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

by Nicola Claire

  “What’s your sister’s connection to Sweet Hell?” I repeated, voice devoid of any emotion.

  My cop voice. And he just smiled at it. A sardonic grimace more than an outright smile. But a telling reaction, all the same.

  “From what I gather,” he started and I sat forward on my seat. He’d been investigating. He didn’t know for sure. He’d been trying to find out.

  I glanced down at his knuckles, acutely aware that Damon’s methods of interrogation were often quite different from mine.

  “She’s gotten herself tied up with Sweet Hell’s darker side,” he finished.

  “It’s got a darker side?”

  “You saw it,” he offered. “At least, I assume you did. You mentioned the nine circles of Hell.”

  I stood up and started pacing, tapping a finger against my lips.

  “A back room?”

  “Not as such. More like an elite layer to their membership. Invitation only. And even then, you have to pass an initiation period in order to be accepted into the upper echelons of Sweet Hell.”

  “You mean the lower circles of Hell?”

  His head tilted to the side, eyes contemplative as he surveyed my still pacing form.

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that, but I think you could be right.” Which didn’t bode well. The nine circles of Hell involved all sorts of immoral and illegal activities. But I needed to know more to be sure.

  “What have you found out so far?” I asked, ceasing the pacing to look directly at him, as I retook my seat on the couch.

  He was still leaning against the desk, but not casually. His position appeared more from necessity than anything else. He was exhausted. No wonder Flack had beaten him on the Sky Tower stairs.

  “There’s a waiting period. I’m currently in it.”

  I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  Damon shook his head. “I don’t know, Lara. I approached a few people,” his fingers clenched, the scrapes across his knuckles splitting, “and managed to gain an invitation.”

  I perked up at that. “An invitation to this… nine circles of Hell?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re waiting for something?” I queried, trying to figure this all out. Damon wasn’t exactly being helpful. But not, I think, because he didn’t want to. I truly believed he was as confused about the whole procedure as me, right now.

  “I’m in a waiting period,” he repeated.

  “But what does that mean?”

  “I… don’t… know,” he said slowly, enunciating each word succinctly.

  “OK, OK,” I said, trying to bring him down from the edge. Strange how a few minutes could change the dynamics of a room. I’d been the one on the brink of a breakdown, and now Damon was the one teetering on the edge. The edge of what, I couldn’t say. But a solid guess would be blowing his stack.

  “Show me the invitation,” I demanded, returning to my cop persona.

  This time his smile was more him. More Damon. Amused with a good dollop of frustration.

  Was that what our relationship felt like to him? It didn’t bear thinking about right now.

  He pushed off from his lean against the desk and rounded to his chair, but didn’t sit down. He pulled his keys out of his trouser pocket and proceeded to unlock a drawer, then lifted a piece of paper out. Black with gold writing.

  “They certainly have a theme going,” I commented, as he brought the slip around and surprisingly sat himself down on the couch beside me.

  It took everything in me not to look at his face as I accepted the invitation he held out. We were nowhere near on solid ground, and one look could mean it all slipped out from under me. If that one look let me see his doubt.

  He didn’t believe in me. I didn’t trust him. It was a fucking mess.

  Just like the rest of my life.

  I cleared my throat and turned the invitation around so I could read it. Three sentences. That’s all. But they packed a punch.

  To seek Paradise, you must first enter Purgatory and cross into Hell.

  Prove your worth.

  For the Irreverent Inferno awaits.

  “Ooohkay,” I said slowly. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  Damon let out a little laugh. We’d finally reached humorous. His body relaxed back onto the sofa and his hand crept out and wrapped around mine, where it rested on my thigh.

  I can’t describe the feeling associated with his touch right then. The knowledge that he’d still reach for me, hold me, even just fingers laced with mine, when minutes ago we’d been divided by too many walls.

  I needed him. He kept everything I didn’t want to feel, to face, away. I had no idea if that was healthy, or not. But I didn’t care. I needed him.

  “The reference to Paradise, Purgatory and Hell is from Dante’s The Divine Comedy,” Damon said, lifting the invitation from my fingers and rereading it himself. I had the impression he’d memorised the words. But clearly rereading it helped him to focus.

  “The nine circles of Hell,” I offered.

  “Exactly. Have you read it?”

  “Not my style.”

  “I think it might be now, if CIB is investigating Sweet Hell.”

  I let those words settle for a second, before I replied.

  “What do you know, Damon?” I finally asked.

  “They have Carole, Lara. What for, I’m not sure. And everything I’ve found out over the past week indicates she went willingly.” He stretched his free hand out again, flexing those bruised and battered knuckles.

  “The members,” I whispered. “You beat up members of Sweet Hell.”

  His face tipped down and he stared at the invitation sitting on his thigh.

  “I don’t know what they’re doing there, but I don’t think it’s anything good.”

  Silence as we both digested that.

  “It could just be a club, Damon,” I said gently, trying to soften the words.

  “Paradise. Purgatory. And Hell. What sort of club uses those types of references?”

  “A pretentious one? There was a Rolls Royce parked around the back.”

  He turned his head to look at me. Those dark eyes full of such emotion I wondered how he managed to keep them at bay. I needed his strength of character. I needed his steel resolve. I would have been drowning in them, had I been him right then.

  “Why were you at the club, Lara?” he asked, and we’d come full circle, it seemed.

  Damn it. That woman had been with the man who killed her willingly. Even I could see that in the blurred images of the video footage Jones and I had watched at Sweet Hell. Damon was saying Carole was involved in this club willingly. Could she be next?

  “There’s nothing to connect them,” I started, hedging my next words with that caveat. “But a murder took place across the road from Sweet Hell this morning.”

  Damon’s whole body stiffened.

  “Not Carole,” I said swiftly. “And like I said, there’s nothing to connect Sweet Hell with what happened across the street.”

  “But you don’t believe that,” he challenged.

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t believe that.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the traitor in CIB?” he suddenly asked.

  “No, why would you say that?”

  He smiled softly. “You’re working live cases again.” Oh.

  “Yeah. I think Hart’s letting me back in the fold.”

  “Congratulations, love,” he murmured, lifting my hand up to his lips for a brief kiss.

  Such a simple measure. Such an inconsequential move. Such a depth of emotion welling inside of me.

  “What are you going to do, Damon?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the curls up.

  “Accept the invitation.”

  “But what does that involve?”

  “I’ve no idea. I feel like I’m in limbo.”

  I thought about that for a minute.

  “Who gave you the invitation?
” I finally asked.

  “The owner of Sweet Hell.”

  My turn to still.

  “Kyan Marcroft?”

  “No. A Nathaniel Marcroft.” Kyan’s father. A one time good friend of my dad.

  “How did it come about?” I asked, needing to join some dots soon, or none of this would make any sense.

  Damon let out a little sigh; they’d become less turbulent, more controlled. More him.

  “I went to Sweet Hell on Saturday, trying to find Carole. The place she’d been staying in out at Piha somehow heard she’d been seen there. They contacted me when she hadn’t returned to the home for three days.”

  “Three days?” I said incredulously.

  “She’d been doing so well,” he explained. “Moved into the next level of her transition. She was allowed to come and go.”

  “OK,” I offered, wanting him to continue, even though I was concerned with how easily Carole had been able to return to old haunts. And Karangahape Road was definitely an old haunt for a drug and sex addict.

  “No one knew her name at Sweet Hell, but I wasn’t convinced. I approached a few of the men I’d seen there on Saturday and finally found out about the back door. The guy I talked to didn’t say much. Only that it was invitation only to attend. I went back to Sweet Hell on Thursday, but no one answered the back door, so I went around the front and entered the club proper. It was there Marcroft approached me.”

  “What did he say?” I asked, when Damon had stalled.

  Damon frowned. “Asked me what I did for a living. General small talk types of things. Then after a couple of drinks, he moved on to my preferences.”

  “Preferences?”

  “What I liked for entertainment,” he explained and I felt a slight chill race down my spine.

  I’m not sure why. Damon had only ever visited Zero Gravity, the sex club I investigated for a date rape case I’d been working on, for his sister’s sake. And now, Sweet Hell, only because of his sister, as well. He’d never shown a penchant for that kind of thing before. It was only ever for his sister.

  And yet, Damon, I suspected, was a closet dominant. He demanded in bed. Oh, he also gave. But he controlled every single encounter. I’d always thought it was simply my body responding to his. I am in no way submissive. But I’ve also not been myself lately, and Damon has taken more and more. Just in bed. Nowhere else.

  Because just in bed, I let the walls down. Just in bed, I let go of Carl.

  And Damon has recently stormed in and taken control. Of my pleasure. Of my body. Giving me a much needed moment in time where I’m not the one carrying the load.

  I let a slow breath of air out and prepared for what would come next.

  “And you told him what exactly?”

  He looked at me then. Unafraid. Chin proud. Not hiding at all.

  “I told him I liked a challenge,” he said, voice low and lethally seductive. I’m not sure he was aware he’d adopted his bedroom tone. “I told him I like control. At the tables. In my life. With my women.”

  I didn’t blink. I most certainly did not look away.

  “And Mr Marcroft?” I pressed.

  “His exact words were, ‘Two vices close to my heart.’ And then he slipped me the invitation and disappeared.”

  “‘Two vices close to my heart,’” I repeated, my brow furrowing with my thoughts. “Gambling and Sex,” I finally concluded.

  “Two commodities Sweet Hell deals in,” Damon agreed.

  “Since when do you gamble?” I queried, abstractly.

  “Since I walked into Sweet Hell last Saturday looking for my sister.” I glanced back up at him, his eyebrows were raised. “I wasn’t going to go in there and flash her picture around, Lara. I pretended to be looking for a certain type of girl, while I lost over three thousand dollars at one of their tables.”

  Holy shit. The man went undercover. Seriously undercover. I could use this. CIB could use this. Marcroft didn’t know.

  I paused in my machinations.

  “He’ll find out you’re dating me.”

  “Who will?” Damon asked.

  “Marcroft.”

  Silence. Then Damon announced, “Then we give him reason to suspect we’ve parted ways.”

  My heart tripped over itself inside my chest.

  “I need to find her, Lara.”

  I nodded. My heart leapt into my throat and quivered; a fibrillated, dying beat.

  “Will you help me?” he whispered, the plea so much more poignant for his soft tone.

  I closed my eyes. Saw the dead woman on the footpath outside The Whiskey Lounge. Her face morphed into Carole’s.

  “I’ll help you,” I whispered back. “But it has to be through CIB.”

  I couldn’t open my eyes again. I couldn’t face his derision.

  The dead woman was an open case. One in which I’d already directed the lead detective towards Sweet Hell. Even if I wanted to help Damon outside of my profession, it would be impossible to do so, without Pierce or Jones, or God forbid, Cawfield finding out.

  I wanted to explain this all to Damon. I wanted to couch my offer in an explanation that painted me in a better light.

  I said nothing. Hiding behind my wall of emotions. Drowning in turmoil and mistrust.

  “So be it,” he said, the words spoken without inflection.

  But the lack of intonation spoke volumes.

  So did the fact that Damon rose from the sofa and rounded his desk. Sitting himself down in his oversized and intimidating black office chair.

  Chapter Seven

  “If you can’t see the wood for the trees, then get the fuck out of the forest.”

  My head hurt. My heart hurt. But there was nothing to be done for either.

  “How do you want to play this?” Damon asked, from his side of the great divide. I stared at the clutter on his desk, wanting desperately to reach out and swipe the whole bloody lot of it onto the floor.

  The better to reach him.

  I remained where I stood.

  “I’ll advise Hart and Pierce. Show them the invite. Get their take on it, and we’ll go from there.”

  “The invitation was for me,” Damon pointed out. His words clipped. Professional. Impersonal. “Hand delivered, so to speak. It won’t work for anyone on your team.”

  My team. I see.

  “They’d be identified as cops immediately anyway,” I agreed.

  “There are cops at Sweet Hell.”

  The room spun for a second. I had difficulty finding my voice.

  “How do you know this?” I rasped.

  He didn’t even look up at me, his eyes scanning a document resting on his desk. It took a second for me to read the upside down writing. It was an internal HEAT memo about car parking spaces.

  I tilted my head and studied the man before me. He was hiding again.

  “Some of the people I questioned,” Damon offered as explanation.

  “Some of the people you beat up,” I countered.

  “Lara.”

  “Damon.”

  He threw his hands up and finally looked at me.

  “You’re angry,” I said softly, belying my own fury right then.

  “And you’re not?” he shot back. Touche.

  “Which cops?”

  “I have no idea. I was just warned that my fists would not be tolerated by some of the members in Sweet Hell. The implication was definitely that they had the law behind them, should I attempt anything outside of the club.”

  “And all of your… confrontations were outside of the club?”

  “Yes. I was the picture of exemplary debauchery inside it.”

  I hated this. But I would not be cowed by it.

  “A contradiction in terms,” I said instead of the myriad of things swirling inside my head.

  “Yes,” he agreed, lips twitching. “The perfect fallen gentleman.”

  “And that’s what they want? This place?”

  “Oh, yes. They want to push the boundaries
of society, but in a way that challenges only them.”

  “Not the law? So, they’re not breaking it?” I didn’t get it.

  “Lara, I suspect there are two sides to Sweet Hell. The public, legitimate gentleman’s club.”

  “And the nine circles of Hell.”

  “Exactly.”

  I started pacing. Damon leaned back in his chair and watched.

  “I need to update those on the case.”

  “Just Pierce and Hart,” Damon countered.

  I started to shake my head, it would be impossible.

  “There are cops involved in this place, Lara. I will not have my sister’s life placed in further jeopardy because of a mole inside CIB.”

  Oh, fuck it. He had a point.

  “OK. Just Pierce and Hart.”

  Damon’s face softened. “Thank you,” he murmured.

  I stilled. Did he think I was doing this just because I was a cop?

  I cleared that uncomfortable thought from my mind.

  “It might be best if I meet with Pierce outside of CIB,” I suggested.

  “Good idea.”

  “You can’t be there.”

  “No. We are no longer dating.”

  The words cut like knives and there was a part of me that believed them.

  But they were just for this case. Weren’t they?

  “No longer dating,” I repeated, softly.

  Silence.

  “I guess I should get going, then.” I turned toward the door.

  “Wait!” Damon almost shouted. My heart swelled. “We need to make a scene.”

  What? I looked back at him, the confusion must have registered on my face.

  “Marcroft has to know we’ve broken up,” he pointed out reasonably.

  “Oh.”

  Damon ran a hand through his hair. I wasn’t sure, but I think it was shaking.

  “We’ll have to convince the guys here,” he said, the words sounding rough when he spoke them.

  “Why?” They were his men. He trusted them. Didn’t he?

  “There’s too many of us. We know too many people. Someone could unintentionally slip up.”

  Oh, God. This wasn’t happening.

  I nodded my head.

  “How do you want to do this?”

  “Slap me,” he ordered.