Richard Castle - Frozen Heat

She sat up to face him. “No, it’s upsetting because it still isn’t over and I don’t want to let my mother down.”

“You can’t. She’s dead.”

“And the man who ordered it is still out there.”

“Then you will do what you have to do. I know that just by your unique definition of a leave of absence.” She nodded in agreement but without humor. “I’d ask you to try to keep scale on this, as overwhelming as it all is. Mistrust feeds on itself. It’s like a virus. You can’t do your work-or live your life-second-guessing your instincts. You’ll become the proverbial deer, frozen in the headlights. Who do you trust the most, Nikki?”

“Rook.”

“Can you discuss this with him?”

Nikki shrugged. “Sure.”

“Openly?” She hesitated, which answered his question. “My experience with cops in this room is that grace under pressure is great in a moment. As a lifestyle it takes a toll. It’s the stoicism. You are alone.”

“But I’m not now. I’m with Rook.”

“How much of you?” He didn’t make her answer but let the softly ticking second hand behind her fill some space before he continued.

“At one time or other, if we’re lucky, we struggle with how much of ourselves to reveal to one another. At work. In friendships. In relationships. You and Don kept the struggle physical without revealing or sharing. That worked because of parity. Neither of you wanted to go deeper. That won’t be so in all relationships. You may want to reveal more of yourself than someone else. But, from what you’ve told me, the opposite is true. So-long term-the issue will have to be confronted at some point if Rook needs more intimacy than you are willing to give. It may turn him away. Not now, but someday, that reckoning will come. And you will let him in, or not. You will be vulnerable with him, or not. And you will experience the consequences, based on your choice. I hope the choice you make fulfills you.”

Nikki stepped out onto the sidewalk from her session bearing more questions than solutions, but one thing in life looked brighter. The yellow Wafels amp; Dinges gourmet food truck had parked for its lunchtime business that day a block up York Avenue. She waited in line, vacillating between sweet and savory and went for a mashup: de Bacon-Syrup wafel, and ate it on a bench under the Roosevelt Island Tram. When Nikki finished, she sat a while to watch the red gondolas of passengers float overhead and ride out over the East River, and wished the weight of her cares could be packed into a sealed capsule and borne away into the sky on steel cables. It didn’t work. That became clear when Agent Bart Callan, Department of Homeland Security, sat beside her.

“You should try de Throwdown,” he said. “It’s the wafel that beat out Bobby Flay’s.”

“Don’t you guys have e-mail? Instead of ambushing me, how about a nice OpenTable invitation next time?”

“Like you would respond.”

“Try me, Agent Callan. As I said last meeting, come in through the front door, I’m very cooperative by nature.”

“Unless cornered.”

“Who isn’t?”

“I need to know everything you learned from Tyler Wynn and Petar Matic. If you can tell me what was in that drop box, that would be helpful, too.”

Heat took her eyes off the tugboat churning upriver under the Queensboro Bridge and regarded the agent. Peel away the military zeal and the aggravating habit of surprise appearances, he seemed like an OK guy. Then self doubt about her trust instincts raised a caution flag. “You must have One PP on speed dial. Use it.”

He shook no. “Not optimal. This is too sensitive, too big. If this goes into the bureaucracy chain, there’s no containment.”

“Then why involve me?”

“Because you are already involved. And you don’t have a big mouth.” He grinned. “I learned that the other night in the warehouse.” She returned his smile and he held out his hand. At first, Nikki thought he wanted to hold hers, but he took her lunch garbage, and she blushed at her misunderstanding. He tossed her plate and fork in the can beside him and then pivoted on the bench to face her. “Detective Heat, I can assure you of one thing. The case we are working is developing into a matter of the highest national security. Maybe if I disclose to you, it will make you feel better about sharing with us.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s a short story. Nicole Bernardin, who was once CIA, reached out to us about a month and a half ago to say that she had come upon highly sensitive documentation of something urgent she needed to share. We did thorough checks on her background with Central Intelligence as well as her more recent history working with Tyler Wynn in his new-let’s call it, independent-capacity. We made arrangements for her to get the information to us, but someone killed her before she could tell us where to find it.”

Heat said, “If you want to know about the drop box, I found it, but I never saw what she had stashed.”

“What did it look like?”

“A tan leather pouch with a zipper on top. The kind merchants use to take their cash to the bank.”

He squinted, envisioning it, and said, “Thank you for that.”

“You can thank me by answering this. If you knew Tyler Wynn had switched sides, why didn’t you arrest him? Especially if he was into something endangering national security?”

“Exactly for that reason. Come on, Heat, you know what it’s like to keep a suspect on a leash. We never picked up Wynn because we didn’t want to blow his cover before he led us to whatever he’s involved with.”

“And how many people have died while you held this leash, Agent Callan?”

He knew what she was getting at and said, “For the record, Intelligence had no information Tyler Wynn had gone rogue at the time of your mother’s death. In fact, her murder is where this investigation began. I was FBI back then, and I was the designated contact for your mother.” That made Nikki turn to face him. “That’s right, I knew her,” he said. “In a scenario that played out very close to Nicole Bernardin’s, your mother had reached out to us, voicing suspicion about a developing security threat on U.S. soil. We seeded her with two hundred thousand bucks to bribe an informant to get the proof and she was murdered the night she got it.”

Nikki watched a tram float overhead as she digested the news. If Callan was telling the truth, that money wasn’t her mother’s Judas payoff, after all. She brought her eyes down to meet his, and he said, “So there you have it. That’s the story.”

“Except for what sort of domestic plot she uncovered that, apparently, has been sitting on your radar all these years.”

“That’s classified.”

“Convenient. And meanwhile, Tyler Wynn has been roaming free. Excuse me, on your leash.”

Agent Callan ignored the shot. Part of that double-locked military demeanor, nothing appeared to knock him off mission. “A lot of people have asked you this, but I’m going to ask again, and I hope you will be straight with me. Do you have any idea what your mother received from that informant?”

“No.”

“And you have no thoughts about where she might have hidden it?”

“No. Wherever it is, she hid it very well.”

“You found Nicole Bernardin’s drop.”

“I told you, I don’t know. Don’t you think I’ve been through this on my own a million times?”

After a crisp nod, he got to his point. “I want you to cooperate with me on this.”

“I have been. Are you listening?”

“I mean moving forward.”

“I work for NYPD.”

“I work for the American people.”

“Then use your speed dial to call an American downtown at headquarters, then I’m all yours. Otherwise, thanks for the visit.”