H.E.A.T. Book Bundle (H.E.A.T. Books 1-3)

by Nicola Claire

  Disappointment. Abandonment. Rage.

  Had he not trusted me enough to come to me and tell me what he was doing? Had he planned it for a while? How long? Had his behaviour changed like Anton Burgess' had before he died?

  Why?

  I shook my head. The ghost in the mirror shook hers.

  "I didn't know you at all," I said to myself.

  You knew me better than most, Carl answered in my mind.

  I fisted my hair and closed my eyes, mouth open in a silent scream as I bent over and breathed my anger and confusion out. "Damn you! Get out!"

  "Lara?" A knock sounded on the door as Damon's concerned voice drifted in. "Are you OK?"

  I froze, staring at the lock, willing myself to get it the fuck together.

  "I'm fine," I managed. "I'll be out in a moment." Then thought to add, "Has Pierce arrived?"

  Damon made a disgruntled sound. Of course he knew I was aware Pierce had arrived. I needed to get my shit together. Or they'd be locking me up in a padded room for a while.

  "He's here," Damon replied. "Viewing the footage. For about the tenth time."

  "Oh, OK. Be right there," I called, sitting down on the toilet seat lid and running a hand over my face to still the panic.

  I counted to three slowly in my head as I sucked a breath in, then let it out slowly for the count of three again. I repeated that process for several minutes. Slowing my breathing down like Hennessey had taught me to. I felt a little light headed afterwards, so maybe I was counting too fast.

  I tried again.

  Another firm knock sounded on the door. I was about to tell Damon to fuck off when Pierce spoke.

  "Detective, open the door."

  Detective. Not Keen. Not Lara. Detective.

  "I just need a minute, Pierce."

  "You've had twenty." I had? "Open the fucking door or I'll break it down."

  So melodramatic.

  I got up off the toilet seat and crossed to the bathroom door automatically, unlocking it and swinging it open.

  "No need to get your knickers in a twist, Sarge," I declared. "Can't a girl do her make-up in private?"

  His eyes scanned my face, clearly make-up free by now, and he scrubbed a hand over his goatee contemplatively.

  "You with us?" he asked. The unsaid being, "Or are you losing the plot?"

  I swallowed, painfully.

  Then said, "I'm with you."

  "Of course you are," he announced, turning his back to me and walking towards the lounge.

  I followed. He was right. I'm a doer not a thinker.

  Ah, fuck it. Why, Carl? Why?

  I blinked my eyes dry as I walked into the lounge. Damon was standing over by the dining table, but not looking at the files or laptop or whiteboard, staring instead back into the lounge expectantly to where Pierce and I had just arrived. He scanned my face, my body, back up to my face to scan again. Dark, intense and worried eyes holding mine.

  I hoped mine said, I'm fine. I feared they said, Why?

  Pierce threw himself onto a chair in the dining area, tapping a finger on the table's surface. I walked stiffly to a chair opposite him and only when I'd sat, did Damon. He gave me space, but his presence alone was a form of comfort. I looked over to him and offered a small smile. You'd think I'd declared my undying love; his face lit up with a mix of wonder and relief.

  "How do you want to play this, Keen?" Pierce asked, surprising the hell out of me.

  "How do I want to play this?" I confirmed.

  "That's what I said. He's your ex-partner. This was your case. It's your life he's trying to save. How do you want to play this?"

  "I..." I shook my head. "I don't understand what you're asking, Pierce."

  There was just too much to think about and I was right in the middle, drowning. I couldn't strategize my way out of a paper bag right now.

  "Hold on," I said abruptly. "You believe he's trying to save my life?"

  "What do you think?" Pierce asked, intelligent brown eyes boring into mine.

  "He's... Fuck, Pierce. He's killing people."

  "People hired to kill you," he pointed out reasonably.

  I sat back in my chair, my head shaking from side to side.

  "This is surreal," I murmured, running a hand over my eyes.

  "My recommendation," Pierce said, not commenting on my 'surreal' statement, "is to keep this between the three of us and Inspector Hart. If the department knows too soon, it could complicate things."

  "You think?" I said on a snort.

  "He's doing it for a reason, Lara," Pierce said softly.

  "They all have a reason why they kill, Pierce," I replied, nowhere near softly. "That's why we ask that fucking question so fucking often. Why?"

  "And we'll find out why," Pierce replied, still in that bloody calm tone. "But in order to do this in a remotely uncomplicated fashion, I recommend not publicising the fact that a dead detective has come back to life and is on a killing spree right now. The press gets hold of this and we'll be stonewalled by every internal investigation committee there is. You'll be suspended, if you're lucky, or observed if you're not, for the duration of any investigation into Carl Forrester's habits up until he went rogue."

  Rogue. Oh, dear God. Carl was a rogue criminal with previous police force experience. Those were considered the most lethal. Carl was a rogue.

  "He wanted you to see him," Pierce mused, sitting back in his chair and tapping the table's surface again.

  "Anyone could have recognised him on that footage," Damon pointed out. I nodded my silent agreement.

  "He hung around in that carpark," Pierce said, "just long enough to be picked up briefly before the footage was cut off by computer forensics. He knew how long to stay back and when to come forward. He knew they'd miss the significance of a blurred image in the corner of the field of view from that camera. But he also knew you would double check that footage at some stage and ask for the full length video."

  Then he said what I had thought while I watched the footage play, making a chill run down my spine which felt so wrong when associated with the Carl Forrester I had known.

  "When he looked into that camera he knew he was looking at you, Keen. I could see it on his face. That pissed off, wake-the-fuck-up look he used to get, if you weren't paying him enough attention."

  Everyone remained silent for a while after that.

  "You know him," Pierce said with a sigh eventually. "No one knows him like you, Keen. He trained you. He nurtured you. Fuck. He moulded you in his image."

  I thought I was going to be sick.

  "We know the informants have been hired to kill you," Pierce added, deciding, obviously, to be the voice of reason here, recapping the case so far and how it now pertained to this new piece of shocking evidence.

  It should have been me, but I couldn't speak for the bile flooding my mouth.

  "We've been going about this the wrong way," he added. "Trying to see the link between these informants and you. That's not it," he declared. "The link is Carl. Always has been. His informants. His cases. What you know about them that someone doesn't want public knowledge."

  Oh, fuck. It made sense.

  "How far back this goes, I don't know," Pierce went on. "But we can assume it's an open case, because revenge just doesn't fit. Why hire two-bit players to kill you, who clearly keep fucking it up, just because you helped put someone away? No," he said, resolutely. "This is active. This is prevention, not cure, not even a band-aid. And the person, or people, behind it have access to the informants as well."

  "What have they all worked on of Carl's?" Damon asked, his seemingly most favourite question of late.

  "The King spill-over case," I said, my voice nowhere near the volume and strength that it usually was. Thankfully, neither man commented on my weakness.

  "Fucking hell," Pierce breathed. "Of course. This all began when the Solicitor-General's office got involved, and the Crown Prosecutor started to dig deeper, finding holes."

 
; "Carl wasn't covering anything up," I found myself saying. Defending my old partner when he truly no longer deserved it.

  It was habit. Nothing more.

  "You know him," Pierce reiterated.

  I shook my head. "I thought I did."

  "The night he died," Damon said, making my body jerk and Pierce turn a frightening look of incredulity towards him. Damon corrected his statement. "The night he disappeared." I knew there was reason why I could never say 'Carl had died'. "He'd met with an informant, hadn't he? Maybe the information, that the people behind this want, is pertaining to that."

  "Good point," Pierce agreed. "But what was it?" His eyes flicked to mine.

  "He never had a chance to tell me," I said, my voice still sounding so damn pathetic. I wanted to clear my throat, to harden the fuck up. But I was hurting, so fucking much. This hurt. Carl had hurt me all over again, this time it wasn't because he'd left.

  It was because he never did.

  I blinked back more tears, wiped a hand over my eyes and stared at the table's surface.

  I wasn't sure I could do this. For the first time in my career I was going to pass over a case to someone else. Willingly. For the first time I was going to fail to give one hundred percent on the job. For the first time I was going to blacken the Keen name on the force.

  All because of Carl and my idiotic worship of him.

  He'd ruined me. I'd been hearing his God damn voice in my head for months. I'd not been able to bear his name being spoken aloud without reacting. I'd suffered the indignity of visiting the department clinical psychologist to sort my shit out. It wasn't working.

  I was failing and I was about to fail even more.

  "Where would he go, Lara?" Damon asked, bringing my focus back to the room.

  It was a simple question. A leading question. Because Damon knew how my mind worked. Damon knew I couldn't stop until I figured this out. Whether I wanted to or not, I had to act. To do. Not think. It's who I am.

  Carl had known that too. Had he counted on it? Because the man was trying to get caught, there was no two ways about it. He'd been leaving me messages at every scene. And now he was talking to me through the camera lens of a CCTV system on Quay Street.

  The question wasn't so much why anymore. It was what.

  What are you trying to tell me, Old Man? What do you know that they think I know?

  "I'm not sure where he would go, but I'm going to find out," I said resolutely, into the silent and expectant room.

  "You do that," Pierce instructed, standing up from his chair. "I'll go corner Hart and keep the hounds off your back." He walked to the lounge room door, turned and said, eyes on my face, "Trust your gut, Keen. Especially where Carl's concerned. It's the one part of your detecting skills he had no hand in developing."

  In other words, my gut instinct was my own. Not honed by Carl nor moulded by him. It was mine. And I was going to need it.

  Because Carl Forrester was a bloody good detective when he was on the force. The best of the best.

  It occurred to me then, that there were not too many degrees of difference between a cop who'd spent his lifetime dealing with criminals on the right side of the law, and a rogue who now found himself surrounded by them on the other side of that law. Carl had crossed over, an easy and surprisingly short step for him to take.

  Now I just had to work out the what, and then I'd know the why.

  Time to play the master at his own game.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  "You're a damn good cop, Keen. But stick with me and I'll make you a superstar."

  Starting is always the hardest part. I'd made the decision to go after Carl, but taking that first step could have been a mountain for all the effort it required. I sat at the table in my dining area and stared at the whiteboard willing myself to get up, grab my gun and jacket, and walk out that door.

  What if I found him? What would I do then?

  Four people dead. Did it matter that they would have killed me if they'd had the chance? Two of them did try.

  Four people dead at Carl's hand.

  I've killed one person through the course of my career. Kenny Tyndall. The man I thought had killed Carl. I felt justified in my actions. I had guilt for being too slow to fire, but there was no blame associated with my attempt to disarm the kid. He'd held Carl at gunpoint. I'd fired to prevent Carl's death.

  I'd thought I'd failed. That's where my guilt lay. Was it misplaced? Should I have been feeling guilty for killing Tyndall? Is that what Hennessey was trying to get me to see?

  It was all screwed up. What I thought happened. What I thought I should be feeling. What Carl had done. I was nowhere near prepared to deal with it. I didn't know how, and for the first time I wished I could talk about these sorts of lost and confused feelings, to get them out.

  I was even tempted to phone Hennessey.

  But I am my father's daughter. I may not file it away, but I definitely keep moving on.

  I stood up from the chair and dusted my jeans down. They didn't need it. They were fine. I glanced at my faded Pink Floyd t-shirt and decided a change of top was in order at least. If I had to face my old mentor, I'd do it in comfort, but with a modicum of style.

  I walked past Damon without a word and entered my bedroom down the hall. I pulled my t-shirt off over my head as I crossed to my wardrobe, chucking it on the bed, not bothering to fold it. I was working well outside of normal parameters, keeping my clothing tidy didn't even register more than a slight blip in my mind.

  My head hurt. Too much swirling around inside.

  My heart hurt. It felt empty by comparison.

  I pulled a white shirt off the rack and slipped into it, aware my bra was a dark colour and would show through if I removed my jacket later. I turned, as I started to do up the buttons, and saw Damon watching me. His dark eyes were cautious.

  "Are you going to talk about this?" he asked, carefully.

  "There's no time," I replied, finishing with the shirt and retrieving my gun from the bathroom.

  "Carl's been alive for four months without making a move, there's time," he said softly.

  "Do we have to do this now?" I asked. Using every bit of strength I had to stay focused. Focused on what came next, not what had been.

  He ran a hand through his curls, scratched the back of his head, and reluctantly, it seemed, shook his head.

  "What's next?" he asked, and I could have kissed him. I knew he wouldn't drop this forever, but I was extremely grateful he recognised my need to be doing something other than dissecting the hell out of this... debacle.

  I let a slow breath of air out and grabbed a well-worn blue dress jacket off the back of an armchair in the corner of the room. I slipped into it before I spoke.

  "His house was sold by his estate, someone else lives there. He drank at the Birdcage and ate at Angelo's, both places would recognise him and he'd run the risk of being seen by ex-colleagues. He wants to keep a low profile, so he won't go to old haunts."

  "What else?" Damon encouraged, aware, I think, that this was helping me get back on an even keel.

  "He used to like to fish out in the Motuhie Channel, heading out from Half Moon Bay Marina in his tin dinghy. But his boat's gone and he'd hardly believe I'd meet up with him out there."

  "Those are old pastimes, anyone who worked with him would be well aware of all of that. You know him. Pierce said, you knew him the best. He didn't mean any of this, Lara. He meant for you to get into Carl's head."

  I stared out the window at my neighbour's tree, blindly watching the slight breeze rustle the leaves, making them dance in the mid afternoon sun. What would Carl expect me to do?

  I struggled to think of somewhere only he and I knew. Somewhere that was just ours. But despite spending most of our time in each other's company, we didn't have a special place for just us. CIB at Central Police. My car usually, occasionally his. Angelo's during the day. The Birdcage at night. Carl didn't use a gym and he met his informants on the street, s
everal of which on his own.

  Keeping your sources anonymous is lesson number one for any decent detective. He knew of some of mine, though. Eagle in particular. I wondered if he'd left a message there.

  "Let's try Eagle," I suggested, at a loss for what else to offer.

  "Would he be around this early in the day?" Damon asked, moving back down the hall to the front door. I slipped my battered foot into comfortable flats that had been left by the entranceway, uncaring that they didn't match my hastily thrown together outfit.

  "He won't be turning tricks, but he'll be about," I said, opening the front door. "He lives and breathes K Road. It's his livelihood and entertainment."

  Damon crossed to his HEAT truck and pulled out a dark jacket to wear over his Henley and jeans. He'd obviously not brought a change of clothes, because he was still in what he wore last night when I found him asleep in his car. The jacket on, he returned to the passenger side of my sedan, looking hot in a casual couldn't-care-less kind of way. Damon was a master of the understated. Worn jeans, scuffed boots, wide leather belt, a plain dark blue long sleeved t-shirt and black woollen trench/pea coat, with oversized buttons and buckles, just skimming his very fine butt.

  He looked like he'd stepped off a runway. I wasn't so sure that I did.

  I mentally shrugged my shoulders and slipped into the car. Fashion was not one of my strengths. At least my toe had stopped throbbing and my gun was covered.

  We drove in silence to Karangahape Road, finding carparking at the top of Queen Street, which would allow us to approach the red light part of K Road from a distance. Hopefully discovering Eagle before we made it down to the rougher end.

  The usual Auckland city shoppers and café hoppers were clogging the wide footpaths, the spill-over of chairs and tables making the going a bit haphazard. I kept my eyes peeled, checking in stores, glancing over faces to see if I could pick out Eagle or one of his boys. Eagle ran with a group of like minded young men, who I was sure made up part of his information gathering team. He always seemed to be aware of things before anyone else. Sometimes, even before the Police.