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

by Nicola Claire

  “Excuse me?”

  “Hit me, Lara.”

  “I’m not hitting you.”

  He stared at me, something working behind those dark eyes.

  “OK, then we do this publicly.” He reached for the door handle at my back.

  “Wait!” My turn to almost shout.

  His gaze came up to my face. He was still reaching for the door handle, so his body was leaning forward, hot breath close to my cheek.

  “It’ll have to be more than just us not seeing each other,” I finally said, after I’d been staring at his eyes for way too long.

  But then, he’d been staring at mine, too.

  He pulled back from the door.

  “What do you suggest?” he asked evenly.

  I tried futilely to still my rapid breaths. Blinked a few times to clear my head. And then came to only one conclusion.

  “We need this to happen quickly.”

  Damon nodded. What with the open case, potential for more murders, Eagle missing, and now Damon’s sister tied up in Sweet Hell, this could escalate really fast.

  “I’ll pay a visit to my father.”

  “What?” Damon said on a breath of surprised air. Whether that was for the fact I was openly suggesting facing my only living parent after several years of minimal contact or for the fact that he couldn’t see a connection between Ethan Keen and Sweet Hell, I couldn’t say.

  But I had to enlighten him.

  I cleared my throat.

  He crossed his arms over his wide chest and stared down at me. Eyebrow raised.

  “The Marcrofts used to live next door to us when I was a child.”

  “I see.” That’s all. But it was enough to know he was not impressed with this late disclosure of information.

  “I think they’re still in touch with my father,” I added.

  “What makes you say this?”

  Another throat clearing.

  “Lara.” Not a question. A demand.

  I ground my teeth. But he had to know. I had to say this. I’d have to say this to Pierce as well.

  Fuck!

  “Cawfield suggested that I might get into Sweet Hell if I used my name.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Kyan also gave the impression…”

  “Who is Kyan?”

  “Nathaniel Marcroft’s son. I saw him at Sweet Hell this morning.”

  “Right.” Harsh. Short. Way more than just clipped.

  “Kyan also gave the impression,” I repeated carefully, “that he was aware I hadn’t been home for a long time. Which would mean his family keeps in touch with my father.”

  Silence. It was uncomfortable. I’d never felt this uncomfortable with Damon before. Even when we’d split up.

  And now we were separating again.

  I widened my eyes to stave off the stinging. I was a Keen. I didn’t cry.

  “So, one visit with my dad and the Marcrofts will hopefully know.”

  Silence again. I couldn’t look at Damon. I couldn’t lift my head.

  “What aren’t you saying, Lara?” he finally asked.

  That did make me rise my head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think your father visits Sweet Hell?”

  “What? No. Of course not.” But that was an outright lie.

  I may not have a tell like Damon’s. But he knew me pretty damn well.

  “Oh, love,” he said softly. I started to shake my head.

  He couldn’t have it both ways. He couldn’t want to use our relationship, or lack of one, to find his sister, and then call me “love” in that tone of voice.

  I wasn’t strong enough. And that admission cost me way too much, as well.

  “I need to go. Tell Pierce. See my father. Get this sorted.”

  “Lara.” He reached for me. God knows to do what.

  I opened the door and slipped out.

  “No, Damon!” I said loudly. Loud enough for my voice to carry to the others in the main room. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  I started heading toward the chaos of HEAT central, Damon fell into step beside me.

  “Just hold on,” he demanded. “Don’t leave like this.”

  “There’s nothing else to say,” I almost shouted, making the noise in the common room all but stop.

  “There’s a hell of a lot more to say, damn it!”

  I shook my head, hair flying out in all directions. Then stopped, turned my back on the silent men watching on avidly, and said, voice controlled and very much Detective Lara Keen.

  “Not anymore.”

  Damon’s eyes flashed. A moment in time hidden from his men by me. He loved me. It was right there. This was an act. For his sister. For the case.

  Then he said, “Fine. I’m done with this anyway.”

  And turned on his heel and stormed back to his office.

  I stood there too long. It was an act. I knew this. He loved me.

  It still hurt.

  I was so damn confused.

  And I realised, belatedly, that I might just love him too.

  Someone cleared their throat behind me. I shook myself out of the moment and spun to face the crowd.

  “You OK?” Marc asked.

  “Fine,” I said, but it came out in a whisper. They believed it. They believed the act.

  I almost did as well.

  “Do you need a lift somewhere?” Stretch asked.

  “My car’s outside,” I managed, the volume of my voice near normal.

  “Can you drive?” Jude rumbled and I offered a signature sneer.

  “Of course I can fucking drive. Better than any of you lot.” A few men smiled, a couple chuckled. All of them felt my pain. “Right,” I said. “See ya.”

  Several calls of farewell sounded out, genuinely given. Just as I reached the door to the stairwell I glanced back. Everyone was watching me leave. Everyone, except Flack.

  He was storming off down the hallway to yell at Damon, if the look on his face said what I think it did.

  I offered a small smile and wave, and then practically ran down the stairs to escape.

  This day had started out bad and was just getting worse by the minute. And the silence in my car, once I slipped inside, almost undid me. But the shadow standing in the upstairs window of the hallway watching as I drove out of Pitt Street Fire Station’s carpark had me stifling a sob.

  It was just an act. We hadn’t broken up. Not really. Just an act.

  God, I was so confused.

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

  “Thanks, Carl. A real help,” I muttered as I negotiated Greys Ave and onto Mayoral Drive.

  Fuck! Three weeks he’d been alive to me again. And for all the good it did, he might as well have remained dead. My mentor. The one person I could say anything to. In the five months since I’d watch him being shot, and then fall off those cliffs, I hadn’t found a replacement. No one could replace Carl Forrester.

  But Damon had. Not intentionally. Certainly not intentionally by me. But somehow he’d wrangled himself into my life again. Cemented himself right there, next to my heart.

  What the hell was I going to do now?

  I sucked in a deep breath and pulled the vehicle into the underground carpark at Central Police. Then realised my mistake right away. I couldn’t talk to Pierce here. I needed to lure him off site and somewhere we wouldn’t be overheard.

  I pulled my cellphone from my pocket and swiped until I found his name. I’d just dialled when a tap sounded out on my window, making me jump, à la Damon at Pitt Street Fire Station carpark earlier. But it wasn’t Damon at the window with a cellphone to his ear. It was Pierce.

  “Where have you been?” he said when the phone call connected. I still held the device to my ear.

  My eyes stayed locked on Pierce’s deep brown ones and I let out a little breath of air.

  “Keen?” he queried. “You OK?”

  “Jump in,” I directed
, and closed the call, unlocking the doors to the car.

  He rounded the bonnet without hesitation and dived into the passenger seat. I started the car and pulled out from beneath the station, before either of us said a word.

  “OK, what’s up?” he asked, clearly onto me. “Why the need for stealth.”

  “Who says this is stealth?” I was curious as to how he’d seen through me.

  “Because there’s no coffee in this damn car and there’s a hell of a lot of it upstairs at CIB. CIB where you are officially welcome again. CIB where the murder case you’re supposed to be working on is being coordinated and discussed and various roles already assigned. You wouldn’t miss any of that unless you needed stealth.”

  Silence.

  Then, “Is it the traitor?”

  I shook my head. Then offered a shrug at the last second.

  “Yes or no, Lara. And for fuck’s sake, start talking.” Pierce wasn’t usually this curt with me, or anyone for that matter. But things had been strained at CIB. For everyone.

  “OK,” I said, pulling the car over along Tamaki Drive, not opening my window, but still hearing the rolling waves as they crashed against the storm wall.

  I gave him a succinct run-down of what had transpired since I’d left the crime scene that morning. Not missing a single thing. Not changing the inflection of my voice or allowing myself to feel. I grasped every lesson my father had ever taught me growing up. Every iota of me that made me a Keen. I held it together. I gave nothing of my emotional state away. Finally ending up handing over the invitation to a stunned and silent Ryan Pierce.

  Who had clearly seen through everything.

  “Are you OK?” he said purposefully, repeating his earlier words, but this time with so much more understanding.

  “I’m fine.” He nodded. He didn’t believe me.

  Leaning back in his seat he stared out the window at the small vessels bobbing about on their moorings just off shore. He didn’t speak for a very long time, and I certainly had said well and truly enough to last me a lifetime. So I waited him out. Staring at the same scene. Wondering if people actually sailed those blasted things, or owning one and having it berthed at the Auckland Sailing Club was status enough.

  “I’ll have to tell Hart,” he advised eventually, still looking out to sea.

  “But no one else.”

  “No one else.” He let a long breath out. “There’s no saying Sweet Hell is actually involved in this murder.”

  “Just my gut.”

  “Just your gut,” he repeated. “Do you think the traitor might be involved in this club?”

  “No way to tell,” I offered. “But how many corrupt cops can there be?”

  He did look at me at that. “Too many, Keen.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “The Declan King spill-over case,” he said as explanation. The case he was still working on that had ended up with the Crown Prosecutor’s death at Carl’s hand.

  “Anyone I know?” I asked, feeling infinitely tired all of a sudden.

  “So far, low level uniforms. But Hart and I suspect there’s more to come out in the wash.”

  “So, maybe we’ll dig some up inside Sweet Hell,” I suggested.

  “Maybe. You ready for it, if we do?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Don’t act naive with me, Keen. I don’t know what Joe’s playing at, but to mention your dad outside Sweet Hell is interesting.”

  “Interesting,” I repeated.

  “When will you go see him?”

  I looked at my watch, as though that would give me inspiration.

  “No time like the present,” I said with more conviction than I felt.

  Silence. He knew what visiting my father would mean to me. Ryan Pierce, I realised, had made it further inside my walls than I’d suspected. He wasn’t a Carl Forrester. But he was… something.

  “So, are we on for this?” I asked, watching a yacht swing ‘round to the south with a sudden direction change in the wind.

  “I’ll have to OK it with Hart, but it’s our best shot. I’ll let you know. Then will you tell Michaels?”

  “It’s best I not talk with him,” I said, feeling every word as though a blow to the head. Or heart.

  Definitely heart.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Pierce agreed. “And I’d be as much a tip-off as you, I’m afraid.”

  “Then how do we do this?”

  “I’ve got an idea. Leave it with me.”

  I stared at him for a long time. Long enough for him to swing his face back to me and away from the strangely hypnotic scene outside the window of the vehicle.

  “Trust me, Keen,” Pierce said, saying the words I’d always found so hard to believe.

  I held my breath, but didn’t move to agree.

  He sighed, reached over and switched the stereo on, and said, “Trust me.”

  I reluctantly pulled the car back out into traffic and hung a U-turn as soon as the road was clear, heading back to CIB.

  But what choice did I have? No Carl. No Damon. A murdered woman. A gaming hell slap bang in the middle. A missing informant. A CIB traitor. Carole.

  And my somewhat estranged father waiting for me.

  Chapter Eight

  “Silence is a golden prison too many people willingly walk into.”

  My cellphone rang as I made my way south on the motorway. I hit the button to put the phone on speaker and greeted the caller with my usual, “Keen.”

  Silence. Just the low level hum of Bluetooth static and the too loud noise of my tyres over tar-seal.

  “You need to say something,” I urged, trying for a different tactic than I’d been using up until now.

  If Carl wanted to heavy breathe to me over the phone, I needed him to know I was on to him. Aware. Ready to talk.

  I wasn’t. But this calling and saying nothing was making me jumpy. There was something I was missing, and it wasn’t just the absence of a voice.

  The phone beeped to announce the end of the call. I let a frustrated breath out and tapped my finger on the steering wheel, contemplating what Carl was trying to say - or not say - to me. But nothing sprang to mind. And by the time I took the off ramp at Manukau, negotiating midday traffic onto Manukau Station Road, my mind had been forced onto the upcoming meeting with my father.

  I’d checked in with our dispatch, to confirm he was on station. But further than that, I hadn’t been able to face. Whether he’d see me or not, was up for debate. But the element of surprise had always worked well for me in the past, so I was grasping it. Once I was in the room with him, though, I’d be on my own.

  Counties/Manukau District Police Headquarters, otherwise known as South Auckland Police, is housed in a modern two storey building, with sharp angles and muted colours. And behind a huge eight foot high chain-link fence. It was nowhere near as large as Central Police Station, but it was contemporary, shiny and clean, even if its criminals tended to bear the same filth as our own. A police station is a police station. But there was always something about this particular station that made me sweat.

  I didn’t need my shrink to tell me what.

  I parked in the secured staff only carpark around the back and slipped out of the car, looking up at the building with trepidation. My keys flicking over and over in my hand. The repetitive motion soothing me, even as my heart rate escalated and a sick feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

  The last time I saw my father was just over six years ago, on my twenty-fifth birthday. I’d just been accepted into CIB. He was meant to be a proud parent. He was meant to embrace me, congratulate me, brag about my following in his footsteps to his drinking buddies down at the local pub.

  He did none of those things. Not that I really expected them. But he was meant to do them.

  I let a slow breath of air out and walked towards the back door of the station, entering the code and slipping into air conditioned tranquillity. It was an oxymoron. Police stations are inherently chaotic, and maybe this
place was chaotic out at the front desk. But back here, in the deeper recesses of the building, it moved as if a well oiled machine.

  Both uniformed and plain clothed officers swept down the silent hallways on quiet feet. The odd soft murmur of greeting, but nothing more than a low hum of noise. Doors didn’t bang. Cellphones didn’t sound out in piercing musical glory. No one raised their voices, even though I knew for a fact that there would be someone here pissed off with their lot.

  The pressures of police work dictated so. Central Police Station was a veritable hive of activity and a cacophony of noise. It thrummed. It pulsed with life. It fought and bickered and screamed its presence to the world.

  It was alive.

  But my father ran a very tight ship.

  I straightened my jacket and then glanced down to see if my shirt was creased. Only to have my eyes alight on the coffee stain I’d managed to acquire in Damon’s office. I stopped in my tracks, making a uniform have to sidestep around me at short notice - not offering an offensive reprimand or complaint - in order to miss me. I stared at that stain, well aware that the jacket would never cover it. I stared at it a while longer, and then forced myself to put one foot in front of the other and keep on going.

  I should have taken advantage of the bathrooms on the ground floor and tried to sponge it clean. I should have wanted to do that. But I walked past the toilets and up the stairs, as though on automatic pilot. All the while my eyes kept darting down to the splash of coffee that had ruined my blouse, and my mind kept swirling with all the possibilities and potential scenarios, while my heart raced with the fuel of once forgotten emotions.

  His secretary noticed. It wasn’t hard to miss.

  “Can I help you?” the civilian woman, sitting behind a pristine desk beside the door to my father’s office, asked. Her eyes kept getting caught on the imperfection on my shirt.

  I smiled.

  “Detective Lara Keen, Auckland CIB, to see the Superintendent if he’s free.”

  She paused. She was new. She didn’t recognise me. I don’t look like my father.

  I look like my mother. Dirty blonde long hair, pale blue eyes, high cheek bones, cream skin. My father has dark hair, always cut in an abrupt military style, dark eyes, and naturally tanned skin. He looks nothing like me.