Heat Storm (Castle) Read online

  Heat pressed PLAY.

  “But I don’t understand,” Nicole said. “If the bills have those prints on them, why don’t you just come forward with them?”

  “Because the fingerprints by themselves don’t prove anything,” Cynthia said. “If it’s in a court of law, a good lawyer could come up with a million reasons how those prints got there. I need to really nail this thing down. I can’t go halfway with something like this. I’d get buried. Besides, they’re—”

  Cynthia’s voice trailed off, like she was suddenly overcome with emotion.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” Bernardin asked.

  “It’s . . . They’re not even bothering to threaten me. It’s like they know they can’t get to me. They’re saying they’ll go after Nikki.”

  “Oh, Cyn . . . I’m so sorry. Do you want me to go up to school and get her? I’ll keep her safe. You know I will.”

  “Yeah, but what are you going to say to her? ‘Hey, you know your mom, the one you think is just a kindly piano teacher? Yeah, she’s really a spy and she’s gotten herself in some serious trouble, so you need to come with me.’ ”

  “It’s better than them getting to her first,” Nicole said.

  “I know, I know. I just . . . I keep thinking there has to be a way to prove what’s really going on with these fake bills.”

  “Be careful, Cyn. Be careful. If it’s who you think it is—”

  “I know. I know. Look, I’ll call you if I need you. You know that.”

  “I know. Love you. Be careful.”

  “Okay. You too.”

  Storm hit the stop button. “The next call is your mother ringing what I now know is a pay phone in your dorm. She talked to a girl who knew you and asked her to leave a note for you to call.”

  “She was trying to convince me to come home from school early for Thanksgiving. I told her no, I couldn’t, because I didn’t want to fall behind in my classes,” Nikki said, so momentarily transfixed by the memory that she sighed without meaning to.

  “Sorry,” Storm said. “I know this can’t be easy. But, look, I need to know: what was your mother up to in 1999? What was she doing that she might have been tussling with the Shanghai Seven?”

  Nikki Heat was flummoxed. She had been over the final months of her mother’s life backwards and forwards for years. She had come across evidence that her mother was trying to expose her former handler, Nanny Network chief Tyler Wynn, as a traitor who was selling American secrets. For a time, Nikki thought Wynn even killed her mother because of it. Now she thought it more likely that Wynn—who in his own twisted way loved Nikki like a niece—helped Cynthia fake her own death.

  But what did any of that have to do with the Shanghai Seven?

  “I’m sorry,” Heat said. “If I knew the answer to that, I’d give it to you. I’m tempted to tell you she had nothing to do with the Shanghai Seven. But she . . . Let’s just say the things I’ve learned about her life have surprised me more than once over the years.”

  “Still, take me back to 1999. There has to be something that . . .”

  Storm began restating the question, doing his investigator’s best to try to extract some bit of thread that would help him put a neat bow on an otherwise untidy package. But Heat wasn’t really listening to him as much as she was assessing him.

  Up until now, she had only told one person about her mother’s dramatic reappearance: her husband, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jameson Rook. She knew she could trust Rook, that Rook wouldn’t dismiss her mother’s sighting as some stress-induced delirium. She also knew that Rook wouldn’t have some hidden agenda that would place some other need ahead of her mother.

  Could she trust this man the same way? Nikki Heat had spent her professional life reading people, many of whom were criminals who lied whenever their lips moved. And a man in Derrick Storm’s line of work had surely worked his share of deceptions and run his share of cons.

  Yet Heat recognized that Storm had a deeply embedded moral compass, that he would never allow it to point him anywhere but true north. He was legitimately trying to turn out the lights on some bad actors who, it seemed, really did have something to do with her mother. Therefore, he needed to know the full truth.

  She rejoined the conversation just as Storm was saying “. . . and I think I’ve lost you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Heat said. “Look, there’s something you need to know. You’re asking these questions about 1999, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t look there. But it seems my mother’s story didn’t end in 1999.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Heat told him about the bus shelter and about her mother’s counterfeit ashes.

  “So she’s really still alive?” Storm said when she was through.

  “I don’t know, really. I mean, it’s still possible I was just mistaken. I saw her for maybe half a second.”

  “But in that half a second you were sure?”

  Heat nodded. “And there’s more. The man who ordered the hit on her is a crooked former FBI and Department of Homeland Security agent by the name of Bart Callan. He was later connected with a plot to unleash massive quantities of the smallpox virus in New York City.”

  “Yeah, he was never going to be able to pull it off, though. I know you guys got to it first, but you weren’t the only ones who figured out the true purpose of that antique fire truck,” Storm said, adding a quick wink.

  “Well, then you know that Callan was bought off by Carey Maggs.”

  “The brewery magnate who also owned the pharmaceutical company that was going to get rich selling the smallpox vaccine? Yes.”

  “But did you know that Maggs was found murdered in his jail cell two days ago? Someone got him with a garotte wire.”

  Heat drew a line across her throat. Storm showed no reaction to the death of a man who would have happily murdered thousands in the name of profit.

  “And there’s more,” Heat continued. “Callan had been incarcerated at a supermax prison out in Colorado until about three weeks ago. Then he was mysteriously transferred to a medium security facility in Cumberland, Maryland.”

  “Medium security? For a former federal agent who killed multiple people and was tied to a mass murder plot?”

  “Well, exactly. And then, of course, he escaped while on a work detail. He’s still at large.”

  “Let me guess: This happened within the last week,” Storm said.

  “Yes. On Tuesday. Also two days ago.”

  The skin around Storm’s eyes squeezed as he squinted in concentration, giving him a pensive look.

  “I’m not saying this is going to fit perfectly, but let’s try it on for size,” Storm said. “My raid on the Shanghai Seven happened a week ago. My team made a bit of a mess on our way out, so it took them a little while to sort things out. They didn’t think they were going to lose any of the evidence I took. They’ve been scrambling a bit since then. When they did an inventory, they noticed that this cassette tape was among the missing items. They would know your mother is on the tape, talking about her hiding these bills. Where? No one knows.

  “But what if the Shanghai Seven knew about Bart Callan’s connection to your mother? I know this may sound odd, but in order to kill someone, especially a pro like your mother, you really do need to learn a lot about them—their patterns, their hideouts, their peccadilloes. There would be no one more qualified to go on a scavenger hunt for those bills than Callan.”

  Heat asked, “So they helped him escape from prison with the understanding he would then work for them?”

  “The Shanghai Seven was betting he could find the bills before I did.”

  “But then why did the transfer happen three weeks ago?”

  “Well, I don’t know for sure, of course,” Storm said. “But that’s when my team and I started training. That must have also been when the Shanghai Seven were tipped off that the raid was coming. So they began making contingency plans, getting Callan into a place where they could access him
if they needed him.”

  “Okay. I understand. Now explain Maggs’s death for me.”

  “Part of the escape. Maggs and Callan were, quite literally, thick as thieves at one point. Callan would know the authorities’ first step would be to go to Maggs to learn where Callan was likely hiding. And at that point, after all those years in prison, Maggs would give it up in exchange for a Big Mac and a new pillow. Maggs had to be silenced.”

  Heat felt her head bobbing up and down. She didn’t know if, in fact, Storm had everything lined up right. But there was no denying the timeline. The Shanghai Seven learned their counterfeiting operation had come to the attention of the US government, and they started making plans to eliminate any potential evidence that tied them to it. At the top of that list were the fake bills—with the damning fingerprints—that Cynthia Heat had stashed away long ago.

  The bills also explained why she felt she had to vanish. In the Shanghai Seven, Cynthia Heat knew she had made a powerful enemy—an enemy with global reach, an enemy that would have no compunction about killing her daughter. And yet Cynthia didn’t have quite enough substantiation to be able to get the Shanghai Seven shut down for good, especially not with the Chinese legal system stacked against her.

  So she faked her own death. It was the only way to make the Shanghai Seven think she was no longer a threat, the only way to save her daughter.

  Nikki Heat breathed deeply. Having—perhaps—finally put together the narrative that explained one of the most agonizing chapters in her life did not give her satisfaction.

  Not until she could prove it.

  And then use what she learned to put the Shanghai Seven in such a deep hole they could smell the middle of the earth.

  Which, in turn, would allow her mother to rejoin the living world.

  “All right. Then just to restate things, Bart Callan is working for the Shanghai Seven, looking for the counterfeit bills my mother hid,” Heat said.

  “Check.”

  “In return for which the Shanghai Seven sprung him from prison.”

  “Check.”

  “And your mission is to put the Shanghai Seven out of business.”

  “Check.”

  “Then Callan’s escape is our hot lead,” Heat said. “There has to be some kind of paper trail at the Bureau of Prisons that explains how a serial killer got transferred to a medium security prison. Someone signed that order.”

  “Probably someone who was either threatened or bribed into doing it,” Storm said.

  “Exactly. If we can prove who applied that pressure and/or gave that incentive, maybe we can start building a chain of evidence that ultimately leads us to one of the Shanghai Seven.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So we’re going to partner on this thing,” Heat said.

  “Agreed.”

  She stood. He stood. He reached out his hand. She took it in her own with a firm grip and gave it a hearty shake.

  Nikki Heat and Derrick Storm as partners.

  Something about it just felt right.

  THREE

  HEAT

  Nikki Heat squeezed her phone so hard she was fairly certain she was going to grind its silicon microchips back into sand.

  “I’m not going,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Oh, but you are,” the man on the other end informed her. “And you will wear dress blues. And you will smile pretty for the cameras. And you will wave to the crowd and look very, very happy to be there. And that, in turn, will make the commissioner very happy.”

  There was perhaps no worse way to start a morning than with a phone call from Zach “The Hammer” Hamner. His official title was senior administrative aide to the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal matters, but Heat had often thought they should simplify it by changing it to senior vice deputy prick. No, actually, make that chief executive prick. The only thing worse than having to listen to his unctuous voice over the phone would have been having to look at his pallid face, which only left the office and saw the sun for approximately two hours on the Fourth of July every other year.

  But the fact was, when he dropped the c-word—commissioner—Heat knew her personal feelings no longer mattered. And when he called, he was seldom expressing his own opinion. He didn’t get the nickname The Hammer because of some fondness for home improvement.

  Still, to preserve some sense of self-respect, Heat felt she had to put up the good fight.

  “It’s a ridiculous political dog and pony show,” she said. “Look, I did my job and caught the bad guy. That’s what—”

  “Yes, except Legs Kline just happened to be a bad guy who was three weeks away from being elected president of the United States until you tied him to that ISIS-wannabe video,” Hamner inserted.

  “Right, right. But, as I was saying, that’s what cops are supposed to do. Put bad guys in jail. We don’t need to hold a press conference every time we do it.”

  “May I point out that ‘we’ are not holding this press conference,” Hamner said. “This press conference is being held by the senior senator from the state of New York, Lindsy Gardner, who is now, because of your efforts, very likely also three weeks away from being elected president of the United States. There will be a number of other dignitaries from One PP in attendance, including the commissioner—did I mention the commissioner yet?—but in case that’s not enough for you, the mayor will also be there. Even with all that, the Gardner campaign was quite explicit about your attendance. In fact, you were personally invited by her campaign manager and likely future chief of staff John Null. Now, the NYPD can either be on the future president’s good side or the future president’s bad side. Which one do you think the commissioner prefers?”

  “She’s a former librarian,” Heat said. “She doesn’t have a bad side.”

  “You obviously haven’t known enough librarians. I wouldn’t wish a pissed-off librarian on the worst cretin at Rikers Island.

  “Now,” Hamner concluded, “in case I haven’t made it clear enough, this is not a request. This is an order.”

  That was what led, two hours later, to Nikki Heat standing on a hastily constructed stage in Central Park, wearing a forced grin as the now seemingly inevitable future president of the United States addressed a collection of New York’s most well-used cameras and microphones, with a large crowd of curiosity seekers assembled behind them.

  “Thank you, thank you. Thank you, New York,” Gardner was saying, having just been introduced by the mayor. Her distinctive voice was part of her charm. It was strong and authoritative, yet somehow still quiet. Like a good librarian should be. She had resisted all efforts from political consultants who told her she ought to adopt a more forceful tone when speaking in public. A variety of comediennes had tried to imitate it. None could.

  She waited for the crowd to settle down, her mere look the mild rebuke they needed to come to order.

  “Thank you again,” she said. “I have to say, I’m very pleased to be here with you on this occasion, because after fifteen months of campaigning, I’m tired of talking about myself. My opponent doesn’t seem to have that problem.”

  The crowd chuckled. Her opponent, Caleb Brown, was what Shakespeare had in mind when he coined the phrase “ass hat.”

  “But today,” Gardner continued, “I don’t have to talk about myself. I get to talk about a true New York hero, Captain Nikki Heat.”

  Gardner paused and the crowd roared. Heat waved, because she was too embarrassed not to; because that’s what she had been told to do; and because the commissioner and a half dozen of the NYPD’s other top brass were onstage next to her, jostling for position in front of the cameras and evaluating her every move. She tried to distract herself by thinking about things that were more pleasant than this. Like dental surgery.

  The candidate went on about Heat for a while, telling how she had exposed that Kline Industries was supplying bullets to ISIS and then prevented Kline and his daughter from escaping to a foreign country that did not have
an extradition treaty. Heat kept the tight smile on her face the entire time, dreamed of root canals and Novocain-free extractions, and was trying to stay good, but drifted off until Gardner managed to catch her attention again.

  “It’s not very often on the campaign trail that I get to tell personal stories,” Gardner said. “And I’m not sure Captain Heat would even know this. But my children were once among the least distinguished of her mother’s piano students. I’m afraid Louisa and Ben inherited their total lack of musicality from their mother. Still, they tried hard and I think Mrs. Heat tolerated them because of their dedication. So we made it all the way to the end-of-year recital, except my Ben . . . Well, we were going back and forth between New York and Washington quite a bit back then, and Ben left his music in Washington. But who ran out to a local music store and found the last copy of Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise’? It was Mrs. Heat’s teenage daughter, Nikki. So it seems she’s been saving the day for a long time now.”

  Heat had no memory of this long-ago event, but she smiled as if she did, if only to keep up the show.

  “And now it’s time for me to repay that favor. I don’t mean to put Captain Heat on the spot with what I’m about to say next,” Gardner said, “but it’s very important to me that I enter this plea into the public record. And, Captain Heat, you should know I’ve run it by your very fine commissioner, and he was very graciously enthusiastic about this proposal. I’ve said from the outset of this campaign that my administration will be about bringing in the best possible people from a great variety of backgrounds, many of them from outside of Washington and outside the political realm, and giving them roles where their talents will benefit America. With that in mind, I hope that if I am elected, Captain Heat will accept my invitation to be my director of Homeland Security.”