Computer forensics couldn’t confirm it.”

  “Didn’t rule it out either and with Boardman Lane’s tapes missing it sheds new light, doesn’t it?” Pierce offered.

  I nodded my head.

  “So,” Hart said, bringing his feet down flat to the floor from where his legs had been crossed as he stared at the ceiling, contemplating the crimes. “Links between the cameras. Links between the bomb at Cawfield’s house last night and the murder. For now we’re saying Michaels is being set-up, but if we go with that, I need another name. Keep your eye on the prize.”

  “And the prize, sir?” I asked, holding his steely gaze.

  “The prize, Keen, is a murderer who may be an arsonist. And if he or she is not, then what the fuck are we actually dealing with?”

  “Two separate crimes,” I offered.

  “The photos Cawfield had were of Michaels beating up members of Sweet Hell,” Pierce said quietly at my side. “This is not two separate crimes.”

  I let a long breath of air out at that.

  Coincidence? I could hardly use that argument now.

  I walked out of Hart’s office feeling like I’d been railroaded. I had to corner my father and force him to take me to a black tie event when I hadn’t even shared so much as a cup of coffee with the man in over six years. I had to link our known suspect list, including the Marcrofts, David Gordon, and Superintendent Keen, with not only Samantha Hayes and Boardman Lane, but possibly a bomb and a string of arsonist attacks on members of my boyfriend’s HEAT teams.