A Touch Of Heat (H.E.A.T. Book 2)

by Claire, Nicola

  I almost did as well.

  “Do you need a lift somewhere?” Stretch asked.

  “My car’s outside,” I managed, the volume of my voice near normal.

  “Can you drive?” Jude rumbled and I offered a signature sneer.

  “Of course I can fucking drive. Better than any of you lot.” A few men smiled, a couple chuckled. All of them felt my pain. “Right,” I said. “See ya.”

  Several calls of farewell sounded out, genuinely given. Just as I reached the door to the stairwell I glanced back. Everyone was watching me leave. Everyone, except Flack.

  He was storming off down the hallway to yell at Damon, if the look on his face said what I think it did.

  I offered a small smile and wave, and then practically ran down the stairs to escape.

  This day had started out bad and was just getting worse by the minute. And the silence in my car, once I slipped inside, almost undid me. But the shadow standing in the upstairs window of the hallway watching as I drove out of Pitt Street Fire Station’s carpark had me stifling a sob.

  It was just an act. We hadn’t broken up. Not really. Just an act.

  God, I was so confused.

  If you can’t see the wood for the trees, then get the fuck out of the forest.

  “Thanks, Carl. A real help,” I muttered as I negotiated Greys Ave and onto Mayoral Drive.

  Fuck! Three weeks he’d been alive to me again. And for all the good it did, he might as well have remained dead. My mentor. The one person I could say anything to. In the five months since I’d watch him being shot, and then fall off those cliffs, I hadn’t found a replacement. No one could replace Carl Forrester.

  But Damon had. Not intentionally. Certainly not intentionally by me. But somehow he’d wrangled himself into my life again. Cemented himself right there, next to my heart.

  What the hell was I going to do now?

  I sucked in a deep breath and pulled the vehicle into the underground carpark at Central Police. Then realised my mistake right away. I couldn’t talk to Pierce here. I needed to lure him off site and somewhere we wouldn’t be overheard.

  I pulled my cellphone from my pocket and swiped until I found his name. I’d just dialled when a tap sounded out on my window, making me jump, à la Damon at Pitt Street Fire Station carpark earlier. But it wasn’t Damon at the window with a cellphone to his ear. It was Pierce.

  “Where have you been?” he said when the phone call connected. I still held the device to my ear.

  My eyes stayed locked on Pierce’s deep brown ones and I let out a little breath of air.

  “Keen?” he queried. “You OK?”

  “Jump in,” I directed, and closed the call, unlocking the doors to the car.

  He rounded the bonnet without hesitation and dived into the passenger seat. I started the car and pulled out from beneath the station, before either of us said a word.

  “OK, what’s up?” he asked, clearly onto me. “Why the need for stealth.”

  “Who says this is stealth?” I was curious as to how he’d seen through me.

  “Because there’s no coffee in this damn car and there’s a hell of a lot of it upstairs at CIB. CIB where you are officially welcome again. CIB where the murder case you’re supposed to be working on is being coordinated and discussed and various roles already assigned. You wouldn’t miss any of that unless you needed stealth.”

  Silence.

  Then, “Is it the traitor?”

  I shook my head. Then offered a shrug at the last second.

  “Yes or no, Lara. And for fuck’s sake, start talking.” Pierce wasn’t usually this curt with me, or anyone for that matter. But things had been strained at CIB. For everyone.

  “OK,” I said, pulling the car over along Tamaki Drive, not opening my window, but still hearing the rolling waves as they crashed against the storm wall.

  I gave him a succinct run-down of what had transpired since I’d left the crime scene that morning. Not missing a single thing. Not changing the inflection of my voice or allowing myself to feel. I grasped every lesson my father had ever taught me growing up. Every iota of me that made me a Keen. I held it together. I gave nothing of my emotional state away. Finally ending up handing over the invitation to a stunned and silent Ryan Pierce.

  Who had clearly seen through everything.

  “Are you OK?” he said purposefully, repeating his earlier words, but this time with so much more understanding.

  “I’m fine.” He nodded. He didn’t believe me.

  Leaning back in his seat he stared out the window at the small vessels bobbing about on their moorings just off shore. He didn’t speak for a very long time, and I certainly had said well and truly enough to last me a lifetime. So I waited him out. Staring at the same scene. Wondering if people actually sailed those blasted things, or owning one and having it berthed at the Auckland Sailing Club was status enough.

  “I’ll have to tell Hart,” he advised eventually, still looking out to sea.

  “But no one else.”

  “No one else.” He let a long breath out. “There’s no saying Sweet Hell is actually involved in this murder.”

  “Just my gut.”

  “Just your gut,” he repeated. “Do you think the traitor might be involved in this club?”

  “No way to tell,” I offered. “But how many corrupt cops can there be?”

  He did look at me at that. “Too many, Keen.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “The Declan King spill-over case,” he said as explanation. The case he was still working on that had ended up with the Crown Prosecutor’s death at Carl’s hand.

  “Anyone I know?” I asked, feeling infinitely tired all of a sudden.

  “So far, low level uniforms. But Hart and I suspect there’s more to come out in the wash.”

  “So, maybe we’ll dig some up inside Sweet Hell,” I suggested.

  “Maybe. You ready for it, if we do?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Don’t act naive with me, Keen. I don’t know what Joe’s playing at, but to mention your dad outside Sweet Hell is interesting.”

  “Interesting,” I repeated.

  “When will you go see him?”

  I looked at my watch, as though that would give me inspiration.

  “No time like the present,” I said with more conviction than I felt.

  Silence. He knew what visiting my father would mean to me. Ryan Pierce, I realised, had made it further inside my walls than I’d suspected. He wasn’t a Carl Forrester. But he was… something.

  “So, are we on for this?” I asked, watching a yacht swing ‘round to the south with a sudden direction change in the wind.

  “I’ll have to OK it with Hart, but it’s our best shot. I’ll let you know. Then will you tell Michaels?”

  “It’s best I not talk with him,” I said, feeling every word as though a blow to the head. Or heart.

  Definitely heart.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Pierce agreed. “And I’d be as much a tip-off as you, I’m afraid.”

  “Then how do we do this?”

  “I’ve got an idea. Leave it with me.”

  I stared at him for a long time. Long enough for him to swing his face back to me and away from the strangely hypnotic scene outside the window of the vehicle.

  “Trust me, Keen,” Pierce said, saying the words I’d always found so hard to believe.

  I held my breath, but didn’t move to agree.

  He sighed, reached over and switched the stereo on, and said, “Trust me.”

  I reluctantly pulled the car back out into traffic and hung a U-turn as soon as the road was clear, heading back to CIB.

  But what choice did I have? No Carl. No Damon. A murdered woman. A gaming hell slap bang in the middle. A missing informant. A CIB traitor. Carole.

  And my somewhat estranged father waiting for me.

  Chapter 8

  “Silence is a golden prison too many people willingly walk into.”

/>   My cellphone rang as I made my way south on the motorway. I hit the button to put the phone on speaker and greeted the caller with my usual, “Keen.”

  Silence. Just the low level hum of Bluetooth static and the too loud noise of my tyres over tar-seal.

  “You need to say something,” I urged, trying for a different tactic than I’d been using up until now.

  If Carl wanted to heavy breathe to me over the phone, I needed him to know I was on to him. Aware. Ready to talk.

  I wasn’t. But this calling and saying nothing was making me jumpy. There was something I was missing, and it wasn’t just the absence of a voice.

  The phone beeped to announce the end of the call. I let a frustrated breath out and tapped my finger on the steering wheel, contemplating what Carl was trying to say - or not say - to me. But nothing sprang to mind. And by the time I took the off ramp at Manukau, negotiating midday traffic onto Manukau Station Road, my mind had been forced onto the upcoming meeting with my father.

  I’d checked in with our dispatch, to confirm he was on station. But further than that, I hadn’t been able to face. Whether he’d see me or not, was up for debate. But the element of surprise had always worked well for me in the past, so I was grasping it. Once I was in the room with him, though, I’d be on my own.

  Counties/Manukau District Police Headquarters, otherwise known as South Auckland Police, is housed in a modern two storey building, with sharp angles and muted colours. And behind a huge eight foot high chain-link fence. It was nowhere near as large as Central Police Station, but it was contemporary, shiny and clean, even if its criminals tended to bear the same filth as our own. A police station is a police station. But there was always something about this particular station that made me sweat.

  I didn’t need my shrink to tell me what.

  I parked in the secured staff only carpark around the back and slipped out of the car, looking up at the building with trepidation. My keys flicking over and over in my hand. The repetitive motion soothing me, even as my heart rate escalated and a sick feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

  The last time I saw my father was just over six years ago, on my twenty-fifth birthday. I’d just been accepted into CIB. He was meant to be a proud parent. He was meant to embrace me, congratulate me, brag about my following in his footsteps to his drinking buddies down at the local pub.

  He did none of those things. Not that I really expected them. But he was meant to do them.

  I let a slow breath of air out and walked towards the back door of the station, entering the code and slipping into air conditioned tranquillity. It was an oxymoron. Police stations are inherently chaotic, and maybe this place was chaotic out at the front desk. But back here, in the deeper recesses of the building, it moved as if a well oiled machine.

  Both uniformed and plain clothed officers swept down the silent hallways on quiet feet. The odd soft murmur of greeting, but nothing more than a low hum of noise. Doors didn’t bang. Cellphones didn’t sound out in piercing musical glory. No one raised their voices, even though I knew for a fact that there would be someone here pissed off with their lot.

  The pressures of police work dictated so. Central Police Station was a veritable hive of activity and a cacophony of noise. It thrummed. It pulsed with life. It fought and bickered and screamed its presence to the world.

  It was alive.

  But my father ran a very tight ship.

  I straightened my jacket and then glanced down to see if my shirt was creased. Only to have my eyes alight on the coffee stain I’d managed to acquire in Damon’s office. I stopped in my tracks, making a uniform have to sidestep around me at short notice - not offering an offensive reprimand or complaint - in order to miss me. I stared at that stain, well aware that the jacket would never cover it. I stared at it a while longer, and then forced myself to put one foot in front of the other and keep on going.

  I should have taken advantage of the bathrooms on the ground floor and tried to sponge it clean. I should have wanted to do that. But I walked past the toilets and up the stairs, as though on automatic pilot. All the while my eyes kept darting down to the splash of coffee that had ruined my blouse, and my mind kept swirling with all the possibilities and potential scenarios, while my heart raced with the fuel of once forgotten emotions.

  His secretary noticed. It wasn’t hard to miss.

  “Can I help you?” the civilian woman, sitting behind a pristine desk beside the door to my father’s office, asked. Her eyes kept getting caught on the imperfection on my shirt.

  I smiled.

  “Detective Lara Keen, Auckland CIB, to see the Superintendent if he’s free.”

  She paused. She was new. She didn’t recognise me. I don’t look like my father.

  I look like my mother. Dirty blonde long hair, pale blue eyes, high cheek bones, cream skin. My father has dark hair, always cut in an abrupt military style, dark eyes, and naturally tanned skin. He looks nothing like me.

  “Ah,” the woman managed. “Um,” she added.

  “Is he in?”

  “He’s…” She cleared her throat. “He’s on a phone call right now.”

  “I’ll wait. If you could advise him I’m here when he’s free?”

  She just looked at me. Then finally found her voice. “You don’t have an appointment. Do you need an appointment?” So, she knew his daughter’s name at least. And was unsure of procedure.

  Normally, in times gone by, I would have called first and “booked” in to see him. But I was here on official business. The lack of an arranged meeting should have been a signal to this woman, but she was clearly too new to pick up the nuance.

  I sat down on a chair in the corner of the room and didn’t answer her. Silence is a golden prison too many people willingly walk into.

  There were newspapers, and pamphlets, and the latest Ten One magazine to read. But I ignored them all and just sat perfectly still, smiling at the woman. It wouldn’t have unnerved a veteran personal assistant. But it had the desired effect on her. The instant the light on her telephone system went out, indicating my father had completed his call, she was on the phone announcing my arrival.

  My heart stuttered inside my chest. The need to wipe my sweaty palms on my trousers was excruciating. I surreptitiously licked my lips as the woman murmured words through her headset, and then, finally, lifted her widened eyes to my face.

  “You may go in now,” she said quietly.

  I nodded, stood from my seat, and crossed to my father’s imposing double doors. I wondered if his secretary was afraid of him. I wondered if her cowed behaviour was because of something he’d said on the phone. I wondered if she was afraid for me.

  I didn’t pause to reason an answer, I turned the handle on the door and strode in.

  Ethan Keen stood at the window behind his desk and stared out over the four lane road that fronted the building. He was in uniform. Pressed pale blue shirt and darker blue trousers, the obligatory pip and crown on his epaulets, indicating he was a Superintendent of a division or area. His hair was cropped close to his head, his tanned cheeks smooth. And his shoulders were stiff. Back rigid. Muscle ticking on the side of his jaw.

  I closed the door behind me and stepped into the middle of the room to wait. My upbringing teaching me more than an average police officer would have ever learnt. You don’t speak until spoken to, unless it’s an emergency.

  This wasn’t an emergency. This was a surprise visit that had thrown my father for a loop.

  I would have smiled, but the child in me just desperately wanted him to turn around and acknowledge that I was even there.

  A whole three minutes later he returned to his seat at his desk. He hadn’t looked at me once.

  “Lara-Marie,” he said to his blotter pad, “this is a surprise.” Not a pleasant one; he would have said so, if it had been.

  “Superintendent Keen,” I replied, delivering the first hit for the day. His head shot up and charcoal eyes connected with mine.
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br />   “You’re here on business.” Now he was pleased.

  I swallowed past the disappointment and took a seat across from his desk.

  “Yes, sir. A case I’m working on.”

  “How can I help?”

  It took everything in me not to flinch. Not to demand a more personal response. His eyes hadn’t strayed from mine. Pinpointed there and nowhere else. His attention sharp and focused. No one could ever say Ethan Keen wasn’t good on the job.

  “It’s delicate, sir,” I started.

  “No point sugar coating it, Keen. You’re here for a reason, best you just get on with it.”

  I think I hated him. No. I was sure I despised this man.

  And yet, I’d done everything in my power to get him to see me. From when I was a child and he was too busy climbing the police service ladder to play with a little girl and her Hotwheel police cars. To when I became an awkward teenager and asked too many questions about his gun, that spot of blood on his collar, the sirens in his car, the police communications radio he always listened to late at night in his locked office. To when I joined the police force, following in his footsteps, sure he’d finally see me.

  My father was a career policeman. He barely took time off for my mother’s funeral. Let alone to raise me.

  “We’re investigating a gentleman’s club on Karangahape Road,” I announced, watching for a reaction. Knowing I would never get one.

  “And?”

  And your name popped up. I cleared my throat.

  “It may be nothing, but we’re covering our bases.”

  “Of course,” he murmured, steepling his fingertips, elbows resting atop his desk. “Connected to what?”

  “A homicide.” Not even a flicker. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or angry.

  “How can Counties assist?”

  I stared at him for a second. He was either a very good actor, which he could be, I’ve never been close enough to my father to be sure. Or he had no fucking clue. Unfortunately my gut wasn’t giving me a solid on this. Too many memories. Too many missed opportunities. Too much hurt.

  I leaned forward in my chair, holding his intense gaze, resting my forearms on my knees. It was completely informal. Utterly at odds with the tone of the conversation. And entirely planned.