To seek Paradise, you must first enter Purgatory and cross into Hell.
Prove your worth.
For the Irreverent Inferno awaits.
Prove your worth.
I sat down heavily on a swivel chair off to the side.
“Does the camera on Pitt Street get a good angle of the Fire Station?” I asked, feeling my pulse spike and a chill race down my spine.
“Yeah. A really good one,” Nick offered and then did something which made the Police CCTV camera on Pitt Street change views and look directly into first Damon’s office window on the second floor of the station and then down the short side driveway into the carpark at the rear.
Where my car would have been parked, in the only available spot left to me, now front and centre on the screen.
“They saw us,” I said, my words barely a whisper.
“Saw you?” Pierce queried.
I nodded, ran a hand over my face.
“In his office. When I left afterwards.”
“Shit,” he breathed. “Please don’t tell me you and he did it on his office desk in full view of the street cams?”
Nick barked out a laugh, and then stifled his amusement when I scowled at Pierce.
“No,” I said, resolutely. “But they would have seen us argue and then watched me leave upset.”
Silence.
And then both men said together, “Perfect.”
No it wasn’t. Not for me. Even if just an act, it had been personal.
I still felt the sting.
“That’s perfect,” Pierce semi-repeated. “And now they’ll see Damon leaving the station and heading in the direction of his home and not yours. Your home which he has always gone to straight after each shift for the past three weeks.”
I stared up at Pierce and wondered just how he’d known this. His returning look was chagrined.
I’d not just been on probation.
I’d been under watch. To see if I cracked.
I sank back in the chair and stared at the screen, watching as Damon’s HEAT vehicle left the Pitt Street Fire Station and headed east. And not west towards me.
Or, so Kyan Marcroft, at Sweet Hell, would think.
Chapter 11
“Disconnect. Disassociate. Detach. This is a job like any other. Emotions stay at the door.”
For some reason, time seemed to go too quickly, passing in the blink of an eye. Because in the next breath, it seemed, Pierce was heading out of the ASI control room towards the back door, where Damon had just arrived. Leaving me alone with Nick Anscombe.
A man who, I was beginning to suspect, didn’t miss a bloody thing.
“Pierce speaks highly of you,” he commented, watching Damon get out of his vehicle and then move to the tailgate and open the boot.
I grunted a noncommittal sound out in reply. Words might have been beyond me right then.
“But I’ll tell you,” Nick went on,” what I tell all of my guys, when about to watch someone they care about go into a situation that could be bad news.”
“I don’t need your advice, Anscombe,” I said, proving I was capable of words. “I’ve been a detective for six years.”
“With five years in uniform beforehand, and two years before that working in a lawyer’s firm as a researcher-slash-investigator, because your father wouldn’t let you join the Force before your twentieth birthday.”
I stared at the back of his head.
He turned in his chair to look at me.
“It’s my job,” he said, in way of explanation. “I’m good at it. As you are at yours. But watching someone you care about going undercover when you can’t is not what they train you at Porirua.” Porirua being the location of Police College.
This man was way too cocky.
I raised an eyebrow at him and then waved my hand for him to continue. I wasn’t going to argue with the prick. Somehow I was sure I was already several steps behind him and his tech savvy equipment.
He nodded his head, accepting the victory. “Disconnect. Disassociate. Detach. This is a job like any other. Emotions stay at the door.”
He turned his back on me and faced the security screens, on which Damon and Pierce were now walking down an internal ASI hall.
I leaned back in my chair and scrubbed my face. Anscombe was right. He wasn’t telling me anything other than what I already knew. What Carl had forced upon me time and again with his teachings. In fact, Nick’s words could have been a Carlism, so similar in tone and inflection they were.
But, I was a Keen. I was born into this lifestyle. Nick Anscombe and his wise words could kiss my lily white butt.
I stood up and paced across the room, then turned and leaned back against the wall, arms crossed over my chest, impassive look on my face. There was no way I was remaining seated for Damon’s arrival. And I needed to place some distance between myself and Nick Know-It-All Anscombe. He might have been right. He might have been trying to help. But I’d had one Carl in my life, I sure as hell didn’t need another.
The screen displaying the hallway outside the control room flickered with the arrival of Pierce and Damon. Pierce looked up at the camera, Damon kept glancing all around at the outfit he’d been brought into. I didn’t think for second that he’d missed the multiple domed ceiling cameras. Damon was a damn fine investigator. If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have even contemplated using him for this sting.
The door clicked open and Pierce pushed through first. My breath stalled inside my chest. I had to swallow, my throat felt so dry. And then he was there. The door closed behind him. The room somehow immediately too small.
I could smell his cologne. His hair was damp from a shower. He was out of uniform, dressed in jeans and a dark blue Henley. Oversized designer belt buckle, sexy as fuck short boots beneath his jeans’ hem, a leather jacket slung over one well defined muscular arm.
His eyes found mine instantly. He even took a step toward me before he realised his mistake and stopped. A short nod of his head was the only further acknowledgement I got.
I didn’t nod back. I couldn’t move.
I was in love with this man.
The realisation felt like a blow to my stomach. The need to double over and breathe through the pain was all consuming. I hardly heard Pierce’s introduction of Damon to Nick, at all.
The room spun. My ears buzzed. I was sure there was a red flush washing up my neck, but I couldn’t stop it. I worked on Hennessey’s cognitive breathing exercises, my pulse rate thundering, adrenaline mixing with serotonin, compounded by dopamine; a cocktail of neurotransmitters making me feel like hell.
“It doesn’t really get underway there until after eight,” Pierce was saying. “If you turn up too early, it could send the wrong signal.”
“Instead,” Nick added, “we think it would be best to go wherever you normally go for a drink after work first.”
“I don’t drink after work,” Damon advised.
“What do you do?” Pierce asked.
Damon looked toward me.
“What did you do before Detective Keen?” Nick pushed.
Damon looked away from me. And ran a hand over the back of his neck.
“Run, the gym.”
“There’s a gym at Pitt Street Station,” Pierce pointed out, calling bullshit. He knew Damon’s tell as well.
“He eats out,” I offered. “Goes to the cinema, shows, museum exhibitions, and corporate events,” I added. Damon was looking at me again. “Occasionally drives out to Piha to see his sister.”
“These dinners and shows,” Nick started, trying to drag Damon’s attention away from me. “You do them alone?”
Damon’s jaw tensed.
“No,” I said, evenly. “Usually with dates.”
Damon tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling as though praying for guidance or help. He’d been a very busy man in the six months we’d been apart. It was a wonder he’d found time to attend HEAT cases after hours at all.
“OK,” Pier
ce said slowly. “We don’t really want to drag another civilian into all of this.”
“I’m not in touch with any of them anymore, anyway,” Damon said, his eyes back on me, willing me to understand.
I understood. He didn’t have to prove anything to me. I’d seen it all before, after all. My father had paraded a slew of beauties through our house after my mother had passed away. Each one more exotic than the last.
Hennessey had said it was a coping mechanism, when I’d broken down enough to open up and divulge a little of my past to him in one of our sessions. The doc could be persistent when he tried and had worn me down by then. I’m more careful now. But that admission had cost me three weeks of father abandonment issue conversations with the man.
Denial, he’d said. He’d been in denial and pretending life was good.
Damon had pretended life was good with several beautiful women over that six month period. But not one of them had made it past a half dozen dates.
But they had made it to his bedroom. More than once.
And I despised myself for knowing this. For paying attention. For checking up.
For spying. Even if only casually, in passing, keeping my ears peeled and my eyes open.
But I’d done it anyway and told myself it was because I was a cop. It wasn’t. I knew this. I didn’t need a shrink to tell me it had been a type of obsession. I’d pushed him away, but couldn’t let go.
And here we were. Together and not. Me unable to trust. Him losing faith in my love.
I blinked, sucked in a deep breath of air, and turned to Nick.
“Have you got an operative who could stand in tonight?”
Nick smiled. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was laced with pride.
“On it,” he said, hitting a button on the dashboard of controls before him and lifting up a headset to place on his head.
“Dinner then?” Pierce said. Damon was still watching me. Silent.
“Angelo’s,” I offered. “The familiar greeting will establish routine, if they happen to be watching.”
And I couldn’t stand to send Damon off to one of the other restaurants he might have taken his dates to in the past.
“After five it’s reservation only,” Pierce pointed out.
“Not for me,” I said, pulling my cellphone out of my pocket and swiping the screen.
While I chatted up Angelo, making up a story for him regarding Damon and another woman coming to dine, Pierce started to explain to Damon the types of wires and recording devices they wanted to place on him. I could hear Nick talking to his female operative on the other side of the room, but he was soon over at a table with Pierce and Damon, and beginning to attach devices to Damon’s clothes.
“These are high-tech, hard to detect,” Nick was explaining, when I hung up from Angelo. “If they use anything more than just a sweeper, then you might be in trouble. But chances of them having military grade devices are slim.”
“But you have military grade devices?” I asked.
Nick looked up from taping a mike to Damon’s bare chest. I’d seen it all before. Didn’t mean I wasn’t having difficulty looking anywhere else. He smiled and nodded. But didn’t say how ASI had acquired military grade gear.
Yeah, these guys were ones to watch.
The last thing to be attached was a minuscule camera, the size and shape of a button, that matched the buttons on Damon’s Henley shirt. Nick was even a dab hand with a needle and thread. Then he turned back to the controls and screens and brought up the image the camera was filming, testing the quality and viewing angle.
Damon was facing me, so it was my body that came up on the screen. He purposely turned just his head to see my face on the monitor, keeping his body in position so it continued to film me.
I looked a mess. But I was too busy watching Damon, who in turn was staring at me on that screen, to worry about it. He had a look of longing on his face, that battled with a look of regret.
“Good,” Nick said. “You’ve got the angles down pat. Always keep in mind where the camera is pointing, but ensure it looks natural. Turn your head in small degrees where appropriate. If you strain your neck too much it will be picked up by their security guys. Cameras on customers are a big no-no for places like these. We don’t want to give them anything to be twitchy about.”
“What about the mics?” Damon asked.
Nick hit another button and said, “Testing, testing, one, two, three.”
His voice came out of hidden speakers, but a touch screen tablet he picked up showed sound waves and levers which he played with while humming a tune, until he was pleased with the quality of sound.
“Battery life?” Damon asked, once the mic and camera had both been switched off.
“Three hours,” Nick advised, as someone came into the underground carpark on one of the screens. A black SUV driven by a Māori guy. A petite blonde sat in the passenger side. “These are small devices, they aren’t deigned to last for a long time. Make sure you activate them just before you head in, and get out of there within three hours. Otherwise, you’re on your own.”
Silence followed that statement and it was me who took an inadvertent step towards Damon this time. His head whipped ‘round to look at me, a soft smile forming slowly on his lips. I stopped mid-step, and offered a small smile in return.
My heart ached.
A click sounded out behind us, breaking the moment, making me realise we’d been staring at each other for a very long time. Because the guy and girl from the garage had arrived at the control room door and were being let in by Nick.
“Ben Tamati and Abi Monaghan,” Nick advised. “HEAT Investigator Damon Michaels and Detective Lara Keen. You both know Pierce.”
The guy lifted his chin in the universal greeting of all males and wrapped a proprietary arm around the blonde. His possessiveness and stake claiming actually made it easier to look past her prettiness and see the intelligent eyes behind the gorgeous façade.
“So, what are we doing?” Abi asked.
“Dinner date with Damon at Angelo’s, then you go your separate ways,” Nick offered. “Need a prop to maintain routine. But you’re friends, he wouldn’t jump out of the frying pan and into the fire so soon after splitting from Keen.”
My eyes widened. It was a little unusual having this man know so much about our private lives and speak so plainly about them to complete strangers. I was aware Damon’s eyes were on me, but I couldn’t look at him. Unsure if he’d show amusement at Nick’s incorrect words. Or confirm them with a steady and pertinent gaze at me.
Pierce cleared his throat. “So, we’re all go. Booking made?” he asked me.
“Angelo’s expecting you,” I offered, looking at the woman. Still unable to look at Damon. “He thinks you’re a friend of mine, so he’ll no doubt mention me.”
“Why am I a friend of yours?” she asked.
I did look at Damon then.
“Because you’re trying to convince him I’m worth a shot,” I said, my words for Damon, really, and no one else. “That he’s made a mistake. He just has to keep a little faith in me.”
Damon’s face softened. He let a deep breath of air out as though releasing long held tension.
“Shouldn’t be hard,” Abi muttered. “He hasn’t stopped looking at you once since we walked in here.”
“Red,” her partner, Ben, said. It was a warning, but made little sense.
“Just saying,” she quipped, not even blinking at the reprimand. “Talk about heating the room up.”
Nick snorted. Pierce closed his eyes. And Damon beamed.
I had no idea what Ben was doing, I was trapped by Damon’s grin.
“All right, let’s do this,” Nick finally barked.
“What you’ll expect in there, is anyone’s guess,” Pierce added, looking at Damon, who had reluctantly turned his attention to him and away from me. “Play it cool. Try to have fun. Otherwise they’ll wonder what the fuck you’re doing there. From what we
can tell, the front of the club is just that. A front. We want you in the Irreverent Inferno part, wherever the fuck that is. We want a better understanding of what this place is about. In particular, we want to know if there is potentially something illegal going on.”
“My sister,” Damon started.
Pierce held up a hand to forestall him. “If she’s there, and unharmed when you spot her, all I ask is you play this out and try to get info before you extract. We have no desire to stop you getting your sister out, if the opportunity arises. But if you could act as though her presence is a surprise, an unpleasant one at that, because she’s interrupting your pleasurable pursuits for the night, we might just be able to salvage something out of this, if we need you to go back in.”
“My main concern is Carole,” Damon argued. “After I have her out…”
“Hey!” Pierce said, bristling. “You agreed to help us. You’re Keen’s partner. This may not be a HEAT case, but damn it, man, this is her case.” Pierce pointed at me. Damon followed the action, looking me in the eyes. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He was hiding behind an indifferent mask.
His worry over Carole must have been acute. I hadn’t seen Damon act like this in a long time.
“Did Keen tell you her informant is tied up in this place?” Nick suddenly said, gaining both Damon’s and my attention.
“Which one?” Damon asked, but from the set of his features I was sure he’d guessed.
Nick looked at me, making Damon’s head swing back as well.
“Eagle,” I offered. Damon closed his eyes.
“OK,” he said, eventually. “I’ll play nice.”
For me. Oh, I was sure if he spotted Carole he’d do everything in his power to get her out right away. But he’d stick to his role while doing it. For me.
Because Damon knew what Eagle meant to me. An informant, for sure. But one I would lay down my life for, if need be.
“All right, let’s do this,” Nick repeated, and Ben and Abi filed out of the door, holding it open for Damon, who took one long legged stride and came abreast of me. Then halted.
I had no idea if everyone was watching, or if Pierce and Nick had turned to the street camera footage of Karangahape Road and Viaduct Quay, where Angelo’s was located. Or if Ben and Abi were too busy looking at each other, to concern themselves with us. I had no idea, because Damon reached out and fingered my shirt.
A Touch Of Heat (H.E.A.T. Book 2) Page 10
