Rook insisted on walking her down to the sidewalk, but Nikki stalled until they were embedded in the group departure of the other guests, so she could get away clean. A group seemed the perfect place to fulfill that. Because the truth of it, she reflected on the ride down, was that she didn’t want so much to be alone as not to be paired up.

Not tonight anyway, she thought.

The news anchor and her husband lived in walking distance and made their exit just as Simpson flagged a cab. The judge was heading uptown near the Guggenheim and asked if Nikki wanted to share the ride. She sorted her feelings about leaving Rook hangdogging on the sidewalk versus staying and having to deal with the awkwardness of the good-night moment, or worse, the come-back-up moment, and answered yes.

Rook said, “Hope you don’t mind I sort of Punk’d you into coming over.”

“Why would I mind? I’m leaving with money, jokey boy.” Then she slid way across the taxi seat to make room for Simpson. Ten minutes later, she was unlocking her lobby door in Gramercy Park, thinking about a bath.

Nobody would accuse Nikki Heat of leading a life of indulgence. “Delayed gratification” was a phrase that came to her mind often, usually invoked as a means to talk herself down off some rare flash of anger at what she was doing instead of what she would rather be doing. Or saw other people doing.

So as she ran the tap to revitalize the bubbles in her tub, allowing herself one of her few indulgences, a bubble bath, her mind ran back to thoughts of the road not taken. To Connecticut and a yard and the PTA and a husband who took the train to Manhattan, and having the time and resources to get a massage once in a while or maybe take a yoga class.

Yoga class instead of close-quarter combat training.

Nikki tried to imagine herself in bed with a ropy tofu advocate with a Johnny Depp beard and a “Random Acts of Kindness” bumper sticker on a rusted-out Saab, instead of sheet grappling with the ex-Seal. She could do worse than Johnny Depp. And had.

A couple of times that evening she had thought about calling Don but didn’t. Why not? She wanted to boast about her perfect arm-bar takedown of Pochenko at the subway station. Quick and easy, take a seat, sir. But that wasn’t why she wanted to call him, and she knew it.

So why didn’t she?

It was an easy arrangement with Don. Her trainer with benefits never asked her where she was or when she’d be back or why she didn’t call. His place or hers didn’t matter; it was logistical, whichever was closer. He was looking neither to nest nor to get away from anything.

And the sex was good. Once in a while he would get a bit too aggressive, or a bit too into task completion, but she knew how to work with that and get what she needed. And how much different was that from the commuter guys, the Noah Paxtons of the world? The Don thing wasn’t the be-all, but it worked fine.

So why didn’t she call?

She shut off the tap when the bubbles tickled her chin, and inhaled the scent of her childhood. Nikki thought about the delays, tried to imagine fulfilling purpose instead of needs, and wondered if this was what it would be like in, say, eleven years, when she hit forty. That used to seem like such a long way off, and yet the last ten years, a full decade of rearranging her life around the end of her mother’s, had blipped along like a TiVo on forward. Or was that for the lack of savoring?

She went from convincing her mother she should be a Theater Arts major to transferring to the College of Criminal Justice. She wondered if without realizing it she was getting too tough to be happy. She knew she did less laughing and more judging.

What had Rook said at the poker game? He called her adept at reading people. Not what she wanted on her tombstone.

Rook.

OK, so I was checking out his ass, she thought. Then the flutter came over her, probably embarrassment at being transparent enough to be caught in the act by The Grand Damn. Nikki submerged under the bubbles and held her breath until the pounding of her flutter got lost in the pounding of oxygen debt.

She broke the surface and palmed the suds off her face and hair, and floated, weightless in the cooling water, and let herself wonder what it would be like with Jameson Rook. What would he be like? How would he feel and taste and move?

And then the flutter hit her again. What would she be like with him? It made her nervous. She didn’t know.

It was a mystery.

She unstopped the drain and got out.

Nikki had her air-conditioning off and walked her apartment naked and wet, not bothering to towel off in the humidity. The die-hard soap bubbles felt good on her skin, and besides, once she dried off, she’d be damp in no time in the soggy air, so why not be damp and smell like lavender?

Only two of her windows gave views to facing neighbors, and since there was no breeze to obstruct anyway, she drew the shades down on them and went to the utility closet off the kitchen. Detective Nikki Heat’s miracle time- and money-saver was to press her own clothes the night before. Nothing stopped the crooks in their tracks more than defined pleats and sharp creases. She drew the board down on its hinge and plugged in the iron.

She hadn’t overdone the alcohol that night, but what she had drunk had made her thirsty. In the fridge she found her last can of lemon-lime seltzer. It was quite ungreen of her, but she held open the refrigerator door and moved herself close to it, feeling the cool air cascade out against her naked body, chilling her skin into gooseflesh.

A small click turned her away from the open door. The red light had popped on, indicating the iron was ready. She set the can of seltzer on the counter and hurried to her closet to find something relatively clean and, above all, breathable.

Her navy linen blazer only needed a touch-up. Walking up the hall with it, though, she noticed that a button on the right sleeve was cracked and she paused to look at it, to remember if she had a match.

And then, from the kitchen, Nikki heard the seltzer can open.

SEVEN

Even as she stood frozen in her hallway, Nikki’s first thought was that she hadn’t really heard it. Too many replays of her mother’s murder had embedded that pop-top sound in her head. How many times had that snap-hiss jolted her out of nightmares or made her flinch in the break room? No, she could not have heard it.

That is what she told herself in the eternal seconds she stood there, cotton-mouthed and naked, straining to hear over the damned night noise of New York City, and her own pulse.

Her fingers hurt from digging the broken sleeve button into herself. She relaxed her grip but did not drop the blazer for fear of making noise that would give her away.

To whom?

Give it one minute, she told herself. Stay still, be a statue for a count of sixty and be done with this.

She cursed herself for her nakedness and how vulnerable it made her feel. Indulged in the bubble bath and now look. Stop that and focus, she thought. Just focus and listen to every square inch of the night.

Maybe it was a neighbor. How many times had she heard lovemaking, and coughing, and dishes stacking, come across the air space into her open windows?

The windows. They were all open.

A mere fraction through her minute, she lifted one bare foot off the runner and set it down one step closer to the kitchen. She listened.

Nothing.

Nikki chanced another slo-mo step. In the middle of it, her heart skipped when a shadow moved across the slice of floor she could see in the kitchen. She didn’t hesitate or stop to listen again. She bolted.