Deadly Heat Read Online Free Page A

part.”
    “Oh, count on that.”
    “I mean right now,” she said. And placed their champagne glasses on the nightstand.

    Distant thunder awoke Nikki. She made a curtain check and saw by the city lights that the streets and rooftops in Gramercy Park were dry. The low cloud ceiling pinked up with a flash, probably from a bolt way out east over the Island.
    On the couch, cross-legged in her robe, with her laptop cradled on her thighs, Nikki clicked on
FirstPress.com
, and her breath caught when she saw her own face staring back at her under the title:
BRINGING HEAT.
    The shot was a candid, taken by a photojournalist when she emerged from the precinct after her ordeal in the subway the night she arrested Petar. Her face showed all the fatigue and hardness and gravity she’d borne. Heat never loved pictures of herself, but this was, at least, easier to look at than the posed magazine cover shot they had forced her to take for Rook’s first article.
    She scanned the piece, not to read it—she had already done that days before—but to absorb the fact of its reality. Some genies come from rubbing lamps, others from uncorking complimentary Cristal. This was out there now, and she only hoped it wouldn’t kill her case.
    Nikki Heat braced herself for the next round of notoriety. And the mild irritation that Rook had published some little bits of her investigative jargon, like “looking for the
odd sock
” and visiting a crime scene “with
beginner’s eyes
.” If that was the worst that came from it, she could deal.
    The next morning, nursing a brain that had spun its wheels all night, Nikki stopped at her neighborhood Starbucks on her walk to the subway. She never used to bother with movie ticket–priced drinks. Blame Rook. He’d gotten her in the habit. To the point that when he donated an espresso machine to the squad room, she taught herself how to pull a perfect twenty-five-second shot.
    When she ordered her usual, she got that unexplainable pleasurefrom hearing “Grande skim latte, two pumps, sugar-free vanilla for Nikki” called out and then echoed back over the jet
whoosh
of the milk steamer. It’s the tiny rituals that let you know God’s in his heaven and all is right with the world.
    She made a scan of the room and caught a twentysomething guy in a sincere suit staring at her. His gaze darted back to his iPad then back to her. Then he smiled and hoisted his macchiato in a toast. And so it begins, she thought.
    The barista called out, “Grande skim latte for Nikki,” but when she moved down the counter to get it, Sincere Suit blocked her, holding up his iPad with her face filling it. “Detective Heat, you are awesome.” He smiled and his cheeks dimpled.
    “Ah, well, thank you.” She took a half step, but the beaming fanboy backed up, staying with her.
    “I can’t believe it’s you. I read this article twice last night… Holy shit, would you sign my cup?” Inexperienced at this, she agreed, just to move it along. He held out a ballpoint he probably got for his graduation, but before she could take it, a wooden chair tipped over, followed by a chorus of gasps.
    Across the room, near the drink pickup, a homeless man writhed and bucked on the floor, his legs kicking wildly against the toppled chair. Stunned customers fled their tables and backed away. “Call 911,” Heat said to the barista and raced to the man’s side. Just as she knelt, he stopped convulsing and someone behind her screamed. Blood had begun to flow from his mouth and nose. It mixed with the vomit and spilled coffee pooling on the floor beside him. His eyes stilled in a death stare, and a telltale stench arose as his bowels released. Heat pressed his neck and got no pulse. When she withdrew her fingers, his head rolled to the side, and Nikki saw something she had seen only once before in her life, the night Petar had been poisoned in the holding cell.
    The dead man’s tongue lolled out of his mouth, and it was black.
    She looked at