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

by Claire, Nicola

  I was chilled to the bone. Nothing could have warmed me right then. But I wasn't sure if I was grateful for the distance or not.

  I need you, Damon. I can't do this alone.

  Images of Tank walking back to his car filled the screen. The car eventually started and he drove off to his death.

  I can do this. It's just another piece to the puzzle.

  And I'm wrong. My subconscious is playing tricks on me. No wonder, I've been under stress, grieving and not getting enough sleep.

  My gut is wrong.

  I leaned forward when the trench coat wearing man appeared in the upper right corner of the screen. Still so fucking blurry. Just a paler shape on the dark tarseal of the carpark he was in. Tank's car had long gone. This guy, if he was part of the investigation, would have followed him, would have left by now. It was nothing. Just a stranger in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Irrelevant.

  And then he turned toward the camera. Looked directly at it, as though in challenge.

  Damon swore softly behind me.

  No.

  His hands came down on my shoulders, gripping tight.

  NO!

  "Lara," he said, pain lacing his tone. Pain he was feeling for me. Not the figure on the screen. But me.

  "No," I whispered, watching the man walk closer to the camera, eyes holding mine, speaking directly to me with that steady, knowing look I knew so well.

  Oh, God.

  "Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God."

  "Lara."

  "It's wrong. It's not... It's wrong. No. No."

  "Lara, love."

  "No."

  I realised I was crying as I stumbled up from the table, knocking the chair over into Damon, making him take several steps away as it had bashed him on the shins. My head was shaking from side to side, one hand was clenched down by my thigh, the other covering my mouth. I was going to be sick.

  "I'll call Pierce," Damon said softly, as I sank to the floor by the couch and pulled my legs in tight, wrapping my arms around them. Tears streaming down my face as my mind blanked and the ache in my chest, blessedly, numbed.

  "He's dead," I whispered, as Damon spoke quietly into his cellphone, his eyes on me. "I watched him die," I whispered, staring into space and a memory.

  Come on, Sport. Get with the programme. Read the clues. Follow the leads. The evidence talks, Lara. You just have to listen.

  "Why, Old Man?" I whispered. "Why did I ever listen to you?"

  Chapter 30

  "Come on, Sport. Get with the programme. Read the clues. Follow the leads. The evidence talks, Lara. You just have to listen."

  Pierce arrived within the quarter hour. Damon had made me a cup of sugary tea, forced me to sit on the couch and drink it. Finally getting some warmth to invade my body, even if I refused all efforts of his to physically comfort me.

  The man I had idolised was not dead as I'd thought. As I'd witnessed. He was walking around out there, breathing, eating, drinking, probably fucking, and interfering in a case.

  Killing people. His former informants.

  And he hadn't even told me he was alive.

  Why?

  It's a universal constant that detectives ask that question more often than any other.

  Why?

  But never before had it meant so damn much.

  Why?

  It's all I could think as I finished the tea, woodenly stood up from the couch to place the empty mug in the sink.

  Why?

  It's all I could think as I noted that Pierce was pulling his car up outside my front lawn.

  Why?

  It's all I could think as I decided that I needed to wash my face before I looked into his soft, brown eyes.

  Why?

  And it's all I could think as I walked down the hall, his knock sounding out on the door, shutting myself in the bathroom.

  Throughout it all I kept asking, why?

  I stared into the mirror above the sink as deep, muffled voices sounded out, carefully modulated as if we were all at a funeral. A humourless laugh left me. Carl had a wake, a memorial service, because his body was presumed washed out to sea.

  King tide. High seas. The rocks, which were normally visible at the bottom of Mellons Bay cliffs, were covered by white tipped foaming waves. Enough to wash a body out to sea, the Coroner had said. I hadn't looked over the edge until the paramedics arrived and relieved me of my duty to Kenny Tyndall. It was pitch black when I did gather enough confidence to peer over that cliff.

  All I saw was the moonlit tops of the waves. Nothing else. By the time HEAT Rescue got down there, he was gone.

  Why?

  I splashed water on my face and blindly dried off with the hand towel. When I looked back in the mirror I was shocked to see how pale I was. How the shadows stood out. How sadness and disillusionment mixed with the blue of my eyes. My hair was a mess. I'd brushed it this morning, I didn't remember running my hands through it to muck it up, but I must have. I searched in a drawer and combed it smooth.

  I still looked like a ghost.

  Another humourless laugh. I think they might have been starting to sound deranged.

  Why, Carl? Why?

  Was I supposed to feel indebted? He'd killed those hired to kill me. I couldn't thank him for that. An eye for an eye was not how I was raised.

  Why did you do it? Fake your death and stay hidden all this time. Why?

  I knew what I was feeling, as I rubbed at my chest and stared blankly at my dull eyes in the mirror.

  Disappointment. Abandonment. Rage.

  Had he not trusted me enough to come to me and tell me what he was doing? Had he planned it for a while? How long? Had his behaviour changed like Anton Burgess' had before he died?

  Why?

  I shook my head. The ghost in the mirror shook hers.

  "I didn't know you at all," I said to myself.

  You knew me better than most, Carl answered in my mind.

  I fisted my hair and closed my eyes, mouth open in a silent scream as I bent over and breathed my anger and confusion out. "Damn you! Get out!"

  "Lara?" A knock sounded on the door as Damon's concerned voice drifted in. "Are you OK?"

  I froze, staring at the lock, willing myself to get it the fuck together.

  "I'm fine," I managed. "I'll be out in a moment." Then thought to add, "Has Pierce arrived?"

  Damon made a disgruntled sound. Of course he knew I was aware Pierce had arrived. I needed to get my shit together. Or they'd be locking me up in a padded room for a while.

  "He's here," Damon replied. "Viewing the footage. For about the tenth time."

  "Oh, OK. Be right there," I called, sitting down on the toilet seat lid and running a hand over my face to still the panic.

  I counted to three slowly in my head as I sucked a breath in, then let it out slowly for the count of three again. I repeated that process for several minutes. Slowing my breathing down like Hennessey had taught me to. I felt a little light headed afterwards, so maybe I was counting too fast.

  I tried again.

  Another firm knock sounded on the door. I was about to tell Damon to fuck off when Pierce spoke.

  "Detective, open the door."

  Detective. Not Keen. Not Lara. Detective.

  "I just need a minute, Pierce."

  "You've had twenty." I had? "Open the fucking door or I'll break it down."

  So melodramatic.

  I got up off the toilet seat and crossed to the bathroom door automatically, unlocking it and swinging it open.

  "No need to get your knickers in a twist, Sarge," I declared. "Can't a girl do her make-up in private?"

  His eyes scanned my face, clearly make-up free by now, and he scrubbed a hand over his goatee contemplatively.

  "You with us?" he asked. The unsaid being, "Or are you losing the plot?"

  I swallowed, painfully.

  Then said, "I'm with you."

  "Of course you are," he announced, turning his back to me
and walking towards the lounge.

  I followed. He was right. I'm a doer not a thinker.

  Ah, fuck it. Why, Carl? Why?

  I blinked my eyes dry as I walked into the lounge. Damon was standing over by the dining table, but not looking at the files or laptop or whiteboard, staring instead back into the lounge expectantly to where Pierce and I had just arrived. He scanned my face, my body, back up to my face to scan again. Dark, intense and worried eyes holding mine.

  I hoped mine said, I'm fine. I feared they said, Why?

  Pierce threw himself onto a chair in the dining area, tapping a finger on the table's surface. I walked stiffly to a chair opposite him and only when I'd sat, did Damon. He gave me space, but his presence alone was a form of comfort. I looked over to him and offered a small smile. You'd think I'd declared my undying love; his face lit up with a mix of wonder and relief.

  "How do you want to play this, Keen?" Pierce asked, surprising the hell out of me.

  "How do I want to play this?" I confirmed.

  "That's what I said. He's your ex-partner. This was your case. It's your life he's trying to save. How do you want to play this?"

  "I..." I shook my head. "I don't understand what you're asking, Pierce."

  There was just too much to think about and I was right in the middle, drowning. I couldn't strategize my way out of a paper bag right now.

  "Hold on," I said abruptly. "You believe he's trying to save my life?"

  "What do you think?" Pierce asked, intelligent brown eyes boring into mine.

  "He's... Fuck, Pierce. He's killing people."

  "People hired to kill you," he pointed out reasonably.

  I sat back in my chair, my head shaking from side to side.

  "This is surreal," I murmured, running a hand over my eyes.

  "My recommendation," Pierce said, not commenting on my 'surreal' statement, "is to keep this between the three of us and Inspector Hart. If the department knows too soon, it could complicate things."

  "You think?" I said on a snort.

  "He's doing it for a reason, Lara," Pierce said softly.

  "They all have a reason why they kill, Pierce," I replied, nowhere near softly. "That's why we ask that fucking question so fucking often. Why?"

  "And we'll find out why," Pierce replied, still in that bloody calm tone. "But in order to do this in a remotely uncomplicated fashion, I recommend not publicising the fact that a dead detective has come back to life and is on a killing spree right now. The press gets hold of this and we'll be stonewalled by every internal investigation committee there is. You'll be suspended, if you're lucky, or observed if you're not, for the duration of any investigation into Carl Forrester's habits up until he went rogue."

  Rogue. Oh, dear God. Carl was a rogue criminal with previous police force experience. Those were considered the most lethal. Carl was a rogue.

  "He wanted you to see him," Pierce mused, sitting back in his chair and tapping the table's surface again.

  "Anyone could have recognised him on that footage," Damon pointed out. I nodded my silent agreement.

  "He hung around in that carpark," Pierce said, "just long enough to be picked up briefly before the footage was cut off by computer forensics. He knew how long to stay back and when to come forward. He knew they'd miss the significance of a blurred image in the corner of the field of view from that camera. But he also knew you would double check that footage at some stage and ask for the full length video."

  Then he said what I had thought while I watched the footage play, making a chill run down my spine which felt so wrong when associated with the Carl Forrester I had known.

  "When he looked into that camera he knew he was looking at you, Keen. I could see it on his face. That pissed off, wake-the-fuck-up look he used to get, if you weren't paying him enough attention."

  Everyone remained silent for a while after that.

  "You know him," Pierce said with a sigh eventually. "No one knows him like you, Keen. He trained you. He nurtured you. Fuck. He moulded you in his image."

  I thought I was going to be sick.

  "We know the informants have been hired to kill you," Pierce added, deciding, obviously, to be the voice of reason here, recapping the case so far and how it now pertained to this new piece of shocking evidence.

  It should have been me, but I couldn't speak for the bile flooding my mouth.

  "We've been going about this the wrong way," he added. "Trying to see the link between these informants and you. That's not it," he declared. "The link is Carl. Always has been. His informants. His cases. What you know about them that someone doesn't want public knowledge."

  Oh, fuck. It made sense.

  "How far back this goes, I don't know," Pierce went on. "But we can assume it's an open case, because revenge just doesn't fit. Why hire two-bit players to kill you, who clearly keep fucking it up, just because you helped put someone away? No," he said, resolutely. "This is active. This is prevention, not cure, not even a band-aid. And the person, or people, behind it have access to the informants as well."

  "What have they all worked on of Carl's?" Damon asked, his seemingly most favourite question of late.

  "The King spill-over case," I said, my voice nowhere near the volume and strength that it usually was. Thankfully, neither man commented on my weakness.

  "Fucking hell," Pierce breathed. "Of course. This all began when the Solicitor-General's office got involved, and the Crown Prosecutor started to dig deeper, finding holes."

  "Carl wasn't covering anything up," I found myself saying. Defending my old partner when he truly no longer deserved it.

  It was habit. Nothing more.

  "You know him," Pierce reiterated.

  I shook my head. "I thought I did."

  "The night he died," Damon said, making my body jerk and Pierce turn a frightening look of incredulity towards him. Damon corrected his statement. "The night he disappeared." I knew there was reason why I could never say 'Carl had died'. "He'd met with an informant, hadn't he? Maybe the information, that the people behind this want, is pertaining to that."

  "Good point," Pierce agreed. "But what was it?" His eyes flicked to mine.

  "He never had a chance to tell me," I said, my voice still sounding so damn pathetic. I wanted to clear my throat, to harden the fuck up. But I was hurting, so fucking much. This hurt. Carl had hurt me all over again, this time it wasn't because he'd left.

  It was because he never did.

  I blinked back more tears, wiped a hand over my eyes and stared at the table's surface.

  I wasn't sure I could do this. For the first time in my career I was going to pass over a case to someone else. Willingly. For the first time I was going to fail to give one hundred percent on the job. For the first time I was going to blacken the Keen name on the force.

  All because of Carl and my idiotic worship of him.

  He'd ruined me. I'd been hearing his God damn voice in my head for months. I'd not been able to bear his name being spoken aloud without reacting. I'd suffered the indignity of visiting the department clinical psychologist to sort my shit out. It wasn't working.

  I was failing and I was about to fail even more.

  "Where would he go, Lara?" Damon asked, bringing my focus back to the room.

  It was a simple question. A leading question. Because Damon knew how my mind worked. Damon knew I couldn't stop until I figured this out. Whether I wanted to or not, I had to act. To do. Not think. It's who I am.

  Carl had known that too. Had he counted on it? Because the man was trying to get caught, there was no two ways about it. He'd been leaving me messages at every scene. And now he was talking to me through the camera lens of a CCTV system on Quay Street.

  The question wasn't so much why anymore. It was what.

  What are you trying to tell me, Old Man? What do you know that they think I know?

  "I'm not sure where he would go, but I'm going to find out," I said resolutely, into the silent and expectan
t room.

  "You do that," Pierce instructed, standing up from his chair. "I'll go corner Hart and keep the hounds off your back." He walked to the lounge room door, turned and said, eyes on my face, "Trust your gut, Keen. Especially where Carl's concerned. It's the one part of your detecting skills he had no hand in developing."

  In other words, my gut instinct was my own. Not honed by Carl nor moulded by him. It was mine. And I was going to need it.

  Because Carl Forrester was a bloody good detective when he was on the force. The best of the best.

  It occurred to me then, that there were not too many degrees of difference between a cop who'd spent his lifetime dealing with criminals on the right side of the law, and a rogue who now found himself surrounded by them on the other side of that law. Carl had crossed over, an easy and surprisingly short step for him to take.

  Now I just had to work out the what, and then I'd know the why.

  Time to play the master at his own game.

  Chapter 31

  "You're a damn good cop, Keen. But stick with me and I'll make you a superstar."

  Starting is always the hardest part. I'd made the decision to go after Carl, but taking that first step could have been a mountain for all the effort it required. I sat at the table in my dining area and stared at the whiteboard willing myself to get up, grab my gun and jacket, and walk out that door.

  What if I found him? What would I do then?

  Four people dead. Did it matter that they would have killed me if they'd had the chance? Two of them did try.

  Four people dead at Carl's hand.

  I've killed one person through the course of my career. Kenny Tyndall. The man I thought had killed Carl. I felt justified in my actions. I had guilt for being too slow to fire, but there was no blame associated with my attempt to disarm the kid. He'd held Carl at gunpoint. I'd fired to prevent Carl's death.

  I'd thought I'd failed. That's where my guilt lay. Was it misplaced? Should I have been feeling guilty for killing Tyndall? Is that what Hennessey was trying to get me to see?

  It was all screwed up. What I thought happened. What I thought I should be feeling. What Carl had done. I was nowhere near prepared to deal with it. I didn't know how, and for the first time I wished I could talk about these sorts of lost and confused feelings, to get them out.