The hum of the rising elevator.
Heat leaned over and, first, cut her right ankle loose, then went to her left. In her rush, she poked herself on the lower shin under her pant leg and winced. But she pushed the pain aside and did her job. She had less than a minute to get loose and had to keep cutting. Her left ankle came free and she stood up just as she heard the elevator's muffled squeal, signaling its stop at Rook's floor.
Nikki was still attached to the chair at her left elbow when the accordion gate opened. She made the decision to turn off the drill so the Texan couldn't hear its whine through the door and be warned.
She couldn't find the seam of the duct tape with her nails to peel it back and the dental tools were all precision points, no good for cutting. The front door key chunked into the lock. In the kitchen there would be knives. The deadbolt shot open. She picked up the chair and carried it with her around the counter. The wooden knife holder was too far to get to. But there. Beside the sink right in front of her: a bottle opener beside a bent bottle cap. Heat grabbed it as the knob turned and she heard the front door creak open around the corner in the foyer.
She backed herself and the chair into the great room, crouched down below the counter to buy a few seconds and some cover, and started to cut herself free with the sharp point of the opener. The boots stepped onto the slate kitchen floor and stopped.
Nikki was still cutting at the tape when the Texan bounded over the counter and landed on top of her.
The force of his tackle knocked Heat sideways under the dining table. His hands clutched her throat in a choke from behind and she couldn't do anything about it. Her right arm was pinned under her side, trapping her hand and the bottle opener under her own weight, and her left was strapped to the chair, which had been dragged along like a slipped boat anchor.
She tipped her body backward and rolled on top of him, pinning him under her back. He responded by strengthening his choke grip on her throat, but with her right hand now free, she plunged the bottle opener down. He yelled when the point sunk into his upper thigh, and his grip loosened. Nikki rolled off him and sprung to her feet, frantically cutting away at the duct tape to free herself. He was on his feet quickly, out from under the table, lunging at her.
Heat used the damned chair to her advantage, swinging her left arm outward as he approached. He put up his arms to deflect, but the wood still smacked him enough to drive him off center. He shot past her, his near arm getting hooked in the stretcher bar between the chair legs, and as he flew by, the last strip of duct tape ripped, and the chair went with him. Nikki was free to move.
She didn't wait for him to recover from his fall. Heat lunged for him, but his reflexes were quick. He spun, using the chair to deflect her. Nikki's church key flew out of her hand and across the room, clanging into the radiator before it fell. She thought of going for it, but the Texan was already up and coming at her. Heat sidestepped a few inches, clamping his throat with her right hand as he arrived, jerking his chin up while she palmed the top of his forehead with her left to push down and backward. Her Krav Maga move buckled his knees, and he toppled onto his ass.
Nikki spotted her blazer on the floor under a window and, sticking out from under it, the butt of her gun. She turned to rush for the weapon, but the Texan had obviously also had personal combat training. He spun on his hips and scissored Heat at the knees, locking up her legs and flipping her down hard, face-first onto the floor. From her workouts with Don, she anticipated a grapple from him to tie her up, so she flailed an elbow at his approaching face, caught him in the cheek, and when he recoiled, she broke free, delivering a rib kick on her rise.
The Texan came to his feet, reaching into his sport coat and pulling out a knife. It was a scary piece of business, one of those military-issue combat blades with a knuckle guard and twin fullers, or blood grooves, running along each side. Nikki's unhappy thought was how comfortable it looked in his hand. He looked at her and actually smiled. Like he knew something. Like he was holding The Game Changer.
Training and experience told Nikki that the only fight you want to be in is the one you win-and fast. Don had drilled her on the mantra just that morning, as he had every session: Defend and attack at the same time. And now, here she was, empty-handed in a fight against an experienced assailant with a combat knife.
The Texan didn't give her much time to reflect on strategy. This man was also trained to end fights quickly, and he came for her right away. Having height on Nikki, he lunged at her from above, bringing the point down at her as he stepped in. Defend and attack, she thought, and jumped right in to meet him, slapping his wrist away to the outside while moving in close to deliver a knee to his groin. It doesn't always go like in training, though. He anticipated the knee and countered his body to the side. Not only did Heat miss, he used his free hand to shove her, taking advantage of her momentum to whisk her right past him.
Nikki stumbled but didn't let herself fall. Instead, she spun to brace for his attack, which she knew would be immediate. It was.
This round he came in low and up, going for her belly. Nikki didn't try to slap the arm to the side. It was time to get the knife away from this asshole and now. As he came in, she clutched his wrist, pulling his arm to the outside and not letting go. At the same time, she brought down a hammer fist on the weak spot she had exposed by pulling his arm to the side: his collarbone. Heat felt and heard it crack under the force of her blow, and he cried out.
But his knife had that knuckle guard, so it did not fall even though his grip was weakened. While he was overcome with pain, she reached with both hands to pry it from him, but he brought his fist down on the back of her neck and knocked her to the floor, dazed. She was on her knees on all fours, her vision tunneling to black, when she heard him scramble across the slate of the kitchen. Nikki shook her head and drew a deep breath. The stars started to clear and she got to her feet. Feeling slightly nauseous, the detective stumbled to the wall, felt under her blazer, and got her gun.
He would be out the front door by the time she made it through the kitchen. Counterintuitively, Nikki rushed to the other side of the great room, where there was a portion of the foyer visible through the kitchen entry. She knew that from her poker night the summer before, when she kept eyeing that door, longing for a chance to leave.
When she saw him, the Texan was just opening the door, but pausing to pick something up off the hutch, a large manila envelope. The same one she'd had locked in her trunk. Heat braced on the counter and called, "Police, freeze." He didn't freeze, but slid quickly into the doorway. Nikki fired off one shot in the narrowing sliver of the opening as the door shut behind him. Detective Heat kicked open the door to the stairwell off Rook's penthouse floor and entered with her gun up in an isosceles brace. When she had made sure the Texan wasn't hiding on the landing, she considered his options: up one flight to the rooftop or down seven to the street. Then below her, Nikki heard the bark of a big dog and boots descending the painted concrete steps.
As she flew down the stairwell, two steps at a time, and past the third floor, the dog barked again from inside his apartment. Good work, Buster, she thought, as she raced by. That was when Nikki heard the echo of the door slam come up from street level beneath her.
Heat paused briefly with her hand on the door before she jerked it open and made her defensive exit, gun ready, out onto the sidewalk. The Texan was not there, but he had left something behind. A spatter of blood on the sidewalk, visible in the pool of light shining down from the sodium lamp above the service door.