Imperial Stout

by Layla Reyne

  Neither had spoken of the kiss in the two weeks since. Nic probably thought he didn’t remember it; there had been hours of beer and whiskey shots and dueling pianos preceding it. Nic sure as fuck remembered it, though. His pale blues strayed to Cam’s mouth more often, he stood just that bit closer whenever they were in the same room, and he argued with him more hotly, like he wanted, consciously or not, to incite another explosive reaction.

  Another kiss.

  Cam never corrected Nic’s assumption, nor did he rise to the bait again, intentionally laid or not. Between his new role as San Francisco ASAC, and his new two-fifty-a-soda life in the Bay Area, which his government salary did not cover, his plate was already full of complications. And there was also the matter of Nic having once dated Aidan Talley, who was both Cam’s new partner and his best friend’s new husband. All signs pointed to danger.

  So of course his fucking dick wanted to run right to it. He’d had those impulses, that other side of himself, under control. Work hard, play hard, but not like the punk kid who’d sacrificed something precious for what he’d wanted, or the hotshot college athlete who’d fucked his way through every fraternity and sorority at Boston College, still wild and desperate to blot out the past. Before he’d found the FBI and atonement avenue. Now, he worked hard as a kidnap specialist, rescuing himself and others in trouble, and limited his play to the occasional man or woman in his bed. That was how he stayed focused at work, how he avoided distractions that ended in tragedy.

  Then into his life walked Dominic Price, and Cam wanted to throw all his rules out the window.

  And look what that distraction might have cost them today.

  Groaning, Cam scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to block out the sight of Kristić in his hospital bed and the memory of his wife bleeding out, only to have the object of his distraction appear in the vending room doorway. Nic stood over the threshold, all six foot plus of him looking cool, calm, and perfectly suited, not a brown or gray hair on his head out of place, despite the rough-and-tumble morning.

  No, no thinking of rough.

  And definitely no thoughts of tumbling.

  “Bowers is here,” Nic said. “In the waiting area.”

  Cam’s thoughts instantly righted. “Fuck. I thought he’d at least wait ’til we got back to the Federal Building.”

  Nic shook his head. “We interrupted his day on the greens. He came straight here from the club.” Nic’s asshole boss was going to be extra salty. “I can deal with him myself,” Nic offered.

  “No.” Cam pushed off the wall. “This is a joint op.”

  “And your charm seems to have worn off, where my boss is concerned.”

  “He likes you any better?”

  Cam wondered if San Francisco’s US Attorney had always been chilly toward his best AUSA or if he’d only become frigid in recent months, as Nic’s ties to the FBI grew stronger. Both agencies were under the Department of Justice, often working side by side, but Bowers liked to think he was top dog. Since taking the helm as Special Agent in Charge, Aidan had disabused Bowers of his top-dog notion, frequently. And Cam, who Bowers used to like, had taken his partner and friend’s back. As had Nic. Their names had since skyrocketed up Bowers’s shit list, which Cam didn’t doubt was long.

  “Conceded,” Nic said, holding an arm out toward the hallway.

  Cam strode past, ignoring the other man’s tempting body heat. “Why is he all over our ass on this one?” Even given their shit-list perch, this was more oversight than usual.

  “High-profile, Aidan’s gone, hoping DOJ doesn’t reappoint him. Take your pick.”

  “Lot to pick from,” he said, as they made their way down the hallway to the waiting area. “How do you want to play this?”

  “Like any other debrief. We did nothing wrong.”

  “Tell that to Stefan Kristić.”

  Nic paused midstride and turned directly to him, blocking Cam’s path. “You ran a clean op. We had no indication of other parties on the scene.” His conviction was fierce, and Cam appreciated the support, especially as Nic had wanted to run the operation himself.

  “We should have checked the surrounding areas more closely,” Cam said. “Or dug deeper into Becca’s background.”

  “One, the third parties came up through the BART tunnels after we’d cleared the area. Two, all we’ve done for months is dig into background. There was no indication Becca had turned against Scott. You know that as well as I do.”

  Cam cast his gaze aside, rubbing a hand over his rough jaw, long past shave time. “We must have missed something.”

  Nic’s hand at his elbow, gently tugging it down, startled him out of his self-recrimination. “We didn’t miss anything,” he said, voice soft, comforting, like his thumb caressing the inside of Cam’s elbow was probably supposed to be. And it was. But it was more too, and Cam’s body reacted, rampaging pulse doing its best to pump all his blood south.

  “Price! Byrne! In here now!”

  Nic’s eyes flashed—equal parts desire and fury—before he snatched his hand away and turned, putting himself between Cam and Bowers. “On our way,” he returned. Cool, calm, all trace of fire gone, he’d tucked it away behind that smooth professional mask.

  Cam marveled at the skill, so much more refined than his own, while also appreciating the extra time to compose himself. Rolling down his shirtsleeves, he buttoned the cuffs and caught up to Nic outside the waiting room. They entered together, a united front.

  “Where’s Talley?” Bowers barked, beady eyes staring them down.

  “On his honeymoon,” Cam said, telling Bowers what he already knew. Aidan’s out-of-office days had been on all their calendars for months.

  “He should have come back for this,” Bowers said. “Or you should have waited.”

  “And how would that’ve worked?” Cam replied, irritation bleeding through his thinning patience. “Were we supposed to call up Scott and tell him it wasn’t a good day for the feds to bust his crew? I guarantee the heist would have happened in that case.”

  Bowers’s round face reddened. “Maybe no one would have died.”

  “On the contrary,” Nic said, “more than one person would have probably died if Cam’s team hadn’t intervened.”

  “Some consolation,” Bowers huffed. “I’ve got a dead dignitary’s wife on my hands and the Serbian consulate and DOJ breathing down my neck.”

  Cam’s bravado waned, reminded of Anica Kristić bleeding out as her husband tried to stem the flow, and of Stefan Kristić, thrashing in his hospital bed when the doctors told him his efforts had been in vain.

  “You can tell the Serbian consulate we have the parties responsible in custody.”

  “Not all of them,” Bowers said. “Rebecca Wright’s still out there.”

  “I’m on my way to question Abby next,” Nic said. “We’ll find Becca.”

  “And who she’s working for. DOJ wants this operation, all the way up the ladder, shut down for good.”

  Cam bristled at being told again what he already knew, especially when he and Nic had put in far more hours than Bowers had on this case.

  He held his tongue, though, until Bowers disappeared into the elevator at the end of the hall. “I hate that fucker.”

  “Not half as much as I do,” Nic answered through gritted teeth.

  Cam sensed there was more there, but now wasn’t the time to press. “I need to get to the office. See what the team’s got on the other shooters.”

  “And I need to talk to Abby.”

  “I want to be there for that.” Cam wanted to know how their CI hadn’t had a clue her girlfriend was about to turn on the crew.

  Nic, however, shook his head. “She’s better one-on-one. Let me talk to her first, then you can question her tomorrow.”

  Cam didn’t like it, but she was technically Nic’s CI,
his play. And the prosecutor did seem to trust her. “All right,” Cam said. “Debrief first thing tomorrow?”

  Nic nodded, turning toward the exit, already onto the next task, just as Cam had suggested, but Cam wasn’t ready to let him go, yet. He shot out a hand, grabbing the other man’s biceps. “I’ll catch the rest of ’em,” he said, finding the words he should have said to Bowers.

  “And I’ll prosecute them.” Bitterness belied Nic’s words.

  Cam slid his hand down to Nic’s elbow, mimicking the earlier touch through the superfine wool of the dapper prosecutor’s suit coat. “I’m sorry about the way this turned out today, for Kristić, his wife, my agents, but I’m not sorry I took the lead. And I’m not sorry you were in the van.”

  “I still got shot at.”

  “By one shooter. You weren’t in the middle of the firefight.”

  Nic pressed his lips together, like he was measuring his words, eventually settling on “I could have helped. Maybe saved—”

  Cam tightened his hold, fingers digging into sinewy muscle through layers of fabric. “You could have maybe died. I’m not risking that, Price. I’m not risking you.”

  Chapter Two

  Hands clasped behind his back, Nic stood in his war room, ignoring the long conference table littered with legal pads and file folders, and stared at their suspect board instead. His and Aidan’s scribbled notes covered half the whiteboard—timelines, bank accounts, travel itineraries. On the other half, they’d hung suspect photos in pecking order.

  Scott was at the top. Directly below him, Becca, his second-in-command, who’d turned on him and escaped with the rip-off crew. On the next line down, below Becca, was the crew’s “talent.” Mike, the B&E guy, who was also keeping mum in a cell, and Abby, Nic’s confidential informant and now star witness.

  As Becca’s girlfriend, and the key to the operation, she’d had a front row seat to everything. And a little sister she was trying to protect. That had been what led Abby to the courthouse to find Nic, sent to him by another contact he’d worked a deal for. She’d been the break in the case they’d sorely needed.

  Bowers apparently thought she was the key to today’s mishap as well. “Why aren’t you interrogating Monroe already?” he blustered from over the threshold.

  Nic forced his lip not to curl. “Abby just got here from holding an hour ago. It took some time for the legal paperwork to process on a Saturday. I checked on her. She’s understandably upset, after this morning. I’ll question her when she’s calmed down and able to focus.”

  “She’s not a witness, Price. She’s a suspect. Take off the kid gloves.”

  Nic rubbed a hand over his mouth, trapping his retort.

  “Maybe I should question her,” Bowers said, misreading Nic’s restraint as hesitation. “Maybe that scene today shook you up too.”

  It had, not that Nic would ever admit it to another soul, especially Bowers, and especially when Bowers was wrong about why the botched raid had thrown him for a loop. For fuck’s sake, he was ex-Special Forces and a fifteen-year prosecutor, first with the JAG Corps and then the US Attorneys’ Office. He’d unfortunately seen worse—more blood and guts and foul play in his lifetime than anyone should ever witness. Anica Kristić bleeding out, Becca turning on her crew, even the shots fired on the surveillance van, were not why his mouth had gone dry and his skin still felt like it’d baked in the desert sun. No, the source of Nic’s earlier distress was now safe two floors above in the FBI’s offices.

  Thanks to that, the scene earlier today no longer affected him, and he’d have no trouble questioning Abby. His only trouble now was his goddamn boss. Bowers wanted him to go in there like a bulldog, which was Bowers’s style, and it worked, most of the time. For Nic too, when he needed to go on the attack. But this wasn’t that situation. Abby was his CI; he knew her and Bowers didn’t. Bowers thought she was just another suspect, another lead to work, and that would be his primary focus with DOJ breathing down his neck. He didn’t see Abby as a victim too. Blaming Abby and strong-arming her was not the best way to the answers Bowers wanted.

  “We need this one, Price.”

  “Understand that, sir,” Nic said. “Scott’s in custody, as is their B&E guy. With Abby’s testimony, Mike will flip and Scott will plead out too.”

  “And Rebecca Wright? The new crew she’s working with?”

  “No activity, according to the Bureau. We’re aiming to extract possible locations, among other things, from Scott and Mike in exchange for pleas.”

  “We could use Kristić and those artifacts as bait. Or your CI.”

  Bulldog was one thing; bait another. No stopping Nic’s lip curl this time. Do whatever and sacrifice whomever to make the case. There had to be a line, and he and Bowers disagreed frequently where that line was.

  But at least he generally knew where it would land with Bowers. As ready as he was to be rid of Bowers, who would DOJ appoint next? It sure as fuck would never be him in the boss’s chair, not that he wanted it. He had more flexibility and more court time as an AUSA, picking and trying cases, putting away criminals, versus admin bullshit and political ass-kissing. Besides, he’d ruffled too many feathers, had had too many lovers, and had too many skeletons in his and his family’s closets to clear full-blown hearings. More than that, he was gay, very out about it, and that wouldn’t fly with the current administration, even at a post in San Francisco. Maybe if he were bi, like Cam, he could pull it off, but he wasn’t. He liked men, period. He’d never wavered, even when his sexual orientation had gotten him disowned.

  “I don’t think that’s the right move, yet,” Nic answered, a hedge without being in open rebellion. There’d been enough of that last year. He was lucky to still have his job, even if the chain of command had soured.

  “Monroe thinks she’s bait regardless,” Bowers said. “Why not use her?”

  “Doesn’t mean she should be. Let’s try the less dangerous route first. Avoid any more deaths, if we can help it. Abby will come around and give us what we need. She’s just a little rattled still.”

  Bowers’s glowering visage indicated he wanted to argue more, but he deferred, for now. “Fine. So long as you get her unrattled and ready for the arraignment.”

  “Working on it, sir.”

  Following his boss out, Nic closed the war room door behind them. At the elevator bank, Bowers boarded a cab down, probably back to finish his round of golf. Good, less chance of him interfering. Nic walked on across the main floor, empty on a Saturday afternoon, to the small conference rooms at the far end.

  “How’s she doing?” he asked Tony, the guard posted outside the room where Abby was waiting.

  “Gave her the iPod with an audiobook on it, like you suggested.” The big man smiled, shaking his head. “Peeked in a few times. Never seen anyone take notes like that except in class.”

  Nic opened the door and sure enough, Abby had both earbuds in, listening intently, while filling a yellow legal pad with barely legible script. Spotting him, she breathed out a relieved sigh, then held up a single finger, signaling him to wait.

  He gestured for her to continue and slid into the chair across from her. With her free hand, she absently twirled a ringlet of hair around her finger, the purple streaks complementing her brown skin and olive eyes. A minute later, she paused the playback and popped out the earbuds, looking up at him.

  “What’d you detect?” Nic asked.

  “Narrator’s from California. When she does the British accent, there’s no underlying lilt or drawl, like the little extra twang when an American from Texas or the South tries to pull off the Queen’s English.”

  “Can you mimic it?”

  Tucking one earbud in her ear, she offered him the other and pressed Play. Nic only needed to listen for a second, a smile stretching across his face. “I know it well.”

  “Fantasy fan?”

>   “That, and I have a traffic-filled commute to work every day.”

  She grinned, tired but true, then started repeating the couple of sentences she’d played for him, the accent getting closer each try, until on the fourth, it was an exact replica of the narrator’s put-on British.

  And that was why Scott’s crew needed her. A military brat who’d been dragged all over as a child, Abby had grown up to be a languages and accents savant who could speak and understand multiple languages and who could mimic nearly any accent, including Anica Kristić’s unique Romani-Slavic dialect. He’d never heard anything like it, nor met anyone with Abby’s skill.

  “Nice work,” he said with a smile.

  She wrapped the cord for the earbuds around the device. “Thanks for this. It helped, a lot.”

  “Knew a guy in the Navy. He was younger so I wasn’t in with him long, but he hummed aloud on flights and in his head when he lined up a shot. Centered him.”

  “That’s exactly it.” She relaxed back in the chair, iPod in her lap.

  With Abby finally wound down, Nic approached the topic that had brought them here. “Tell me what happened today.”

  “There was so much blood.” She wrung her hands, staring down at them as if they were still covered in blood. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “Take it from the top. We’ll get to where it went wrong.”

  She clasped her hands on the table, fingers laced to still their movement. “We were in the vacant condo across the hall. Where I’d called you from.”

  She’d called in the wee hours of the morning, once she’d had a second alone. They’d had less than an hour to clear the area and move into position. Cam’s operation prep had been solid, ready to move at a second’s notice.

  “The portable safe was in the living room,” Abby continued. “We were supposed to go in quiet and take the safe if we could. If we couldn’t, Scott had been practicing the husband’s part. I had the wife’s down. They should have never heard us.”

  Cam’s team had tried to warn the Kristićs, but there’d been no answer to their calls, texts, or emails, and they couldn’t approach to warn in person without tipping off Scott’s crew. It’d been a calculated risk—based on Abby’s intel that the op would go down quiet, as she described. Cam’s team would be waiting to pounce in the hallway, once they’d exited.