Driving Heat Read Free Page A

here…and here.”
    “Good morning, Captain Heat,” said Lauren Parry, who was crouched over the victim with her back to her colleagues. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t salute.”
    “I’ll live.”
    “Lots of people say that right before I see them,” said the medical examiner. In spite of the lightness of their banter, Heat knew better than to be impatient with her friend and
waited her turn to see the corpse while the ME performed her prelim on the body, which was still seated upright in the cockpit. The kayak wasn’t going anywhere. First-on-scene had roped the
carry handles and staked it, bow and stern, to the bank.
    “Who’s got the rundown on the vic?” asked Heat, eager for something to do other than pretend to be patient.
    “
Moi
,” said Ochoa. “Black male, forty-six. We had to open about six zippers in his life vest to find ID. Turns out he’s kinda family.”
    “Cop?” asked Heat, wishing Lauren would hurry the hell up.
    “Not in the strict sense. He’s got PD credentials as a contractor.”
    “Consultant, actually.” Rhymer held up a plastic evidence bag and read the laminated card zipped inside it. “Here it is, ‘Consulting Psychologist to the
NYPD.’”
    The flutter in Nikki’s chest accelerated so much that her heart skipped a beat as her head whipped toward the kayak. She wondered if anyone else had noticed her startle, but only Rook was
watching, intrigued by her reaction. Protocol be damned, she stepped up beside Dr. Parry and stared at the corpse.
    “His name,” said Raley, “was—”
    “Lon King,” finished Heat. Beyond that she couldn’t summon breath for more words. Nikki looked down at the corpse in the boat, wondering who the hell would put a bullet in the
forehead of her shrink.

H eat felt more than saw all the heads of the homicide squad slowly rotate to face her. But with the vortex of disbelief swirling
within Nikki all she could manage was to keep her eyes fixed on the body beneath her as she groped for an emotional handle. Still more disquieting, the psychologist’s face looked not much
different in death than it had in their sessions: neutral, dispassionate, amenable. How many times had she stared at the blank canvas he so studiously presented and seen him with his eyes relaxed
and his mouth slightly open just as they were now, betraying no judgment or pleasure—or, in this case, no life itself.
    Lauren Parry whispered a soft, “Nikki?” and slipped a gloved hand into hers. “Do you need to sit down?” Heat gave her a no-look head wag and made an instinctive, albeit
pointless, visual survey of the area for the killer. An al-Qaeda sniper on the fishing pier to the left? It was unoccupied. A drug cartel’s menacing cigarette boat speeding away? There was
none. A PTSD cop scrambling upslope into the thicket above the Greenway? Nothing but robins on worm patrol in the grass.
    At last her gaze came back to the squad, every one of them still attending her, patiently waiting for Heat to speak. Then she sought Rook, who stood with the others but was staring down at the
shrink’s body with an expression of distress that appeared out of scale for someone who didn’t know the victim. Could it be, she thought, that their relationship had reached some point
of emotional fusion and that Rook had taken on her upset as his own? Under other circumstances that would have made Nikki feel very happy. But not these.
    “Guess you’ve all figured out that I knew the victim,” she said, trying to dig herself out of the moment she had created. Rook’s eyes came up to meet hers, and she took a
pause, rummaging in the uncomfortable instant for the version she dared to tell about the extent of her counseling with the shrink. Nikki, usually one for transparency, opted for the smallest truth
she could tell, instinctively protecting herself from personal disclosure—to the detectives, to her fiancé. “You remember back a couple of years when Captain Irons