A Touch Of Heat (H.E.A.T. Book 2) Page 16

  Of me.

  “The exact description of the victim,” Pierce concluded. “Fucking hell.”

  “It’s circumstantial.”

  “You’re defending him now?” He almost sounded put-out on my behalf for the childhood I’d been forced to live.

  “I’m a cop,” I argued. “I work the facts. I sort the evidence. I leave my emotions at the door.”

  Carl would be proud.

  Pierce sighed. “And you’re a damn fine cop, Keen. But are you sure you want to pursue this?”

  “What’s the alternative? Ignore a lead?” I shook my head.

  “Let me talk to Hart. Stay out of this, hang in the background.” At least he was offering it as a suggestion. And I understood his reasoning, I just couldn’t accept being sidelined as easily as Jones just had.

  “Not happening.”

  “This is fucking complicated,” Pierce exclaimed, reaching into the paper bag for another doughnut. I couldn’t eat a thing. My stomach was churning and churning and churning.

  I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. And a few sips of tar-like coffee didn’t count.

  We both sat and stared at Hart’s closed door.

  “Whoever’s in there is important,” Pierce said after a long while of him chewing thoughtfully and me drowning in my thoughts.

  “We’ve been here for close to an hour,” I agreed.

  “Closed door and closed curtains.”

  “On a Saturday when the place is usually bare.”

  “Hmmm,” Pierce said, and I had the feeling he’d guessed who was in there. But he didn’t enlighten me.

  I didn’t try to guess.

  Pierce’s cellphone interrupted our silence. He fished it out of his pocket while staring at the perpetually closed door.

  “Pierce,” he said around a mouthful of sugary delight.

  His whole body stilled. He didn’t look at me, but I knew the conversation was one he didn’t want me to hear.

  “When did you find this out?” he said, dusting the fingertips of his free hand off on his jeans leg.

  I pulled my own cellphone out and checked my calls, giving him as much privacy as I was prepared to right then. My silent caller hadn’t been back in touch. And neither had Damon. Not that I’d expected him to. But after last night I’d wondered if he’d find a way to do it that couldn’t be traced.

  He must have parked down the road, maybe even caught a cab to my address. Parking his car in my front drive would have been a dead giveaway to Nathaniel Marcroft, and as Damon had worked so hard to convince the Sweet Hell owner that he and I were through, then I was sure he’d taken the necessary precautions not to ruin it all with a booty call visit in the dead of night.

  Which, once again, raised the question of why? Why did he do it at all?

  Pierce rung off his call with a curt, “I’ll be in touch.” Then stared at the door.

  “Progress?” I asked, knowing damn well he didn’t want to talk about it.

  He did another of those frustrated, exhausted, why-me? sighs and scrubbed at his jaw.

  “You know I’ll find out eventually,” I pressed.

  “What, is this kindergarten? I can’t have a private conversation without being harassed?”

  I lifted my hands up in the universal sign of surrender. “Hey! Just saying, you’re all pissed off and huffy, and haven’t looked at me once since you answered that secret phone call.”

  “God, sometimes I hate that you’re a decent cop.”

  I smiled at that. Big beaming, teeth-showing grin.

  He looked at the ground, face serious.

  “Michaels is on for tonight.”

  What did that mean?

  “Oh?” I managed.

  “Passed the second circle test. Moving onto the third. What was it?”

  “Gluttony,” I said absently, my mind reeling.

  “Yeah. Gluttony. I guess he’ll be eating a shit-load tonight.”

  “Gluttony may not refer to just food,” I countered, trying desperately not to think what I was thinking inside. “You know the saying, ‘Glutton for punishment.’ Could be he has to show gluttony for something, not necessarily overindulgence in eating.”

  “What do you think a place like that would expect you to be gluttonous about?” Pierce asked, looking at me for the first time since the phone call.

  He looked shattered.

  He looked embarrassed.

  “How did he pass the test?” I asked, my throat dry. My heart crushed under a weight of emotional torment.

  “Proved he could succumb to lust.”

  “How?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I have a right to know, Ryan.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes you certainly do.”

  I opened my mouth to demand he tell me then, when Hart’s door unlocked and he appeared, back-lit by sunshine, his greying hair slicked back as per usual, his large form taking up the entirety of the doorway, so we couldn’t see clearly who stood behind him. His tie was undone.

  “Ah, fuck,” Pierce muttered, when Hart turned to let his guest past. “His tie’s undone.”

  Detective Inspector David Hart was a tough old bugger who prided himself on dressing well. Shirt pressed and clean. Trousers professionally laundered. Hair immaculate. Tie always done up and straight.

  If it was crooked or missing, all hell was about to break loose.

  But I didn’t need the tie to clue me in on how hell was about to fall apart. The man behind Hart had stepped into the CIB main room, no longer hidden by his shadow.

  I stood up. Pierce followed my move, a solid figure supporting me at my shoulder. He even moved closer. I was sure it was unintentional. It showed too much. How he cared. How I needed his strength right in that moment.

  “Lara-Marie,” my father said, walking towards us as though he hadn’t just spent over an hour in my superior’s office, right when information had arisen connecting him to a homicide. “Working on a Saturday,” he added. “I’m surprised.”

  “Crime never takes a break, sir,” I said, suddenly realising, with a stomach somersaulting whoosh, what the formal address actually meant. From the age of six, my father had insisted I call him ‘sir.’

  Holy shit.

  I wondered how many of his exotic beauties had used the same title in his bedroom.

  Oh, God. I felt sick.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, cocking his head at me. I must have paled. Or turned green.

  “Doughnuts,” I said weakly. “Too many doughnuts.”

  “My fault,” Pierce offered quickly. “Can’t get enough of the things.” He picked up his half full bag of doughnut holes and held it out in offering. “Would you like to try one, Superintendent?”

  God, we looked like the keystone cops.

  “The Superintendent has more important things to do than eat your damn doughnut holes, Pierce,” Hart exclaimed. “I expect more from a senior sergeant than this!”

  “Indeed,” my father announced, superciliously. He didn’t say anything more. He didn’t need to.

  He turned toward Hart and gave him his full attention. Dismissing us with that simply move.

  “You’ll deal with this as requested, then?” he asked.

  Hart didn’t so much as bristle, but something dangerous shifted behind his eyes.

  “I’ll do what’s expected, sir.”

  “Good. Right then. Good day,” my father said, not offering a personal farewell. He turned on his heel and we all watched him walk out of CIB and down the hall.

  Ryan crossed to the door and peered around it, then came back in once he’d seen my father board the elevator down the hall. He let a low whistle out and thrust his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his feet.

  His eyes locked on Inspector Hart.

  “I gather the plot just thickened,” he said softly.

  “If it got any thicker we’d be up to our bloody necks in treacle,” Hart replied.

  Then turned and look
ed at me.

  “You up for this, Keen?”

  Was I up for it? Up for what?

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t give me that shit, Detective. Your father just presented me with a signed affidavit pinning him at Sweet Hell for three hours with our murder victim, Samantha Hayes, last Saturday night. He’s admitted to carrying out a casual liaison with the woman on the Sweet Hell premises and in various hotel rooms around town. He’s given dates and times, as well.”

  Holy fucking shit.

  “He’s also confirmed his alibi for the morning of her death.”

  I felt nothing at that news.

  “What I want to know is why it took him over twenty-four hours to come here, even after you visited his office and personally advised him of our investigation into Sweet Hell. What I want to know is why am I being ordered by the Assistant Commissioner to leave the man alone.”

  I swallowed nervously. Pierce remained silent. I wasn’t sure what the Inspector was after.

  “Did he mention the Irreverent Inferno?” I asked, surprising all of us, I think.

  Hart stared at me for a very long time.

  Then, “No. He did not mention, either verbally or in writing, a connection with the Irreverent Inferno. Why is that?”

  I blinked, started to pace. Both men remained silent.

  Then I stopped.

  “Because he can’t.”

  “Not because he isn’t involved?” Pierce queried.

  “Oh, he’s involved. But he just can’t talk about it.”

  “Not unless we make him,” Pierce finished for me. “An NDA.”

  “Fuck,” Hart muttered. “And my hands are tied.”

  Both men looked at me.

  “And mine aren’t?” I said, more as a question than a statement.

  “What you do in the privacy of your family home with your father is your own concern,” Hart pointed out.

  Pierce smiled. It was evil. “Just tell us about it afterwards.”

  Oh, holy fucking shit.

  Chapter 18

  “We all need someone to lean on, Sport. That’s why God gave us broad shoulders and strong arms.”

  I promised myself I’d never come back here. Too many wasted hours spent crying over an empty grave. But when I left Pierce and Hart at CIB, discussing “the case,” with instructions to corner my father at his house as soon as possible, I’d somehow ended up here.

  Standing in front of a vacant space on a length of brick wall where a memorial plaque had once been.

  The wind buffeted my body, flicking strands of hair into my face. My chilled hands held my cellphone in front of me, willing it to ring. He wouldn’t stay silent if he was watching me falling apart right here.

  I needed focus. I needed an anchor to stop me spinning away. I felt lost and adrift and I couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down. I gasped every single breath as though I couldn’t get enough oxygen.

  I was being strangled by invisible hands. One minute they were attached to the elegant, manicured fingers of my father’s. The next the fingers had bruised and cut knuckles, blood dripping down my chest.

  Two more nights. Forty odd hours. And I’d see my shrink again.

  For the first time since I started my sessions with Hennessey the next one couldn’t come fast enough.

  But what good would he do? Teach me to count my breaths? Ask me how I felt? Patiently wait for me to empty his tissue box and open up a part of myself even I don’t allow myself to get.

  I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t go on like this. This was not me.

  My father never asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Don’t parents ask those sorts of things? It was just understood. I’d follow in his footsteps. I’d join the police force. Rise up in the ranks. Maintain the Keen name, the Keen tradition.

  I wonder now if that was the case. Maybe he would have acted exactly the same way if I’d become a librarian. Seen through me. Not even cared.

  Classic abandonment issues. Not that Hennessey has diagnosed my problems as such. Clinical Psychologists don’t diagnose. They treat. They help the patient recognise the triggers that set them off and give them tools to avoid them. But you don’t need a PhD in philosophy to figure out my daddy issues are rooted in his indifference.

  And now my boss expects me to walk into the one house I’ve always felt so very alone in and ask my father personal questions about his sexual predilections and not call him sir while I do it.

  “You won’t be on the job,” he’d said. “You cannot be asking any questions as a police detective.”

  What did he think my father and I talked about? The job. Cases. Or nothing at all… for six long years.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go there and be someone I’m not. But I didn’t know who I was anymore.

  What would Carl have said?

  I stared at the phone waiting for it to ring. It didn’t.

  My hand reached out and touched the space on the wall where Carl’s plague had been. He wasn’t here. Not even in spirit. Hell, he may well have never come here at all. It was just my imagination and the remnants of a license plate number sprayed on the wall.

  The Crown Prosecutor’s license plate number. The last man my former partner had killed.

  A humourless laugh burst out of my mouth. And I wanted to use Carl as an anchor?

  It didn’t make sense. Nothing did. Not a murder across from a private club, nor the activities that went on around the back.

  Where was Carole? Where was Eagle? Who the fuck were these hooded men?

  I let a slow breath of air out and pocketed my cellphone, taking one last look at the empty spot on the wall, I turned around, my eyes meeting the dark brown of Damon’s.

  My heart stopped. Oxygen, though, no longer depleted. Despite the lack of a pulse right then, I could breathe.

  I closed my eyes, sure I was seeing things. But when I opened them again he was still there. A few feet away, leaning against a post that marked this section of the cemetery.

  He looked tired. Worried. The wind caught little curls of his hair and danced them across the skin at the back of his neck. His lush lips were pressed in a thin line, his hands deep within the pockets of his long coat. He was dressed like I’d last seen him. Jeans, long sleeved Henley, thick soled boots.

  It might have been the very same clothes he’d worn last night, which meant he hadn’t been home since he left me naked in my bed. He hadn’t been home since leaving Sweet Hell. He hadn’t been home since he passed the second circle of hell and entered into the third.

  Maybe he was a glutton for punishment.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and walked toward him. My posture could have been attributed to the chill wind, but we both knew it wasn’t.

  “Congratulations,” I said softly, my words floating away, but he’d heard. “How did you convince Marcroft?”

  His eyes never left mine. His posture never changed. He was guarded, I realised. Holding himself taut as if he would break.

  “Have you found out anything more about where Carole might be?” he asked, and I felt the air I’d so easily been breathing, since I’d spotted him standing right there, disappear.

  I shook my head, reaching up to pull strands of my wayward hair behind an ear.

  “The jury’s still out on the Irreverent Inferno connection,” I admitted.

  “And yet, Pierce has told me I can go back in.”

  I shrugged. “It would be a wasted opportunity to not do so.”

  “What aren’t you saying, Lara?”

  I stared at him.

  “How did you convince Marcroft you passed?”

  “How do you think?”

  “Was he watching my house?”

  “No.”

  “Then how… Oh. You recorded it.” I shook my head, struggling for breath. “Camera as well as mic?”

  “I faced the camera lens to the wall. There were only shadows.” Like the shadows on my headboard. Hooded figures in between
twisted trees. But those shadows had been my imagination. Nathaniel Marcroft would have seen shadows of me.

  “How could you?” I whispered.

  He took a step toward me, but I held up my hand to ward him off.

  “If I’d asked you to help me would you have?” he whispered back.

  My eyes flicked up to his. Searching for an answer he wasn’t going to give me.

  “Do I have to say it?” I said. “Do I need to?”

  “Your job always came first, so there was a chance that you’d agree,” he admitted. “But you’re also very private about that sort of thing, very black and white about what’s right. About what’s wrong. And I needed ASI’s system to view it and get a copy of it, before handing it to Marcroft this morning.”

  “Who saw it?” I demanded.

  “Just Nick Anscombe. He cleared the control room.”

  My head still shook. Utterly blindsided by this development.

  “So, you chose to use me instead,” I said, but the words seemed so very distant.

  “I had no choice.”

  “Oh, no, Damon. There is always a choice.”

  “Bullshit, Lara! I had until dawn to pass the test. Who the hell would I have passed it with, if not you?”

  “But not telling me!” I yelled back. “God! Damon! They heard me…” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say the word. I could barely think it. Come. Orgasm. Climax. Pant. Scream. Fucking beg!

  I started walking back towards my car.

  “It’s Carole,” he said behind me, as if those two words made it all better.

  I spun back and crossed the distance between us, my finger slamming into his chest.

  “Yeah, and you know what?” I snarled, and I was picking it wasn’t pretty. “It’s always been Carole, Damon. For you Carole is your work.” Like Carl and CIB had been mine.

  His eyes flicked all over my face, looking for something, I don’t know what. He would have seen my anger. My embarrassment. My rage.

  But he chose to say, “You sounded beautiful.”

  I wanted to laugh. But nothing about this was funny. We were a train wreck. And if we were a train wreck, what did that make my life?

  “I can’t do this,” I said, staring at the ground, at the trees, at the tombstones. Anywhere but at him.