by Layla Reyne
Tamela didn’t struggle or appear surprised. On the contrary, she looked satisfied. Downright smug.
The pieces snapped together in Chris’s head. “Madigan, stop! It’s what they want.”
Hawes tightened the wire. “They’re vetted.”
“Why are you here?” Chris asked, snatching up Devon’s knife.
“Got a tip.”
“Exactly.” He pointed at the black-domed cameras all along the platform and at the foot of the stairs. “There are cameras everywhere.”
Hawes’s smile was wicked. And beautiful. “Not anymore.”
Chris tamped down the near overwhelming desire to kiss that deadly, gorgeous smile right off his face. He’d come for him. No, fuck, someone had sent him. “They may have information we can use.”
Shouts echoed on the level above.
“ATF!”
“Police!”
“Move, move, move!”
“Guessing they got a tip too,” Chris said to Hawes. “This is a setup, Madigan. Don’t play into it.”
“I knew what it was the second I got the tip, but I wanted to know who the rest of the traitors were. Now I know two more.” He backed off and waited for Chris to secure Devon and Tamela. “And I had to be sure you—”
Inconveniently, the urge to kiss him crested again. “I can take care of myself too,” Chris said instead. Not that he wouldn’t have done the same thing, had he gotten a tip that Hawes was in mortal danger. Which was the very definition of going rogue, and Chris, recognizing that fact, still wouldn’t do anything differently. He’d still race to save Hawes, for reasons beyond his value to the mission. Reasons that Chris needed to sort out, but not with the cavalry bearing down on them.
He shoved the gun and knife into his bag, not wanting either to trace back to the organization. From his experience with Amelia, he knew the soldiers wouldn’t talk. The weapons were the only evidence. He thrust the bag at Hawes. “But thank you for the assist. Now get the fuck out of here.”
He expected Hawes to take the bag and run. He did not expect Hawes to step closer, to shove a hand in his hair and wind it around his fist, to yank back Chris’s head. “I still don’t trust you.” He crushed his mouth down onto Chris’s, acting on the same adrenaline-fueled desire that had been riding Chris. A slide of lips, a swipe of tongue, a nip of teeth, a groan from each of them. The kiss was brief, stunning, breathtaking in its force and surprise, and Chris would have happily stayed right there in Hawes’s arms if not for the official-sounding shouts a level above getting louder, closer.
Chris drew back and whispered, “Go,” against Hawes’s lips, then the king was gone, bag in hand, disappearing into the morning fog snaking through the train tunnels.
Chapter Seven
A fuming Scotty Wheeler was waiting for Chris in the field office lobby. “You let him get away.”
“Let who get away?” Chris said, then flashed a smile at the receptionist, who tossed his access badge onto the counter. While the ATF’s local division office was in Dublin, the smaller SF Metro office was Chris’s home base when he was between assignments. Which was seldom enough that he didn’t bother to keep—and lose—his access badge. Better to leave it here and claim it when needed.
Unneeded: Wheeler’s welcome party. “Don’t fucking play dumb with me, Perri.” Wheeler turned on his heel and marched across the bullpen, the end of his tie flying over his suited shoulder. Always the properly dressed agent. Professional attire, clean-shaven, not a blond hair out of place. A far cry from Chris’s beard, jeans, and tees, though he’d upgraded to a Henley today, owing to the office visit. He didn’t even own a suit anymore. He’d tossed his only one the day after Izzy’s funeral. The same day he’d tossed his hair clippers.
Wheeler spun in the conference room doorway, blocking Chris’s entrance. He was shorter than Chris by a good half foot but packed into that compact body were muscles that spoke of daily hours spent in the gym. Not someone you wanted to tangle with. “Witness statements indicate a man matching Hawes Madigan’s description was at the scene.”
“But you’ve got no positive identification?”
“Don’t I?” Wheeler stared up at him with big brown eyes that, on any other man, Chris would have considered attractive. Not, however, on the man who was about to make his life a living hell.
“Hawes Madigan was not at the scene.” A phantom tingle ghosted over Chris’s lips, reminding him that Hawes had most definitely been there.
Wheeler’s ears and cheeks reddened with anger, the same frustration glittering in his dark eyes. He wanted to argue, but after a beat and a huffed breath, he thought better of it and retreated into the conference room. Chris bit back a victorious smile. Had he let it loose, it would have been short-lived, dying as soon as he entered the room and glimpsed Wheeler’s work to date. File folders were scattered the length of the conference table, a flip board near the door was covered with pictures from both crime scenes last week, and the two wall-mounted whiteboards at the far end of the room were full of scribbled notes, including a Madigan org chart similar to the one Chris had constructed in his home office. Wheeler’s chart had each party’s official and unofficial capacity listed beneath their name, and off to the side, under the heading Wildcard, was written Braxton Kane.
Fuck.
Tran had lied. Wheeler hadn’t just been put on this case. This level of detail required weeks, months, years of work. Had Tran been running parallel investigations? And from the setup here, when had Wheeler actually arrived in town? Definitely before this weekend.
“You took those two operatives down by yourself?” Wheeler asked.
“I did.”
“We’ll see what they say when we question them.”
Devon and Tamela had received medical attention at the scene and were now in the FBI’s holding cells downstairs, neither cognizant enough yet for admissible interrogation. The SAC would let Chris and Wheeler know when they were ready. Not that Chris expected the soldiers to say much. If this went the way questioning Lucas and Amelia had, they’d stay mum. The opposing faction wanted to bring Hawes down and wrest control of the organization, not destroy it completely.
Chris strolled to the coffee maker at the other end of the room, checked it for water and fresh-enough grounds, then set it to brew. He rotated and rested back against the counter, gaze drifting again to Wheeler’s case notes. “There’s a flaw in your workup.”
Wheeler turned halfway around to the board. “What’s that?”
“The explosion after Cal’s funeral was an attack on the Madigans, not one engineered by them.”
“Amelia Madigan was behind it.”
“Yes, but—”
“Let’s get something straight, Perri.” He shifted back around to face Chris. “Neither I nor the ATF care about whatever feud is going on in the Madigan organization. We’re bringing it all down, starting at the top.” He pointed at the picture of Hawes, sitting alone at the top of the pyramid. Another flaw in the workup, but Chris didn’t clue Wheeler in on that one. If Wheeler wanted to focus his attention on Hawes, let him. Hawes could handle Scotty. There’d be less attention on Chris as he worked with Holt, Helena, and Kane on the thing that was supposed to matter to the ATF.
“According to Tran,” Chris said, “the explosives are our primary objective.”
“Which are where?”
Chris poured a mug of coffee and sipped in silence, not admitting to the unknown that was more dangerous than any of the Madigans.
“Exactly,” Wheeler said, correctly reading his nonanswer. “You don’t know where they are. Explosives made by professional assassins, which could land in the hands of even worse killers. I want to eliminate the organization that made them thereby stopping them from making more and eliminating those who could put the explosives to use.”
That was one way to look at the situation. A bit Rambo-esque in its idealism, because fuck knew they couldn’t eliminate all the targets.
“And you’re goi
ng to help me,” Wheeler added.
“What do you think I’ve been doing here? The past week with the Madigans, the past month of getting everything into place, the past three years following Izzy’s leads? I’m trying to find a way in so we can identify the real killers and find the explosives.”
“Well, you failed, King Slayer.”
Chris gritted his teeth.
“Isn’t that what they call you?”
There was a reason he understood Hawes’s loathing of his Prince of Killers moniker. A reason Chris knew exactly when to needle him with it and when to let it go. Because after taking down more than a few heads of criminal empires, Chris had earned his own moniker. One he liked about as much as Hawes liked his. Unfortunately, every time he slayed a king, collateral damage was unavoidable. Innocents wrapped up in the organization. Partners, kids, organization members who were just trying to do right by their families. Another reason why Hawes’s new order had resonated with Chris, why he wanted to help him, not slay him. But Chris couldn’t tell Wheeler any of that. “Yes, that’s what they call me,” he said instead.
Wheeler grinned, victorious. “Then let’s slay the fucking king already.”
If Chris had thought all eyes were on him Friday at SFPD headquarters, it was nothing compared to Monday afternoon. Badge around his neck, backup weapon holstered on his hip, he was no longer hiding his identity, and the curious looks were coming from all directions. He’d have to address the rumor mill at tomorrow’s interagency task force meeting, but first he had a meeting with Kane—without Wheeler.
Maybe also with a certain Madigan.
Chris had mentally replayed that morning’s altercation in the BART station too many times, like the best broken record ever. Hawes’s too brief kiss, a phantom tingle on his lips that had lingered delightfully, torturously. His speed and skill in taking down Devon, the same agility and grace he’d displayed in dispatching Jodie. That wicked smile after. Chris couldn’t get the scene—or the man—out of his head.
Trained in combat as he was, Chris found something undeniably sexy about a person whose skills rivaled his own, a person who exercised that much confidence and control over their faculties and surroundings. Even sexier had been Hawes ceding all that confidence and control to Chris in their moments alone last week. He’d done so because he’d trusted Chris, and Chris had betrayed that trust, though not to the extent Hawes believed. Chris had a way to go toward winning back that trust, but last night’s meet and this morning’s kiss were good starts. Granted, the brief lip-lock was ninety-nine percent fueled by adrenaline, but Chris could work with the one percent.
“You gonna stand out there all day?”
Kane’s voice startled Chris back to the present. The chief was leaning his head and shoulders out his office door as if hiding something—someone—inside.
Chris’s hope bloomed cautiously. “Sorry,” he said. “Was going over some details from this morning in my head.”
“We’ve got some other details to discuss.” Kane inched the door open far enough for Chris to slip inside, then closed it behind him.
One look across the room and Chris’s hope died, nipped in the bud by a wisp of disappointment and then a flood of concern. A folding table had been positioned in front of the shuttered bullpen window and the visitor chairs moved behind it. In one sat Jax, typing away on their laptop, and in the other sat Holt, with Lily strapped to his chest in a polka-dot sling.
He looked like utter hell.
The last time Chris had seen Hawes’s fraternal twin was Thursday, before Papa Cal’s funeral. Holt had looked rough then. Four days and a mountain of shit later, the former soldier looked four-months-in-the-desert rough. Auburn beard untrimmed, freckled skin blotchy, brown eyes bloodshot and underlined by dark bags. Even his tattoo sleeve, peeking out from under the rolled right cuff of his flannel shirt, appeared dull. But as tired as he looked, his typing was no less sonic, the one-handed speed mind-boggling. He cradled Lily with his other arm, as if he were afraid to let his daughter go. She was out like a light, stealing the hours of sleep her father had clearly missed out on.
Kane collapsed into his protesting desk chair, which had been rolled to the short end of the folding table, closest to Holt. “He came in to meet with Amelia and her attorney.”
Chris leaned a hip against Kane’s desk and snagged a candy. “How’d that go?”
Holt lifted his fingers off the keyboard, then lifted his eyes, glaring daggers at Chris. “How do you think it went?”
Chris diverted to a safer topic. “How’s Lily?”
“Misses her mom.”
Or not so safe. The big man’s tension only eased when Kane reached out and brushed his fingers over Lily’s head.
Jax watched the quiet, familial moment fondly, unsurprised. In fact, the IT specialist didn’t appear surprised about any of what was going on here. “You’re helping out on this case?” Chris asked them.
They jutted an orange nail at Holt. “I’m one of his kids.”
Chris raised a brow. “One of his—”
“Jax was Holt’s star mentee at the LGBTQ shelter,” Kane supplied.
“Got my GED, then my BS, and started here last year.”
How convenient. Another member of Team Madigan here at the SFPD. A hacker. Any other time, Chris would worry about conflicts of interest, but more allies—and less traitors—were a good thing right now.
Kane reached behind Holt and picked up something off the floor. “I believe this is yours.” He heaved Chris’s saddlebag onto the table.
“You go through what was inside?”
“Of course,” Holt answered. “Most of it was on the flash drive you gave us, though some of the additional…casework…was…” Holt swallowed hard and averted his gaze—to Kane, to Lily, to his laptop. All the new materials had been about Amelia. More shit for Holt to bear while processing a broken heart. No wonder he looked like shit.
“Busy work for Wheeler,” Chris said as he rifled through the folders and gave Holt time to gather himself. Everything except the weapons was still in the bag, including a new copy of the book he’d sacrificed to the pigeons. Ducking his chin, Chris hid his grin and lowered the bag to the floor. “Scotty’s gonna be a problem,” he said. “He’s not just after the prototypes.” Chris used the Madigans’ code for the explosives, unsure how deeply Jax had been read in. “He’s out to take your family down.”
Holt’s narrowed eyes darted up. “Scott Wheeler?” His fingers flew across the keyboard, and then he rotated the laptop toward Chris. “This guy?”
On-screen was Wheeler’s profile page from the ATF’s supposedly unhackable intranet. “That’s him.”
Holt cursed and snapped the laptop lid shut. “He was one of the feds posing as attorneys for the last buyer.”
“At the meet last Tuesday?” Chris recalled Hawes’s haste that morning. He’d turned down an offer of shower fun because he couldn’t be late to that meeting. “For the sale of the prototypes?”
Holt nodded. “Hawes and I ran every feature we could remember through recognition databases until we got an ID. We weren’t one hundred percent sure, but—”
“That’s him, for sure. He’s a good agent, but very by the book.” Chris turned to Kane. “He’s clearly been on this case longer than Tran led us to believe.”
Kane rose, snagged a candy, and unwrapped it as he paced the threadbare carpet behind his desk. “She also led us to believe she’d call off the investigation if we secured the weapons. That’s the ATF’s jurisdiction.”
Chris had thought so too, but he wasn’t sure now. “Except jurisdiction gets murkier depending on who we find the prototypes with, how they came to be there, and if they can be traced back to the manufacturer.”
“We’re in the clear,” Holt said. “They won’t trace back to us.”
“Someone could testify against you or manufacture evidence.”
“Sure.” Holt shrugged. “And I can manufacture evidence otherwise.”
<
br /> Kane tossed the balled-up candy wrapper at Holt and covered his ears with both hands. “Christ, Private.”
One corner of Holt’s mouth quirked up. Just the teensiest bit. Chris would have to buy Kane more candies.
“Any luck finding Amelia’s missing flash drive?”
“So you admit you don’t know where it is?” Holt countered.
Chris tilted his head. “In the new spirit of honesty.”
Holt chuffed. Another good sign. “Fuck your honesty, but no.”
Jax didn’t hide their amusement, chuckling out loud before getting back to business. “What I do have is a new lead on the explosives.” Read all the way in, then. They held out a tablet to Chris. Paperless—definitely one of Holt’s kids. “This was posted on the dark web.”
Chris took the tablet and read the solicitation on-screen. It was for bidders for a private auction of demolition prototypes happening tomorrow evening. The location would be provided to “pre-qualified bidders.”
“You think this is your stockpile of explosives?”
“Pretty sure,” Holt said. “We know from our last buyer that there was no one else in the market offering this much firepower.”
“But why?” Chris asked. “If Amelia and her faction are after power, why are they selling off their most powerful weapons?”
“It’s just a portion,” Holt said.
“Funding the operation?” Kane ventured.
“Could be,” Chris said. “Or it could be another trap like the one they tried to spring on Hawes this morning.” He shifted his attention to Kane. “We’ll have to prep the bust with multiple scenarios in play.”
“We want to be there,” Holt interjected.
“Did you fucking miss what I just said?”
“We have as much interest as you in finding out who’s behind this.”
Chris’s frustration—and volume—rose to match. “Ask your fucking wife. She’s not talking to any of the rest of us.”