Richard Castle - Naked heat

Toby concluded his confession by saying that when they got outside the Dragonfly, Soleil was still freaked and didn't want to ride with him. The last he saw of her she was running off crying into the night. Then he told the limo driver to take him home to his family in Westchester. On Chambers Street, outside the front door of Stuyvesant High, Heat was about to get into her car when the Roach Coach pulled alongside her and stopped.

"Still no sign of Jess Ripton," said Ochoa out the passenger window. "Not at Bouley, not at Nobu, or Craftbar. We checked all his other usual haunts and watering holes Toby gave us. Nada."

"Think he's helping Jess duck us?" asked Raley.

"Always possible," said Nikki, "but I think Toby wants his Firewall about now, not to have him be MIA like this. A good indicator is that I let him try to call Jess, thinking he'd need his handler."

"Generous of you, Detective Heat," said Ochoa.

"In a self-serving, clever, tricky way. Thanks. Anyway, all Toby got was Ripton's voice mail. We have someone staking out his apartment, but let's also detail somebody else to roam on this overnight. I'll ask Captain Montrose to pull a detective off Burglary who can keep making the rounds to Ripton's usuals. Parking garage, his gym, his office."

Raley said, "But don't you think if Ripton's trying to go off the grid, he's too smart to go to any of those places?"

"Probably. Might be wheel-spinning, but we have to check anyway," said Heat.

Ochoa nodded. "Man, I know somebody's got to do it, but it sounds like a pointless exercise for some poor dude."

Raley laughed. "Give it to Detective Schlemming."

Roach scoffed, shook their heads, and muttered his nickname. "Defective Schlemming."

"Sounds about his speed," said Heat.

Ochoa's face grew serious. "I think we ought to quit picking on Schlemming. I mean, come on, just because a guy rear-ends the mayor's limo trying to shoo a bee out of his car is no reason to- Aw, hell, yes it is."

"Can I tell you something?" said Raley. "All those bodies. It's hard for me to buy Toby Mills as the contract killing type. And I'm a Mets fan."

"Come on, partner, you ought to know one thing by now and that is that you can never know. His Yanks contract, all those endorsements? That's millions of motives for Toby Mills to clamp a lid on that mess."

"Or Ripton," countered Raley. "He has a stake, too. Not just because he was the cleaner at Reed's hotel that night, but Toby's image is his meal ticket also. You agree, Detective?" He leaned over from the steering wheel to look across Ochoa out the side window to Heat. She was busy scrolling on her cell phone. "Detective Heat?"

"Hang on, just reading this e-mail from Hinesburg. It's a forward from Hard Line Security of the list of the Texan's old freelance clients." She continued to scan and then stopped.

"Whatcha got?" said Roach.

"One of his clients? Sistah Strife."

"Should that mean something?" asked Raley.

"It sure does. It means Rance Eugene Wolf and Jess Ripton both worked together for Sistah Strife."

As Raley and Ochoa departed, Heat called in to elevate the search status for Jess Ripton to an APB with an alert that his known associate was a professional killer. Spent and aching from the ordeal of her day, she got into her Crown Victoria and felt her body begin to melt into the driver's seat from fatigue. Tired as she was, she felt bad for Rook that, in his journalistic diligence, he had to miss the Toby takedown. She tried his cell phone one more time to fill him in. The iPhone sitting on Rook's desk sounded with Nikki Heat's ringtone, the theme from Dragnet. The writer sat and stared at it from his chair as it continued to loop its ominous "Dum-dah-dum-dum… Dum-dah-dum-dum…" The screen header he had entered for her flashed "The Heat," and her ID badge photo filled the screen.

But Rook didn't answer the call. When it finally stopped ringing, a melancholy swept over him as her image faded and the screen went blank. Then he shifted uncomfortably against the duct tape lashing his wrists to the armrests.

"You've got to be one smart aleck putting something like that on your phone," drawled the Texan.

"If you don't like it, cut me loose and I'll change it," said Rook.

Jess Ripton turned from the bookcase he was searching. "Can you button it?"

"I can tape his trap if you want, Jess."

"Then how's he going to tell us where it is?"

"Yes, sir, I hear you," said the Texan. "Just say the word, though."

Jess Ripton and Rance Eugene Wolf continued tossing Rook's loft in another search for the last chapter of Cassidy Towne's manuscript. Across the room, The Firewall was on his knees looking through a built-in that housed DVDs and even some dinosaur VHS tapes that Rook no longer had a machine to play. Ripton clawed them all out of the cabinet onto the floor. When it was empty, he turned to Wolf. "You're absolutely sure you saw him with it?"

"Yes, sir. Got out of the cab and came up with a manila envelope. Same one he brought out of the mail drop."

"You were following me?" said Rook. "How long were you following me?"

Wolf smiled. "Long enough, I figure. Not hard to do. 'Specially if you don't know you're being tailed." He stepped around behind the desk, moving without registering any discomfort, which Rook attributed to heavy painkillers, a high threshold of tolerance, or both. He was dressed in new blue jeans that were tight on his lean frame and a Western-style shirt that had pearl buttons. Wolf had accessorized with a sheathed knuckle knife on his belt and an arm sling that looked like it was from a hospital supply store. Rook also clocked a.25 caliber handgun, holstered on the small of his back, when he turned to clothesline everything but the laptop off of Rook's desk with his good arm. Every item he and Nikki had so painstakingly replaced there-his pencil cup, framed photos, stapler, tape dispenser, copter controller, even his cell phone, hit the rug around his feet.

The Texan then spun the laptop to face him and leaned over to read the draft of Rook's Cassidy Towne article.

Ripton got up off the floor. "Where is it, Rook? The envelope."

"It was from Publishers Clearing House. You wouldn't be interes-" The Texan smacked Rook's mouth with the back of his hand, hard enough to whiplash his neck. Dazed, Rook squeezed his eyes closed a few times and saw kaleidoscoping pinpricks of light. He tasted his own blood and smelled Old Spice. As he came out of his haze, the most disturbing thing to Rook wasn't just the surprise, the quick uncoiling of the violence. What chilled him to the core was that Wolf then went back to reading his computer screen as if nothing had happened.

For a time, Rook sat in silence while Jess Ripton continued ripping apart his office and the Texan scrolled through his article an arm's length away. When Wolf finished, he said to Ripton, "None of the information that would be in that chapter is in here."

"Information about what?" said Rook. When the Texan snapped down the lid of the computer, he flinched.

"You know perfectly well what," said Ripton. He surveyed the mess on the floor and bent over, coming up with the unfinished Cassidy Towne manuscript her editor had supplied. "What's written in the rest of this." He tossed it on the desk in a discarding motion, and the fat rubber band holding it together broke, scattering pages.

"I never got it. Cassidy was holding it back from the publisher."

"We know," said Wolf casually. "She shared that with us a couple of nights back."

Rook didn't have to think hard to imagine the ghastly circumstances of that confession. He pictured the woman strapped to a chair, being tortured, giving only that much up to them before they killed her. He reflected on how her last act was so in character with her life-the power play of giving them the assurance that there was something valuable they wanted, and then denying it to them, taking its whereabouts to her grave.