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

by Claire, Nicola

  He stood up and held out his hand to Damon, murmuring through a smirk, “Pleasure to meet you, Mr Michaels.”

  They’d met before of course. At Sweet Hell. But I wasn’t meant to know this. I looked toward Damon, hoping he’d play along. But Damon was more switched on than your average investigator.

  Plus he had a reason to continue to dupe Marcroft. He hadn’t found his sister yet.

  “Mr Marcroft, my pleasure as well.”

  “Are you taking good care of our Lara-Marie?” Marcroft asked, his voice low and conversational, but I had the sudden impression that he was trying to keep my presence overlooked by those still obscured by the curtain.

  I have a suspicious mind. I’m a police detective who sees the darker side of life more often than not. I’ve witnessed some truly devious acts. Seen the repercussions of them. The fallout that ensues. The far reach of nefarious crimes. Nathaniel Marcroft was not doing anything illegal, not right now that is, but he was setting the stage for something. And my money was on it being wicked.

  “Absolutely,” Damon replied, placing his arm around my waist and ‘staking his claim.’

  Marcroft noticed. Of course he did. He smiled, lifted his glass up in salute, and said, “To matches made in Heaven.”

  We all took a sip, repeating the words.

  “To relationships that can traverse Hell,” he said immediately afterwards, in a way that would have received an automatic repeat in normal circles.

  But we were no longer in normal circles. We were somewhere in the lower circles of Dante’s Hell.

  Because I realised as Damon repeated the words and I mouthed them, and then he sipped his drink and leaned in to kiss my temple, showing affection and possession in that one simple move, that he’d just played right into Marcroft’s hands. Danced directly into position.

  And been caught in his treacherous web.

  To Nathaniel Marcroft I was ignorant of what Damon had been doing. Blinded by his soft kisses and tender caresses. Unaware of the nature of his evenings in a back room of Sweet Hell.

  The eighth circle was fraud. Damon had just passed it. Acting as though he didn’t know the man I had introduced him to. Behaving as though I was the centre of his world.

  To Marcroft that was as good as a lie. A deception worthy of a true fraud.

  To Marcroft, Damon had just become his poster boy. And that meant his journey through the ninth circle, the remaining circle, would be personally orchestrated by the man.

  I knew this. I knew it with a sense of clarity that alarmed me.

  But it still did not mean Nathaniel Marcroft murdered Samantha Hayes.

  I had nothing. Except a predatory sexual deviant who fit the role but seemed more concerned with winning his next conquest. A closed-off, ice sculpture for a father, who kept sexual slaves as pets. And a strangely compelling but completely hollow psychopath, who enjoyed fucking with people’s lives.

  Either one could have done it, really.

  None of them I could conclusively peg for committing the crime.

  Chapter 30

  “If you think you saw it, you probably did. If you pretend you didn’t, it never exists.”

  I didn’t want to stick around and corner Kyan. I certainly didn’t want to spend another second in the company of his chillingly, fucked-in-the-head father.

  And staying long enough to see Haydee emerge with her jewel studded collar from behind those curtains was a definite no-no, as far as I was concerned.

  But if wishes were horses, I wouldn’t have been so lonely as a child.

  Kyan approached from over the shoulder of Nathaniel. A look of abject terror on his face and then gone in the blink of an eye. I didn’t mistake it. His skin was still blanched and his fingers shook when he attempted to brush hair out of his eyes. A move designed to look relaxed, and it would have succeeded, but my bullshit meter was set at its most sensitive.

  It was dinging a mile a minute right about now.

  Then, in the next breath, my father pushed through the curtains. No Haydee, but he shut them quickly at his back, and effected a look of casual surprise when he spotted the group who awaited his arrival. His eyes skimmed over Kyan, hesitated briefly on Nathaniel, and then took in Damon and myself without so much as a pursed lip or narrowed gaze.

  Or appropriate blush.

  The emotionless expression on his face suddenly meant something. The look I had seen so often as a child made sense. I’d known it was an act, a cover for whatever the fuck went on beneath his chilly exterior. But I hadn’t realised just what that act tried to hide. Just how much it said by saying nothing.

  He’d made a mistake. Exiting the curtains without taking care that the coast was clear. He’d made a monumental mistake and he was angry. The type of anger that consumed a soul. The type of anger my father had been living with all of these years and then some.

  Anger was better than indifference. But he wasn’t angry at me.

  He was angry at himself.

  “Well, this is cosy,” Nathaniel said, breaking the silent stand-off first. My father said nothing. “A Redoubt Road reunion.”

  “Dad,” Kyan urged, moving closer and laying a hand on his father’s arm. “I think it’s time we should go.”

  “Nonsense,” Nathaniel countered. “We’ve only just all arrived.”

  It was almost a childlike gleeful statement. An innocent announcement couched in that shadowed, multi-layered unease I’d begun to feel. And, by the looks of it, Kyan felt it too. The need to get his father out of here overrode any act he had managed to perform in the past.

  “We have a late afternoon meeting, Dad,” Kyan pushed. “I’m sorry,” he said, finally addressing the rest of us. “But we’re expected and must leave.”

  “Not a problem,” I replied. “The day is still young, after all.”

  “Indeed,” Marcroft said, his attention springing to me in that instant. “You never know what the night will bring.”

  I smiled. Pleading ignorance in that one vacant look. Marcroft grinned; the Cheshire cat look again. And then looked toward Damon.

  “You two make a fine couple,” he offered, ignoring the continued efforts of his son to get him to move. “We should have an official reunion, Ethan,” he said, still looking at us and not my father. “Lara-Marie brings her Damon.” Now he looked at my father. “And you bring your latest pet.”

  I’d thought he was icy before, but the chill that emanated from my father almost froze our heated breaths on the tense air.

  Kyan struggled with his composure, such a contrast to who he had presented at the back door to Sweet Hell. Marcroft floated in the blissful turmoil he’d created, watching first my father’s cold, feigned indifference and then me. It wasn’t the surprise he’d thought it would be. It wasn’t the distraction he’d hoped he’d achieve.

  I stared into the eyes of a treacherous spider and smiled. It was hopefully confused, shocked and mortified all at once.

  I glanced at my father, a nervous and uncomfortable look shared between daughter and parent, then said, “I’m sure Mr Marcroft doesn’t mean that.”

  “Of course he doesn’t,” Kyan offered, grasping his father’s wrist and starting to haul him away. “Too many glasses of champagne,” he added, his grip tightening.

  “We’re all family here,” Nathaniel declared, as if that allowed for such blatant rudeness.

  “Come on, Dad,” Kyan said, and finally his father agreed to be turned away. Kyan’s eyes met mine, a look of shame crossing his features and then replaced suddenly - and I suspected purposefully - with a haughty smile. “It doesn’t help that we spend our nights surrounded by every manner of vices.” He lowered his voice, his words aimed at me and not my father, the subject of Nathaniel Marcroft’s darkest vice of all. “Sometimes I think my father wishes the rest of the world were as open as those who frequent Sweet Hell.”

  “Open about their sexuality, Kyan?” I asked.

  He paused, his father now deep in conversation wi
th someone else further along. We were all but forgotten to the man. At least for now.

  “Any vice, Lara,” Kyan offered. “We’re a gambling establishment which caters to the many sins known to man.”

  “Those would be what exactly?” I pressed, my words still only mildly interested. “Lust? Gluttony? Greed?”

  He stilled, but returned to his polished performance in the next heartbeat.

  “Come now,” he said jovially. “Surely you’re not entirely unfamiliar with any of those. You do see some interesting things in your line of work, I should think.”

  “Yes,” I said, keeping eye contact. “It makes it easier to see the truth amongst the treachery.”

  “Well,” he replied softly. “A worthy trait for a police detective to have.” He nodded to my father. To Damon. But not to me. And then left.

  We watched him approach his father, but couldn’t hear what was spoken or see what expression Kyan wore. Their backs to us, they made their way toward the exit of the banquet hall. Somewhat faster than strictly necessary.

  “Are you aware of any illness, mental or otherwise, that Nathaniel Marcroft might have?” I asked, still watching the men leave, but my father knew the question was all for him.

  “You’re playing a dangerous game, Lara-Marie.”

  “One you think I’m not adept at,” I countered.

  “On the contrary,” he remarked, straightening his cuffs and taking a step away. “I think you play it better than me.”

  Was that a compliment? He was gone before I could ask.

  “Fuck me,” Damon whispered, somehow managing to break the strain of the last few minutes and allow me to breathe. “What the hell just happened?”

  Good question. Kyan Marcroft was a performer, an actor who excelled at his chosen role. Was his initial terror at seeing his father cornered by me the act? Or was the conversation afterwards part of the play? Who was the more treacherous? Father or son?

  “There is something seriously fucked up about the Marcrofts,” I offered in way of answer.

  “You’re telling me,” Damon murmured, and then took a step towards the curtains my father had appeared through and parted them slightly.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he was seeing.

  “But what the hell have they got to do with HEAT?” I added, in a poor attempt to get him to butt out of my father’s - out of what was now my - secrets.

  He turned to look at me and smiled. “I don’t know either of them. Never met them before last weekend. They’re more connected to you than me, love.” The curtains at his back slid together. They hadn’t been parted long enough for me to see behind them, but they taunted with the way they continued to softly sway.

  I ran a hand over my face. Carl insisted it wasn’t just about revenge. Or just about evading capture. Or just about the nine circles of Hell. It was about all of them.

  HEAT had to be the revenge. But for what?

  Evading capture? Was it to cover the crime of murder, or was it something else? And if it was something else, how did Samantha Hayes fit into all of this?

  Lastly, the nine circles of Hell. That was perhaps the easiest to solve. The Irreverent Inferno was involved. Providing the stage? Or hiding the actors?

  “She’s not there, you know,” Damon said from beside me.

  “Who?”

  “Haydee.”

  I glanced up. He shrugged. “Magic.”

  I let out a small laugh.

  “What’s our next step?”

  I slowly shook my head. “I need to plot the case. Map it.”

  “You’re close enough to the end to do that?” He knew me so well. The white-board only came out when my mind was too full of potentially connecting dots.

  I nodded. It didn’t make any sense. And yet my gut was telling me I had everything I needed to solve this thing. I just had to line it up and take a step back to see the bigger picture.

  “Your place or mine?” he asked, slipping an arm around my shoulders and leading us in the direction of the exit.

  “Mine,” I offered, just as he stilled mid-stride. I glanced up at him, then toward where he was looking, eyes narrowed, frown in place. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

  “Do you want to check it out?”

  “Nah, it’s nothing.” He started to walk forward, but I remained rooted to the spot.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I started, making him turn to look down at me. “But Carl had a saying.”

  “He did?” His smile said it all.

  I ignored the way it made me feel. Like warm sunshine and a fresh, clean breeze. Like heat and him, and a lung full of air.

  “‘If you think you saw it, you probably did. If you pretend you didn’t, it never exists.’” He raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Never exists?” he queried. “Or never existed?”

  “Exists,” I confirmed. “Kinda like the tree in the woods saying.”

  “The tree in the what saying?”

  “‘If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?’”

  “Of course it does.”

  I shook my head. “How do you know unless you’re there?”

  “And this has what to do with Carl’s saying?”

  I sighed. “Observation. Knowledge of reality. It’s a thought experiment.”

  “Like Schrodinger’s cat?”

  “Yeah. But not as macabre.”

  “OK,” he said, sounding lost.

  Ah, crap. Philosophical discussions right now were not a good idea. Too much was fogging my brain.

  “My point is..”

  “I’m so glad you’ve got one,” Damon joked.

  I gave him a mock scowl. “If you think you saw something, then believing it helps to prove it. A cop has to follow their hunches, or in this case, a moment in time where you thought you saw something then weren’t so sure immediately afterwards.” Damn Carl for fucking up my brain. “Basically, if you ignore it, you’ll never know and it might as well have not existed at all.” I took a breath then added, “It’s as if it doesn’t exist at all.”

  “Fucking hell, this is what you have inside your head? This is what he put there?”

  I shrugged, suddenly feeling uncomfortable.

  “Hey,” he said, taking a step after my rapidly fleeing body. “It’s… deep, that’s all. And I never took Carl Forrester as being particularly deep. It explains a lot.”

  Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I read too much into his wise words and they weren’t in fact wise at all. Maybe I was the one fucked in the head.

  “What did you see?” I asked, as we came out into the entrance foyer of the Town Hall.

  “Oh, just an old boyfriend of Carole’s.”

  The world stopped on its axis.

  “Lara?”

  “Good or bad boyfriend?” The words were whispered.

  Damon immediately pulled me to the side of the foyer out of the stream of brightly dressed foot traffic.

  “It probably wasn’t him,” he argued. “I’ve just been thinking about all her boyfriends and he must have been on my mind.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be him?”

  “Not his scene.”

  “Good or bad boyfriend?” I repeated.

  He sighed, looked out across the packed foyer - everyone was making their way from the benefit now - and then rubbed at his jaw.

  “I didn’t like any of her boyfriends, but this guy was the worst of all.”

  Oh, this was bad. My fingers itched to pull my cellphone from my handbag. To play the message for Damon and admit what I’d held back. Now would be the ideal time to confess.

  “And you’ve been thinking of him because Carole’s missing,” I said instead.

  He nodded his head, offered a wry smile and then shoved his hands in his pockets looking infinitely lost.

  “Could he be a suspect?”

  “I thought he’d left town
,” Damon admitted. “When I managed to get Carole into her last rehab he disappeared.”

  “How close were they?”

  “Too close.”

  “Be more specific.” His eyes darted down to mine and his body stilled.

  “You’re acting like a cop.”

  “Because I am a cop, Damon.”

  “Does my sister have anything to do with the murder case?” Right to the point, that was Damon. Also capable of seeing through the shit to what was really important.

  “I honestly don’t know.” He opened his mouth, but I spoke before he could get a word out. “But I’m not ruling it out.”

  “Why?”

  Why indeed? It would have been too easy to shake my head and admit defeat. But this was Damon. His sister, who ruled his world like Carl had ruled mine. If anyone understood that type of devotion it would be me.

  “She was at Sweet Hell,” I said.

  “Yes, but only seen there once, and even then it was hearsay.” Now it was his turn to play devil’s advocate? He wasn’t going to make this easy for me.

  “The informant who’s been playing Cawfield used you. Why you and not another HEAT member?”

  “I don’t know. Convenience? Coincidence?”

  I huffed out an unamused laugh.

  “The lure was Carole. The web the Irreverent Inferno. The murder is tied up with Sweet Hell.”

  “Are you sure?” I wasn’t, but I was getting closer after today.

  “I’ve been getting silent phone calls all week,” I said, instead of answering that.

  “Oh?”

  “The last one was on the way here.”

  “The one you said was from Cawfield.” Sometimes I hated that he was so fucking astute.

  “Yeah.”

  “And it wasn’t. The silent caller?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What aren’t you telling me, Lara?”

  I turned and looked up at him. It was written all over his face. Worry. Fear. Hope.

  “I suspect they’ve been from Carole.”

  “Jesus,” he whispered, turning away and starting to pace. I watched him, as I felt my heart pull apart at the seams. Not just for hiding this for a few hours and the guilt associated with that. Not just because I thought this was a breach of trust he’d use as a reason to walk away from me. But also because he was frantic. Beside himself with utter panic. And I felt every torturous emotion along with him.