Silent Knight: A Fog City Novel

by Layla Reyne

  “I’m exhausted, Cap.”

  “What happened to that caffeine high?”

  “Used it all up.” He held up the end of the blanket, inviting him under. “I’ll sleep. Just making sure you do too. Feel guilty I interrupted.”

  Brax glided a hand over his head, took a couple deep breaths, then finally swung his legs up and stretched out, his back to Holt’s front. He took the end of the blanket from Holt, pulling it tight around them, and when Holt curled an arm over his waist, Brax, after a few tense seconds when Holt feared he’d gone too far, exhaled a long slow breath and relaxed, letting himself be held. Desire rippled again, but Holt’s own exhaustion muted the effect, as did his contentment at having Brax in his arms and giving him something he needed. During moments like this, Holt thought maybe he could give back an ounce of everything Brax had given him over the years. Maybe… if he had a lifetime with the man in his arms.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Helena worried a nick in the scuffed and scratched conference room table, deepening the groove with her manicured nail. “You ever hear the joke about the three assassins, a PI, and a cop who walked into the FBI?”

  “Hena,” Hawes chided from one side of Holt.

  “Christ,” Brax cursed from the other.

  Helena aimed a side-eye at Chris, who declined to comment from the corner where he doctored his second cup of coffee.

  “Killer story,” she snickered.

  Hawes angled his chair toward Holt and away from their sister. “You shouldn’t be here.” His brother’s gaze skipped past him. “Neither should you,” he said to Brax. “We shouldn’t all be here.”

  “I’m not sitting this one out,” Holt said.

  “And this is my career we’re talking about.” Brax leaned forward, his right arm brushing Holt’s left. “Not to mention, I called this meeting.”

  The weird distance that had been between them didn’t seem so vast, so frightening, after last night, furthering Holt’s conviction that he’d done the right thing, letting Brax make this call and making sure he slept. Even if, despite those wins, Holt also couldn’t shake the feeling they were sitting ducks. Hawes was right to a degree. Where possible, he and his siblings avoided all being in the same dangerous pond at once. Holt was usually the one at home or at MCS, running comms for operations. Today, though, he wasn’t the duck out of place.

  “Helena is here as Brax’s attorney,” Holt said. “I’m here as his best friend. What are you doing here?”

  “He’s right, Big H,” Helena said. “We’ve got Mr. Hair as your proxy.”

  Chris made a show of flipping them all off. Probably not a good idea, then, to ask him for a cup of what smelled distinctly like Dunkin’ goodness. Holt was about to get up and pour himself a cup when the door opened.

  Mel entered first, statuesque and dressed to the professional nines for a morning back in her old office. On her heels were two men Holt recognized, though he’d never met them in person. The redhead in a three-piece suit was FBI San Francisco’s Special Agent in Charge, Aidan Talley. They’d kept an eye on the Irish ex-pat—Mel’s brother-in-law and best friend—as he’d climbed the FBI’s ranks. Holt respected the company he kept and the way he did business. The man beside him, a hand resting on Aidan’s lower back, would be recognizable to anyone who paid the least bit of attention to sports. Jameson “Whiskey” Walker was a former star basketball player who’d made headlines several years back, coming out as gay and leaving the FBI to return to basketball as an assistant coach at St. Mary’s. And so he could marry his Bureau partner, Aidan. He was also, Holt grudgingly admitted, the best hacker he knew. Holt wouldn’t, however, begrudge Jamie the fact that he and his husband looked like they belonged in a menswear catalog or on the cover of OUT magazine, both so gorgeous and both so obviously in love it made his own chest ache.

  “Oh,” Helena drawled in an exaggerated whisper. “Now I get it.”

  Chris leaned back in his chair, reaching behind her to nudge Hawes’s shoulder. “I ain’t even mad, boo. Think they’d go for a quad?”

  Helena coughed, poorly hiding her laugh. “Wrong Talley.”

  Mel replied with a wink.

  Hawes shot to his feet so fast Holt failed to muffle his laugh. Beside him, Brax chuckled too, and Holt was glad for the amusing start to what was going to be another long day. Brax shot him a grin, and for a moment, Holt forgot about everyone else, his world revolving around a pair of smiling hazel eyes. Objectively, he couldn’t deny the other hotness in the room, but as far as he was concerned, a rested and suited Braxton Kane, smiling just for him, was the only hotness that mattered.

  “Mel,” Hawes said, “Good to see you.”

  Brax rose too, popping their bubble, but Holt internalized the warm, soft feelings and let them buoy him through the round of introductions.

  “Nice to finally meet you in person,” Jamie said as he shook Holt’s hand. After Jamie had helped them last year, he and Holt had struck up a friendship, frequently chatting online or by video, trading hacker tips and tricks.

  “There a reason we needed to meet here?” Hawes asked. “I know Brax called this meeting, and we’re on board with cooperation, but the setting is—”

  “Pretend it’s Switzerland,” Mel said. “At least for today.”

  “And we have a common target,” Aidan said, his friendly Irish brogue fading as he shifted into work mode. He stepped forward, a stack of files in hand. He dropped the first on the table. “Samantha Pritchard.” Dropped another. “Aka Sam Gilbert.” And another. “Aka Sammy Wallace.” Then the rest. “She’s got a half dozen other aliases too. She’s a master forger”—he cut a glance to Holt—“real and digital”—then reverted to addressing the room at large—“and she’s the target of an active federal investigation.”

  “Any idea how she got tangled up in this?” Chris asked.

  Aidan pushed the folder labeled Sam Gilbert toward him. “She’s done work for the Camino cartel before.”

  “So then, what? This is revenge?” Holt said, picking up the thread he and Brax had speculated about yesterday. He angled toward him. “The cartel getting back at you?”

  “Guess they’re tired of me gumming up the works.”

  “You turned their accountant,” Mel said. “Which led to two busted deals and multiple arrests.” She shifted her attention to Hawes. “And you fucked up their rivals last year, real good. They don’t want to be next.”

  Hawes pressed his lips into a thin line.

  “They’re sending a message,” Aidan said. “To all of us.”

  Guilt reformed in Holt’s gut. Not quite a brick but weighty and jagged enough. He clasped his hands, stilling them before they started air-typing. The cartel had their own reasons for going after Brax—it wasn’t only his connections to the Madigans that had made him a target—but they were all tangled up in this together.

  Brax’s hand landed on Holt’s bouncing knee beneath the table. With his hands clasped, Holt had displaced the nervous energy, and Brax aimed to calm him. But the divot between Brax’s brows and the worry in his eyes did not project calm.

  “Sorry to break up the fun with lawyer-speak,” Helena said. “But—”

  “But this isn’t enough to clear Chief Kane,” the other lawyer in the room, Aidan, finished. “And it’s not enough for me to catch my suspect either.”

  “Which is where I come in,” Jamie said. His gaze landed on Holt. “How do you feel about setting a trap with me and a friend?”

  Holt unclenched his hands and stretched his fingers, letting the trapped energy flow back into them. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  They had all just stood when the door at the opposite end of the conference room opened. A dark-haired, dark-eyed man Holt recognized from their FBI files as Aidan’s ASAC, Cameron Byrne, poked his head inside the room. “I’m patching through a video call.” He pointed at the wall-mounted screen flickering to life. “You want to take it.”

  Agent Byrne closed the door, and
a moment later, the image onscreen resolved. Holt bit back a gasp at the man he knew but hardly recognized. ATF agent Scotty Wheeler’s suit was days wrinkled, his dark blond hair was greasy and long past regulation, and his brown eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. It wasn’t I’m-hiding-and-recovering-from-a-gunshot or your-grandmother-kidnapped-and-tortured-me bad, but it was the look of a man on the verge of losing everything.

  Scotty didn’t bother with pleasantries, cutting right to the chase instead. “You’re investigating Samantha Pritchard?”

  “And her other aliases,” Chris said. “Scotty, what the hell—”

  “You’re missing a few names,” he said. “Samantha Smith was the alias she used with Remy Pak. Her real name is Savannah Grace Ryan, and I’ve known her since we were kids.” No one managed to hold in their gasp at that unexpected revelation. Or at the next, more shocking one. “That trap you’re setting, it’s for my ex.”

  “Fuck, Scotty,” Chris cursed as Aidan ducked out of the room. “Does the ATF know about this? Are you flying solo on it?”

  Scotty’s answering laugh was just this side of hysterical. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”

  “Aww,” Helena drawled, mocking the Georgia lilt in Scotty’s voice, the more pronounced accent evidence of his weariness. “We missed you, Agent Salty.”

  “Leave him alone,” Hawes chided gently.

  Holt lowered his chin to hide his smile. Despite married bliss, Hawes still projected cold efficiency to the outside world. He hadn’t earned his moniker, Prince of Killers, for nothing. He did less of the killing these days, leaving that to Helena and their operatives, while he focused instead on their social and political connections and running their legitimate business, but he was still the too serious oldest sibling, the patriarch of the family. Except Hawes’s marshmallow center had leaked out more often the past year, most surprisingly where the federal agent who’d tried to bring them down was concerned. Hawes had developed a soft spot for Scotty Wheeler, one that included keeping tabs on the agent. Holt had attributed Scotty’s wild travel patterns to cases—he was the ATF’s best undercover wrangler—but by the look of him, he was the one who needed wrangling.

  “This is the Sam you wouldn’t tell us about?” Hawes said.

  “For obvious reasons. When I found out you’d pinged one of her aliases, I caught the next flight out there but missed my connection in Vegas.”

  “Rewind,” Chris said. “You said her real name is Savannah, but you call her Sam. Why?”

  “She was named for the place we grew up, and she wanted the hell out of there. She started calling herself Sam when we were twelve. She wouldn’t answer to her real name anymore, so we all got in line. That was her way.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us about her?” Brax asked.

  “I didn’t expect her to cross SFPD’s path,” he said to Brax, then to Hawes, “And I wasn’t going to put her in yours.”

  “Fair enough,” Hawes replied.

  “You were looking for her,” Chris said. “When you came back to town in November?”

  Holt recalled seeing the rumpled agent slip into the restaurant where they’d held Lily’s birthday party. Chris and Hawes had spoken with him. Holt hadn’t joined them, too caught up in keeping Lily distracted from her mother’s absence and too caught up in whatever odd distance was building between him and Brax. In any event, that rumpled Scotty looked prim and pressed compared to the Scotty onscreen now.

  Another bitter chuckle confirmed how much the agent’s world had darkened. “I’ve been looking for Sam since we were teens and she made herself a fake ID and skipped town. I thought I saw her one of the times I was at FCI Dublin to meet with Amelia after her arrest.”

  “You did,” Aidan said, reentering the room with a folder in hand. “Didn’t take long to find her once we knew who we were looking for. She was bonded out. Skipped bail.”

  “Who paid the bond?” Scotty asked.

  “Hyokkose LLC.”

  “Remy Pak,” Holt said, recognizing the entity name.

  As had Scotty, who scrubbed a hand over his face and mumbled a weary, “Fuck.”

  Pak was tight with the Russian mob. The ATF had busted and turned her too, and in so doing, discovered a trust fund she’d set up for Samantha Smith.

  “I met with Remy in December,” Helena said. “And she helped us out earlier this year. Sam wasn’t with her either of those times.”

  Scotty lowered his hand. “She’s running from both of us.”

  “This is how she spoofed the IP addresses for FCI Dublin,” Holt said, reminding them of the primary matter at hand, the one involving the man beside him. “She knew the system.” He turned to Jamie. “You got a trap in mind?”

  Jamie nodded. “We make it look like the cartel is contacting her to fabricate more evidence. Emails in Chief Kane’s SFPD mailbox. If the trap works and she produces the emails, it’ll support the manufactured evidence theory to clear Chief Kane. And hopefully we can also get a location on Sam and anyone else she’s using to route the email traffic or money.”

  “And if Sam takes the bait?” Scotty said.

  “I’m willing to cooperate if she does,” Aidan said. “The FBI isn’t after her so much as her various employers and contacts.”

  Holt caught the exchange of looks between Hawes and Mel, Hawes and Scotty, then Scotty and Aidan. Nods all around.

  “All right,” Holt said. “Let’s do this.”

  Holt and company followed Jamie past the lobby elevators, down the hallway, and into a large interior space. A converted boardroom by the look of it, no windows and AC blasting. Single file, their group wove through stacks of servers, and Holt slowed his steps, desperate for a peek. Behind him, Brax chuckled low and put a hand to his back, shoving him forward. Holt wanted to be angry about it, but the fact Brax knew him so well sent a gentle wave of warmth sluicing through him. They emerged from the stacks into a sort of mini-bullpen, several rows of desks comprising SF-FBI’s cyber division. A petite brunet, hair in a wobbly pencil bun, stood in front of a line of three workstations. Holt recognized her from their files as Agent Lauren Hall.

  Arms spread, Jamie strode forward. “Mini-Me.”

  Lauren dodged the baller who was clearly playing at obnoxious older brother, though said files indicated he wasn’t older by much and he wasn’t blood related. But that was the vibe Holt picked up, the two of them acting much the way he and Helena teased each other sometimes.

  “Ohmigod,” Lauren huffed. “You act like it’s been ten years. You saw me last weekend at Gravity, for fuck’s sake.”

  Laughing, Jamie moved to her side, an arm slung over her shoulders. “Holt Madigan, Agent Lauren Hall,” he said. “Lauren, this is the other hacker we run into from time to time.”

  “Barb—”

  Helena backhanded his gut, then rose on her toes and whispered, “Brax might like your balls too someday.”

  Holt blushed and prayed to all that was holy that only he’d heard Helena’s words, a callback to a conversation over cards last year.

  Lauren slipped out from under Jamie’s arm, stepped forward, and held out her hand, her manicured nails painted alternating blue and red. “Agent Lauren Hall. Nice to meet you.”

  “Same,” Holt said.

  “You get the protocols I sent over?” Jamie asked.

  “Yep, we’re all set.” She pointed at the middle computer first. “This one will spoof the target’s cartel contact.” Then the one to the left. “This one is for Holt to back trace and for you”—she looked to Brax—“to log into your email account. We need before and after screenshots so we can show the forged email traffic.” She gestured to the last computer. “And this one will make the bank transfer.” She circled behind the computers. “We just need the relevant IPs to ping. See if we can get her attention.”

  “And that’s where you come in,” Jamie said to Holt.

  Helena withdrew Holt’s tablet from her briefcase and handed it to him. Holt followe
d Jamie behind the desks and pulled up the necessary IP addresses and permissions, courtesy of Amelia.

  “And we think Sam will respond right away?” Helena asked.

  “Chances are good,” Holt said. “She responded to each of the other relevant communications within five minutes.”

  Helena nodded and rejoined the ongoing legal discussion with Scotty via a video call on Chris’s phone.

  “I’m good here,” Jamie said from behind the middle unit.

  “All set here too.” Lauren bounced on her toes behind the far unit. “Game time!”

  The same excitement coursed through Holt, tingles radiating out to his fingers and toes. He forced them calm, using the memory of that earlier wave of warmth as he familiarized himself with the new computer, which was already logged into SFPD’s mainframe. He called the source of warmth closer, and Brax sank into the spare chair next to him.

  “Log in, please,” Holt said, sliding over to make room for Brax in front of the keyboard. “We need to get the before screenshots of your inbox and outbox.”

  Brax entered his username and password, and his desktop appeared onscreen.

  “We’re in,” Holt told the others. “Dates for the screenshot?”

  “Aim for the period between the second and last meeting with Swanson,” Helena said, an ear on both conversations. “That’ll be most convincing to her and for our case.”

  Brax provided the date range, and Holt, rolling back in front of the computer, quickly took the needed screenshots. Brax, however, didn’t get up to rejoin the others. “Thank you for doing this,” he said. “For working with them and for coming to me last night.”

  “This was your call to make.” His gaze drifted to where the others were still arguing with Scotty. “And we owe Agent Salty a favor,” Holt added. “If we can help him with this too…”

  “Do you realize what an incredible man you are?”

  Holt’s gaze snapped to Brax’s, and the emotions in his hazel eyes—warmth, admiration, affection—set off an ocean of ripples again. And a blush that by the heat of Holt’s face, Brax had to notice. “I—”