Richard Castle: Heat Rises

A gunshot cracked and hit the fender of the taxi beside her. Heat wanted Dutch’s Smith amp; Wesson, but The Discourager was bearing down and his next shot might not miss. Nikki hurried into the open hangar door of the garbage receiving station and took cover behind the six-foot-tall bales stacked there for barging.

When she heard Harvey’s feet slapping to a stop at the door, she crouched down and peered out between rows of compacted trash. He had turned off his six-cell so he wouldn’t give himself away, but there was enough ambient light from the West Side that she could see him wince as he rubbed a tender spot on his chest. When he took his hand away, Nikki made out the puncture in his jacket just below his shield, where his Kevlar had stopped Feller’s bullet.

Just as Heat renewed her plan to escape with a dive into the river, The Discourager worked his way around to her left flank, wittingly or unwittingly blocking her route to the open side of the hangar where they loaded bales onto barges bound for landfills. So Nikki crept to her right in the crevice between the stacks and made her way to the end of the row, where there was a small workbench.

Tools, she thought.

She studied the open distance to the workbench. It was risky exposure but better than waiting to become target practice. Heat was about to take a tentative step out of her hiding place when she heard his breathing. Immediately, she crouched low in the opening between the bales and made herself still.

Harvey was being quiet, too. Where the hell was he?

On a shelf above the workbench, among the girlie calendars and chipped coffee mugs, there sat some kind of trophy cup from the city or maybe the union. Nikki fixed her gaze on it and waited. Sure enough, after a few seconds, in the brass-plated reflection, she saw slow movement. The dark blue uniform was approaching the gap in which she was hunkered.

Detective Feller’s car keys were still in her hand. Being careful not to jangle, Heat made a fist around them so that the two keys protruded from her knuckles. Not exactly Wolverine, but it would have to do.

Patience again, always patience. The cop tiptoed sideways to the opening, searching for her in the gap. But his mistake was to look eye-level. Heat was crouched low, and when he was centered in front of her she sprang up at him, driving the keys into his left cheek while she grabbed for his gun with her right hand. He cried out in shock and pain. She jerked his wrist upward and the gun fired. The bullet hit harmlessly, eaten by the garbage bale behind her.

Heat thrashed his face again with the keys and tried to wrest the weapon away. His grip was strong, and when, on her third try, she did manage to wrest the gun free, it flew and clattered on the floor.

Nikki bent to grab it, but he tackled her from behind. She twisted and used his momentum against him, ramming him back-first into the workbench. She elbowed him three times at the sore spot under his badge. He wailed with each blow, until he palmed the side of her head and shoved her into the wall, where her shoulder crashed, breaking glass. Heat looked up inside the shattered case and hauled out the fire ax.

Harvey was coming up from his stoop, the gun back in his hand. Heat quickly reared to swing. Mindful that he was wearing body armor, she went for his gun arm. And severed it at the elbow.

He writhed on the floor moaning and bleeding out. Spent, Heat dropped the ax and scanned the surrounding area for something to use as a tourniquet. Then she heard sudden movement beside her. Nikki spun, bringing her hands up.

Someone was diving at her, she braced herself for a blow, but in the same flash that she heard the gunshot, she recognized that the man pushing her aside was Rook. They both landed on the ground beside Harvey. Heat clapped a hand on his loose service weapon, came up with it, and put two rounds in Dutch Van Meter’s forehead as he stood in the doorway holding his smoking S amp;W.

Nikki set the gun down and hugged Rook, who was still in her arms. “Oh, man, I don’t know how you found me, Rook, but your timing did not suck.”

But Rook didn’t answer.

“Rook?” Nikki’s heart stopped and her skin flushed with alarm. She shook him, but he didn’t respond. When she rolled him over in her lap and touched his cheek, she smeared it with blood.

That’s when she realized it was Rook’s blood on her fingers.

Frantic, she ripped open his shirt, looking for the wound, and found it right away, a. 9mm entry gushing red below his rib cage.

Sirens drew closer.

Nikki fought tears; coming around to kneel over Rook, she compressed the wound with one hand and stroked his face with the other. “Hang on, Rook, you hear me? Help’s coming, you hang on. Please?”

The sirens stopped right outside and flashing lights filled the hangar. “In here!” shouted Nikki. “Hurry, I’m losing him.” Verbalizing the thought crushed Heat, and she barked out an involuntary sob as his face lost more color.

The EMTs rushed in and took over. Nikki retreated in a daze and wept, her bloody hand covering her mouth. She watched, trembling, as they cut Rook’s shirt off and went to work on him. That’s when Heat saw something she had never seen on Rook before.

The big St. Christopher medal around his neck.

“They’re ready for you now.” Nikki had been staring at nothing because that’s what she needed, a glazed, checked-out, middle-distance fix on the posters and memos on the bulletin board across from her seat in the hallway at One Police Plaza. The administrative assistant came around to step into her line of sight, saw her swollen eyes, and gave her a tender smile. Sympathy. Please, no more sympathy. Nikki had had her fill of it in the last twelve sleepless hours and didn’t know which was worse, the pitying faces or the consoling words.

But she stood and returned the woman’s well-intended smile anyway. Then Nikki sealed the firewall once more. If she thought about Rook now, she couldn’t hold her emotions. “Ready,” she said. The aide opened the door for her. Heat drew a long breath and then stepped through it.

Rooms didn’t come much more stony or intimidating than the tenth-floor conference room at 1PP that morning. The last time Nikki had been in there it had been just she and Zach Hamner-with the added attraction of the duo from Internal Affairs to confiscate her shield and piece. That had been frosty enough. Now she was being scrutinized by a full conference table of deputy commissioners, chiefs, and administrators, who halted their conversations to give her The Big Appraisal as she entered.

Zach had been waiting for her inside the door and led her to the empty chair at the head of the conference table. On her way along the row of weathered faces belonging to the NYPD’s top brass, her eye caught a friendly wink from Phyllis Yarborough. Heat nodded her acknowledgment to the deputy commissioner and took the seat.

Todd Atkins, the deputy commissioner for legal matters, faced Heat from the opposite end. As soon as The Hammer perched on the folding chair behind his boss, Atkins began quietly, saying, “Thank you for coming in. I know this must be an awful time for you, and you have all our best thoughts.”

Nikki fought away another wave of crushing sorrow and managed to say in her most professional voice, “Thank you, sir.”

“We wanted you in to address this matter immediately,” continued the Department’s lawyer. “The commissioner would be here himself, but he is in a committee meeting on Capitol Hill about now and we felt it was important to remedy the miscalculation made by this body vis-a-vis your status.” While he continued on, speaking in his coded language for their screwup, Nikki felt herself tumble into the kaleidoscopic tunnel that had swallowed her at Belvedere Castle in the aftermath of her attack. She held eye contact with Atkins, but all the while random images turntabled around him. Rook draped on her after the gunshot.. . Montrose cursing at his performance data printouts… Rook’s ashen face… Van Meter pulse-checking Steljess in the auto salvage yard… Rook’s blood in the sink when she finally washed her hands