A Flare Of Heat (H.E.A.T. Book 1)

by Claire, Nicola

  "Feel better?" he asked.

  "Monumentally," I admitted.

  He smiled slyly. His objective obviously achieved for now.

  "So, how's the case?" he asked, nursing his barely touched Scotch.

  I gave him a run down of Anton's change of finances and new career move, bringing him up to speed with where I'd managed to get the case to so far. I also mentioned my theory that the roofies pushers were setting up a trap. Damon agreed, but for now there was nothing we could do about that. Then came the fun part.

  "The Inspector suggested using an informant to lure the killer in."

  Damon whistled low. "Your take on that?" The words were spoken carefully.

  "Initially, I baulked. It's a huge risk, considering the escalation of each murder so far. The perp is getting too confident, we push his hand, he'll bite ours off." Or the civilian's.

  "And now you've had time to think about it?"

  "Now I've had an informant of Carl's fall into my lap, asking for me on the streets, which is as good as an invitation to meet."

  "Ah, and you're not sure whether to answer the invitation."

  "Oh, I know I have to answer the invitation." It was a conclusion I'd reluctantly made. "I'm just not sure if I'll be able to live with myself afterwards if it all goes wrong."

  "So take back-up," Damon suggested. Do what the Inspector had recommended. Cover him and me, and have the contact watched and followed after the meet.

  "Is it as simple as that?" I asked, dubiously.

  "It's never simple, Lara. There are just paths with less risk than others. It's what we do. When I enter a building fully involved, there are choices I can make to lessen the risk. Walk along the outer edge of an upper hallway, utilising the structure's strengths even when they're failing. Check the heat on doors before I open them, conscious of flashback at any time. Watch the curl of flames, the movement or direction, read the fire, predict its next move. I could ignore the rules I have set up completely, or I could lower the risk and take my time implementing each one."

  "Take my time," I repeated. "What if there's not enough time?"

  "Who's to say there isn't?"

  My gut. Carl's voice in my head urging me onwards. Pay attention, read the signs. Don't ignore your gut.

  Three dead informants, connected to me through Carl. A near miss with a .38 bullet, the culprit one of the dead informants themselves. Cash as payment for an as yet unknown service. A trap set at the centre of the roofies sex club scene.

  I looked at the damage I'd done to the whisky bottle, felt surprisingly level headed. Then called in a few favours from my colleagues at CIB.

  Chapter 13

  "Pay attention, read the signs. Don't ignore your gut."

  It was set for the end of Patrick O'Malley's shift; six tomorrow morning. Two reasons. I'd consumed enough alcohol to be aware it would be dangerous to undertake a sting right now, despite feeling in control of my faculties. There was just too much riding on this to fuck it up because I'd had a couple of drinks. And secondly, tomorrow evening was booked solid with the back room invitation to the mystique night at Zero Gravity.

  Time was also of the essence. Striking tonight off the schedule meant tomorrow morning was the soonest I could tee things up. It also gave Pierce, Cawfield and Simpson time to clear their decks and back me up at the meet.

  So, with little else to do but confront HEAT's issues, Damon agreed to finally 'show' me what the hell was going on with them.

  "Where are we going?" I asked from the passenger seat of my car. "This isn't in the direction of Pitt Street."

  "I've got all the information in my car. I'm taking you to my place."

  What?

  "Isn't it at HEAT?" I think I'd started sweating.

  Damon smiled, not removing his eyes from the road out the front of the windshield.

  "I moved everything to my car to bring it to your house tonight, as we were meant to be having dinner there. But when you requested my attendance at the Birdcage, I stopped off home to garage my truck, and grabbed a taxi from there."

  So fucking reasonable. Couldn't the guy slip up at some stage?

  "Oh, all right then," I said, trying for breezy, but I think sounding a little harassed.

  Damon chuckled. "Come on, Keen. You've been to my home before."

  Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Flashbacks at the scene of the crime. Hot, slick bodies and long, tangled limbs. Yep, this was going to fun.

  Still, I wouldn't let him see that. Not a fucking chance.

  I offered a shoulder shrug and received an amused smirk in reply.

  Damon's house hadn't changed much in the six months since I'd been there. The security lights came on as he parked my car in the driveway at the back of the row of terrace houses, directly in front of the sectional door to his garage. The three storey Paddington styled home had an uninterrupted view of The Domain reserve across the street from the latticed balconies on the opposite side of where he had parked my car. It was a quaint, inner city apartment style home, conveniently located and plushly fitted.

  I'd been surprised when he'd first brought me here. Damon, being a fireman, was not in an executive type job raking in the money, yet these terrace homes were definitely for the well-to-do. To this day I hadn't done more than a Query Person check on him through the system at work, coming up with the standard; no outstanding warrants and no prior arrests. It felt wrong to delve further into his background, and he hadn't been forthcoming himself other than to mention the fact that his parents were both dead. And he had a younger sister, whom he'd been very protective of, and at the same time irritated with, but we were never introduced.

  And then we'd parted ways and looking into anything Damon Michaels related was at the bottom of my to-do list.

  Now, I found myself standing in his modern lounge, looking out the dark windows at the lit up trees along The Domain's edge, and remembering how his body felt, hard against mine, on top of the beige leather couch that dominated the room. Keeping my eyes off that settee was difficult. Keeping my body from responding to the memories was impossible.

  Damon had always been able to get me to react to him, even when he wasn't doing a single thing.

  I turned as he re-entered the room, having made sure I was settled - as if I couldn’t remember how to find my way to the den of sin myself - first before retrieving whatever he wanted to show me from his vehicle in the garage. I was surprised and intrigued to find him carrying what looked like several large boards covered in various notes, photos and, I was guessing, evidence reports. He painstakingly set them up along the wall that housed hundreds of books on dark wooden shelves, almost covering the entire length back towards the open-plan kitchen.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and studied his fussing rearrangement of the boards, until he had them displayed exactly how he wanted them to be read. Left to right. First case to last.

  There were, at a quick glance, six cases. All of them involving a fire related crime.

  "Looks like you've got yourself an arsonist," I commented, thoughts of previous entanglements within these walls forgotten for the more immediate challenge of solving a mystery instead.

  He stood back, scowl in place, hands on his jeans clad hips. Then abruptly he removed his jacket, slung it over a chair at the dining table towards the kitchen and raised dark eyes to mine.

  "All on HEAT staff property."

  Oh. I took a step closer and stared at the first series of connected notes and photos, string lining up between those items on the board that inter-related. We often did this at CIB, if a case needed to be tracked to be understood. Much like joining the dots in my mind and taking a step back to see what picture they created, this method allowed several people at once to do the same.

  I couldn't see a picture. Each case, although involving some form of fire related crime, wasn't exactly the same. There was the burning of a storage shed, followed by sabotage of a HEAT member's private vehicle using fire foam in the petrol ta
nk, then a fire bomb on a member's lifestyle block killing several sheep. Then what appeared at first a spontaneous wildfire behind another HEAT member's house in Titirangi, only to find lighter fluid planted at the member's house as though to assign blame. A call was made to the Police to tip them off. Rescue had also suffered, a call-out to a stranded patient part way down a cliff in St Heliers Bay, when one team member abseiled down to the 'patient' he'd found a volatile cocktail of chemicals, similar to those used in a drug chem lab set-up, attached to a manikin. He'd gotten out of there just in time. And finally, the last attachment to the boards, a burned out garage with the remains of a hot rod car inside.

  "You're being targeted," I announced, unnecessarily. "I haven't even heard of most of these cases in CIB."

  "Most of them we haven't reported."

  I spun around and glared at him. "That's insane. Why would you keep this to yourselves; this person is clearly unstable."

  He ran a hand roughly through his hair, his face showing signs of fatigue and distress. His eyes darkened, as he pursed his lips, and then he let out a ragged breath of air.

  "What don't these boards say?" I asked.

  "We think it's one of the watch."

  The watch - or watches - were made up of firemen who manned the engines downstairs at Pitt Street Fire Station. They were the guys who attended your average kitchen flare up, or rescued your neighbour's cat from a tree. Experts at handling fires, but not specialised like HEAT. There were four watches to man a station; Red, Green, Blue, Brown. Twelve men per watch at Pitt Street. Four on the front-line pump/rescue tender, four on the pump/aerialscope, four on the breathing apparatus tender and four on the hazchem and decontamination unit. It was the busiest station in all of New Zealand.

  It also housed HEAT.

  "What makes you say that?" I asked carefully, talking about this was having a negative affect on Michaels. His fists were clenched, his jaw set hard, a vein bulging in his forehead.

  Part of me wanted to reassure him, soothe him. Another part, the police detective part, wanted to take a step back and place a hand on my gun.

  "It started about eight months ago," he said, beginning to pace.

  Eight months ago, incidentally, meant it had started while we were still dating.

  "At first we didn't pick up a pattern; a coincidence nothing more. Even firemen get their sheds burned down. But a month after we dealt with that, and rebuilt Stretch's shed, a note appeared attached to the new door."

  "Where's the note?" I asked, looking for it on the board.

  "It disappeared."

  "Disappeared?"

  "From my office at HEAT."

  I let a slow breath of air out. "What did it say?"

  "One of eighteen." I frowned. "There's eighteen of us in HEAT."

  "Let me guess, notes have turned up at each scene afterwards, counting up to six so far."

  He nodded. "We haven't received Marc's, but I assume it's coming. The last three were left on my desk, in my locked office at HEAT."

  "And this has made you suspect the watches?"

  "It's not one of ours." He said it with vehemence. A challenge for me to counteract.

  I let it slide for now. He was too close to this to be objective.

  "But it doesn't mean it's one of the watches," I pointed out instead. "It could be a civilian gaining access to HEAT HQ when it's not manned."

  "With the knowledge of chem lab chemicals and access to fire fighting foam?"

  "Those aren't impossible for the average layperson to obtain if they know where to look," I added.

  He begrudgingly nodded his head, neck stiff.

  Then said, voice low, "I just have this feeling it's one of the watches."

  Far be it for me to question a gut feeling. But although I pretty much could trust mine, I wasn't entirely sure of Damon's.

  "So why keep this in house?" I asked, remembering his words when I was last at HEAT.

  "Because it's personal and we deal with our own."

  "Bloody hell, Michaels. This isn't the special forces. These are crime scenes, acts against the law. If this ever goes to trial it'll be pulled apart by any decent defence lawyer."

  "Who says we want it to go to court?"

  Silence. I started to pace.

  "You have to have more to go on than your gut," I finally said, still walking while I talked. "Has there been any discord between HEAT and the watches?"

  "None more than usual. You know how it is. Ribbing, slight shows of jealousy. To get chosen for HEAT you have to excel in what you do."

  "Most of your guys have come up from the watches," I mused. "Have you turned any down recently?"

  "Two names, I have them here." He walked over to a folder he'd placed on the dining room table and pulled out the list of names. "Both of them were told they'd get a second shot, there just happened to be better candidates at the time they applied. There was nothing overtly wrong with them."

  "And they knew this?"

  "I tried to make them aware of that fact, whether they still took umbrage, I don't know."

  "Anyone else who could be targeting HEAT?"

  He shook his head, sinking into a chair he pulled out from the table. He really did look tired. "We've all taken a long hard look at our recent relationships, professional or otherwise, but none of us have been able to come up with any names of those who could be capable of doing this."

  "Why don't you leave that assessment to the detective," I said, making him raise his eyes to mine.

  "Are you taking on this case? Outside of CIB?"

  "Must it remain outside of CIB?"

  "Yes." Unequivocal.

  "You're asking a lot. I could get into a shit load of trouble over this."

  "You don't have to get involved," he bit out, standing up again and moving to the boards, beginning to turn them all around to face the shelves, hiding the information each contained.

  I stood there for a second watching him, turbulent emotions swirling inside my mind. This would create a hell of a complication in my life, in my career. I couldn't begin to imagine how Inspector Hart would react if he caught wind of me getting involved in a spate of crimes directed at an Emergency Service and not reporting my findings through the correct channels. There were reasons why we had rules and guidelines, all set up to ensure the safety of the public and those inside CIB. All designed to make gaining a conviction that much easier. That much more infallible.

  You stuff it up, the criminal wins.

  But Damon was talking about something else other than conviction. At a guess, he was talking about revenge or vigilante justice.

  In all good conscience I couldn't get involved in this.

  I took a step backwards, distancing myself from what he was doing, mentally wiping what I'd seen from my mind. Turning around I came face to face with the couch. Images flashed, one after the other, behind my closed eyelids. Hot, sweaty, moaning images. My hands fisted and I snapped my eyes open again, landing on a book sitting innocuously on a side table next to the armchair I knew Damon favoured at night.

  Stalling for time before I gave my answer, I crossed to the seat and picked the novel up. My breath froze in my throat. The book was one of my favourites, about a hard nosed female detective working alone to solve crimes. Had Damon known I loved this series? Is that why he was reading it, to better understand me? Or because, in this particular book, the detective takes a risk, heart over head, out of character but understandable if you believe in romance stories, that is.

  With a small shake to my hand I returned the book to its resting place, trying to decide if he was playing me. Six months he'd been gone from my life, at my request he'd stayed away. Six months and now he was back, risking my wrath because... he hadn't made progress on this.

  He needed me. It was flattering in a way. But so very dangerous. To let him in now would be more than risking my reputation and my job. It would be personal. It would mean victory for him in more ways than gaining my assistance in catching the
arsonist who was targeting HEAT.

  The hardest thing for a detective to do is turn her back on a juicy mystery. I thrived for the challenge of getting inside the criminal's head. This HEAT case would be a challenge in more ways than that, though. I knew it. In my gut. In Carl's soft, gruff voice inside my head. In my heart. I knew it.

  Walking out that door without a backwards glance was the most reasonable thing to do. It's what Carl would do.

  I shook my head. Damn Carl for leaving in the first place. But damn him more for setting up shop inside my mind. And damn, if I wasn't actually considering this. What the hell did it say about me?

  I was tired, exhausted. The most peace I'd had recently was with Michaels acting as my sounding board. Pierce was good, but he didn't make me feel that sense of calm, that inner equilibrium in amongst the choppy waves. I almost laughed at that. Michaels also had a heavy hand, going behind my back to the Inspector, ratting on my arse.

  But he'd done it because he cared. Because he was worried. He would have known how I'd react, but still he'd done it. For me. I didn't like it, but I kind of appreciated the reason behind the act. In a way.

  And he also would have known how I'd react to his return to my life. Not favourably. Yet he'd done it. Because he was desperate and needed my help.

  It was actually easier to segregate it like that. Sure there was still intense attraction between us, but we didn't need to act on it to get the job done. The bottom line was, could I help an old friend in need at the risk of losing my job?

  I didn't owe Michaels any favours. But I'd be lying to myself if I said I didn't get something significant out of having him around. Who did I turn to first when I was having trouble deciding what path to take with the sting? Damon, that's who.

  And now he'd turned to me.

  I told myself, as I moved slowly to face him, that it didn't mean I couldn't steer him toward convicting the assailant who was targeting HEAT instead of whatever plans he had for the crim. I told myself, that agreeing to do this was for the challenge of the mystery. And it was because I had finally found the first modicum of solace since Carl had left. I told myself that it was an equal exchange for both of us, purely professional, if not entirely above board.