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

by Claire, Nicola

  Carl had already delivered his message tonight.

  I crossed to the dining room table, switching on lights as I did, dumped my handbag and jacket, and then made my way to the kitchen. I pulled two beers from the fridge and uncapped them. Handing one to Damon, I took a swig. Damon, being Damon, reached for a glass and decanted his. I watched on with a smirk on my lips.

  The doorbell ringing interrupted our smirk match. Damon went to pay for the pizza while I organised plates. In minutes my stomach was thanking me, and Damon had relaxed from uptight protector to satisfied partner.

  Even Carl hadn’t looked after me like this.

  And that was enough of that.

  I switched my laptop on and waited for it to boot up.

  “There are over four hundred case files to go through,” I said.

  “What?” Damon uncharacteristically said. “That many?”

  “I couldn’t narrow the search parameters,” I explained. “I was in a hurry.”

  He rubbed a hand over his stubbled face.

  “How do you want to do this, then?” he asked.

  “Whittle it down somehow.”

  “The pattern?”

  “Yep. The four pieces to the pattern-puzzle cross-referenced with locations we know Weston to have operated in. Failing that, we’ll cut back to three pattern pieces.”

  Damon made a sound of disquiet. It was hardly a foolproof plan. But other than Rhys Kyle Weston’s known aliases, which had been tried multiple times already in multiple different varieties, we didn’t have much else to go on. The man was a psychopath, but then so was approximately one percent of the population and a quarter of males who perpetrated crimes.

  And don’t even get me started on those clever enough to goose the system.

  Rhys Kyle Weston did not appear to be in any psychiatric database we could find. That didn’t mean he wasn’t. He just hadn’t been charged with a crime and had his records unsealed. A shrink and their patient’s relationship was sacrosanct. Until it wasn’t. Weston hadn’t crossed that all-important line.

  Not any of his known aliases had.

  If he had a history of psych evaluation and treatment, we didn’t know it. So, I hadn’t bothered to put that criterion in the search parameter.

  Forty minutes later, two bottles of beer and one extra large pizza consumed, we had our list whittled down to twelve cases. Eight of which were local to Auckland. It sounded far easier than it had actually been.

  Thirteen hours down, over halfway to the earliest I could be booted from CIB, and I had a potential lead to follow. Eight potential leads. I’d save those outside of Auckland for when the shit really did hit the fan.

  It was better than I could have hoped for.

  As it was midnight, and I couldn’t actually follow up on a damn thing without waking up half of Mt Eden Prison, I had to settle for some sleep. Reluctantly I followed Damon into my bedroom, wishing sleep was not a biological necessity.

  I contemplated jumping Damon as soon as he hit the sheets, but by the time he’d brushed his teeth with the toothbrush he left in my ensuite and joined me under the covers, I was already counting sheep.

  The fact that he didn’t wake me for some midnight nookie told me exactly how badly he wanted me to catch up on some sleep.

  He did wake me at seven the next morning with hot kisses against my neck and a hand wrapped around my left breast, though. So I felt his masculinity hadn’t been in any way compromised.

  “Again,” he instructed sometime later when my body was wrung out and limp as a noodle. “Once more, love,” he instructed, rolling me over, so I was chest first to the mattress, and his larger frame moulded down the back of my body. He pressed a knee between my thighs and spread my legs wide, then nestled his lower half between them. One hand was wrapped up in my bedhead messy hair, the other was beneath my pelvis, fingers finding purchase on sensitive nerve endings.

  I bucked, and he slid his thick length into me from behind. I made a keening sound, and he tipped my head to the side and kissed the sound away with strong strokes of his tongue inside my mouth. I panted for breath as he struck up a rhythm to be proud of, every thrust of his hips pushing me further and further into the bed itself.

  I shuddered my release as his fingers pinched my clitoris. And then he lost his steadfast rhythm and found his own release, a silent snarl crossing his lips, his spent body collapsing across my arse and back.

  The bed felt like a cloud beneath us. Sweat slicked our bodies and made my skin tingle. I could feel the thumping of his heart against my left shoulder blade. His lips brushed against my neck, hot breath making me shiver delightfully. He sucked the skin in gently; not enough to leave a mark but enough to know he was marking me.

  Even urbane and cultured men like Damon were Neanderthals when it came to their women and beds.

  “It’s morning,” I said.

  “So it is,” he said, not stopping his efforts in the slightest.

  My eyes landed on the bedside clock.

  “Twenty-one hours,” I said.

  “What was that, love?” Damon asked distractedly.

  “I’ve got three hours before I could get booted from CIB.”

  Damon stopped kissing me, his body becoming rigid.

  “You know it won’t be for long,” he murmured, sliding off my body and rolling onto his back. He kept contact through a hand on my butt, but the separation he’d created made the reality of the new day set in.

  I pushed to a seating position and scrubbed at my face and then made my way to the bathroom and a shower without offering comment.

  I knew, intellectually, that Inspector Hart was only playing Weston’s game. Pierce also knew that when the order came down, and I was suspended from CIB, it wasn’t real. But no one else would know.

  I’d never thought myself particularly self-conscious. I didn’t care what I wore or how I looked, all that mattered was how I acted and what I achieved. Solving cases and catching the bad guys was all that truly mattered to me.

  Or so I thought.

  But picturing my fellow detectives aware of the supposed reason for my suspension left me feeling chilled to the bone and utterly desperate.

  And they would know. They were damn fine detectives.

  I did not like the sensation of desperation one little bit.

  Damon joined me in the shower, but he didn’t try to start anything up again. I didn’t think it was because twice in the space of an hour had worn him out. Damon had proven on many occasions that he could literally go all night long. Instead, I was pretty sure, when he helped me wash with care, that he wanted to comfort and not distract me from what was in store.

  I loved him more for that distinction than I could have thought.

  We stepped out of my bedroom, dressed in clean clothes and looking respectable, having spent thirty minutes in domestic bliss. A type of bliss I had never thought possible but which Damon insisted on showing me time and again.

  He was railroading me, I thought. Forcing me to face up to the fact that we worked well together. Not just in a professional manner, but in every possible way. We weren’t living together. And some nights we spent at his house instead of mine.

  But we might as well have been.

  I wasn’t sure how to take that. I knew what Carl would say, though. Life is short. Live it well. Live it grandly. But most of all, live it as though at any moment it could vanish.

  He approved of Damon. He approved of the way Damon took care of me. The way he loved me.

  I tried very hard not to let that negatively influence me in any way.

  Damon strode towards the kitchen and the coffee machine. I strode towards the printout I’d made last night of the twelve cases, eight local, and names associated with them. Two of those local names were in Mount Eden Prison. One had insisted on his innocence right from the start. We’d begin there.

  I wasn’t naive enough to believe a convict’s innocence just because it would force the puzzle piece I had in my han
d into place. But if there was a chance that Weston had manipulated the evidence to force the false imprisonment of an innocent man, then I had to investigate.

  I downed my coffee in several quick gulps, relieved that Damon had expected such behaviour and made the coffee cooler than normal. And bit into the slice of toast he’d prepared as I walked toward the front door. Damon took the time required to rinse the mugs out in the sink and then joined me on the front step.

  My eyes scanned the street. It was after eight, so most of the residents had left for work already. There were a couple of kids walking off towards the local high school — a dog barking at them from behind a picket fence. And the smell of scrambled eggs and bacon mixed with coffee on the air.

  But nothing else. If Carl was watching, I couldn’t tell. And if Weston was, he was too good for me.

  “Everything all right?” Damon asked from beside me when I didn’t immediately move.

  Twenty-one hours down, closing in on twenty-two. No, everything wasn’t all right.

  “Fine,” I said and received a grunt of disapproval in return.

  I led the way to my car and released the locks. Damon slid into the passenger side without another word. I took one last look around the neighbourhood and then threw myself into the driver’s seat. Switching the scanner on and activating my 10-3 or available status, I listened to North Comm dispatch vehicles to various routine type incidents and let out a breath of air.

  Somehow the familiar sound of a busy police channel settled my nerves. Surely, if something devastating had happened or was about to happen, the radio would reflect it.

  I shook my head and started the car, then reversed out of my driveway.

  My pager went off before I’d even reached the end of my street.

  I hadn’t even made twenty-two hours. Hennessey had lied. Two hours too soon. Twenty-six if you counted the outer limit he’d given me.

  I stared at the words on the screen, blocking traffic in the middle of the road if there had been any. The car purred as it waited for me to release the foot brake. My leg was locked as my eyes locked on the small LCD screen.

  AKX3/4A: CIB

  “What is it?” Damon asked, bringing the rest of the world back into focus.

  I checked the rearview mirror. Nothing had snuck up on me while I’d been otherwise out of it. I slipped my pager back into its rightful place and then moved off slowly. Carefully. One might say precisely; in the middle of the lane and not an inch out of it, as if I strayed I’d hit a landmine and blow up.

  “Lara?”

  “It’s happening,” I said, my voice merely a whisper of sound. I licked my lips. Forced some volume into it. “I’ve been called back to CIB for a meeting.”

  “A meeting?”

  “Or a course, but as I’m not scheduled for that, I’m going with a ‘4A’ meaning a meeting.”

  “It could be something else,” Damon tried in an uncharacteristic attempt to soothe me with false platitudes.

  I offered him a glare and gripped the steering wheel tightly.

  “It came via pager,” I explained. “Hart’s way of giving me notice in private.” And a way for the CIB traitor to trace it.

  “Ah,” Damon said, staring off out of the windscreen. He knew, being in the emergency services too, that if it had been a standard directive, the dispatcher would have used the comm as I’d marked my vehicle and thereby myself as available.

  “I’ll drop you off at HEAT,” I said. It was on the way and delaying this any further would just make me antsy.

  I was already antsy having had my countdown interrupted earlier than expected.

  Expect the unexpected, Sport. Then they can't use your surprise against you.

  I might have resented Carl’s voice inside my head, but that didn’t mean it had nothing of use to say.

  Sorry, Old Man. I wasn’t listening.

  It’s your arse not mine in the hot seat; I pictured him saying.

  Only I was responsible for my discombobulated state.

  Damon had stiffened in the seat beside me, but he didn’t counter my advisement of dropping him off at HEAT first. He’d want to be there for me, to offer moral support, or punch Inspector Hart in the face for mistreating me. We couldn’t have that, and he knew it. He also knew this was something I had to face alone.

  With as much decorum as I could manage. Wasn’t that what Hart had ordered?

  I wasn’t sure if I could do decorum, but I could channel Ethan Keen and encase myself in ice. If Damon accompanied me, that ice would crack, melt into a torrent of water. We couldn’t have that either.

  So, I drove towards HEAT.

  Chapter Eight

  “This Is The Price We Pay For The Good We Do, Sport. This Is What Happens When Good Cops Don’t Save Themselves First. Save Yourself, Lara.”

  Because life was a cunning bastard and liked to fuck with you daily, CIB was full of eager and bizarrely up-at-the-crack-of-dawn detectives. Not that nine in the morning was the crack of dawn for most people, but for detectives on call, it certainly could be seen that way.

  I scanned the occupied desks, took in the hum of activity. It wasn’t chaotic. It wasn’t anticipatory either. It was the usual welcome buzz of good men at work.

  Save one.

  Cawfield was here… and I knew, then, that the stage had been set.

  Hart was nothing if not an opportunist. The suspension order would have come through first thing, and he would have waited only long enough for Cawfield to be in attendance. The fact that Joe Cawfield was here at all before ten in the morning proved everything.

  I pegged him for the traitor in an instant.

  I’d waffled about it. But no more. This was too much a coincidence and outside his normal behavioural pattern.

  I made a show of crossing the room to Hart’s door.

  Pierce was already there. As my immediate supervising officer it made sense but wasn’t a requirement. The fact he was also a union representative sealed the deal, though. Any disciplinary action must be conducted with a union representative of choice in attendance.

  Ryan Pierce had always been mine.

  I entered Hart’s office and stood at parade rest.

  “Close the door, Detective,” Hart said.

  He hadn’t said it loudly. He hadn’t whispered it either. There was no doubt, though, that those closest to the door would have heard the business-like tone of his voice.

  I turned to do as the inspector bid and spotted Cawfield by the water cooler, which happened to be near enough to Hart’s door to listen in.

  It took everything in me not to arrest the bastard then and there. But charging Cawfield for rehydrating in my vicinity wouldn’t stick in a court of law, and I didn’t have any evidence yet that he was the traitor.

  Just a gut feeling and six years of antagonism which had cultivated an extraordinary amount of hatred for the man.

  I seethed as I turned back around to face the firing squad.

  “Don’t look so mad, Keen,” Pierce said, his poor choice of words being lost on him. “You know this is only temporary.”

  “And early,” I said.

  “Yes,” Hart remarked. “I’ve had it on my desk for three hours already. I couldn’t delay any longer.”

  Three hours. Which would mean Hennessey would have filed it at least four almost five hours earlier than he said he would. And that was using the shortest time frame he’d given me.

  I looked at Pierce. “Why? Have you found anything on the doc?”

  He shook his head. “He’s divorced. Never remarried. Has no kids. His ex-wife is living in England, her country of birth. His only sibling, a brother, works down in Christchurch as a professor of psychology at Canterbury University. He has a godchild, but the kid’s safe at boarding school in the Bay of Plenty. Everyone else of note has been accounted for.”

  “Then what changed?”

  “I don’t know,” Pierce reluctantly admitted.

  “Pierce will keep digging,” Ha
rt advised. “He’ll also officially take over the Carole Michaels case. Unofficially, you’ve still got it. But you two can’t be seen to be collaborating. You’ll do that through ASI.”

  Nick Anscombe had already been called into the ruse and now knew all about my fall from grace.

  I knew it was all an act. That I wasn’t really being suspended from CIB. But seeing Hennessey wasn’t an act. That was real. And now Nick Anscombe would be aware of the fact that I was seeing a Department shrink.

  It didn’t sit well with me, but I used my father’s ice to detach from the embarrassment and shame of the moment and concentrated on my supervising officers instead.

  Both men, undoubtedly, saw right through me.

  “While you’re here,” Inspector Hart went on, ignoring my ice queen act completely, “bring us up to date with what you’ve found out so far regarding the Weston case.”

  And there went that opportunist character trait trampling all over my suspension.

  I forced myself to take the spare seat in front of the inspector’s desk and gave them both a rundown on the four hundred cases Damon and I had painstakingly whittled down to twelve nationally and eight locally. Like me, Hart thought the local cases were the safest place to start.

  Getting into Mount Eden Prison without a badge would not be as easy as I’d have liked. But neither Hart nor Pierce offered any guidance on that. I was more than capable of working it out for myself. And I would have Nick Anscombe’s multitude of off-the-record skills to call on.

  Yippee.

  “Well, that’s that,” Hart said and started shuffling sheets of paper on his desk. It was unlike him to be so wishy-washy on his dismissal procedures. He was out of sorts about my suspension, too, I thought.

  I couldn’t stand to see my senior officer operating below par, so I stood up, offered a police college parade ground salute, and then fished out my badge, placing it on the desk before him.