Barrel Proof (Agents Irish and Whiskey)

by Layla Reyne

  “With what? You’ve already caused the chaos Renaud wanted.”

  “Until you pressed pause. We want more.”

  All Jamie’s training, his mind, said no, but his heart trapped the word in his chest. Made him want to speak a different one instead.

  Cam snatched the phone from his hand before Jamie dug his grave any deeper. “Torres, this is Cameron Byrne. Remember me?”

  “Agent Byrne, I should have known. Irish goes missing and the K&R cavalry arrives.”

  “The FBI doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

  “You sure about that? I researched you, too. Plays by the rules, except when it comes to your best friend there. I’m guessing you’re pretty invested in his partner’s well-being too.” Jamie’s stomach knotted, anticipating Oscar’s next threat. “Would you stick by your rules, if I pushed a button right now and sent an email to the SEC and FBI about Aidan’s foul trades—”

  “He didn’t make those,” Jamie cut in. “You did, and then you hacked Aurora to make it look like the sell orders came from Aidan. We have proof of the encryption change.”

  “Proof obtained via software you’re not supposed to have, dear Jamie. Bet the higher-ups would love that, along with details of your black hat activities.”

  Jamie didn’t have a comeback. Oscar knew about his hacking. Jamie had never figured he’d use that knowledge against him.

  “What do you say, then, Byrne?” Oscar carried on. “Or maybe the rules don’t apply if neither Aidan or Jamie are FBI any longer? Problem solved.”

  “Torres,” Cam said. “Turn on Renaud and we can cut a deal.”

  “Not a better one than he’s offering.”

  Cam pressed mute. “Can he crack your kill switch?” he asked Jamie.

  “Eventually.” Oscar was a better-than-average hacker. “We need to stall.”

  Cam nodded and clicked it off mute. “Hey, Torres, you forget we’ve got Westley?”

  “And I can do a lot more damage to Aidan and Kevin than you can to do Westley.”

  A wave of bile surged up Jamie’s throat. “Kevin?”

  “Oh, did I forget to mention I brought him with me from Houston? Want to talk to Byrne and get him to take my deal now?”

  “The FBI doesn’t negotiate with terrorists,” Cam repeated.

  The sent-mail whoosh carried over the line. “Won’t be long now. Call me when you’re ready to trade yourself, Jameson.”

  The line went dead and Jamie laced his fingers behind his head, the only thing keeping it from exploding. “What are you doing here?” he asked Cam. “You were on case in LA.”

  “Got a heads-up you might need me. I flew up.”

  “A heads-up from who?”

  Cam waved him off. “Doesn’t matter. When’s the last time you slept?”

  Jamie couldn’t recall. “Doesn’t matter,” he parroted back.

  “You assaulted a suspect and almost conceded to a terrorist’s demands. Where’s your head at?”

  He threw his arms out wide. “Right where it’s supposed be, with my partner.”

  “Your partner or your lover?”

  “Both!” The two were indistinguishable. Aidan was his everything.

  Cam grasped his shoulder. “You need to go home and go to sleep.”

  Jamie batted the hand away. “Fuck that. I need to find Aidan and Kevin.” His head spun, dizzy. “Fuck, he’s got Kevin too. It was one thing for Aidan to walk into the lion’s den, but now they’ve dragged Kevin into this too.”

  “Kevin’s the hacker from Galveston? From your case there?”

  Jamie nodded. “He’s an innocent, Cam.” It was harder to get the words out, to slow his racing heart and put one foot in front of the other. “Oscar has them. Renaud has them.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “The fuck we don’t!” Jamie turned, headed for the door, but his leg had other ideas, finally giving out.

  Not again, not now, not yet.

  As the ground rushed up to meet him, he was saved at the last second by his best friend. “Easy, brother.” Cam hauled him up, leaned him against one of the roof-top A/C units, and brought his hands up in a T. “Time-out. You need to breathe.”

  Jamie, who’d spent half his life on the basketball court, instantly responded to the game-time command. Cam had known he would. He bowed his head and gulped in air like he would on the sidelines. “I love him.” The words were broken, strangled, painful to his own ears. “I can’t lose him.”

  “You’re not going to. We’ll get him back. I promise.”

  Cam didn’t make those promises lightly, but at the moment, it was as much a struggle to hope as it was to stand.

  “Duke-Carolina, Senior Night,” Cam said. “You were the star player. Tie ball game, a quarter to go, and you were worn out. What’d Coach do?”

  Jamie remembered that game all too well. It hadn’t just been a battle; it’d been a war. “Rested me; played the reserves.”

  “Right, so that’s what we’re gonna do. You’re going to fill me in and then you’re going to rest.” Cam clasped his shoulder when Jamie started to object, the thought of wasting even a minute unacceptable. “We’ve got an all-star bench, and you can barely stand. Let the reserves play for a few minutes, then we’ll bring you back in for the game winning shot.”

  As much as Jamie didn’t want to ride the bench, he wouldn’t be taking any shots, much less a winning one and saving Aidan, if he couldn’t even stand. Cam’s game plan was solid. Hell, it was the only game plan under the circumstances.

  He laid a hand over Cam’s and squeezed, praying this was the right call. “All right, Coach. Bring in the reserves.”

  * * *

  Face and knuckles bruised, blood dripping from his nose, Aidan stood hunched in front of Kevin, backing the younger man into the corner as he stared down his opponent.

  “Move, Talley.” Torres wiped blood from his split lip and flicked his hand, droplets of red splattering the floor.

  “You’re not getting him until I get a sit-down with your boss.”

  Back to full strength, Aidan straightened and advanced again. Torres swung, Aidan blocked. They’d volleyed back and forth—punch, block, side step, repeat—for at least fifteen minutes, each of them landing occasional hits to the face or body. If Aidan wanted to take Torres out, he could have done so with his first few swings, but he was drawing this out. On purpose. While Kevin was ready to do his part, Aidan had overheard Torres on the phone, taunting Jamie. Aidan wanted to be sure his partner had time to reset and be ready to receive Kevin’s clues. And there was the added benefit of beating the shit out of Torres, something Aidan had wanted to do for months.

  Petty, maybe.

  Satisfying, definitely.

  And he wasn’t giving up Kevin until he got his face-to-face with Renaud.

  “He doesn’t want to talk to you.” Torres feinted right, trying to get around him to Kevin. Each time he’d tried a feint, a juke, a spin, Aidan matched him, court time with Jamie paying off.

  “Bullshit! He’s systematically ruined my life for the past year and a half. He wants to talk to me.” Aidan swung, landed a right hook to the side of Torres’s fleeting chin, and suffered a hit to his torso in return.

  The flurry of parries continued until the door banged open and a deep voice commanded, “Enough!”

  Like a dog on a leash, Torres retreated. Over his shoulder, Aidan glimpsed Renaud, standing fully suited in the door. Those pale green eyes shifted off him to Torres, annoyance flashing. “You were a fool to put them in the same room.”

  Torres’s arrogance and bravado faded.

  “Not so brave now, are you?” Aidan said, reveling.

  Renaud stepped into the room. “Take the kid.”

  No
w that Aidan had what he wanted, he stepped out from in front of Kevin. He could feel Kevin’s dark eyes on him, but Aidan stayed focused on Renaud, not wanting to give away what he and Kevin had planned.

  Torres followed Kevin out of the room and Renaud turned to close the door behind them. Presented with a clean shot at the man who’d killed his husband and his former partner, who’d tried numerous times to kill him and Jamie, Aidan attacked.

  And landed flat on his back, winded, remembering two seconds too late that Renaud had likely trained with Mel’s uncle.

  The older man loomed over him. “I’ll give you that one. You earned it. Another and I won’t stop at disarming you.”

  Aidan spread his arms out on the concrete. “Why’d you stop? You’ve been trying to kill me for months. Now’s your chance.”

  “Proof of life.”

  Aidan scooted up against the wall. “To secure Jamie’s cooperation.”

  “That little fight of yours with Oscar makes a pretty picture.” Renaud pulled a phone from his pocket and snapped a picture. He pressed send and Aidan prayed for whomever was in Jamie’s vicinity when he received it.

  Aidan used the corner to haul himself up. “What do I call you? Pierre Renaud? Peter Wald? Benjamin Connors?”

  Renaud’s step faltered. “I didn’t think you’d get that far so fast.”

  “Everyone underestimates Jamie.”

  “Including you?”

  “Including me.” There was no denying he’d underestimated Jamie at every step—mentee, partner, lover, so much more.

  “Good.” Renaud retrieved the toppled chair from the far corner and sat, one leg crossed over the other. Totally calm, totally in control. “Then I’m sure he can do what we need with the directories.”

  “You want to destroy more than Pearl, don’t you? You want to reach through the directories all the way back to Seven Oaks.”

  “No one listened to me the last time. They’ll listen now.”

  “Listened to you?”

  “I had a charmed life, like your family.”

  Aidan’s jaw clenched. Yes, his family had built an empire here, but the Troubles had claimed the life of his older brother and forced his family to flee their homeland. “It hasn’t always been easy.”

  “You escaped, as did I.” So that slight accent in his voice wasn’t a cover. “I admire that about you.”

  “Pardon me if I don’t care for a terrorist’s admiration.”

  “The world will admire me now, like they should have then.”

  “Then?”

  “I predicted the dot com bubble would burst in 2000. No one listened. When I started slowing investments, Seven Oaks voted me off the board. Greed. The American way. Too much money to be made; no one wanted to listen. I was kicked out of the very company I’d founded.”

  “All this is to get back at the people who said you were wrong?”

  Pain flashed in Renaud’s eyes but otherwise he betrayed no emotion, picking at a loose thread in his slacks. “No, this is for my wife.”

  Aidan jolted. “Your wife?” He hadn’t expected so human a motive.

  “When the crash happened, she didn’t know I’d already put enough money away for us to live comfortably. She thought we’d lost everything, and before I could tell her otherwise, she put a gun to her head and blew her brains out.”

  Delivered flat, emotionless, and it was still a punch to Aidan’s gut, robbing him of breath.

  “Cat got your tongue, Agent Talley?”

  “You lost your wife. You know what it’s like to lose the love of your life...and you took mine?”

  No response, no emotion, no heart.

  Another punch to the gut, this one hitting harder than the last, as Aidan realized he might have become this man. How many times had he tried to shut down his heart in the wake of Gabe’s death? But Katie, his family and Mel were always there with a piece of it. They kept it beating, however faintly. Until Jamie came along and shocked it fully awake, stole it with a smile, a joke and a big, warm hand. Aidan could have become the cold, heartless man sitting across from him, hell-bent on revenge, if he hadn’t gotten a second chance at love.

  If Jamie hadn’t sauntered into his life.

  He was still angry at Renaud, for murdering Gabe and Tom, for attempting to kill him, Jamie, Mel and Danny, but Irish manners and sympathetic pity crept in too. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For your losses.”

  “They all will be too, once I crash their precious markets.”

  “Using Aurora. Financial chaos, that’s been your endgame all along, hasn’t it?”

  “I secured their funding, knowing I could use it, when the time was right.”

  “And you used my husband to set up the companies to do so?”

  Renaud smiled. “He was so eager to make a name for himself. Everyone here is. Same as I was.”

  Anger blotting out manners and pity, Aidan wanted to attack again. Which would be futile. He focused on getting more answers. “Galveston?”

  “Was meant to be the first domino. The death of Silicon Valley’s top financial minds.” He laughed, cold and bitter, and underlying it, Aidan thought, a thin thread of jealousy. The belief he should have been among them. “So smart, they put themselves all in one place. Like sitting ducks, until you foiled my plan. You and Agent Walker, both bulletproof it seems. Worked out for us, though. Jamie will be a useful asset.”

  Jamie, not him. He was the bait, the lure to reel in his partner, then he’d be killed. Aidan fought to suppress his laugh. Renaud had no idea who he was dealing with, no idea of the hair-trigger temper that lay beneath the Southern gentleman Jameson Walker showed the world.

  “You intend to keep him alive?” Aidan said.

  “Of course.”

  “He won’t work for you.”

  “Oh, but he will. There’s so much there to leverage. His sexuality, his hacker identity, his best friend, his family.” Menacing eyes pinned Aidan to the spot. “You.”

  “But I’m a loose end. You don’t intend to keep me alive.”

  “I could. You both have such large families.” There was that underlying thread of jealousy again. And resentment.

  “What happened to yours?” Aidan ventured.

  “Unlike your parents, mine didn’t make it out of Czechoslovakia alive.” He said it the old way, the full name, the full accent. Aidan did the math in his head. The Warsaw Pact invasion would have left Renaud a young teenage orphan. He’d fought his way out and up.

  “And then you lost your wife.”

  Renaud stood and straightened his jacket and tie. “I was tired of getting knocked down. My turn.”

  “You won’t get away with this.”

  “I already have,” he said, hand on the knob. “The market is crashing, and it’ll drop further once Jamie hacks the wall to the other directories. After-hours and overseas trading will plunge the market even lower, and the world will be a different place in the morning.”

  “You’ll still be lonely.”

  “And others will know how that feels.” Renaud looked back from over the threshold. “Including your precious Jamie.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jamie woke in a strange bed, roused by a mishmash of accents. He glanced right, out the window. Dark. Night still. The full moon cast enough light to read the old-fashioned clock on the bedside table. Half past eight. He’d only slept a couple hours, soundly for a change, too exhausted to have nightmares.

  But he’d woken to one. Where Oscar had used his remote server to hack Aurora and had kidnapped Aidan and Kevin on Renaud’s behalf. Bending his bum leg, Jamie tested it out. Aching, but not as bad as when Cam had rushed him out of the Federal Building. If Oscar had sent the threatened email, any number of agencies would be after him. They’d called M
el from the car, filled her in, and she’d sent them to the Talleys’. After introducing Cam and Danny, he’d agreed to rest until Mel, Nic and Lauren arrived. His rest was over; time to find out how the reserves had done and get back in the game. Time to bring Aidan home.

  He rotated his head and found a little girl in the bedside chair. Maybe five, she had a mop of red curls and a pony charm on the bracelet around her wrist. “You must be Katie,” he said.

  She giggled. “And you’re Jamie.”

  Jamie chuckled. “I see someone’s talked about me.”

  “You smile big too.”

  “Who else smiles big?” Jamie hiked up his pant leg and slid on the brace.

  “Uncle Aidan, when he talks about you.”

  Despite his aching chest, Jamie smiled wider and she pointed at this face, giggling louder. “Like that.”

  He snagged Aidan’s cufflinks off the bedside table.

  “Jamie?” Katie watched as he clipped them in. “Where’s Uncle Aidan?”

  “He’s working.”

  She looked as unconvinced as he felt, gap-teeth biting her lip.

  “He’ll be okay, Princess. I won’t let anything happen to him.”

  She fiddled with her bracelet, green eyes downcast. “I love him.”

  He reached out and tweaked the pony charm. “I do too. That’s what seals the promise.”

  Jamie stood, on relatively steady legs, and held out a hand to Katie. “Want to lead me to my friends?” he asked, not wanting to alarm her but also not wanting to waste any more time. He smiled wide, and she returned it, slipping her tiny hand in his.

  Led into the kitchen, Jamie staggered from the wave of jealousy that swamped him. The room was huge, as it would have to be to cook for a family as large as the Talleys. A giant La Cornue range and ovens dominated one wall, copper pots hung from a rack over a marble-topped center island, and deep farmhouse sinks were arranged at the far end, under a greenhouse window full of home-grown herbs.

  “Give him a sec, Katie,” Cam said from where he stood next to Grace. “He’s having a walking wet—”

  Grace elbowed his best friend, cutting off the thing Cam shouldn’t have said within earshot of a five-year-old. Even if it was pretty damn accurate.