“Too wired to be tired. Don’t even know what a time zone is anymore.”
“Does sex help your writing?”
“Sure doesn’t hurt.” He stopped and rotated to face her with a grin, then went back to his computer. “But I’m not actually writing-writing. I’m just downloading and saving some attachments I e-mailed myself. Won’t be a sex — I mean sec.... Or do I?”
“You e-mail yourself? Rook, if you’re lonely, I could e-mail you.”
He continued working keystrokes as he explained. “I always back up my iPad docs and smart phone notes by e-mailing them to myself. That way, if my iPad takes a dip in a swamp or my phone gets confiscated by some former Eastern Bloc gun runner... or I leave it on the R Train like an idiot... I don’t lose all my work.” With a flourish, he double-tapped the track pad. “Done.”
After they made love again, of all places, in the bedroom, Heat and Rook held each other in the dark. A trickle of sweat ran across one of Nikki’s breasts and she wondered — his or hers? She tracked the sensation of its slow, meandering course between them and smiled. After a month apart, how wonderful to be close enough that she couldn’t tell whose sweat was whose.
When they both decided they were hungry, she wondered aloud who was still delivering after midnight, but Rook was already at his suitcase fishing out a pair of sweatpants. “You’re not going out,” she said. “10-10 WINS said it’s in minus temps tonight.” He said nothing, just handed Nikki her robe and led her to the kitchen. He opened the door to the refrigerator and came out with a half dozen takeout trays.
“Rook, what did you do?”
“Hit SushiSamba on the way over.” He set a container of each on the counter. “Let’s see, got your Samba Park roll, your BoBo Brazil, your Green Envy... ,” he paused to purr like a tiger, “. . . your tuna sashimi.”
“Oh my God,” said Nikki, “and you got yellowtail ceviche?”
“Do I know you? Margarita, señorita?”
“Sí.” She laughed, remembering how long it had been since she’d done that.
Rook set the pitcher he had mixed on the tiles and, as he salted two glasses, said, “Consider the potential irony. Four weeks surviving nighttime jungle landings in the cargo bays of unmarked planes, multiple detentions by corrupt border guards, getting roughed up in the trunk of some paranoid Colombian drug lord’s El Dorado by his crackhead flunkies, only to be gunned down in my girlfriend’s apartment.”
“No laugh, Rook, I was feeling jumpy. I think someone was following me tonight.”
“Seriously? Did you see who?”
“No. And not a hundred percent sure about it.”
“Yes, you are,” he said. “Should you call Montrose?”
There was a time that’s exactly what she would have done. Detective Heat would have let her captain know and then vehemently declined his offer to park a cruiser out front (which he would have done anyway, ignoring her protests). It wasn’t the uncertainty about the tail that stopped her, though. It was the uncertainty in the face of him questioning her judgment and leadership. Plus her own awkwardness dealing with the captain with so many suspicions swirling. “No,” she said. “It’s too weird with Montrose now. Kind of tense.”
“With Montrose? And you? What’s going on?”
The day had been such a grind, and this respite was such a welcome oasis, she said, “Way too much to get into now. I’m not shutting you out, but can we leave it until tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.” He held up his glass. “To reunions.”
They clinked salut and sipped. The taste of a margarita would always remind her of the first night they had sex in the summer heat wave. “Hope you learned your lesson about sneaking in here without a heads-up.”
“You gave me a key. And what kind of surprise would that make, if I called?”
“The surprise would have been yours if I’d had company.”
He served the food, placing the cut rolls of sushi on her plate and then his with chopsticks. “You’re right. That would have surprised me.”
“What?” she said, “You mean, surprised if I had been with someone?”
“You wouldn’t be.”
“I sure could.”
“Could, yes. Would? No. That’s not who you are, Nikki Heat.”
“A little presumptuous.” She ate some of the ceviche, and as she tasted the citrus and cilantro, relishing how it made the fish even fresher, Nikki reflected on how close she had come to bringing Don home with her that night. “And how do you know that’s not who I am, Jameson Rook?”
“It’s not about knowing. You can never really know someone. It’s really about trust.”
“Curious. We’ve never really defined our...”
“. . . Exclusivity?” he said, finishing for her.
She nodded, “Yeah, that. And yet you trust me?” He chewed a Green Envy and nodded back. “And what about you, Rook, am I supposed to trust you?”
“You already do.”
“I see. And how far does this trust extend?” she asked, chopsticking a dab of wasabi for her next victim. “What about travel? What’s it called? The Hundred Mile Rule?”
“You mean the one that says you can do whatever — meaning whoever — you want if you’re more than a hundred miles away? The variation on the ‘What Happens in Vegas’ Rule?”
“That’s the one,” she said.
“Since you brought it up, the places I’ve been, situations do present themselves. Do they ever. And yes, I absolutely subscribe to the Hundred Mile Rule.” She set her chopsticks on the side of her plate, parallel to each other, and studied him. He continued, “But here’s the thing. According to Rook’s Rule, no matter where I am in the world, a hundred miles or a thousand, Mile Zero starts here.” He poked two fingers on his chest.
Nikki thought a moment, then picked up a piece of sushi with her fingers. “When I finish this Samba roll? I want you to pretend Mile Zero is a beach in Fiji.... And we’re on it alone.” She popped it in her mouth in one bite and flicked her eyebrows at him while she chewed.
The next morning “brisk walk” took on a literal meaning as she and Rook picked their way over ice patches on the way to the subway in minus-two degrees Fahrenheit. At least the smack of cold in her face helped wake her up. Heat had to tear herself out of that toasty bed with him to make her breakfast meeting on time. He helped by getting up with her and brewing coffee while she showered. When she stepped out, he was packing up gear so he could get to his loft in Tribeca and a day of writing. The deadline for his arms smuggling article loomed, and he told her that on its heels he owed the proofread galleys for his ghostwritten romance novel, Her Endless Knight.
“I feel like I just had one of those,” she said as they kissed at the stairs leading down to the 6 train at 23rd.
“Any complaints?”
“Only one,” said Heat. “It is about to end.”
Nikki made one more survey of Park Avenue South and was satisfied she wasn’t being followed. And as Rook stood holding the cab he had hailed, waiting in the street while he watched her, his pause confirmed Nikki’s suspicion that his early rise to get to work was an excuse to escort her without saying so. The sidewalk rumbled like distant thunder below, and she could hear the screech of the subway braking as it slowed at the station. She gave him a head nod and hurried down to meet it.
The deli Zach Hamner had chosen couldn’t have been more convenient. The Corte Café storefronted her subway exit on Lafayette between Duane and Reade, right across the street from the Municipal Building and, just behind it, One Police Plaza. Heat pushed through the glass door behind a trio of construction workers who tossed their hardhats on a table and swarmed the counter, calling out orders for breakfast burritos and ham & eggs on a kaiser. She didn’t know Hamner, but the skinny guy in a black suit and gold tie at a window table was a good candidate. He stood to wave at her with one hand; he held his BlackBerry to his ear with the other. As she stepped over, he said into his phone, “Listen, I gotta go, my breakfast meeting is here. OKlaterbye.” He set the phone on the table and extended a hand. “Detective Heat, Zach Hamner, sit, sit.”