“Nice. I’m on my way.”
“Negative. Stay put. This area is too hot. Wait for my call and we’ll set up a rendezvous.”
An automated voice from inside the train announced that it was preparing to leave. Without breaking stride, Nick stripped off his jacket, hat, and utility belt and tossed them into one of the cars. If the SO15 man who called after him earlier was worth his badge, he wouldn’t take long to put two and two together. He would have the trains leaving this station searched at their next stop. The stolen uniform gave him something to find, something to push the bulk of their search miles away from here.
Shortly before he ran out of concrete platform, Nick felt icy particles pelting his face. He was out in the open, out from under the broad station roof, and it was sleeting. Even London’s weather had turned against him. Maybe ditching the police jacket wasn’t such a good idea. Two huge bell towers rose up on either side, and the roof and its fluorescent lights fell behind. The dark of the long railway bridge enveloped him. He could still hear the shouts of the yellow jackets back in the station, but they were distant, no longer threatening.
The train pulled out of the station and clacked across the bridge, covering the crunch of his boots on the gravel between the tracks until he was a good hundred meters from the station. At two hundred meters, he had reached the other shore. An old brown brick building with a high-pitched roof was pressed up against the left abutment of the bridge. Nick lowered himself over the side, dropped to the roof, and slid on his backside down the icy shingles until his heels hit a black half-pipe gutter. He had just started climbing down a thick four-story drainpipe when Scott came up on the comm link.
“Nightmare One, come in.”
Nick paused in his climb to flex his frozen fingers. “I’m up. Go ahead.”
“I have Lighthouse on the line for you. It’s the colonel.”
That didn’t bode well. Walker rarely spoke to his people via earpiece comms these days, not with the team’s ability to telecom almost anywhere. The colonel preferred face-to-face communication so he could scowl at his operators. Nick wiped his free hand on his pants and continued descending to the street. “Has there been a development?”
“A couple,” Scott replied. “And neither of them is good.”
CHAPTER 44
I’m worried about Nick,” said Drake as Chaya opened the door to her flat. His police radio continued to buzz with calls about the fire at Cannon Street, and he had not heard anything on his SATCOM piece since Nick ordered him to stand by.
Chaya motioned him inside. “I am worried, too, but there is nothing you can do for him.” She took the radio from Drake’s hand and turned it off. “If I have learned anything about your friend, it is that he can take care of himself.”
Chaya’s apartment was not what Drake expected. He had pictured cold colors and spartan contemporary furniture — the flat of a smart, ambitious young businesswoman who slept there but lived at the office. Instead, the colors here were warm and earthy. She patted the back of a low couch upholstered in silky burnt orange and gold. “Sit down and relax. And please, take off that ridiculous hat and jacket. They are too small for you anyway.” She cracked open the door to her bedroom. “I’ll be right back.”
Drake laid the bobby’s gear on a table near the kitchen bar and sank down onto the couch, resting his head back on the soft cushions. He breathed deep and detected a trace of some dark, intoxicating aroma. Maybe Chaya had lit a candle in the other room.
In the comfortable setting, the temptation to close his eyes and drift off was strong. After all, Nick had told him to sit and wait. This was an opportunity for some much-needed rest. Then again, Drake had grown accustomed to ignoring Nick’s orders.
He shook off his exhaustion and sat up, activating the SATCOM feature on his phone rather than using his earpiece with Chaya so close. “Nightmare One, say your status.”
Nick did not respond.
“Nightmare Four, are you up?”
Nothing from Scott either. He checked the phone. No signal.
“I hope you don’t mind.” Chaya emerged from the bedroom wearing maroon silk pajamas that hung from her slender frame. “This might take a while, and I couldn’t bear to spend another minute in that suit.”
“Uh… No, that’s fine.” Drake stumbled over the words as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. “If I had brought my jammies, I’d be wearing them too.”
She laughed, slipping into her tiny kitchen. “I am certain you would be.”
Drake heard the clink of glasses and the splash of pouring liquid. While he watched Chaya work, he noticed a set of three pictures, hanging one above the other on the narrow column of wall at the end of the bar. Each depicted a chess game in abstract perspective from the level of the board, and each featured the queen in the foreground. From the bottom picture to the top, the queen moved closer to the viewer, each time with more pieces lying on their sides behind her.
“I like these chess paintings. Do you play?”
Chaya returned with two glasses of wine. “I dabble.” She pressed a glass into Drake’s hand and sat down cross-legged at the end of the couch. “And you?”
“It’s not really my game.” He set the glass down on the coffee table. “Too much thinking.”
She giggled in the midst of a sip, nearly spilling her wine, and raised a delicate hand to the corner of her mouth to catch a wayward drop. “You’re too funny.” She locked his eyes and touched the red liquid to her parted lips, gently sucking it in. “And too modest. My instincts tell me you are quite the chess player.”
With that, Chaya set her glass on the table. She stretched and ran her fingers through her hair, arching her back so that the silk shirt lifted, exposing her flat stomach and small naval. “The game of chess is not always played on a board,” she said, bringing her hands to her lap again. “It is a way of life — making your moves, anticipating your opponent’s. I think you understand that more than you let on.” She extended a leg and playfully pushed at Drake’s thigh with the sole of her bare foot. “You strike me as a man who enjoys the thrill of the hunt even more than the taste of the kill.”
The vibe that Chaya was sending out left little room for interpretation. And she was right, this was Drake’s form of chess. He loved the hunt, bandying flirtations back and forth, inching closer to the prize. Maybe that was why he kept pushing Amanda away, so he could start the game all over again, but how long would she keep coming back to the board?
At the thought of his girlfriend, Drake shifted uncomfortably. Chaya slowly pulled her foot back and tucked it underneath her thigh. She glanced down at his glass and folded her arms, pouting. “You’re not drinking your wine. Is something wrong?”
Drake patted the cell phone in his pocket. “Nick could call at any moment. I need to stay alert.” Then he glanced around the room. “So… can you show me that file?”
Chaya relaxed her defensive posture and rocked forward onto her knees, resting a hand on his shoulder. She pushed him back into the cushions. “There’s no rush. If we’re going to crack this case, we need to get out of our own heads for a few minutes.”
One knee at a time, the lawyer crossed over his lap, her scented hair grazing the top of his head, her fingers lightly tracing the line of his collarbone as she passed. On the other side, she sat back on her heels and gently pushed him into a half turn. She dug the heel of her palm into his back and slowly ran it down to his waistline.
“Is that incense?” The trace Drake had noticed before had grown to fill the room.
“That is Nag Champa. I burn it when I want to loosen my brain cells and refocus. Do you like it?”