A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four

by Claire, Nicola

  “Evil wind blows, Keen,” he said.

  I blinked at him; my heart rate reluctantly returning to normal. But Carl’s departure still pulled at my frame and equally pushed me away again. And Eagle’s soft voice held me immobile.

  “Is that what he told you to tell me?” I demanded.

  He shrugged. “Don’t much matter now, does it?” he said, stubbing out the half-smoked cigarette. “He ain’t who you thought he was.”

  “Because he helped you to get off?”

  Baby brown eyes stared at me, no longer looking guileless but rather a little wired. Eagle had taken a hit of something this evening. More than seeing my old partner and mentor slap the butt cheek of one of my informants to pay up on a task, seeing that change in Eagle’s eyes tore through me.

  I sucked in a shaky breath of air and took a step closer.

  Eagle stepped back into the shadows surrounding another door I was pretty sure was unlocked and would afford him an easy escape route. No one could say Eagle was stupid. Or that he trusted his marks.

  “Not the first time, Keen,” he said, moving back another step as he spoke. “Won’t be the last. Carl and me is friends now.”

  And then he was gone, and I was left shaking, my mind twisting and turning, my stomach flipping and threatening to expel any meagre stores it held.

  Carl and Eagle were friends.

  That was the message. But what the fuck did it mean? I had no idea.

  Chapter Six

  “Don’t Let Your Imagination Get Away From You, Sport. Tie It Up, Strap It Down, And Beat it With A Whip On Occasion.”

  I slammed both hands down on the steering wheel almost making it bend with the force I used. What the hell was Carl playing at?

  “What the hell is he playing at?” I said aloud because saying it inside my head wasn’t good enough.

  I had to get it out of me.

  Wisely, Damon didn’t reply.

  “Why do this?” I mused a little less violently. “He knew I was there; knew I was watching. Jesus Christ, Carl,” I exclaimed. “What the fuck?”

  Damon shifted in his seat and turned to face me. The careful silence was clearly about to be fractured.

  “The message was seeing him with Eagle,” he said quietly.

  “I know that,” I snapped. “But… what the fuck?” I repeated because it bore being repeated.

  “You cannot attribute sane reasoning to anything Carl does,” Damon said levelly.

  And in the process sucked all of the air out of the car.

  I turned the key in the ignition and started the air-con up. Fresh air blew over my heated face. I would have wound down the window, but I was too scared of who might hear me lose it.

  Carl was no longer sane.

  “Damn,” I muttered, checking my mirrors reflexively. No one was sneaking up on the car. And when I looked out of the windows, I couldn’t spot anyone in Mercury Lane or further up on K Road watching us either.

  Carl might have been mad as a hatter, but he knew when to make his escape.

  “Eagle,” I said, letting out a pent up breath of air. “Eagle said they were friends now. Carl was always just my partner. Eagle dealt with only me. He knew about Carl. Heard things from his informants about him. But he never showed any inclination toward working with Carl over me.”

  “That’s not why Carl’s doing this,” Damon said, staring blindly out of the windscreen.

  “Then why?” I asked, but I had an inkling. It wasn’t something I wanted to face up to, because doing so would mean I was partly responsible for what had gone down in Eagle’s alley tonight.

  “Carl’s looking out for him, so you don’t have to,” Damon said.

  I closed my eyes and tipped my head back on the headrest. My hands gripped the steering wheel as if I was afraid I’d float away. As if by releasing my hold on something tangible, I would also be releasing my hold on something I could only sense in an abstract way.

  And Damon said Carl was crazy.

  “That is fucked up,” I murmured.

  “Like I said,” Damon said carefully back, “nothing Carl does now is sane.”

  I opened my eyes and turned my head to face him.

  “He knows what Weston is doing,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “He knows Eagle could still be targeted,” I added.

  “Yes, it would seem so.”

  “And this is how he chooses to deal with it?” I asked incredulously.

  “Like I said…”

  “I know, I know. I heard you the first two times. Please, if you ever wish to be kissed again, don’t repeat it.”

  “My lips are hereby sealed, love.”

  A small smile threatened to break my scowl in half. Damon smirked at me.

  We stared at each other for a moment, and then I automatically checked my watch. Nine hours down. Closing in on ten. One blackmailed. One dead. And one manipulated being cared for by a crazy ex-detective.

  Weston couldn’t have planned for this to have gone better. Because as much as I hated to admit it, I was compromised. I wasn’t focused, and I wasn’t attentive, and I was so far from being the superstar cop Carl wanted me to be it wasn’t funny.

  To top that all off, I still had to advise my father of what was happening.

  I pulled my cellphone from my jacket pocket and stared at the screen.

  I wasn’t normally a coward, but when facing Ethan Keen, I needed my wits about me. I had neither the courage nor the wits right now. I dreaded to think what Hennessey would say about that.

  But then, anything Hennessey said to me now was up for debate.

  What did Weston have over the shrink?

  I swiped the screen active and placed the call.

  It went straight to voice mail. Part of me thought my father had his cellphone set up for that. When it recognised my number, it didn’t bother to ring, just simply shunted me off to an answer service. Cellphones weren’t that sophisticated. At least, the cellphones owned by cops didn’t seem to be. And my father was nothing if not the perfect image of the police.

  I disconnected before leaving a message and then dialled again.

  Same deal. Straight to voice mail.

  Sighing, I considered the implications of leaving a message that could be heard by anyone with a little know-how and then pocketed the phone and started the car properly.

  Within minutes, we were on the motorway, heading south.

  Damon remained silent, which I was equal parts thankful for and angry about. I leaned forward and switched the radio on. And then promptly turned it off again when it only played adverts. Tapping my fingers on the steering wheel, I tried to picture the dots as I knew them inside my head.

  There were too few to start connecting them.

  I sighed again, and Damon turned his head to look at me.

  “Do you want to do this alone?”

  Face my father he meant.

  There were certain things that had recently come to light regarding my father’s private life. Certain behavioural aspects that no daughter should ever be aware of in regards to their parent. My father had been cleared of any illegal activity, but that didn’t mean his dirty laundry hadn’t been aired in public during the Sweet Hell case. Hart had done his best to keep most of it out of the open case files.

  But doing his best and succeeding where a bunch of nosy detectives with a penchant for digging up shit were concerned was quite a different thing.

  I was sure Cawfield knew more than he should about Ethan Keen’s pastimes. Hell, he knew more than most, having been inducted into Sweet Hell along with Damon by Nathaniel Marcroft.

  Two men in my life knew more about my father’s sex fiendish ways than I wanted. Damon’s knowledge I could just about handle.

  But Cawfield? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  I took the off ramp at Manukau on Redoubt Road and headed towards my father’s house. It was the same house I had grown up in. The same house he had lived in when first married to my
mother. It was the same house we came back to after we buried her when I was five.

  The same house he’d paraded a bevvy of beauties through every weekend while I grew old enough to understand what their intended purpose was.

  I’d recently decided my father’s cool, standoffish demeanour was due to an inner rage he was attempting to control. He iced over and froze all emotions out. I’m sure he didn’t hide them all from everyone; I had to hope Haydee saw something that I didn’t. But to me, at least, he was ice personified.

  That rage had almost cracked the ice during the Sweet Hell case.

  Almost but not quite.

  I hadn’t spoken to him since then.

  I parked the car out the front. Dad’s car would be around the back. And if he had a visitor, I couldn’t see an extra vehicle about. Haydee lived on the North Shore. I’d looked her up after I’d met her. ‘Met’ might be a stretch. We’d been introduced. I’d talked. She hadn’t. Not much for conversation that one.

  I shuddered.

  The lights were on, including the outside light. So he either expected a visitor or had one that would leave sometime tonight.

  Or he’d simply forgotten to switch it off.

  I couldn’t picture my father doing that. But who knew what Haydee made him feel or do that I couldn’t even think of.

  Damon slipped out of the car silently and padded up the stairs at my back. I realised I hadn’t answered his earlier question. He’d simply taken it upon himself to be at my side while I did this.

  Sometimes Damon could read me like a book.

  For a police detective, that wasn’t necessarily a welcome acknowledgement.

  I considered knocking on the door. I didn’t live here anymore. But something had me pulling out my keys and locating an old disused one for the house’s front door. Stained-glass windows cast pretty coloured patterns across my pale hands as I slid the key in the lock and turned it.

  The door promptly opened on well-oiled hinges.

  I stood on the threshold and regretted my choice to enter unannounced.

  The smell of candles burning wafted on the air. The lights were dim. I couldn’t hear anyone downstairs, but I knew my father was home. His coat hung on a coat rack to the side of the door; his keys were in a dish on the hall stand. I could scent his expensive whisky on the air.

  I looked down at the hall table and noted the extra set of keys lying there and then looked back at the coat rack and picked out the well-tailored women’s jacket hanging beside my father’s familiar one.

  I sighed, stepped back out of the doorway, and closed the house up again. And then I just stared at the stained glass.

  “Are you going to press the doorbell?” Damon asked.

  He’d watched the entire episode without passing judgement.

  I had no idea what he thought of me right then — the daughter who wasn’t a daughter but sometimes forgot about that conveniently.

  I reached up and pressed the doorbell, and the door opened.

  My father stood before me in slacks and an open-necked shirt. Both were clean and pressed as if just pulled from the wardrobe. He wore slippers on his feet.

  And no socks.

  I smiled.

  He glared at me.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure, Lara-Marie?” he asked in that icy tone of voice.

  Oh, I’d well and truly done it now; I’d interrupted his evening.

  “I’m here in a semi-official capacity, sir,” I said.

  I always wanted to grimace when I said ‘sir’ now. I held it together for both of our sakes.

  “Very well,” he said, opening the door up further. “Wait for me in the study.”

  I nodded and stepped past him; Damon followed without having been offered a greeting from my father at all. Ethan Keen could be polite when he chose to. He had manners. He knew what the correct etiquette was when greeting either the man sleeping with his daughter or the head of an emergency service.

  He just chose to forgo etiquette right then in a show of pique.

  I’d well and truly interrupted something.

  He waited until we walked into the study before climbing the stairs again. I had a sudden vision of Haydee tied up up there which I had to forcefully push from my mind before I shuddered.

  Damon paced across to the fireplace, which was lit and burning down to embers. He stoked it back up; the ancient house was quite cold. But all I could do was close my eyes and try not to think about whether my father’s evening had started in here for the fire to be going.

  Thankfully there were no empty whisky tumblers to confirm that thought. I chose to go with this being a place he entered after work and nothing else.

  I sat myself down in an armchair and crossed my legs, hands to knees, back straight. I was a good daughter. Damon watched me from his stand beside the fireplace.

  It was a very quiet and long eight minutes later before my father entered the room. A lot can happen in eight minutes, I thought.

  Stop it!

  Don’t let your imagination get away from you, Sport. Tie it up, strap it down, and beat it with a whip on occasion.

  Damnit, Carl.

  “So,” my father said, rounding his big wooden desk and taking a seat behind it. I was used to a wall being erected between us. Right now it felt a mile high. “What is semi-official enough for you to turn up at my house after hours?”

  Uninvited, I thought. He’d forgotten to say uninvited.

  But when was the last time my father invited me home?

  I held his frosty gaze and said, “Angelo Berti is dead.”

  I half expected him to say “Who?” But that’s not my father. “Suspicious circumstances?” he asked instead.

  “We believe so,” I said. “Andrew Hennessey is being blackmailed.” I wasn’t going to give him a second to regroup and attack.

  If it was war that Weston was waging, it was a different type of battle I fought with my father.

  He stared at me, tight-lipped. I couldn’t tell if the lip tightening was due to my delivery or the topic.

  And then he said, “Your position at CIB is under threat.”

  No one could say my father wasn’t a good policeman.

  I looked at my watch. “I have less than a day, possibly two before my suspension.”

  “And Hart won’t stop it.” It wasn’t a question. “He’s laying a trap.”

  I said nothing. Damon had remained silent the entire time we’d been here.

  “Blackmail and murder,” Ethan said. “What else?”

  “Manipulation and abduction,” I finished for him. The pattern rounded out.

  His eyes snapped to my face.

  I could see the cogs turning. Ethan Keen was not a likely candidate for manipulating. It just wouldn’t be an easy thing to achieve with a man like my father.

  But abduction?

  “I’m the connection,” I said. “Damon is the target.”

  My father flicked a glance at Damon, but his icy stare returned to me in the next heartbeat.

  “Thank you for the warning,” he said.

  That was it. That was all I was getting. He’d look after his own which in a way would help me. The most my father had done for me in years.

  And only because the person immediately in danger was his pet.

  I grimaced. Damon moved off to the doorway, expecting our hurried escape.

  I didn’t blame him. I wanted out of there as much as he did and as fast as he did too at a guess.

  But I stopped in the middle of my father’s study and turned to look at him.

  Ethan Keen was a lot of things to me. And a lot of things he failed to be.

  But he was still my father.

  “Take care, Dad,” I said.

  He blinked.

  “Lara,” he whispered, but I left before he could complete whatever ill-advised thought he’d been about to speak.

  Chapter Seven

  “Life Is Short. Live It Well. Live It Grandly. But Most Of All,
Live It As Though At Any Moment It Could Vanish.”

  I was numb on the ride back to the city. Damon remained quiet beside me. A type of silence that wasn’t filled with unsaid words, but instead filled with a sense of companionship and solidarity. Most men would have littered the space with suggestions or platitudes. Damon had learned a long time ago that those things didn’t work with me.

  Sometimes I wondered how he put up with my waspish ways.

  Silence. That’s how he put up with me.

  I let a little sound out which could have been mistaken for a sigh or a sob or simply a snort.

  Damon took that as an invitation to open up a dialogue.

  “Where to next?” he asked.

  We’d passed the eleven-hour mark and were closing in on twelve. I’d secured, in a manner of speaking, two of my people. Damon had taken care of whoever was left to be targeted in HEAT. Cawfield and Simpson were on the Berti case. Pierce was looking into Hennessey. If either had found out anything of note, I’d have been notified indirectly or directly by Pierce.

  I’d heard nothing, so I had to presume there was nothing to hear.

  I flexed my fingers on the steering wheel. My stomach chose that moment to let out a resounding grumble.

  “Here’s a suggestion,” Damon said conversationally. “I’ll order in pizza to your house, and we’ll go over the case files together.”

  Unbidden tears threatened to ruin my she-bitch reputation. I cleared my throat and said, “Good idea.”

  He didn’t look at me as he pulled his cellphone out and swiped the screen. In fact, he purposely stared out the passenger side window, allowing me a moment to wipe my eyes and piece the shell I wore back together. It was fragile. Prone to cracking. Carl had been the calcium carbonate that it had been created from. Hennessey had been the glue that held it together when my ex-partner had disappeared from my life without explanation.

  I counted to three inside my head, but I wasn’t sure if it was working. How was I going to do this without the glue?

  My street was deserted at this late hour thankfully. It made it easier to see if anything was out of the norm. There were no strange vehicles parked in the shadows. And although there were plenty of shadows for bodies to hide amongst, I didn’t get an itchy feeling between my shoulder blades. I led the way to the front door and let us inside, deactivating the alarm system after checking to make sure it hadn’t been tampered with.