Heat Storm (Castle)

by Richard Castle

  Carl looked down at his shoes. “We, uh, we can’t.”

  “What do you mean, ‘we can’t’?”

  “He doesn’t exactly have a phone.”

  “He can crack this unbreakable encryption but he doesn’t have a phone?”

  “He’s very serious about his privacy.”

  “And who, exactly, does he worry is going to invade his privacy?”

  Carl just shook his head. “Everyone.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  HEAT

  Nikki Heat slid her key card into the door of her room at The Lucerne.

  It felt far longer than four hours since she had departed there. But after dropping off the bills for Benigno DeJesus to begin working on, she’d begun to feel every minute of the sleep she had lost.

  She tiptoed in to find Jameson Rook in the exact same spot where she had left him. He was still naked, still lying on his right side, still in a deep sleep. About all that had changed was that there was now a small stream of drool running down his chin onto the pillow.

  Rook always did look cute when he was sleeping. And he looked something better than cute naked. It suddenly struck Heat that a naked hunk was a terrible thing to waste.

  Stealthily, she took off her clothes and slid into bed next to him, draping his left arm back over herself.

  The jostling brought Rook’s upper half awake. Then her lack of clothing began to do the same for his lower half.

  As he moaned his approval, Heat gently took hold of him. His body responded instantly to her touch. Rook’s manhood had certainly gotten a good workout the previous night, yet he was ready for more. The man’s stamina knew no end.

  He brought his lips to her nape, and she gasped in delight as he took a small nip of her neck. Realizing she was already wet, she guided him between her legs and enjoyed him thoroughly.

  When they were through, he said, “That was fantastic.”

  “Thanks. You too.”

  “And now you’re going to tell me where you’ve been.”

  “I’ve . . . I’ve been here all night.”

  “Then how come you’ve got coffee breath?” Rook said.

  Busted. Sometimes, sleeping with a trained journalist really sucked.

  “Where did you go?” Rook asked.

  Knowing there was no fooling him—at least not this time—Heat relayed her adventures with George The Bartender and Captain Feng. Then she told him about George finally turning over the bills, which she had, in turn, entrusted to DeJesus.

  “So what are you going to do when DeJesus gets a hit?” he asked when she was through.

  “I don’t know. Start asking someone a lot of difficult questions, I guess.”

  Rook nodded. Then a switch flipped inside him and he got a sly grin on his face. “And what are you going to do in the meantime?”

  He began closing in, and she was already relishing the feel of him inside her again when—with terrible timing—her phone bleeped with an incoming text.

  “Ignore it,” he said throatily.

  But she was already rolling away from him. “I can’t. It’s probably DeJesus.”

  He let out a different kind of moan this time.

  “Sorry,” Heat said. “But I won’t be able to enjoy this until—”

  “Okay. Get on with it.”

  Heat rolled out of bed and fetched her phone from her pants. She sat on the edge of the bed as her eyes focused on the screen.

  It wasn’t a text from DeJesus.

  It was from a 646 number she had already begun to recognize altogether too well.

  The Serpent.

  But how was that possible? Bart Callan was dead. She had watched him die. And there was no possibility of it having been faked. She had seen the back of his head blown away and the brain matter decorating the wall behind it. No one, no matter how good an actor, could have assumed the odd angle at which his neck had come to rest.

  So was The Serpent really someone else? He had to be. She thought back to what convinced her it had been Callan in the first place. It was because he’d scrawled her name in blood on the wall behind the lobby desk after killing Bob Aaronson, which had seemed like The Serpent delivering on the threat he had promised, and because of the tie back to his code name, The Dragon.

  But that could have been nothing more than coincidence. And it stood to reason Callan had plenty of reasons to write Nikki’s name on that wall. After all, she had put him in jail for four years.

  “What’s going on?” Rook asked, crawling over next to her.

  “It’s another text from The Serpent.”

  Rook took a moment to absorb this. “But I thought . . .” he began, then stopped himself, having seemingly reached the same conclusion— or lack thereof—as Heat. “Okay, so if The Serpent isn’t Callan, who is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Heat said.

  She swiped at her phone to read the text.

  LAST WARNING, it said.

  There was a video attached. Heat hit the play button and waited for what felt like an eternity for it to load. Then the screen went from blank to full color, and Heat nearly dropped her phone.

  It was her mother. Alive. Tied to a chair at the wrists and ankles. With a newspaper propped against her lap.

  “Oh my God,” Rook said. Nikki was beyond words.

  Cynthia Heat was just sitting there, looking straight ahead, showing no emotion. Whether she knew the camera had been turned on and was recording her was unclear.

  It gave Nikki a moment to really study her mother in a way she hadn’t been able to during that half-second glimpse in the bus shelter, when her mother had been made up as a street person. Cynthia Heat was now dressed exactly as Nikki remembered her: a simple pair of slacks, a blouse with an elegant pattern and subtle splashes of color, expensive but tasteful jewelry, a belt and shoes that brought the outfit perfectly together.

  The camera zoomed in. The screen on Nikki’s phone was small, but it still managed to pick up the new details this closer view brought. There were more lines around Cynthia’s eyes than Nikki remembered. New wrinkles had cropped up on her forehead as well. Her face was narrower, more drawn. Her lips had thinned and her eyes had sunk, victims of that inexorable loss of collagen that time inflicts. Her hair was grayer, duller, more fragile.

  And yet: Her cheekbones were still a marvel, as high and proud as ever. Her eyes continued to radiate an intense awareness, like she was right then figuring out the weaknesses of her captors and factoring her odds of overcoming them. She was holding her chin up, strong, defiant, and prideful. She still had her dignity.

  More than that, there was life to her. Seventeen years had not taken the fight out of Cynthia Heat.

  Which was good. Because it was pretty clear she was going to need that and more to get her through whatever this was.

  What scared Nikki more than anything was that her mother wasn’t blindfolded. Whoever had detained her wasn’t worried about her seeing their faces or being able to identify where she was being held. It suggested they didn’t plan on leaving her alive long enough to do either.

  Nikki pulled the sheet up over her naked body in some kind of futile attempt to feel less vulnerable. Rook had placed a protective hand on her back. Neither gesture provided much comfort.

  The camera panned down to show the paper in her lap was the New York Ledger. Heat couldn’t quite make out the date, but the front page featured a photo of Lindsy Gardner’s visit to the city from the previous day. In the upper right corner, there was a teaser: HOMELAND HEAT? CELEB COP OFFERED DC JOB. It was that morning’s edition, which Nikki had watched hit the newsstands only two hours earlier. This was new footage.

  Once the shot of the newspaper had been established, the camera worked its way back up, then zoomed back out to show all of Cynthia, sitting in a room that was so nondescript it could have been across town or across the planet.

  “Good morning, Cynthia,” a deep disguised voice said from behind the camera.

  Cynthia looked just
to the right of the camera, where it seemed the operator was standing.

  “Go to hell, you gutless coward,” she spat.

  The voice laughed like he found this amusing. “Yes, yes. Cynthia Heat, always talking a big game, always so brave.”

  “Take these restraints off me and we’ll see whether it’s talk or not.”

  The voice laughed again. “That might be fun. But that’s not why we’ve taken you. We want you to say hello to someone.”

  “Is it the queen? Don’t bother. I said hello to her last week.”

  “No, Cynthia,” the voice said. “We want you to say hello to your daughter.”

  Cynthia had already inhaled to make another snappy retort when the last word seemed to hit her like a shock wave. Her strength seemed almost immediately sapped.

  “My . . . my daughter?” she said.

  “That’s right. I’m sending this video to Nikki as soon as it’s done. It will be on her cell phone a few minutes from now.”

  Tears immediately welled in Cynthia’s eyes, even as she tried to remain defiant.

  “Leave her out of this,” Cynthia said fiercely. “She has nothing to do with this.”

  “It’s too late. She keeps trying to insert herself. She keeps pressing the issue. She won’t heed any of my messages. I’ve tried warning her. I’ve tried shooting at her. She still doesn’t listen. But maybe she’ll listen to her mother. Tell her. Tell her to stop looking for you. Tell her to stop investigating the circumstances of your disappearance. Tell her to leave the Shanghai Seven alone.”

  A solitary tear fell down the side of Cynthia’s face, leaving a salty track behind. She seemed to be having a difficult time controlling her breathing.

  “I . . . I tried telling her that,” she said quietly. “She won’t listen to me, either. I wrote her a letter. I told her to stop looking for me. But she won’t stop. She just won’t stop.”

  “Then tell her again,” the voice urged. “Tell her now!”

  Cynthia Heat was staring straight into the camera, which had zoomed back in. Nikki felt that stare in some deep part of her gut. This was her mother, talking to her, for real.

  “Nikki, sweetheart. I know . . . I know what a terrible mother I’ve been. But you have to believe that I’ve only done what I’ve done to protect you. So now please, please, let me keep protecting you. Forget about me. Go on with your life. Enjoy your husband. Have children. Take that new job in Washington. Do whatever it is that makes you happy. That’s all . . . That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. Please.”

  At that moment, a red dot appeared on her forehead. “That’s enough,” the voice said. And Cynthia Heat, who could obviously see the weapon whose laser scope was now trained on her, closed her mouth.

  “Nikki Heat,” the voice said. “You’ve heard your mother. Now listen to her. Listen to her or the next video you receive will be me pulling the trigger.

  “To signify you intend to comply, you will leave the country. Now. Two tickets have been purchased for you and your husband on Alitalia. They are waiting for you at the Kennedy Airport ticket counter. The tickets will take you to Rome, then to Amalfi, where you will stay for three weeks, contacting no one. When you return, you will go about your life as usual. The flight leaves at two o’clock this afternoon. You will be on that flight, or your mother will die. We will be watching.”

  Cynthia Heat gave the camera another searing look. “Please, Nikki. Please, please. Just go on with your life. You’ve lived without me for seventeen years. Please, please just go on doing it . . .”

  And that was how the video ended: with Nikki Heat’s mother begging her daughter to forget she ever existed.

  * * *

  It was the worst kind of bargain, the kind even the devil wouldn’t have offered.

  If you don’t stop working a case that might bring about the safe return of your mother, she’ll be killed.

  But if you do stop working the case, she’ll never be part of your life—so it’ll be like she died anyway.

  Two choices. Both bad. And time was running out before she had to decide between them.

  Heat slumped at the end of the bed with the unseen weight of her mother’s life pressing on her shoulders.

  “Is it too dumb to ask if you’re all right?” Rook asked.

  Heat hugged the sheet tighter around herself.

  “No,” she said. “But to answer the question: No, I’m not.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Do you have any thoughts about what you want to do?”

  “I’m not having any thoughts yet. All I seem to be able to do right now is feel. And don’t ask what I feel, because all I know is that it’s too terrible to have a word associated with it.”

  Rook didn’t immediately reply. He slid out of bed, put on some pants, then faced her.

  “I’d like to watch the video again,” he said.

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “I understand. Why don’t you go take a shower? It’s a short video. Forward it to me so I can watch it a few times while you’re getting cleaned up. Then I’ll put on some coffee for us and we’ll figure out what we should do.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say ‘we.’ It’s bad enough my mother is in danger. I don’t want you to—”

  “Too late. I’m already in this. Now forward me that video.”

  Heat was so enervated she complied with Rook’s request and then walked into the bathroom. She turned on the water as hot as she could stand and then stood under it, hoping it could wash away some of her misery.

  But there wasn’t enough water in all the oceans to do that, nor enough heat in the sun. Heat felt lost and wretched and despondent. But more than that, she felt the extraordinary impotence of her situation.

  It was a feeling she seldom experienced. From the day she entered the Police Academy, the one message that had been impressed upon Cadet Heat was that she could do something about the evil of the world. She could track down burglars. She could punish violent offenders. She could bring killers to justice.

  As a cop, it wasn’t just a suggestion she could do something about bad guys. It was her sworn duty.

  And yet now, faced with the worst kind of bad guys, she was being told she couldn’t do anything. It was an order that took her worldview and put it on spin cycle. Nikki Heat wasn’t very good at being helpless.

  She finally shut off the shower, not because it had made her feel any better, but because she felt she had given Rook enough time to watch that horrible video a few more times and come to whatever conclusion he needed to reach about it.

  After drying herself and wrapping the towel under her arms, she returned to the room. Rook had donned a bathrobe with The Lucerne’s logo. He was looking at the video intently, though he had turned the sound off so she wouldn’t have to hear her mother’s pleading or that awful disguised voice. It spoke to his level of concentration that he didn’t even look up as she slipped out of the towel and into the change of clothes—a navy blue power pantsuit—Rook had thoughtfully brought from home for her.

  Finally, he put down the phone and announced, “Okay, I think I’ve got a handle on this. I’ve watched the video six times. Four with sound, two without.”

  “And?” Heat asked.

  “I think The Serpent is basically the Incredible Hulk.”

  When she saw he was actually serious, Heat brought her hand to her forehead, which she expected to begin throbbing at any moment. She was accustomed to Rook’s wild theories and nonsensical suppositions. She had even grudgingly come to recognize they were sometimes right. But this was absurd, even for Rook.

  “Rook, I’m not sure I can handle a trip to Crazytown right now.”

  “This isn’t a trip to Crazytown. I’m not even getting you on the highway that leads to Crazytown. Just hear me out. The first communiqué was The Serpent saying he could be a friend or an enemy, and that it was up to you. Am I right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, right off the bat, that’s a very Inc
redible Hulk play. At this point, he’s still Dr. Bruce Banner. He’s calm. He’s rational. He’s trying to use logic with you. Yes, there’s an implied threat—because he might turn into the Hulk—but everything is still very safe.”

  “Okay,” Heat said, unable to believe she was actually playing along with this.

  “Next we get the more overt threat: Do it my way, or else suffer. That’s obviously a minor escalation. But there’s still this hesitance there. Dr. Banner is fighting the transformation with everything he has. Even someone who is not as passionate about Marvel Comics as I am—”

  “That’s pretty much everyone over the age of twelve, Rook.”

  “Point taken. But as I was saying, you have to recognize this is classic Hulk behavior. It’s basically him saying, ‘Don’t make me angry. You won’t like it when I’m angry.’ In his heart, Dr. Banner doesn’t want to turn into the Hulk. He tears up a nice outfit every time he does. But he knows if things keep going a certain way, he probably won’t be able to control it anymore. Still, there’s that sense of regret. Do you follow?”

  “I guess.”

  “Good. Because your next contact with The Serpent was even more Hulk-like. Bear in mind, your next contact was not the Bob Aaronson murder. We know for a fact that was Callan. And Callan can’t be The Serpent, because dead men send no video texts. Your next contact was those potshots he took at you. Shots that missed.”

  “He only missed because I was dodging out of the way of some drunk people coming back from a restaurant.”

  “No, I’d argue he missed on purpose. If he was really trying to kill you, he might have gotten unlucky, on account of the drunks. But he would have hit some drunks instead. Instead, he was aiming high, which is very Hulkian.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  “Because the Hulk goes out of his way not to hurt people. No matter how complete his rage is, no matter how green his skin turns, he never hurts innocent people.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “No, this is so dead-on, I’m thinking the psychology literature is seriously lacking for not having identified this sooner. They could call it Incredible Hulk Syndrome. IHS. Lou Ferrigno could be the celebrity spokesman for the disease. Anyhow, where was I?”