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

by Nicola Claire

  I had to deal with my boyfriend being set-up to take the fall.

  I had to deal with my boyfriend looking very much like my ex-boyfriend right about now.

  But this all smacked of the HEAT saboteur, and if it was, if the murder and the assault and the bomb were all from the one person trying to tear HEAT apart, then Damon needed to know.

  I slid into my car and stared out of the windshield. Damon would be at the HEAT lab, going through the evidence from Cawfield’s house with a fine tooth comb.

  The Hauraki Emergency Assistance Team’s Fire Investigation laboratory was located in Mt Albert in the same building as the Police Science Centre, where all our additional forensics are housed that can’t fit into the Central Police building in the centre of town. It took me forty minutes to get there. Sunday shopping traffic had started up by the time I’d made it out of CIB.

  I parked next to his truck around the back. And stared at it for way too long.

  There was so much to say and no way to say it. I was losing him. I refused to believe that I already had. But I knew I was also fooling myself. Damon had had enough. He’d walked out of the ambulance and not looked back.

  I could let him go. I could be professional, stick to the case. Treat this like any other inter-departmental job. I let a long breath of air out. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. It wasn’t that I was breathing too quickly, like I had been for the past three weeks. It was as though I couldn’t breath enough.

  My chest hurt.

  No. My heart did. There was no more ice to protect me now. I was bare.

  I climbed out of the car as though my body weighed a thousand tonnes. I stood with my face tipped up to the early morning sunshine and told myself I could breathe. I could do this. I could go on without him and live my life.

  We weren’t so special, him and I. He made me laugh. I made him smile. He touched me where no man had ever reached before. Inside. But that didn’t mean he’d be the last. He was just one man. And I was encased in ice.

  I shut and locked my door and strode over to the back entrance, hitting the intercom button because I didn’t have the lock code that would let me in. A woman answered.

  “Detective Lara Keen,” I said in answer to her greeting. “Auckland CIB. Can I come in, please?”

  “Show your ID up to the camera, Detective.”

  I flashed my badge where required and the door clicked open.

  “ESR is to your left, HEAT to your right,” she advised before I slipped through the door.

  Cool air conditioning met me, the soft hum of electronics filled the air. Maybe the air con unit, maybe wiring in the walls. This place was meant to be something straight out of a science fiction story. Normally, I’d go left, to our forensics lab. But this time I took the right branch and walked the long white corridor to the staff only entrance at HEAT’s lab.

  I pushed through the double doors and came to an unmanned desk. The woman I spoke to over the intercom would have been at reception around the front of the building. This area was purely set-up for HEAT staff.

  Who were inside a pristine looking lab, much like those found at Central Police and back down the hall.

  Charred detritus spread out over a stainless steel bench. Bright lights shone down illuminating every facet of every single piece they’d collected from the scene of the crime. Bubbling solutions boiled off to the side in clear pots, small fragments of unidentified objects floated forlornly inside. Electronic equipment beeped and whirred, computer screens flickered on the walls. A microscope’s image displayed on one of them.

  Damon had his head down over the viewing piece of the microscope and was adjusting the magnification, while Flack looked up at the screen.

  “Any luck?” I said from the doorway.

  Flack turned slowly, but Damon jumped.

  “Detective,” he said, causing Flack to raise a single eyebrow.

  “Damon,” I returned. His eyes closed slowly and he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “I think I need a coffee,” Flack announced. “Yeah, I definitely need a coffee. Anyone else want a coffee? I could do us coffee.”

  I smiled. I was sure it didn’t reach my eyes.

  “Thanks,” I managed and Flack nodded his head, took one last look at Damon, and then ducked out of the room.

  “We don’t have anything more than what I’ve already conveyed to Pierce,” Damon announced, returning his attention to the microscope. Or so it seemed.

  The image on the screen up on the wall was out of focus. Damon was looking at the same blurred scene.

  “It’s a set-up,” I announced.

  His hands came up onto the bench, fingers clenching the edge, and he raised his head to look at me.

  “What is?” he asked.

  “The bomb. The information passed to Cawfield. Everything.”

  “The murder?”

  It hurt, that he could slip back into work so easily. That he could stand there and discuss a case so reasonably hours after walking out on me. He said I was encased in ice. He did a damn fine impersonation.

  “That’s where it gets messy,” I admitted.

  “Tell me about it,” he encouraged, the knuckles on his hands not looking quite so strained as he grasped the edge of that stainless steel bench.

  I rubbed at my face, feeling so very tired. Feeling so very much alone. Could he see? Could he tell the ice was gone? Did he even see me?

  “Cawfield’s anonymous tip-offs about you. All of it relates to Sweet Hell in some way. The only hard evidence that’s been supplied so far, though, has been photos of you beating up a couple of Sweet Hell members from earlier in the week. I’m guessing they’re the ones you questioned about Carole.”

  “Probably,” he said with a frown.

  I almost didn’t ask. But he made it fucking difficult.

  “Probably? Who else have you beaten up?”

  He shook his head.

  “Damon,” I said carefully. “You can’t say probably to a police detective and expect them to ignore it. We work in facts. Hard truths. Probably is not a hard truth.”

  “Black and white,” he murmured.

  “Yes,” I said, getting angry. I tried to rein it back in. “Black and white are facts. It’s what we’re trained to uncover. There will always be grey, but grey doesn’t stand up in Court. We might use it, to get a feel for things, for certain people, to give us a lead. But not in Court. And Court is where justice is served. Not out here. Not on the street. But in front of a judge and jury. In front of a very black and white law.”

  He stared at me, his chest rising and falling heavily.

  And then he said, “I’d never thought about it like that before.”

  All the breath left me in a rush. I felt lightheaded. I had to lean my butt against a cupboard.

  “So,” I said, aware his eyes were watching my every move. “These tip-offs have been enough to convince Cawfield you’re up to no good. And he started following you.”

  “Following me?”

  I nodded. “I don’t know for how long, but long enough to see you enter Sweet Hell. To connect you to that world. To make him question just what sort of man you are. And then Samantha Hayes was murdered, and he says you don't have an alibi.”

  “That’s why you asked.”

  “So I could shove it in his smarmy face,” I growled. Damon smiled. It stole my breath. But in a way that made it easier to breathe. I couldn’t explain it. He just did.

  When Damon was happy, even just fleetingly happy, I was ecstatic.

  “He was at the Irreverent Inferno.” Silence met my words.

  Then, “He’s a member?”

  “Apparently his informant got him in. Told him you’d be there. That your actions would speak louder than words.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “Eagle was a set-up. I don’t know for sure if Cawfield’s informant arranged it, or Cawfield did. But Joe took photos of what happened and delivered them to my house.”
>
  “Jesus,” Damon whispered, looking away, unable to face me.

  “Eagle said he was there willingly, so we have to go with that being the truth.”

  “He was drugged,” Damon argued.

  “But coherent.”

  Damon shook his head.

  “It’s not the real problem.”

  “There’s more?”

  I nodded. “We suspect the bomb at Cawfield’s house was the informant attempting to clean shop or, more likely, set you up again.”

  “The accelerant,” he guessed.

  “It’s circumstantial. But enough to cast a shadow of doubt over your head.”

  He moved away from the bench and crossed his arms over his chest. A defensive move that wasn’t aimed at me.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “This links the HEAT saboteur with Sweet Hell, which is under investigation in regards to the Samantha Hayes homicide and the Boardman Lane assault. Both victims are connected to the club. Either a member, in the case of Malcolm Warren, the Boardman Lane victim, or had attended the casino at one time, in the case of Samantha Hayes, the murder victim.”

  “Fucking hell.” He seemed unable to say much more.

  I understood. I felt every single blow along with him. I felt his pain. I felt his joy. I realised, what Damon and I had was special. I’d never felt so much through someone else before. And I’d lived my life through others.

  “We have four current suspects,” I said. “Kyan and Nathaniel Marcroft, the owners of Sweet Hell. David Gordon, Samantha Hayes’ ultimate boss. And my father, who had a relationship with the woman.”

  Damon’s mouth dropped open.

  “A potentially kinky relationship,” I added.

  His mouth snapped shut.

  “I need your help.”

  “My help?”

  “I can’t do this alone.”

  He swallowed.

  “I don’t want to do this alone anymore.”

  “Lara?”

  “This is me,” I whispered. “This is me standing before you telling you that I care.” My eyes began to sting. My heart started racing inside my chest. “Telling you that it's easier to breathe when you're with me. That Carl is quiet when I feel your touch. That only your heat can melt the ice I've been forced to live with since I was just a young girl.”

  The tears were flowing freely now. I couldn't stop them. I didn’t want to. I had to get this out. Something drove me. Held me in its fisted grasp and squeezed tight. I was sucking in gulps of air, while parts of me sluiced away in a torrent of melted ice.

  “And I don’t know what to do with this... this need,” I stressed, my words becoming desperate. “This obsession you've created inside of me. I don’t know how to breathe when you're not there. You're my air, Damon. And part of me hates you for it, but another part, the biggest part, the part right here,” I slapped a hand over my chest, “it wants to shout to the world that you're my air!”

  I stared at him, holding my breath, while he stared back slack jawed.

  Time stretched, the room seemed to close in.

  And for the longest moment I was sure he wouldn’t talk.

  I stood there, bared to him, the ice all melted and gone, and realised I finally knew what true loneliness meant.

  How being really alone actually felt.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “The dead demand our attention.”

  “Lara,” he finally said, his voice reaching me down a very long and desolate road. “That's not just caring, baby.” He took a step closer, then another. “That's what we call mad, crazy love.” He smiled. It reached the very core of me. “I feel every torturous bit of it along with you,” he added. “I feel it here.” He slapped a hand over his heart, in a mimic of me. “I feel it everywhere. You’re in my blood. And I’m in yours. Always have been.”

  He stopped advancing, now just this side of the bench he’d been working at. Still a few feet away, but he’d never felt closer. Not even when rubbed up against me, skin on skin. His eyes held mine, melted dark chocolate; beautiful, rich, and so fucking compelling. His lips spread in a small smile, but one that lit up the room brighter than any halogen. He held out a work roughened hand.

  “Now,” he whispered, voice low and seductive. “Come here, love. I think I deserve a kiss after waiting this long.”

  “You deserve a kiss?” I remarked, taking a step closer. “What about me?”

  His head shook, his eyes sparked with humour and… love.

  I saw it now. I recognised it. I felt it along with him.

  “No way. You’ve kept me waiting, hanging on a string,” he mock growled.

  I reached him, staring up at dark brown eyes that seemed to suck me in, and waited. His hand came up, cracked knuckles bent to stroke my cheek. I felt the roughness of the scrapes on them. I felt his control when the wounds barely brushed my skin.

  “I intend to use that string to bind you to me,” he whispered. “To never let you forget how you feel about me. Every time you think of closing down, of shutting me out or using ice to hide behind again, I’ll pull on that string. I’ll tug it and wind it, and wrap you up until there’s nothing but you and me. Me and you. And this.”

  His hand wrapped around the back of my neck and his lips crushed down on my mouth. Our bodies crashed together, two opposite magnetic forces set to collide. I wound myself around him, as if we’d never been apart, as if he’d always been a part of me. I kissed him back as hungrily, greedily, possessively as he kissed me. Hot bodies, wet tongues, racing hearts.

  “You’ve said the words now,” he whispered against my lips, in between heated kisses and soft licks. “You’ve said it aloud.” Another nip, another tongue tangling thrust. “You’ve admitted it to yourself.” Kiss. Lick. Bite. “To me.” A moan, either his or mine, I couldn’t tell. “You’re mine,” he breathed against me, one hand tangled in my hair, one hand holding my chin at just the right angle. “I’m never letting you go again.”

  I melted into him. Lost all sense of the here and now. Just him. His strong body, his firm hands, his devouring mouth.

  His soul destroying words.

  “And I am yours,” he said, kissing across my cheek and down the side of my throat, until he buried his face in the crook there, where shoulder meets neck, inhaling deeply. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered, moistening the skin deliciously with his breath. “So much, love.”

  “I know,” I said, running my fingers through his thick hair. “I was so lost without you, too.”

  His arms tightened around me, held me like that for the longest time, and then we both smelled the coffee. I made a move to step back, but Damon’s hands gripped me harder. He growled low in the back if his throat, hot breath coasting over my skin, making it pebble with goosebumps. The air conditioning in the lab suddenly felt too cool. Or my skin was too hot.

  The doors behind me swung open and caffeine permeated the air.

  “You two finally kiss and make up?” Flack asked. I could hear the sound of cups being set down on stainless steel.

  Damon still did not release me, though. Ignoring Flack’s presence easily. I couldn’t. I turned my head enough to catch a glimpse of Flack grinning. He rarely grinned. He was as serious as Damon, but with a harder edge to him. Flack was all strong lines and sharp angles, mixed in with tight shirts and a couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude. It was appealing, or at least, seemed so, to half the female population out there.

  “Not finished with the kissing yet,” Damon murmured.

  “Is that a hint for me to get out?” Flack asked, picking up a mug and grinning into it. Clearly we were amusing him today.

  “Not at all,” I returned before Damon could, pushing against his chest ineffectually while I was at it. “We were just discussing the case.”

  “Yeah, Keen,” Flack drawled. “That’s how you discuss the case with all your colleagues.”

  “Damon,” I ground out, still pushing against his chest and shoulders. “Cut it out.
”

  “Stop fighting it and I will,” he shot back. Then leaned down, intent evident in his dark assessing eyes, and whispered in my ear, “Surrender.”

  A bubble of laughter burst out before I could stop it.

  “I wasn’t being funny,” Damon remarked.

  The laughter died but the smile still held in there.

  “Argh! OK,” I said, lifting my hands up in a show of defeat. It reminded me of the way the hooded figure at the Irreverent Inferno kept lifting his up in a mock prayer to God. I stilled, sucked in a breath, and stared at Damon’s chest.

  “What?” he said, not exactly releasing me, but easing his grip and pulling back to look at my face. “What are you thinking?”

  “Why was she murdered?”

  “Isn’t that always the question?” Flack asked behind me.

  “It looks like a kinky lover’s tryst gone too far,” I commented.

  “Erotic asphyxiation,” Damon provided.

  I nodded my head, found myself pacing, and hadn’t even realised Damon had let me go. I was no longer touching him. He was no longer touching me. But I still felt as if we were.

  Had we resolved everything? There was still Carole. Still Carl. Maybe we’d never resolve everything, but I knew I couldn’t breathe properly without him. And he knew I was in his blood.

  I wasn’t sure if it was healthy, what Damon and I had, but it was essential. As essential as breathing and blood.

  “Yeah,” I said, refocusing on Samantha Hayes. Or more appropriately, the Irreverent Inferno. “Breath control play but was it?”

  “The victim enjoyed those types of sexual pursuits,” Damon pointed out.

  “She also attended that member’s only club more than once, didn’t she?” Flack offered, leaning against a bench and sipping his coffee. He wasn’t used to the way I thought through a case. The way I connected the dots in my head like a case-map on a white-board. But he was prepared to follow Damon’s lead. “Where sex was just another form of gambling.”