Detective Ochoa was already spotted at one side of the door. She took the opposite and held up her watch. On her third nod, they burst in large and loud. "NYPD! Freeze, now!"
The man sitting at the kitchen table saw three guns coming at him from two doors and shrieked as he thrust both hands high in the air.
As the flash of recognition hit her, Nikki Heat called out, "What the hell is this?"
The man slowly lowered one of his hands and pulled the Sennheiser buds out of his ears. He swallowed hard and said, "What?"
"I said, what the hell are you doing here?"
"Waiting for you," said Jameson Rook. He read something he didn't like on their faces and said, "Well, you didn't expect me to wait in there with her, did you?"
Chapter Two
As the detectives holstered up, Rook breathed a sigh. "Man, I think you took ten years off my life there."
Raley came back with, "You're lucky you still have a life. Why didn't you answer us?"
Ochoa piled on. "We called out to see if anyone was here."
Rook simply held up his iPhone. "Remastered Beatles. Had to get my mind off the b-o-d-y." He made a wince face and pointed into the next room. "But I found that 'A Day in the Life' wasn't the most uplifting diversion. You guys crashed in on me at the end, just on that big piano bong. For real." He turned to Nikki and smiled meaningfully. "Let's hear it for timing, huh?"
Heat tried to ignore the undercurrent, which to her ear wasn't very much under anything. Or maybe she was more sensitive to it. As she scanned Roach for reactions and didn't see any, she wondered if things were more raw for her than she'd thought, or if it was just the shock of seeing him there, of all places. Nikki had crossed paths with old lovers before, who didn't? But usually it was in a Starbucks, or a chance glimpse across the aisle at the movies-not at a murder scene. One thing she was sure of. This was an unwelcome distraction from her job, something to be pushed aside. "Roach," she said, all business, "you two clear the rest of the premises."