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

by Claire, Nicola

  Despite all of that, he had been a massive arsehole at Les Mills Gym. I mean, whipping out his pecker in front of Pierce. That was not normal, even for Joe Cawfield.

  I reached forward and swiped my cellphone off my desk and dialled a now familiar number. I got the dragon on the second ring. Some indeterminate amount of time later, a few halfhearted barbs at each other which I think we were both well and truly sick and tired of by now, and I was talking to Nick.

  “Detective,” he said in that smooth, deep voice of his. “To what do I owe this dubious pleasure?”

  I smiled into the phone. Three things I could always rely on: death, taxes, and Nick Anscombe having a go at me.

  “I need your spooks,” I said without preamble.

  “They’re not my spooks,” he shot back. “And stop calling them spooks!”

  “I need to know if one of our detectives has been PSYOPSed,” I said, ignoring his outburst. “And your spooks would be able to tell.”

  “Jesus Christ, you’re a pain in the arse.”

  I looked around the bullpen as detectives hurried to do Hart’s bidding; faces set in hard lines, heads down, not making eye contact. Having one member of the boys’ club under suspicion was bad enough. Having two? It was getting to them, and the sooner we got this sorted, the sooner we could all move forward with the investigation.

  Jones would be in the wind. And finding him was imperative. Hart would have the guys in Computer Forensics scouring the CCTV footage across Auckland City. They were good at what they did. Very good. But were they Amber or Eric Shaw good?

  “I also need your tech geeks’ assistance,” I said.

  I half expected Anscombe to tell me to stop calling them geeks, but he remained silent.

  “I need a detective found,” I told him.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “Does Hart know you’re asking me to do this?”

  “No. Pierce doesn’t either.”

  “Pierce is currently not taking my calls,” Nick said sullenly.

  “Why do you want to talk to him?”

  He sighed. “Somethings brewing on Radar.”

  The radar was the underground network of informants that people like Anscombe used to stay ahead of the Police. You had to walk a little on the shady side of the legal line to be able to use it. There were some detectives in some Bureaus throughout New Zealand who could possibly get a foothold on the Radar and use it occasionally. But most, if not all, of Auckland Central CIB would be out.

  The Radar had haunted Detective Inspector Hart for years.

  “I see,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t give me that holier-than-thou attitude, Keen. You know you’ve used my contacts in the past.”

  “What you do with Pierce is your own deal. Keep me out of it.”

  “And if your name came up on Radar?”

  “Has it?”

  “Carl’s has.”

  Nick was baiting me. Stirring up shit the only way he knew how. Our relationship would never be a friendly one. He pushed. I pushed back harder.

  “Can you send the spooks over?” I asked, purposely calling them ‘spooks’ and not by name. “And get the geeks to search for Trevor Jones.”

  “Jones?” Nick sounded surprised. I didn’t blame him. Trevor Jones was way the hell out of left field. The good old boy cowboy cop. My heart hurt even thinking about it.

  “Yeah. Looks like it.”

  “Huh,” Anscombe muttered. “I thought it was a shadow, but maybe not.”

  “What are you waffling about now?” I demanded.

  “Radar.”

  He was losing me.

  I said nothing because silence is a golden prison too many people willingly walk into.

  Nick said nothing. The silence stretched.

  “Fucking hell,” he muttered, eventually making me grin. “You’re as bad as Pierce.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “So you should. OK. Charlie and Ava are on their way to CIB. Eric is on Jones. Amber’s on her day off, but I’ll call her in if I need to. And as for the shadow, it’s a hit on Radar that you don’t believe. One that’s so incongruent that it’s likely been used as a distraction technique.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Yeah. Your boy Jones was the shadow. Some shit about a drug exchange that seemed so out of the ordinary that I ignored it. I’ll look into it further and let you know.”

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to think.

  “And for God’s sake, tell Pierce to answer his fucking phone.”

  The line went dead.

  I pocketed my cellphone and rose to my feet. Hart was going to have kittens when he heard I’d invited two former spooks into CIB. Not that I was sure Ava was a former anything but Charlie, I thought, had moved on from that life.

  I shook my head and knocked on the doorframe to Hart’s office. He’d kept his door open, which could mean anything from availability to watching us like hawks. His tie, though, was slightly crooked.

  I swallowed nervously and walked in when he looked up.

  “You have something for me, Detective?” he asked gruffly.

  “Where are we with Cawfield?”

  “He can stew for a bit. I want Jones back in here ASAP. We need to start showing some progress on this thing.”

  He was getting pressured from above, and it was cracking his normally unflappable façade.

  This was going to shake things up nicely.

  “We don’t know whether Jones has been blackmailed or manipulated, sir. Which means we don’t know if Cawfield is the manipulation pattern piece. It could be important to make that distinction.”

  Hart sat back in his chair and studied me.

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked quietly.

  “Weston is PSYOPS trained. He’s an ex-spook, sir. No one knows him better than another spook.”

  “Tell me you didn’t contact that arsehole Anscombe and pull in Charlie Downes for this.”

  “I contacted that arsehole Anscombe and pulled in not only Downes by someone called Ava who was definitely a spook at some stage and could quite possibly still be one now… Sir.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face.

  Then he pointed a finger directly at my head.

  “This is on you, Detective. You meet them at the front door. You accompany them wherever they go in the building. You do not let them out of your sight, and you make damn sure they don’t get a glimpse of what we’re doing in here. No case files, no computer screens, no cellphone calls in their immediate vicinity. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Crystal, sir.”

  “Then get on it. And God help us if this blows up in our face. Fucking spooks! What’s the fucking world coming to? How the fuck did it come to this? Jesus fucking Christ!”

  I left him shouting obscenities and walked back out into the bullpen.

  Every single detective in the room stared at me in horror.

  “What. Did. You. Do?” Pierce all but whisper-shouted at me.

  “Return Anscombe’s calls,” I told him and walked out of the room.

  The spooks were waiting for me at the main reception area to Central Police. The cop on the front desk was attempting to buzz me up in CIB. He looked a little flustered. I narrowed my eyes at the women.

  “This way,” I said, directing them through the x-ray machine and into the heart of Central Police.

  Neither of them set the machine off, but I wasn’t naive enough to think they weren’t armed in some fashion. Ava smiled sweetly at the desk jockey, but thankfully Charlie was all ice. I was strangely more comfortable with Charlie than Ava. Which might have explained the way Anscombe behaved around them, too.

  As we traversed the corridors to the lifts, I could feel both of their eyes on me — a bullseye right between the shoulder blades. I refused to show any discomfort and leaned forward and pressed the button to call the lift without glancing back at them once.

  “Could use some updated decor,” Ava said.
<
br />   “We’re about to break ground on a new building,” I told her.

  “How long have you been in this one?”

  “Over fifty years.” It’d be a sad day when Central Police moved to College Hill. But I certainly wouldn’t miss the stained carpet and scuffed walls and extraordinarily slow elevators.

  The doors to said elevators swung open on creaky wheels in dirty tracks. I stepped in and felt the box shudder. Ava delicately stepped over the track and looked around with a moue of distaste on her brightly painted lips. Charlie leaned casually against the wall; I guessed the leather of her jacket protected her some, but I still grimaced slightly.

  Maybe we wouldn’t be too sad to leave Cook Street after all.

  The lift began to rise.

  “So, how are you, Detective?” Ava asked sweetly.

  I stared at her. It had to be an act; this upbeat, sweet as pie, nothing wouldn’t melt in the mouth persona. She was a stone-cold killer; I was sure of it.

  “Shit’s just hit the fan,” I said and saw Charlie smile out of the corner of my eye. “We’ve got one detective in lockup who we suspect has been manipulated by Weston and another on the run who could be simply a blackmail victim or another manipulation. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “And you want our opinion?” Ava asked.

  “You’re the spooks.”

  The air chilled several degrees, and yet the woman hadn’t stopped smiling sweetly. Alarm bells clanged inside my head and my primitive fight or flight reflexes kicked in big time. No. Not just a pretty face. Lethal. That’s what Ava the Spook was.

  “You don’t like being called that?” I asked, doing my damnedest not to show any emotions. Thankfully, I’d been raised by the best. I might not have been PSYOPS trained and abused like these two had, but I’d had the King of Ice as my dad.

  Ava slowly arched a brow and then laughed. “Just messing with you. Nicky responds with much more vigour than you do, Detective. You’re absolutely no fun at all.”

  “You’ve been pulling his leg?” I asked.

  “And it’s such a nice leg, too.”

  I laughed. “Nice one.”

  “But on a completely unrelated note,” Ava said. And suddenly I had a sharp composite blade against my throat. “Don’t underestimate me, Lara. It could be the very last thing you ever do.”

  “How did you get that blade through the x-ray?” I said carefully.

  The blade disappeared, and I didn’t even see where it went.

  “What blade?”

  Fuck me. I swallowed and rubbed at my neck. She hadn’t broken skin, but I couldn’t for the life of me stop myself from checking.

  “You’re fucked in the head,” I whispered as the lift came to rest at our floor.

  “We all are a little, aren’t we?”

  She stepped off, and Charlie slowly followed. She patted me on the shoulder but said nothing to reassure me. Nick Anscombe might be a pain in the arse, but he was an astute pain in the arse. I’d never doubt his assessment on spook-related things ever again.

  I pushed myself into motion and led the… ex-spies down the hallway to Interview Room Three, the only one you could access without entering the bullpen proper. I knocked twice on the door and pushed it open. Cawfield sat behind the desk looking tired, and his lawyer was pacing. The suit stopped in his tracks and scowled at me.

  “Detective,” he snapped. “About time. My client has been waiting for hours. This is unacceptable treatment for one of your own.” His gaze landed on Ava and Charlie as they entered the room behind me. “Who are these two?” he demanded.

  I closed the door behind the spooks before speaking.

  “Joe,” I said. “How’re you doing?”

  “Fuck you, Keen.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” the lawyer asked.

  I stepped to the side and waved a hand at Cawfield, looking at Ava and Charlie. “All yours,” I said.

  “Now, hold on a minute!” the lawyer shouted. “If you have questions to ask my client, I want them on the record. Start the tapes.”

  I did nothing.

  “Who the hell are you people?” the lawyer snapped.

  Charlie moved to the wall opposite Cawfield and leaned back. She looked like a lethal leather clad goddess. Ava pulled out a chair on our side of the table and sat, long legs crossed at the knees and red lacquered nails tapping on the table’s surface. The lawyer swallowed visibly.

  “I want it on record that this is highly inappropriate,” he said. “Whatever is discussed in here has no legal standing. I will not allow my client to be abused in such a fashion.”

  “Sit down,” Ava said, not taking her eyes off Cawfield who was already sitting. The softly spoken words had been for the lawyer. “And shut up.”

  The lawyer did what she asked. I cocked an eyebrow.

  “Joe, is it?” Ava asked.

  “Who’s asking?” Cawfield drawled.

  “My name is Ava.”

  “Well, hello there, Ava,” Cawfield said smirking. His eyes darted to me and then back.

  “Are you having fun?” she asked him sweetly.

  “A hell of a lot more fun now,” he said and winked.

  “What did you do to end up in here?”

  “Fucked with the wrong detective.”

  Ava offered a frown to show her dislike of his language.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. Cawfield never apologised. I sniggered. “Fuck you, Keen!” he shouted.

  Ava bit her lip. “Sit with me, Detective,” she said, pulling the chair beside her out and patting it.

  Getting closer to the spook, and by extension, her composite blade, was not welcomed, but I did what she asked; she’d have a reason.

  After making myself comfortable, I met Cawfield’s eyes. They blazed with anger. And not just a little desire. I felt dirty just being here.

  “You like her,” Ava said.

  “I can’t stand her guts,” Cawfield replied.

  “But you want her,” Ava pushed.

  “Who wouldn’t? She’s got a fine arse.”

  “Just her arse?”

  “I like her mouth too; get a hard-on just thinking about it.”

  “Joe,” the lawyer cautioned.

  Ava looked at the suit. “Nothing said in here is legally binding. You said so yourself. Relax, Mr Smithers. This will all be over very soon, and you can go home to your wife and son and dog. Poodle, I believe. Named Sophie?”

  He stared at her, his mouth hanging open, sweat beading his brow.

  I glanced at Charlie. She was ice. I looked back at the woman at my side. She smiled sweetly.

  Fucking hell.

  I did nothing because we needed this. In bed with a crazy spook who could slit our throats in a heartbeat and not break out in a sweat.

  “Are you all like this?” I asked. “Like him?”

  The smile turned sharp, almost brittle. “He created us, Detective. What do you think?”

  I felt a little sick.

  The smile turned sweet again as if a light switch had been flicked.

  “Joe,” she said. “What else do you like about Detective Keen?”

  Joe scowled at her, his eyes flicking briefly to me; a question there.

  She’d lost him. The lawyer had derailed things. This could get messy.

  Ava shot the lawyer a look of annoyance. Charlie moved to stand behind the suit silently. The lawyer looked like he was about to piss his pants. Charlie placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. It didn’t look hard, but the lawyer turned whiter than a sheet.

  His silence was guaranteed from here on in.

  My eyes met Cawfield’s.

  “Nice friends you’ve got there, Keen,” he said.

  “You don’t know the half of it, dickhead.”

  Ava’s smiled twitched, and Joe predictably went off the deep end.

  “God, you’re a bitch!” he snarled.

  “But you like her,” Ava said in that sweet sing-song voice. “Yo
u want her.”

  “I want her,” he said, suddenly looking like Crazy Cawfield again.

  I couldn’t believe how quickly he transformed. Did all it take was me pushing back at him?

  “What do you want to do to her, Joe?” Ava asked sweetly.

  Cawfield leaned forward over the table and looked directly at me.

  “I want to make her bleed.”

  “A knife?” Ava pulled her blade from somewhere and placed it between us on the table.

  I stilled. The lawyer whimpered. Cawfield looked at the blade as if he couldn’t make out what it was.

  He looked back up at me. Then his hand slowly reached out and picked the blade up off the table top.

  I stood up and pushed my chair back to give me space to manoeuvre.

  “This could work,” he said, eyeing me evilly. “It’d be bigger than his dick in any case, eh, Keen?”

  “Whose dick, Joe?” Ava asked, leaning back in her seat and checking her nail polish.

  I glared at her. The lunatic had a knife and was clearly gearing up to use it.

  I searched out Charlie. She stared back at me as cold as the Antarctic.

  “His,” Joe snarled. “That fucker’s. The one who fucks her like she’s a whore.”

  “She’s not a whore, Joe,” Ava said.

  “Yes, she is. A fucking whore who needs a good fucking.”

  “And you’re the one to give it to her?” Ava asked, moving onto her other fingernails for inspection.

  “Yes. Dumb cunt won’t know what hits her.”

  My eye caught Charlie’s. She nodded her head toward Cawfield in a gesture I could only take to mean I needed to engage him. But engaging him right now seemed suicidal.

  “Lara,” Ava said, taking the bull by the horns. “Surely you’re not going to let him get away with that?”

  “Chance would be a fine thing,” I muttered.

  “Little whore wants it badly,” Cawfield said eerily.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I said, snapping completely. This was way too bizarre to let continue.

  “Nothing,” Cawfield spat, spittle flying everywhere. “Not once I teach you a lesson.”

  He rounded the table. I stepped back against the far wall. Charlie kept her hand on the lawyer who was miraculously making a move to come to my aid. Ava looked up from her nails but didn’t stand.

  “Why?” she said.