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

by Claire, Nicola

  “A non-disclosure agreement would make it impossible to confirm or deny that.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” Did he think I graduated Police College just yesterday? “It would prohibit you from speaking about the subject of the agreement, not whether you had signed one.” It was in fact a defence; mentioning your lips were legally sealed.

  He sighed, and stared off into the middle distance. I waited, offering only silence and an endless supply of patience that was entirely a ruse.

  “I never wanted you to be aware of my lifestyle,” he suddenly said, and for a second I could not comprehend the words. So foreign. Or maybe it was his tone. So… normal. Laden with feeling. Something Ethan Keen never, ever showed.

  “Excuse me?” I ridiculously said.

  “Your assumptions are correct.” Not exactly breaking his NDA, but skirting the legalities of it.

  “You’re a full member of the Irreverent Inferno,” I said. He remained silent. To confirm it wouldn’t break his contract. But it was obviously all I’d be getting.

  But he didn’t deny it, either.

  “Why tell me now?” I asked.

  I felt, more than saw, him shrug. A non-Ethan Keen move if ever there was one.

  “It will come out if this reaches Court. You need to be prepared.”

  Cawfield had said the same.

  “That woman,” I said, looking over to where Damon and Haydee had gone. I couldn’t see them through the throng, but I knew they were there. I always knew when Damon was there. “What’s with the silence?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” And we were back. To this… nothingness that we shared. Biology but little else. He’d confirmed, in a round about way, that he belonged to the Irreverent Inferno and his lips were sealed. But any more and I was on my own.

  “OK,” I said, an edge entering my tone, letting me down. I rallied, and when I spoke again all emotion was gone from my voice. “When did you last see Samantha Hayes?”

  He stood up, straightened his jacket, and walked away.

  I watched him leave, not giving chase, not having an answer to the myriad of questions that swirled inside my head. I should have been used to this. It was how he behaved. Avoidance at its most cutting. Turning his back on me. The familiar made it easier to continue to breathe.

  Could I see my father strangling a woman to death? Honestly, despite our dysfunctional relationship, no. I couldn’t. He liked the law.

  The law is there to protect us, Lara-Marie. Stay on the right side of it, and it will always be your guiding light. Cross it, and it becomes a laser beam.

  But he was hiding something. His lifestyle? Or more? Had the law become a laser beam for my father? I didn’t know.

  But I also couldn’t see him setting fire to a storage shed and a hotrod car and killing sheep in a paddock with a fire bomb. My father, for all his stiffness and closed off expressions, did not fit the profile.

  Was this just about Samantha? The assault, as well, at a pinch? Two separate crimes? Three, if we count HEAT?

  What had Carl said, outside my house this afternoon?

  “I know it’s not just about revenge. I know it’s not just about evading capture. I know it’s not just about the nine circles of Hell.”

  Carl wasn’t being evasive. He was talking in Carlisms. His twisted mind giving details that were just as twisted to me.

  Not just about revenge.

  Not just about evading capture.

  Not just about the nine circles of Hell.

  It was about all three.

  HEAT was the revenge crime. Murder and assault were the evasion of capture. And the Irreverent Inferno tied them all together.

  Damn it to hell. I was back at square one.

  I looked up and saw Damon approaching. His face set in the polite political mask he wore at events like this. Shaking hands, smiling, sharing an innocuous word or two. I let my eyes wander. I still had the Marcrofts to corner, but I couldn’t spot either of them.

  What I did see, though, was my father and Haydee standing just this side of a set of velvet curtains that matched the ones Damon and I had used. He slipped through them. She stood staring at the floor for a moment, waiting with that graceful patience I was beginning to envy. And then his hand snaked out and grasped the chain hanging between her breasts and pulled.

  Leading her like a puppy into a velvet lined kennel.

  The fucking chain was a collar. And if I had a left nut to gamble with, I’d bet it on Haydee being my father’s sexual pet.

  My head was resting in the palms of my hands when Damon reached me.

  So sure my world was about to be torn apart by a homicidal arsonist I couldn’t seem to fucking identify and an exclusive gaming club that seemed just out of my reach.

  Chapter 29

  “If you can’t stand the heat, then hand in your badge. It’s a simple as that. Cases don’t get solved without a few uncomfortable questions.”

  Damon’s body heat announced his arrival. He settled himself beside me on the settee and leaned forward, almost matching my current pose.

  “I take it, it didn’t go well?” he asked, elbows to spread knees, eyes on the floor like mine.

  I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t even form them in my mind. How does one announce to the world that their father has a sexual slave? Maybe I’d gotten it wrong. Maybe he just grabbed the first thing he could and pulled her into their secret alcove for a passionate kiss.

  It’s not like I could ask him. If it didn’t pertain to the case, there was no way I was ever going to go there. But I couldn’t help the way I felt. The emotional turmoil I’d just ridden as I watched him grasp that chain and lead his docile girlfriend behind velvet curtains and out of prying eyes.

  Had he done it because of me? Turned to his woman to drown out whatever the fuck it was I made him feel?

  And Haydee. That graceful poise that was swamped with an edge of excited anticipation when my father’s hand snaked out between the curtains and dragged her back toward him.

  Oh, God, I felt a little sick.

  I sat up straighter and scanned the crowd, trying to focus on what was important. My father’s sexual activities were not. Despite the fact that he’d confirmed he was a full-fledged member of the Irreverent Inferno where borderline immoral acts were performed in a flame lit cavern by anonymous men in hooded robes.

  Despite the fact that the murder victim was killed across the street from the building where the Irreverent Inferno met and performed those borderline immoral acts.

  Despite the fact that he’d dated the murder victim and when pressed for more information by a detective on the case he chose to run.

  Fuck.

  “What do make of Haydee?” I asked Damon, keeping my eyes on the bright spectacle that was the crowd.

  “Not much,” he replied, sitting upright and placing a casual hand along the back of the settee behind me. “She didn’t speak a word.”

  I did turn to him at that. Eyebrows raised.

  He shrugged. “Tried to make conversation, but all I got was that serene smile and nothing else.”

  “Is she deaf?”

  “No. She moved when people asked to pass when they approached from behind.”

  I slouched down in my seat, looking every inch a police detective and not an elegant banquet attendee.

  “My father is a member of the Irreverent Inferno.”

  The words met silence from Damon. The benefit for ‘Auckland City Supports the EMS’ didn’t even bat an eye.

  “He’s signed an NDA, but he won’t talk about Samantha Hayes either,” I added.

  “Refuses to?”

  In his way, he had. His way just happened to be aloof, cool, and detached.

  “Yes.”

  Damon whistled low. “What are you going to do?”

  I looked back down towards the velvet curtains my father and Haydee were still hidden behind. They’d been in there longer than Damon and I had been behind ours. My eyes scanned the
tables nearest, finding an addition to one I hadn’t spotted before.

  Everything about this made me feel uncomfortable, but being a cop was not a job for the faint of heart. If you can’t stand the heat, then hand in your badge. It’s a simple as that. Cases don’t get solved without a few uncomfortable questions.

  Carl was right. He often was. That’s why I’d trusted him so deeply.

  That’s why his betrayal had cost me so much.

  I stood up and Damon followed suit. Then I considered my options.

  “I need a drink,” I said, lifting my eyes up to his for a brief moment.

  “All right,” he said, a little uncertainly. “Shall we head to the bar?”

  “How about you go grab us something and meet me back here. I just need to check on something.”

  “Are you getting rid of me, Lara?”

  “Yes.”

  He chuckled. It was more bemused than humorous.

  He lifted his head and scanned the nearby tables, spotting who I was after.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, worry etched in his tone.

  “Yes.” I wasn’t, but why Nathaniel Marcroft had suddenly sat himself down just outside the curtains my father and Haydee were hiding behind right now was important. I knew it was. And I also knew I’d get more out of him if I was unarmed.

  Damon was a defence I was more than happy to use when needed. But that also meant I had to be prepared to put him away when appropriate as well.

  “Five minutes,” I said, my voice steady, my face impassive, my cop persona well in place.

  “Five minutes?”

  “Five minutes and then you stake your claim.”

  “Lara…”

  “Trust me.” I was using that statement a little too often. I wasn’t comfortable with it at all. But I understood its power. I’d been subject to it in the past.

  And been destroyed by its falsity as well.

  “OK,” he said, voice clipped. “Five minutes.”

  He started to walk away.

  “What makes you so nervous about him?” I asked, before he’d made it two steps.

  Damon swung back and looked at me. Then lifted his head and glanced across the busy space to Nathaniel, still sitting patiently at his table, still watching the red velvet curtains like a hawk.

  “It’s not him I’m worried about,” he finally said.

  I stilled. My eyes searching Damon’s face. He turned slowly back and looked down at me.

  “These men are used to these games of theirs. They’ve spent a fortune designing them,” he whispered, moving closer so I could hear every word. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t even reach for me. But by simply being there I felt held. “I have a feeling you’re about to step onto their chessboard. And, I have to admit, that feeling doesn’t sit well.”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “It’s my job.”

  “No, love. It’s you.”

  Then he turned away and headed towards the bar, just as I’d asked.

  It took a second or two to get my bearings, and then I was wending my way through the throng and approaching Nathaniel Marcroft in such a way that he couldn’t possibly miss me. I wanted his attention. I wanted him to have a few seconds to realise I was coming for him. I wanted to watch his face as the daughter of the man he was so intently waiting on came within inches of her father’s sins.

  He knew who my father had behind that curtain.

  He knew why they were there. What they were doing.

  And, I was certain, he knew what that chain looped around her neck meant. And I had to wonder, if he had a chain somewhere as well. If he’d wanted to use it on Samantha Hayes.

  This was an intricate dance, not a game as Damon had suggested. This was shadowed in layers of secrecy and riddled in excess and desire. It was a dance performed in Hell. And as I came closer to Nathaniel Marcroft, who was now watching me and not the curtains, I realised that this man could well be the devil himself.

  His suit was bespoke, gold and diamond cufflinks glinting in the low lights of the room at each wrist. His hair was an intriguing salt and pepper shade, cut to accentuate his square jawline and strong, straight nose. His skin was tanned to perfection, not too much, not too false, just right. As though he had obtained it on the exclusive beaches only the rich and famous attend. Everything about his appearance was the height of elegant fashion. Everything about his mocking smile and calculating eyes represented a sense of entitlement and boredom only the supremely wealthy can effect.

  He was gorgeous, for a man well into his fifties. A true fallen prince.

  “Mr Marcroft,” I said, offering a smile as I came abreast of his seat. “What a pleasure.”

  He stood up in a move that would have been considered gentlemanly, if he hadn’t stepped into my personal space with such apparent disregard for social etiquette.

  “Lara-Marie,” he said softly, the hint of his accent shining through in just my name. His body emanated a type of heat. One that made me think of lower circles, and fire and brimstone, more than anything else.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked, purposefully ignoring my father’s curtains. I couldn’t go there. Even if I was prepared to use them to corner Marcroft, I still couldn’t look at those blasted curtains.

  Nathaniel raised a single eyebrow and then indicated the vacant seat at his side.

  “If you were to join me,” he said, “then I am sure to enjoy myself.”

  I smiled and took the offered seat. He waited for me to be seated and then sat himself. He was a man of manners. But I suspected those manners were only for show. What really existed was beneath the exquisite exterior. What really existed could have killed a woman, I told myself.

  “I met Kyan the other day,” I said as a way to start the conversation.

  “Yes. I’m aware.” His attention kept straying to the curtains. I’m not sure he was aware of that fact.

  Or maybe he was and he was using it.

  “He hasn’t changed a bit since we were young.”

  “I do hope he has changed some, my dear.” He looked at me again with such delight it made me wonder if he’d been looking elsewhere at all. “Men need to grow up eventually.”

  “Well, you know what I mean. He still looks so young and full of life,” I said, wondering just what Nathaniel had meant.

  “He is a Marcroft,” he replied in what was obviously a tease. He winked when I smiled at him. It should have been creepy. I needed it to be creepy. But his smile seemed genuine and his humour self-deprecating.

  “Your new venture seems quite the success,” I offered, wishing I had a glass of champagne in my hands, as for some reason I suddenly felt the need to fidget.

  It wasn’t that he was looking at me in a way that made me nervous. It wasn’t that I found questioning an old family friend in such a veiled way disturbing. It wasn’t even the fact that my father was doing God knew what to his collared and graceful girlfriend just a few feet away.

  Something about all of this was off. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  “We were lucky to find a niche that was underrepresented,” Marcroft replied, taking a sip from his own glass.

  It was the first slip-up he’d made in regards to being a gentleman.

  “And you, my dear,” he added. “I hear you are doing very well in your chosen profession.”

  “I like what I do.”

  “You look happy. Or is that for more personal reasons? A man, perhaps?”

  OK, and the creepy had arrived. And yet, his questions were light and well intended. Casual conversation between an established businessman and the daughter of his old friend.

  But something was off.

  I had to force myself not to look at my watch, wondering how much longer I had before Damon arrived to rescue me. The uncomfortable of earlier had become a tight noose around my neck.

  And still he’d done nothing, absolutely nothing, to have set the fine hairs on my arms up on end as they now were.<
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  I offered a smile. I feared it was patently false. Nathaniel’s eyes assessed me and then he looked toward the curtains, even though they hadn’t moved. This time it was definitely purposeful. Drawing my attention, even as he added, almost absently, “Don’t mind me, Lara. I’ve been hounding Kyan to settle down, and I’m afraid matchmaking is on my mind of late.”

  “Do you have someone lined up for Kyan?” I asked.

  He smiled, still looking at the curtains.

  “In fact, I do,” he said, almost wistfully.

  Damon’s arrival couldn’t have occurred at a better time. And then not. This was the Nathaniel Marcroft beneath the perfectly presentable gentleman facade. This was the evil behind the prince.

  There was something wrong about this man. Something that set a primal part of me on high alert. He was intelligent. Poised. Every action and emotion well contained. For all intents and purposes he was the picture of charm. But he’d forgotten one thing.

  I grew up next door to him. I saw him at our dining table on many occasions as a young girl.

  This man before me was not the Nathaniel Marcroft I had known. This man was all calculated charisma, masterful manipulation, and errant elegance. The Nathaniel Marcroft I had known was full of potential but also quite unable to shut the fuck up.

  He could have trained himself to be more circumspect. He could have learnt to hold his tongue and mete out conversation as though it was priceless.

  Or he could have been completely inside his head, otherwise unengaged, but somehow managing to cover the shortfall.

  What had happened? And did that make him good for Samantha Hayes’ murder?

  “There you are, darling,” Damon announced, handing me a glass of champagne and garnering Nathaniel’s attention. How long he’d hold it, I wasn’t sure.

  Because that was becoming more and more evident. I’d thought him charming, but charm requires attention to detail. And for Nathaniel Marcroft I was suspecting the details were a little off.

  “Damon Michaels,” I said, smiling up at him in a way I hoped looked convincing. “This is Nathaniel Marcroft.”

  Nathaniel smiled. It was a Cheshire cat grin.