Rook raced to meet her, skidding on his socks as soon as she opened her door. “You are not going to believe what I just learned.” If he had waited, maybe taken a breath, he would have sensed it, seen the damage, downshifted and cocked his head and asked what was up. Instead, she got his back, retreating to the laptop on her dining table, shooting power fists in the air and roaring, “Yesss!” Nikki drifted into her apartment behind him, not hearing or even feeling her own footfalls. The sensation was as if she were floating or, dare she say — suspended.
Nose deep in his MacBook Pro, Rook crackled with energy. “It’s been eating at me. I remembered hearing something about Lancer Standard — Lancer Standard: Mercenaries to the Stars.” He turned to her to laugh, but Heat startled him by slamming down the lid of his laptop.
“Why’d you do it?” she said.
He searched her, frowning. “. . . Nik?”
“You can quit the act. Tam Svejda told me.”
He looked puzzled. “Tam? You talked to Tam? About what?”
She moved to the counter and came back brandishing the copy of the Ledger. “This. The article that just got me suspended because they think I leaked it.”
“Oh, my God,” Rook shot to his feet, “they suspended you?” He took a step to her.
“Don’t!” She put up both palms to stay him and he stopped. “Just... keep away from me.”
His mind was racing, so it took him a few seconds to piece things together, and by then, she was striding to the kitchen. He hurried to follow, catching up to her as she opened the fridge. “You really think I had something to do with this?”
“I didn’t have to think it. I was told. By your bouncing Czech.” She still had the newspaper in her hand and tossed it at him. By reflex, he caught it.
“Tam? Tam told you I sourced this?” Rook realized he still had the offending Ledger in his hands and tossed it into the other room. “No way.”
“Great. Now you’re calling me a liar?” said Heat.
“No, no, I believe you. I just don’t understand why she would say that.” He felt it all spinning out of control and said, “Nikki, listen to me. I did not leak this to her.”
“Yuh, right. Like you’re going to admit it now.”
“How can you think it was me?”
Heat reached past the Sancerre and pulled out a Pellegrino. This was a time for a clear head. “For one, I’ve been looking at that prose you said was so... what did you call it?... tabloidy? Well, I smell a few Rook-isms in there. Calling the funeral issue a ‘problem that cannot be buried’... What else? Oh. ‘NYPD black and blue’?”
“Come on, I...” He stopped himself and looked like he’d tasted something foul.
“So those are your words.” She ditched the water and got out the wine.
“Sort of. But I never shared. It sounds like synchronicity.”
“It sounds like bull. Tam says you e-mailed notes to her.”
“Nope. Did not.”
Nikki pointed to his laptop over on the dining table. “What was that secret typing you’ve been doing?”
“All right, full disclosure. Yes, I have been writing up some notes for an article I plan to write on this Montrose thing.”
“You what?!”
“See? That’s why I didn’t tell you. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it after the cover piece I did on you.”
“Rook, this is even more devious. You were hiding it from me because you knew damn well I’d be against it?”
“No.... Yes. But I was going to tell you. Eventually.”
“You’re digging deeper the more you talk.”
“Look, I am an investigative journalist and this is a legitimate story.”
“That Tam Svejda says you slipped to her.”
“No.”
“What else did you slip her?”
“Oh. Oh ho! Now I’m seeing what’s happening here,” he said. “This is the green monster rearing its head.”
Nikki slammed the bottle down on the counter with a loud crack. “Do not minimize what I am going through by tagging me with some cheap label.”
“I’m sorry, that was out of line.”
“Damn right it was. Now it’s my turn.” The pent-up emotion from her week of agony spilled over. “Get your stuff and get the hell out of here.”
“Nikki, I...”
“Now.”
He hesitated and said, “I thought you trusted me.”
But she was already storming down the hallway with the bottle in her hand. The last thing Rook heard from Heat was the locking of her bedroom door.
The next morning, even though she knew she had no reason to, Nikki got up at her usual early time, showered, and dressed for work. While she was in the shower, Raley and Ochoa left her a message of between-the-lines support. They knew about the suspension like everyone by now and had left what they called a Roach-mail. “Hey, uh, Detective, or... whatever I should call you now,” said Ochoa.
Raley was on the other line and said, “Hey, partner, how about a little sensitivity? Hi, it’s Roach calling. Do they let you get calls in the penalty box? Anyway your dirty coffee mug is still in the sink down here at the precinct.”
“That’s right,” said Ochoa, “and if you think we’re going to wash it for you, dream on. So if you want the mug, well, you know what to do.... See ya?”
She thought about calling back, but instead Nikki sat on the cushion of her window seat while she watched a sanitation crew remove the overnight snow from her street. It gave her something to do. As she idled there, Nikki wondered if she should roll some cell phone video, in case she got a chance to upload the latest viral of a parked car getting its fender peeled away by a city snowplow.
That would help her get her job back, all right. Leak video of a municipal embarrassment.
Her solitude was anything but peaceful. Zach Hamner’s accusations insisted on visiting her perch in the bay window. He had called her disloyal. She dismissed that but then wondered, had she been? Nikki had done nothing deceitful, but the objective part of her — the part that was all about middle-of-the-night gut checks and self-reproach — wanted to pick at the wound. So she did. Heat asked herself, had she caused harm to others by her relationship with Rook? She hoped not. And then there was ambition. The Hammer had also scolded her about that, and she worried herself over whether her sense of entitlement to the new rank had emboldened her to threaten Zach to go public over the funeral.
What ate at her most was the trust issue. He’d said you can’t lead if you can’t be trusted. Nikki wasn’t bothered by what that cockroach thought of her. But what gnawed at Heat was her own perception. Did she trust herself to lead?
Her phone jarred her back to the present. The caller ID was from 1PP. Nikki went for the green button so quickly, the phone slipped out of her hand, but she caught it before it hit the floor. “Hello? You there?”
“Nikki Heat, it’s Phyllis Yarborough. Hope you don’t mind me calling your personal number.”
“About the only way to reach me today.” Heat tried to make it light without putting any stink on it. Like she was taking it all in stride.
“I hear that,” said the deputy commissioner. “May I tell you flat out, this sucks?”
Nikki laughed, and even though the call didn’t sound like it was going to be the reprieve she had hoped for, she was glad for it. “You won’t get much argument out of me.”
“I just want you to know, if you weren’t aware of it, the decision was not unanimous. There was one dissenting vote, and you’re talking to her.”
“Oh... I didn’t know that. But thank you. That means a lot.”
“Have to say, I’m not a fan of The Hammer anyway, and this time he did not disappoint. He called the meeting, he fanned the flames, he pressed for the sanction, he was obsessed.” Yarborough paused. Nikki figured it was her turn.
“I do have to admit I understand Zach taking it as an affront, the way I lit into him about the captain’s funeral.”
“Oh, boo-hoo, he needs to grow a pair. I’ll tell you something, Nikki, I not only don’t believe you leaked this, I believe this is pure politics. Zach and his network of man weasels were fine when I was interested in grooming you for my team at RTCC, but there was a definite sea change after Captain Montrose died.” She quieted her tone and added, “I am sorry about that, by the way, I know it’s a loss for you.”