Richard Castle - Frozen Heat
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- Название:Frozen Heat
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- Рейтинг книги:3 / 5. Голосов: 1
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She heard footfalls on the metal rungs and a silhouette came up from the tracks behind Tyler Wynn, who said, “Take her gun.”
And when the other man stepped forward into the light and Heat saw who it was, her heart punched all the air from her chest.
NINETEEN
“Petar.”
It was all Heat could manage to say. She had no breath for more, as if the oxygen had been sucked from the tunnel. But those two hoarse syllables spoke volumes. She whispered her old lover’s name as both a question and an answer. And the weight she gave the word articulated a sour array of feelings suspended from it on sharp, cutting hooks:
Betrayal. Sadness. Shock. Disbelief. Blindness. Anger. Hatred.
Petar’s face displayed no shame or regret as he moved toward Nikki. His eyes met hers and she saw in them something like amusement. No, arrogance.
Heat thought of going for her gun. Even if Tyler Wynn hit her, she might get off a shot at Petar. He was armed, too, but holding his Glock sloppily. She could do it.
“I wouldn’t,” said the voice behind the flashlight. Tyler Wynn, the living ghost in the Ghost Station, had read her. So much for making the play.
Petar took her Sig.
“Good.” Tyler stepped a little closer. “I’ve seen so many people try something stupid when emotions take over.”
Nikki twisted to look up at Petar. “You killed her? Fuck you.”
All Petar did was take a step back while he tucked her gun into this waistband. He looked past her in pure dismissal. To him, she was just a chore.
“I said, ‘Fuck you.’”
“You two will have time to air things out after I leave. Petar, get the bag, please.”
Petar stepped behind her, and Nikki could hear him sliding the cooler back under Nicole’s drop box. She tried to wall out her torment and get strategic. Petar would need to pocket his gun to reach up for that pouch. If only she weren’t on her knees, she might have a shot at catching Wynn with a surprise kick. He had read her before, so she covered with conversation. “Was it you that Carter Damon called on the burner cell to get the green light to kill Nicole?”
“That was for logistics. Petar did the actual work.”
“And he called you again. Was that to set up the visiting nurse to spy on us?”
“I am a creature of habit. Once you run a Nanny Network, it’s hard to stop.”
She didn’t ask permission, just kept her hands behind her neck and eased up off the ground onto her feet as she spoke. “I really thought Carter Damon killed my mother.”
“No, he was there after, for cleanup.” Petar fell off the cooler behind her and swore. She noticed Wynn become alert and didn’t make her move. When Petar stepped up on it again, he relaxed and continued, “Detective Damon was quite an asset until the very end when he got a dying man’s conscience and tried to text you.”
“The interrupted text,” she said, inching closer.
“Yes, we caught him trying to reach out to you to make amends. Bad for his health, it turned out.”
“The Brooklyn Bridge?”
Wynn nodded. “His attempted confession gave me the idea of staging his suicide with another text taking responsibility for the murders. Seemed win-win.”
Nikki said, “More like win Wynn,” pointing at him. And when she extended her arm to do that, she used it as a feint to lunge for him.
The old man anticipated her and quickly got her in a choke hold, pressing the muzzle of his gun against her temple. “What? Do you want me to shoot you? Well, do you?” Nikki stayed still. “I will if I have to, but I’d rather not. In fact, I’ve been thinking train mishap. More ambiguous to the police than a bullet, but I’m happy to improvise, if you force my hand.” He pressed the muzzle harder against her flesh. “This gun is a throwdown I can easily plant at Rook’s loft. Do the math on that before you make me shoot you with it. Understood?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He just shoved her away.
Petar came down from the drop box and handed him the leather pouch. Tyler whispered instructions to him. She picked up “after the next train,” but the rest was lost in the racket as a downtown subway rushed through on the far side of the tunnel.
Heat battled to keep her head under the crush of emotions coming down on her. Self-anger dominated. She found herself sucked back to Paris, in the Place des Vosges, where she had felt unsettled about something she couldn’t articulate. Now, waiting to be killed in the Ghost Station, the nagging thought defined itself, albeit a bit late. As usual, it was the odd sock.
“I should have known,” she said to Wynn. She shook her head, unhappy with herself. “I should have smelled it back at the hospital when your ‘dying words’ were urging me to nail the bastards who killed my mom, that’s what you said.”
“I did.”
“But I never asked myself, if you were CIA and were so passionate about avenging my mother’s death, why didn’t you do it yourself? You had ten years and all the resources.”
He smiled. “Don’t feel bad. I’ve fooled more experienced players than you, and for much longer.” A train began to approach them from downtown. Blocks away, but the soft rumble drifted up the tunnel. Nikki’s chest seized with sudden urgency.
“Why did you have my mother killed?”
“Because I didn’t fool her. When she found out I had gone independent in the interval between Paris and when I reactivated her in New York, she had to go. She just had to. Up to then, she thought working for me meant she’d still been working for CIA. Then she found out who I was really working for and, unfortunately for her, what the project was.”
“You killed her for that?”
“Your mother’s sense of mission is what killed her. She was just like you.”
They stood as statues when an uptown train raced through, rattling the station and making the hair on their heads lift and swirl. The moment it passed, Petar took out his gun. Tyler Wynn holstered his under his sport coat and climbed down the ladder to the tracks. “Should have four to six minutes before the next train.”
“You’ll have plenty of time,” said Petar, switching on his Mini Maglite. “Catch you after.”
Nikki watched just Wynn’s disembodied head move along the platform as he walked the tracks. “Tyler.” He stopped. “What’s in the pouch?”
“You’ll never know.”
“Wanna bet?”
Wynn said, “Shoot her, if you have to.” Then started his walk back to the 96th Street station.
Heat made up her mind she would kill Petar.
That’s how she would survive. The only question was, would she enjoy it? And what would that make her if she did?
Alive. That was all she cared about. The morality of how she felt, she would gladly sort out in her old age.
She had already figured out their plan. It wasn’t hard to. The next train would rocket past in four to six minutes, and the idea was for her to be in front of it when it did. So she had five minutes, give or take, to get it done.
“So there’s no way to call this off?”
Petar didn’t engage. He stood silently, close enough to be accurate with his Glock but distant enough to be out of reach if she made a run at him. At the moment, their plan was better than hers.
“A head start for old times’ sake?” Still no reply. He watched her but without looking at her.
It was hard for Nikki to even see Petar as the same man she had fallen for. She had not gone to Venice in the summer of ‘99 seeking romance but passion of another kind: her love of theater. Other students interning at the Gran Teatro La Fenice had asked her out, and she had a series of first dates, but nothing serious. Until the night at the Ai Speci wine bar when she met an earnest-looking Croatian film student visiting the city to shoot a documentary on Tommaseo, the renowned Italian essayist. Within a week, Petar Matic had moved out of his hostel into her apartment. After Venice, they spent a month touring Paris before she returned to Boston to start her fall semester at Northeastern. He surprised her by sliding into her booth one morning in the student union, saying that he missed her so much, he’d enrolled there himself.
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