A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four

by Claire, Nicola

  This man we chased down was far more dangerous than any I had faced previously. He scared me. And not just because I could see Damon was losing it.

  The pressure was getting to him. Worry over his sister mixed in with this new serving of worry over Stretch. He was close to snapping in two and half of him would come out guns blazing while the other half made him shoot a friendly.

  I wanted to reassure him, offer some comfort. But I knew what that sort of thing did to someone so close to the edge. I’d been there for so long myself because of Carl. One wrong word or touch would have sent me over that cliff right along with my ex-partner.

  “Pierce and I can place ourselves here and here,” Anscombe was saying. “Eric’ll have good line of sight on the front of the property.”

  “It’s just the back that is our blind spot,” Pierce said.

  “We could use a drone,” Shaw suggested.

  “Weston would spot it,” Damon snapped. He’d been shooting down ideas as if he were at a clay pigeon shooting contest. I had money on him winning gold.

  “Our drones fly at eight hundred feet,” Shaw said.

  “Five hundred is the legal limit for NZ,” Pierce offered.

  “Your point being?” Shaw said.

  Pierce shook his head in a way that said he’d had these types of arguments before with these men and knew he’d only lose in the end so why bother.

  “That might work,” Anscombe muttered, ignoring Pierce. “Set it up.”

  “So, we’ve got eyes on the building,” I said. “Something that Weston will no doubt be expecting. What does that leave uncovered?”

  “You and Damon,” Pierce replied. “If he doesn’t expect you to bring in Nick and me, that is.”

  “He’ll know you’ve left HEAT on lockdown,” Anscombe offered, glancing at Damon. “He’s not aware of my team or me, though, so we can assume we’re an unknown factor.” He looked at Pierce now. “You, he’ll expect, so we should use you as a distraction.”

  “Play his own tricks on him,” Pierce agreed.

  Anscombe nodded. “Let’s move you to here,” he said, indicating a more visible location on the map they had up on the screen. “Still good cover, but not good enough for someone like him.”

  Someone like him.

  Who was this man? Weston had skills a layperson wouldn’t. His mind manipulation games were on a whole other level to what we were used to. Every psychopath out there manipulates the world and people around them to some extent. But Weston did something more. He took over minds completely. Intelligent minds. Carole was not uneducated. Eagle might be, but he had street smarts galore. Weston cut through both with ease.

  And let’s not forget the CIB traitor. Cawfield might be a dick, but he was a highly trained detective dick. How had Weston got to him?

  My thoughtful gaze snagged on movement under the main desk where Shaw was sitting. His hand methodically rubbed his thigh, just above his knee, as if to ease an ache there.

  Ex-military. It was an angle we hadn’t considered.

  Add in his mind manipulation ability, and it led you down a whole new path of discovery.

  I’d thought it simply hypnosis, but what if it was hypnosis crossed with brainwashing? A type of brainwashing even standard military jocks weren’t aware of. One I hadn’t even thought possible.

  Shit.

  I looked back at Anscombe as he and Pierce finalised the plan with Damon running interference. Damon was going to be a problem. He was hot under the collar and fit to throw a monumental tantrum at any minute.

  This was getting to him, and there was nothing I could do to help him other than getting on with this and catching Weston. Save his sister and fireman brother.

  But Weston was more than we had bargained for; I was sure of it.

  “You’ve got an ex-spook on your payroll, haven’t you?” I said to Anscombe; interrupting whatever useless planning they’d been discussing mid-sentence.

  Anscombe narrowed his eyes at me. Pierce shook his head frantically as if my suggestion was an explosion waiting to go off. Damon just looked confused. And frustrated with the segue. And desperate to get on with things.

  Yes, Damon was going to be a problem. A problem I was beginning to think I was going to have to address.

  “I thought you wanted to keep this low key,” Anscombe said.

  “Is your spook trustworthy?”

  “Of course, she is. And stop calling her a spook; she’s likely to put a bullet in your head from one hundred metres.”

  “Was she a good spook?” I said, ignoring the warning just to mess with him.

  “I believe she was one of the best,” Anscombe ground out. “Why do you want her in on this?”

  “Why are you throwing up walls at the suggestion?”

  “I’m not throwing up anything! I’d just like to know why you’ve singled her out of all of my men.”

  Anscombe had an eclectic bag of operatives. Ex-military, ex-exotic dancers, ex-mob affiliated and gang-raised daughter. And an ex-spook.

  “Bring her in,” I said, not offering an explanation.

  “Lara,” Pierce hissed, walking over to where I was sitting so he could speak without the others listening in. I was sure they were trying, but at least Anscombe had his cellphone out and was doing what I had asked. “What’s going on?”

  I glanced at Damon, who was rechecking the map of Ponsonby and trying to stare daggers at it. Shaw was pretending to do something, God knows what, but I was fairly certain it involved eavesdropping on Pierce’s and my conversation.

  Nothing said in this room would be private.

  I looked up at Pierce and then purposefully looked back at Damon. Pierce followed my gaze and scowled.

  “I wondered if you saw that,” he murmured. He’d noticed Damon’s unravelling as well. “Rather you than me telling him he’s out, though,” he muttered. Looking back at me, he said, “And the spook?”

  “Stop calling her that!” Anscombe shouted.

  Fuck, they had ears everywhere in here. Damon, thankfully, just looked alarmed and not irate at what Pierce and I had been discussing. So, at least, he hadn’t figured out what was what yet.

  Anscombe, on the other hand, was probably gearing up for the fallout already.

  I considered grabbing Pierce and exiting the room, but that was a laughable solution to our eavesdropping dilemma. This place was bugged up the wazoo. I just stared at Pierce as he stared back at me and said nothing.

  Eventually, he got the message and dropped it, returning to the main screens and looking over the map with Damon.

  “When are we going?” Damon asked him.

  “We can’t just rush in; it’s a trap.”

  “I know it’s a trap,” Damon snapped back. “But it’s the first chance we’ve really had to get him.”

  The first chance since Sweet Hell that was. And look how that had ended up; a complete and utter clusterfuck. I shuddered as I remembered being tied to that cross and blindfolded.

  “If we do this properly,” Pierce said, “without rushing in before we’re ready, then we might just get him and end this.”

  Pierce didn’t believe that. Anscombe and Shaw didn’t believe it either. I certainly didn’t.

  But Damon just nodded his head and returned his seething and desperate attention to the map of Ponsonby.

  My heart lurched. We all have our limits. We all have that line in the sand that if we cross it, we’re done for. I’d come close to mine; Carl had seen to that.

  You’re close to breaking, Lara.

  I’d come close, but I hadn’t yet stepped over. Damon, though, I thought as I sat there while my heart was breaking, had crossed over it. He was on the other side of rationality now. He was a desperate man, close to breaking, if not already breaking apart, and he hadn’t even realised that this was the one thing too much that had sent him over.

  It wasn’t insanity. It wasn’t any type of madness. It was a type of stress, a trauma of the mind and heart and soul, t
hat meant continuing on the path you were on could be fatal.

  Not that I thought Damon would want to end his life to end the pain he was feeling. But he wouldn’t hesitate to put his life in danger to end this once and for all.

  He was out. Weston would expect him to go to the halfway house, but instead, he’d get me and, hopefully, a spook.

  A spook that had just ridden into the underground carpark at ASI and was parking her matt black, lethally fast looking motorbike beside the Porsche Cayenne.

  I watched as the woman in question took off her helmet, scanning the carpark in a split second glance that you wouldn’t have even noticed had you not been looking for it and knew what she was. What she formerly was, that is. She crossed the well-lit space, glancing up at the camera that was filming her; the one I was watching right then play out on a smaller screen to the side of Shaw.

  She knew she was being watched. She probably knew she was being watched by more than just a tech geek or Anscombe who’d called her in. I’d overheard what Anscombe had said on his cellphone to her; it had given nothing away. But this woman, this ex-spook, knew there was more than just her coworker and boss waiting and watching.

  She walked with purpose, sure steps and relaxed shoulders. I doubted, though, that she didn’t have weapons on her body readily accessible. She disappeared into the building itself and then came up on a new camera feed. I followed her progress as she approached the ASI control room.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Anscombe said.

  “You make it sound like you can’t trust her,” I replied steadily.

  “Oh, I can trust her,” he muttered and left the rest hanging. I guessed, not many others could trust this woman not to slit their throats if they ran counter to her objectives.

  I arched my brow and met Pierce’s I-told-you-so gaze. It was almost enough to make me laugh out loud.

  But then she was there, being allowed access into the inner sanctum, and one quick glance of her eyes across every screen, person, piece of equipment set out in readiness for the operation, and I knew she had been granted access into the op itself.

  It left me feeling decidedly uneasy.

  “Charlie Downes,” Anscombe said, “you know Pierce, and this is Detective Lara Keen from CIB and HEAT Chief Investigator Damon Michaels.”

  She said nothing.

  “This is your show, Keen,” Anscombe said with a dismissive wave of his hand, “by all means, clue us in on why Charlie is here.”

  Her sharp, storm-coloured eyes swept across the room to land on me. She hadn’t sat. She hadn’t yet spoken. But she didn’t need to. I knew a predator when I saw one. A weapon considered lethal simply by existing.

  “Does the name Rhys Kyle Weston mean anything to you?” I said.

  You could have heard a pin drop, even over the hum of electronic equipment.

  Charlie turned her eagle eyes on Anscombe, ignoring me completely. Or so it would seem.

  “What have you got yourself into this time, Nick?” she asked.

  She knew Weston. And she didn’t know him because Anscombe had let slip what he was working on with Pierce and me.

  Charlie Downes, ex-spook, current private eye with Anscombe Securities and Investigations, knew Rhys Kyle Weston because he was an ex-spook, too.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “If You Feel Your Back Hit The Wall, Sport, You Better Get Moving.”

  The shit hit the proverbial fan after that.

  “Is he one of yours?” Pierce demanded.

  “What the hell can he do?” Shaw asked.

  “Who is he?” Damon growled.

  “Is this sanctioned?” Nick queried.

  The questions were fired rapidly, one after the other, and in some instances, spoken over each other. The tension in the room ratcheted up several notches, and it had already been sitting at a low simmer due to Damon’s stress levels.

  I watched the spook as she stood in the face of the barrage; I watched as she didn’t even flinch at all and I knew one thing for certain.

  “This changes things,” I said.

  All eyes turned towards me, including the spy’s.

  “Understatement of the year, Keen,” Anscombe snapped.

  Charlie watched me with a hint of interest, but it was hard to tell. Those eyes were deadly, and it took effort to hold her gaze. I forced myself to because I thought this might have been a test. A simple one. An early one. But nonetheless a test. Charlie Downes wanted to know if I had a backbone and I was determined I’d bloody well prove it to her.

  She smiled softly and then turned back to Nick.

  It was surprising how good the full breath of air I sucked in felt right then.

  “What is he involved in?” she asked.

  “No,” Damon said, shaking his head. And then he repeated it as if it needed saying again. “No. You answer our questions before we answer yours.”

  I thought perhaps that Damon hadn’t noticed the danger this woman presented. I glanced at Nick; his face said nothing. I had to hope he had her on some sort of leash, but I wouldn’t take the chance that he didn’t control her completely. Not where Damon was concerned, at least.

  I stepped forward.

  “CIB is investigating him in relation to a serious crime,” I announced, drawing her attention away from Damon.

  “Lara,” Damon warned, sounding hurt that I might have betrayed him. I hadn’t yet. But he needed to be out of her crosshairs.

  I placed myself front and centre.

  “We believe he’s compromised one of our own,” I added.

  “Keen!” Pierce all but yelled at me. I’d gone from having Damon’s wrath aimed at me to having Pierce’s.

  I was happier with the current situation than I had been when Damon thought I was throwing HEAT and him under the bus. But we’d kept CIB’s traitor on a need-to-know basis for so long, that I did feel a little uncomfortable right then.

  The bottom line, though, was that Downes recognised Weston’s alias immediately and hadn’t tried to cover her reaction. Which meant she either knew he was in town and wasn’t at all surprised or he was someone of interest to her for a previous unknown reason and she’d decided our cooperation was needed in order to do whatever she deemed necessary.

  I had to assume the mind manipulation, his most telling and insidious skill, was to blame.

  Which meant admitting we were aware of it. Enter the CIB traitor.

  Pierce turned away in disgust. Damon thrummed in my peripheral vision as if a tuning fork recently struck. Shaw watched on in a way that made you think he was part of the furniture and not a threat. And Anscombe was a statue, waiting to act if needed.

  In that suspended moment it was strangely Anscombe I trusted the most.

  “Interesting,” Charlie said.

  I snorted. This chick would give my father a run for his money. Ice Queen didn’t even cover it.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” she pressed.

  I studied her. She had dirty blonde hair, not too different in colour to mine; muscular arms and a trim figure. She was also about my height, so I thought that could be used as well if needed. She wore leathers and a figure-hugging t-shirt; her jacket hung open, but still, I couldn’t see the firearm I was certain was holstered beneath it. Her face would be considered attractive by most if not all men. And some women. Her voice was a little gravelly as if she smoked a packet a day. But I was fairly sure this woman was as fit as a woman in her thirties could be. Cigarettes would not have featured in her daily intake unless they served a purpose.

  Everything she did had meaning; I just had to decipher what that meaning meant.

  “How about you give me something first,” I said to her. “Quid pro quo.”

  “I may not be at liberty to answer your questions.”

  “Then he is a spook,” I mused.

  Nick winced. Shaw shifted a hand slowly toward a button on his desk which I thought might have been a panic button of some description — probably des
igned to disorientate and give him and Anscombe a chance to escape the fallout.

  I kept my eyes on Charlie.

  “I am not at liberty to answer that,” she said, reconfirming her earlier statement.

  “This could be a very short conversation, then,” I told her.

  “No skin off my nose, Detective.”

  “And your boss’s nose?” I asked, not looking at Anscombe even though I knew he wasn’t enjoying being brought up in the pissing contest Charlie and I were having.

  “Nick and I have an understanding.”

  “Maybe we can come to one too,” I said.

  “You’re a cop; I doubt it.”

  “Suspended cop and I think if you hadn’t wanted us to know you recognised Weston’s alias, you wouldn’t have said a thing.”

  She smiled. It was a little creepy. Only because she looked so normal doing it and this woman was anything but normal.

  “Very true,” she admitted. “If he has shown an interest in Auckland and CIB, then someone has a bullseye on his,” she looked at me sharply, “or her back. Who is it? You, Detective?”

  And then she turned to look at Damon.

  “Or you, Investigator?”

  Damon’s behaviour alone would have singled him out, so I wasn’t surprised she’d come to that conclusion.

  “Does it matter for the purposes of this conversation?” Pierce asked.

  “Oh, I think it matters a great deal,” Charlie said.

  “Just tell them what you can, Charlie,” Nick growled. “And stop playing with your dinner.”

  She laughed. It was throaty and full-bodied and garnered the attention of every single male in the room.

  I couldn’t decide if I liked or hated this woman. I worked on not showing either reaction right then.

  “He was one of ours,” she admitted, moving to take a seat.

  It seemed to signal something to Anscombe and Shaw because they immediately relaxed a little. Pierce was still wound up tighter than an industrial-strength spring, and Damon was… Well, Damon was still close to breaking.

  I pushed those thoughts away and concentrated on the spook.