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

by Nicola Claire

  “He riles easily,” I pointed out.

  “And his response is completely controlled. Right down to his emotions.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You should run his profile by Hennessey, but I’d bet my left nut he’d agree.” I frowned at him, he waggled his eyebrows at me. Then added, “David Gordon is a predatory dominant who is too busy seeking his own sexual gratification to be interested in anything else. Including the death of one of his employees.”

  He was right. It was too elaborate of a smoke screen to be real. Because it wasn’t a misdirect at all. David Gordon was a self obsessed, egotistical, sexual deviant, who needed control.

  “I still like him for the murder,” I grumbled.

  Damon laughed, leaned forward and rubbed his nose against the edge of mine, and then clasped my hand.

  “By all means, keep an open mind,” he said, as he pushed the curtain aside and walked out as though king of the world. A cocky swagger to his step, a proprietary hand on the small of my back. “But I’d move him to the bottom of the list.”

  My eyes found Gordon’s across the room, and even from here I could see the disappointment staring back.

  We’d taken two steps when our path was blocked. Dark eyes flicked over my face, noting the lack of suitable make-up, then moved onto my dishevelled and free flowing hair, then down to my still slightly crumpled dress. Then he made a point of looking over our shoulders at the velvet curtains we’d just come out from behind.

  Finally, my father looked toward Damon.

  “Superintendent Keen, I presume,” Damon said, offering a hand. It took four long seconds for my father to accept it.

  “HEAT Investigator Michaels,” he said voice clipped. “Hardly the venue to seduce my daughter.”

  Strangely his comment made me feel warm. My desperation for any attention from my father was appalling.

  Damon didn’t make excuses. He held himself rigid, slightly taller than my father, and said, “I’ve heard so much about you.” In a blatant lie that my father saw through immediately. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet.”

  “Lara hasn’t said anything about you,” my father threw back.

  They stared at each other, having some form of pissing contest I was expected to ignore. To hell with that.

  “Are you here alone, Dad? Or did you bring a date?”

  My father stiffened, and then he turned slowly and held out his hand. A small, willowy woman with short dark hair and tanned skin stepped forward, accepting his offered hand meekly. She wore a stunning dress I immediately knew my father had chosen. It showed too much skin. Around her neck was draped a length of chain, wrapped tree times securely, with the bulk of the studded emerald and sapphire length hanging loosely between her breasts.

  It was unusual and mesmerising; sparkling as she shifted and swayed with a sense of grace I severely lacked.

  “This is Haydee,” he said, bringing his hand up to the back of her neck as she stepped to his side, then running a finger across the jewels on the chain at her nape. It was purposeful. That movement. For me? Or for her?

  She flicked Kohl rimmed eyes up to his, head still somehow lowered, and then smiled benignly at both Damon and myself.

  She did not talk.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Lara. Ethan’s daughter.”

  The smile remained in place. The lips serenely sealed.

  “This is my boyfriend Damon,” I added, waiting for her to return the greeting.

  Nothing.

  My eyes lifted to my father’s, who was watching me.

  “It’s strange to see you at an event like this,” he commented, ignoring the glaringly big elephant in the room. Why wouldn’t she talk?

  Couldn’t she? Then why didn’t he say something to cover the awkward silence? And not something about how strange it was to see me here of all places.

  “I’m on the clock,” I said, unable to think of a single thing to say otherwise.

  “Ah,” he said, looking Damon up and down again, and making a show of glancing towards the velvet curtains at our back. “Clearly CIB has changed its tactics since my day.”

  “We utilise all avenues available to us,” I said back in a steady voice.

  Damon didn’t shift as such, but suddenly the heated pressure of his touch was at my back. Reassuring me. Calming me. Letting me know I was not alone.

  “I can see that,” my father replied, just as steadily, just as devoid of emotion. “How is your case progressing?”

  “Slowly,” I admitted. “We have suspects.”

  His eyes stared intently at me.

  “Narrowing it down?” he queried.

  “Making some headway, but I could use your advice.”

  “Of course.”

  This was how we talked. If we talked at all. It was sad. Terribly, unbelievably, utterly sad.

  “Do you have a moment now?” I asked, looking around for somewhere for us to go.

  “I’m not sure now would be appropriate,” he replied in that same emotionless voice.

  “Just a few minutes. I’m sure Damon could take Haydee for a drink.”

  My father stiffened, his eyes flicking to Damon. The look one of challenge. Bloody hell. Everyone was challenging everyone today. And I still couldn’t figure out what this one said.

  “Very well,” my father replied, and there was a note of emotion in his voice for once. Regret.

  He didn’t want to spend any alone time with me. Because of who we were to each other? Or because of the case?

  Damon offered an arm to Haydee who immediately looked toward my father. As if seeking permission, or direction of some sort. He nodded his head, and said, “You know what to do.”

  She nodded back, a sense of calmness invading her frame, making her appear even more graceful as she swept off with Damon, silently walking at his side. Not accepting the offered arm.

  I whistled low and raised an eyebrow at my father, who ignored my immature response and indicated a vacant settee off to the side. We would still be in plain sight of the luncheon guests, so couldn’t start arguing - which was highly unlikely with Ethan Keen - but close enough to the velvet curtains to make me feel uncomfortable. I had a feeling everyone had seen Damon and I come out from behind those.

  “So, how can I help?” my father asked as soon as we were both seated.

  “You can tell me if you signed an NDA with Sweet Hell.”

  He stared at me for a very long time. It was hard to say if he was pleased I wasn’t beating about the bush or appalled at my lack of detective skills.

  “A non-disclosure agreement would make it impossible to confirm or deny that.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” Did he think I graduated Police College just yesterday? “It would prohibit you from speaking about the subject of the agreement, not whether you had signed one.” It was in fact a defence; mentioning your lips were legally sealed.

  He sighed, and stared off into the middle distance. I waited, offering only silence and an endless supply of patience that was entirely a ruse.

  “I never wanted you to be aware of my lifestyle,” he suddenly said, and for a second I could not comprehend the words. So foreign. Or maybe it was his tone. So… normal. Laden with feeling. Something Ethan Keen never, ever showed.

  “Excuse me?” I ridiculously said.

  “Your assumptions are correct.” Not exactly breaking his NDA, but skirting the legalities of it.

  “You’re a full member of the Irreverent Inferno,” I said. He remained silent. To confirm it wouldn’t break his contract. But it was obviously all I’d be getting.

  But he didn’t deny it, either.

  “Why tell me now?” I asked.

  I felt, more than saw, him shrug. A non-Ethan Keen move if ever there was one.

  “It will come out if this reaches Court. You need to be prepared.”

  Cawfield had said the same.

  “That woman,” I said, looking over to where Damon and Haydee had gone. I co
uldn’t see them through the throng, but I knew they were there. I always knew when Damon was there. “What’s with the silence?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” And we were back. To this… nothingness that we shared. Biology but little else. He’d confirmed, in a round about way, that he belonged to the Irreverent Inferno and his lips were sealed. But any more and I was on my own.

  “OK,” I said, an edge entering my tone, letting me down. I rallied, and when I spoke again all emotion was gone from my voice. “When did you last see Samantha Hayes?”

  He stood up, straightened his jacket, and walked away.

  I watched him leave, not giving chase, not having an answer to the myriad of questions that swirled inside my head. I should have been used to this. It was how he behaved. Avoidance at its most cutting. Turning his back on me. The familiar made it easier to continue to breathe.

  Could I see my father strangling a woman to death? Honestly, despite our dysfunctional relationship, no. I couldn’t. He liked the law.

  The law is there to protect us, Lara-Marie. Stay on the right side of it, and it will always be your guiding light. Cross it, and it becomes a laser beam.

  But he was hiding something. His lifestyle? Or more? Had the law become a laser beam for my father? I didn’t know.

  But I also couldn’t see him setting fire to a storage shed and a hotrod car and killing sheep in a paddock with a fire bomb. My father, for all his stiffness and closed off expressions, did not fit the profile.

  Was this just about Samantha? The assault, as well, at a pinch? Two separate crimes? Three, if we count HEAT?

  What had Carl said, outside my house this afternoon?

  “I know it’s not just about revenge. I know it’s not just about evading capture. I know it’s not just about the nine circles of Hell.”

  Carl wasn’t being evasive. He was talking in Carlisms. His twisted mind giving details that were just as twisted to me.

  Not just about revenge.

  Not just about evading capture.

  Not just about the nine circles of Hell.

  It was about all three.

  HEAT was the revenge crime. Murder and assault were the evasion of capture. And the Irreverent Inferno tied them all together.

  Damn it to hell. I was back at square one.

  I looked up and saw Damon approaching. His face set in the polite political mask he wore at events like this. Shaking hands, smiling, sharing an innocuous word or two. I let my eyes wander. I still had the Marcrofts to corner, but I couldn’t spot either of them.

  What I did see, though, was my father and Haydee standing just this side of a set of velvet curtains that matched the ones Damon and I had used. He slipped through them. She stood staring at the floor for a moment, waiting with that graceful patience I was beginning to envy. And then his hand snaked out and grasped the chain hanging between her breasts and pulled.

  Leading her like a puppy into a velvet lined kennel.

  The fucking chain was a collar. And if I had a left nut to gamble with, I’d bet it on Haydee being my father’s sexual pet.

  My head was resting in the palms of my hands when Damon reached me.

  So sure my world was about to be torn apart by a homicidal arsonist I couldn’t seem to fucking identify and an exclusive gaming club that seemed just out of my reach.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “If you can’t stand the heat, then hand in your badge. It’s a simple as that. Cases don’t get solved without a few uncomfortable questions.”

  Damon’s body heat announced his arrival. He settled himself beside me on the settee and leaned forward, almost matching my current pose.

  “I take it, it didn’t go well?” he asked, elbows to spread knees, eyes on the floor like mine.

  I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t even form them in my mind. How does one announce to the world that their father has a sexual slave? Maybe I’d gotten it wrong. Maybe he just grabbed the first thing he could and pulled her into their secret alcove for a passionate kiss.

  It’s not like I could ask him. If it didn’t pertain to the case, there was no way I was ever going to go there. But I couldn’t help the way I felt. The emotional turmoil I’d just ridden as I watched him grasp that chain and lead his docile girlfriend behind velvet curtains and out of prying eyes.

  Had he done it because of me? Turned to his woman to drown out whatever the fuck it was I made him feel?

  And Haydee. That graceful poise that was swamped with an edge of excited anticipation when my father’s hand snaked out between the curtains and dragged her back toward him.

  Oh, God, I felt a little sick.

  I sat up straighter and scanned the crowd, trying to focus on what was important. My father’s sexual activities were not. Despite the fact that he’d confirmed he was a full-fledged member of the Irreverent Inferno where borderline immoral acts were performed in a flame lit cavern by anonymous men in hooded robes.

  Despite the fact that the murder victim was killed across the street from the building where the Irreverent Inferno met and performed those borderline immoral acts.

  Despite the fact that he’d dated the murder victim and when pressed for more information by a detective on the case he chose to run.

  Fuck.

  “What do make of Haydee?” I asked Damon, keeping my eyes on the bright spectacle that was the crowd.

  “Not much,” he replied, sitting upright and placing a casual hand along the back of the settee behind me. “She didn’t speak a word.”

  I did turn to him at that. Eyebrows raised.

  He shrugged. “Tried to make conversation, but all I got was that serene smile and nothing else.”

  “Is she deaf?”

  “No. She moved when people asked to pass when they approached from behind.”

  I slouched down in my seat, looking every inch a police detective and not an elegant banquet attendee.

  “My father is a member of the Irreverent Inferno.”

  The words met silence from Damon. The benefit for ‘Auckland City Supports the EMS’ didn’t even bat an eye.

  “He’s signed an NDA, but he won’t talk about Samantha Hayes either,” I added.

  “Refuses to?”

  In his way, he had. His way just happened to be aloof, cool, and detached.

  “Yes.”

  Damon whistled low. “What are you going to do?”

  I looked back down towards the velvet curtains my father and Haydee were still hidden behind. They’d been in there longer than Damon and I had been behind ours. My eyes scanned the tables nearest, finding an addition to one I hadn’t spotted before.

  Everything about this made me feel uncomfortable, but being a cop was not a job for the faint of heart. If you can’t stand the heat, then hand in your badge. It’s a simple as that. Cases don’t get solved without a few uncomfortable questions.

  Carl was right. He often was. That’s why I’d trusted him so deeply.

  That’s why his betrayal had cost me so much.

  I stood up and Damon followed suit. Then I considered my options.

  “I need a drink,” I said, lifting my eyes up to his for a brief moment.

  “All right,” he said, a little uncertainly. “Shall we head to the bar?”

  “How about you go grab us something and meet me back here. I just need to check on something.”

  “Are you getting rid of me, Lara?”

  “Yes.”

  He chuckled. It was more bemused than humorous.

  He lifted his head and scanned the nearby tables, spotting who I was after.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, worry etched in his tone.

  “Yes.” I wasn’t, but why Nathaniel Marcroft had suddenly sat himself down just outside the curtains my father and Haydee were hiding behind right now was important. I knew it was. And I also knew I’d get more out of him if I was unarmed.

  Damon was a defence I was more than happy to use when needed. But that also meant I had to be
prepared to put him away when appropriate as well.

  “Five minutes,” I said, my voice steady, my face impassive, my cop persona well in place.

  “Five minutes?”

  “Five minutes and then you stake your claim.”

  “Lara…”

  “Trust me.” I was using that statement a little too often. I wasn’t comfortable with it at all. But I understood its power. I’d been subject to it in the past.

  And been destroyed by its falsity as well.

  “OK,” he said, voice clipped. “Five minutes.”

  He started to walk away.

  “What makes you so nervous about him?” I asked, before he’d made it two steps.

  Damon swung back and looked at me. Then lifted his head and glanced across the busy space to Nathaniel, still sitting patiently at his table, still watching the red velvet curtains like a hawk.

  “It’s not him I’m worried about,” he finally said.

  I stilled. My eyes searching Damon’s face. He turned slowly back and looked down at me.

  “These men are used to these games of theirs. They’ve spent a fortune designing them,” he whispered, moving closer so I could hear every word. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t even reach for me. But by simply being there I felt held. “I have a feeling you’re about to step onto their chessboard. And, I have to admit, that feeling doesn’t sit well.”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “It’s my job.”

  “No, love. It’s you.”

  Then he turned away and headed towards the bar, just as I’d asked.

  It took a second or two to get my bearings, and then I was wending my way through the throng and approaching Nathaniel Marcroft in such a way that he couldn’t possibly miss me. I wanted his attention. I wanted him to have a few seconds to realise I was coming for him. I wanted to watch his face as the daughter of the man he was so intently waiting on came within inches of her father’s sins.

  He knew who my father had behind that curtain.

  He knew why they were there. What they were doing.

  And, I was certain, he knew what that chain looped around her neck meant. And I had to wonder, if he had a chain somewhere as well. If he’d wanted to use it on Samantha Hayes.