Imperial Stout

by Layla Reyne

  Cam bumped Nic’s hip, shifting him out from in front of the computer. He tapped the key as directed and the front window retracted, displaying a zoomed-out version of the desktop. In one of the other open windows, Lauren’s pixie features filled the picture. Cam brought that window forward, the view changing as Percy rotated his head. “We’re good on visual,” he said.

  “Now cough,” Lauren said to Percy.

  He cleared his throat and a sound bar on-screen registered the noise.

  “Sound’s good too,” Cam confirmed.

  Bowers ambled over beside Lauren. “You’re sure the tech can’t be detected?” he asked.

  “It’s all in the glasses,” she answered. “Unless Becca takes the glasses off him and feels their weight, we should be in the clear.”

  “Has it been tested in the field?” Bowers followed up, narrowed eyes not on the tech but on Lauren, doubt coloring his voice and every feature.

  Beside Cam, Nic tensed, his hands curling around the lip of the granite counter. Cam shifted closer, brushing his arm against the other man’s, containing him as much as he could under watchful eyes. The last thing Percy needed was to doubt the competency of the people who were supposed to keep him alive.

  But before Cam could step in, Lauren shut the matter down. “Multiple times,” she said, standing tall, not giving an inch, despite being a good foot shorter than Bowers. “It’ll work.”

  “Let’s hope so, Ms. Hall.” Nose in the air, Bowers headed up the stairs.

  Once he was out of earshot, Lauren muttered, “That’s Agent Hall, asshole,” and Cam was pleased to see the answering smile on Percy’s face. Whether she’d meant to or not, she’d eased their bait’s jangled nerves.

  Hoping to do the same for Nic, Cam crossed behind him, trailing a hand gently over his lower back. At first, Nic’s hands tightened around the counter lip, knuckles going white, but then they relaxed, along with his shoulders, and he leaned back into the touch. Mission accomplished, Cam stepped on past him, meeting Lauren and Percy at the end of the bar.

  With a piece of Jamie’s tech.

  He pulled the two-ply card out of his pocket and held it out to Percy. “Find a way to give this to Becca or Abby.”

  Percy flipped over the simple black card, running his thumb over the white embossed number on one side. A number that would ring to any of the team’s encrypted phones. “What if she won’t take it?”

  Mel slunk past them, whispering “Try harder” in Percy’s ear.

  Eyes wide, Percy’s Adam’s apple bobbed, struggling to swallow his nerves as he pocketed the card. He lifted his other hand to adjust the glasses. Lauren slapped it away. “Don’t do that. Draws attention.”

  Static crackled over the comm, and those with a device in ear snapped to attention. “Two women approaching from the west,” Charlie radioed.

  “That’s your cue,” Cam said to Percy. The kid started to tremble, and Cam began to seriously question whether he could pull this off.

  Sensing the same, Nic stepped closer, hunching slightly to bring him eye level with Percy. “You’re the key to this, Mr. Hunter.” Calm and soothing, the same way he’d handled Abby the other day. Getting his witness, his CI, what-have-you, to do what he needed. “All of us—” Nic gestured around the room “—are here to back you up.”

  Head down, Percy stared past his wobbling knees to his shoes. “I don’t even want to be in this.”

  A partial lie. He’d accepted the first job, had wanted it and the sizable payoff. He was a B&E guy with a record. Only this time, he’d accepted the wrong job. “After tonight, you won’t have to be.”

  Percy’s head snapped up. “What about that guard, the one from the courthouse? What about what I’ve done already?”

  “You’re not our target, Mr. Hunter.” A partial lie on Nic’s part. Percy had been under FBI surveillance. He was a target, they’d caught him, but in this case, he wasn’t the target. “Your cooperation will be noted.”

  “There a problem, gentlemen?” Bowers called down the stairs. “We need to get moving.”

  Nic straightened, eyes locked on Percy, who gave a slight nod. “Not at all, sir,” he called back to his boss.

  After a last round of checks, Percy was ushered out the condo door. An agent would take him down the stairs, to the back exit of the building, and from there, Percy would pretend to break into the ground-level commercial unit on his way to the park. In reality, Mel and Danny owned the entire building and had given the other agent a key to the downstairs unit.

  Once there, however, Percy ignored the agent’s offer of the key and picked the lock. “Calms him, probably,” Danny said, as they watched Percy’s progress on-screen. “Kid’s good. Knew a few tricks even I didn’t.”

  “Daniel,” Mel called from the couch. “Let the professionals work.” Far enough back from the window, she wouldn’t be spotted, but she likely saw everything through her night-vision goggles.

  Danny rolled his eyes, but left them to it, loping over and plopping down on the couch next to her.

  Eyes back on the screen, Cam watched as Percy made his way through the design firm’s premises and out the front door, approaching the park.

  “Comms hot,” Cam ordered. “Percy, cough for us.”

  Percy did as instructed, and each of the teams confirmed the audio. Cam had proven Nic’s point, that Percy had backup, and the younger man’s spine got a little straighter, his step a little surer, with each report.

  He was near the jungle gym, Becca in sight on the other side, sitting on a stone bench, when her two bruisers converged.

  “Arms out, Mr. Hunter,” one said.

  Cam waited as the guard patted Percy down. But only up to his neck. Cam breathed easier. Their surveillance was clear. And so was Percy.

  “Nice little demo you put on there,” Becca said, as he rounded the jungle gym.

  “You didn’t seem to think the courthouse was enough. You got a safe? I can crack that too.” The kid had memorized the new script well. Another opportunity to get a confession out of Becca, otherwise they would have cornered her the minute she walked into the zone.

  “That’s what I have her for.” Becca scooted to the side, and the new view through Percy’s glasses caused Nic to inhale sharply. Cam too. In the lamplight, Abby looked like she’d been put through the wringer. Bruise on one cheek, hair straggly, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

  Nic clenched his jaw so hard that Cam heard the grinding of teeth. Saw it too in the sharp relief of Nic’s sunken cheeks and in the way his eyes were locked on the screen, on his witness who, by her haggard appearance and her jerky motions each time Becca moved, was definitely not a willing participant. She wasn’t acting now; she was afraid. Nic’s gaze didn’t stray, even as he toggled off his comm and said to Cam, “Move the teams in now.”

  Cam inched his hand over, brushing the back of Nic’s where it’d curled around the counter’s edge again. “Teams, we have eyes on the target. Treat Monroe as a hostage, nonhostile. Approach quiet.”

  Those long fingers relaxed, twining with his, until Bowers’s voice came over the comm. “Hold.”

  “What the fuck?” Nic said, at the same time Cam demanded, “Bowers, stand down.”

  “We need someone on the inside,” Bowers replied.

  His argument from earlier today rearing its head. So much for that rope he’d given them. He wouldn’t let them hang themselves. He’d hang them himself.

  And Nic was having none of it. “I promised Percy this was over for him tonight. Once he put himself on the line for us.”

  “Change of plans. DOJ wants the person at the top. Percy will have to roll with it.”

  “Wait, what?” Percy said, and Cam’s eyes whipped back to the screen.

  Becca had heard it too, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Who are you talking to?”

 
The view on-screen tilted, and Lauren cursed. “Percy! Stop touching your glasses.”

  Whatever Percy’s reaction, probably a swift jerk of his hand down, gave him—gave them—away. Becca bolted to her feet, dragging Abby with her.

  Bowers’s plan was shot. And his last-minute change had possibly also shot the entire plan if Cam didn’t act fast.

  “Teams converge!” he ordered. “Go, go, go!”

  But they weren’t close enough yet. Becca twisted, yanking Abby in front of her and pressing a knife to her throat. Their CI used as a shield.

  Nic was out the door before Cam could get out a “Wait!” He cursed, then ordered his teams to hold.

  “Who sent you?” Becca demanded of Percy.

  “You did,” Percy improvised. “Gave me this location.”

  Becca hustled backward, hauling Abby with her. “I think I’ll be demanding a refund.”

  “Who’s got a clean shot?” Cam asked.

  “Command, Beta, clean shot from the west side.”

  “Take it,” Cam said. “Disarm only,” he added, in deference to Bowers. They needed to question Becca, not kill her.

  “Hold!” he shouted a half second later, before his sniper got off a shot. At the corner of his screen, Nic barreled out from behind a building, gun drawn. He was headed straight for Becca and Abby, whose attention was drawn the other direction by Percy. Nic had a better angle on the situation, and Cam didn’t want him caught in the crossfire.

  No one, however, counted on the car that suddenly revved. That flashed on its high beams, blinding Nic in the middle of the street, and pedal to the metal, aimed right for him.

  “Dominic, watch out!” Cam hollered.

  But it was too late.

  The car caught him midstride, tossing him over the hood like a rag doll.

  Cam couldn’t tell if it was his scream or the screech of Nic’s comm that rattled his ears more.

  He ripped the device from his ear and hauled ass for the door. Mel stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “Run the op, Agent Byrne.”

  Every one of his cells screamed a different objective. “I need to get to Nic.”

  “You need to tell your agents which way is up.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Bowers hollered behind them, steps thundering down the stairs.

  Mel snatched the comm from his hand, tucking it in her ear. “I’m headed down.”

  A sheathed knife hurtling through the air, tossed by Danny perfectly into Mel’s outstretched hand, snapped Cam out of his panic-induced haze. “We’re on it,” he answered Bowers, then to Mel, “Go to him.”

  She nodded, and disappeared out the door, while Cam ignored a glowering Bowers and hustled back into the kitchen. Lauren tossed him another comm, and he shoved it in his ear, fighting to get his focus back, to look at all the screens, when all he wanted to do was watch the screen that showed Nic lying motionless in the street. “Teams report.”

  Grinding metal was his answer. Lauren’s fingers flew across the keyboard of the far right computer, and a second later, a street level view appeared on-screen. A second crash of metal and the car that had hit Nic rammed through two police cruisers on its way out of the oval.

  Orders were called down the line to pursue, but the two most able to give chase were out of commission.

  Cam whipped his gaze to the center computer, to a sideways view of the park, Percy’s glasses on the ground. Percy was in the frame, writhing on the ground with his hands over a bloody nose. Nowhere in the limited view did Cam see any sign of Becca or Abby.

  “Where are our suspects?”

  “They disappeared into one of the south side buildings,” an agent on the ground reported.

  “Fan out,” Cam ordered. “Search them all.”

  “Lost your suspects again, did you?” Bowers said from the other side of the kitchen bar.

  Cam bit back the No thanks to you on the tip of his tongue. There’d be a time for arguing later, and he’d prefer to do so with Nic—

  “Agent down!” Mel’s voice came over the line. “We need medical, STAT.”

  Cam finally let himself look at the third screen. Then immediately wished he hadn’t.

  He’d needed eyes on the scene, and now he needed some way to erase what he’d seen.

  Because the sight of Mel crouched next to Nic’s unconscious body, lying crumpled in the middle of the street, was going to haunt him forever.

  Chapter Nine

  Nic woke to Cam’s Boston brogue, harsh and drawn out with unleashed fury. “What the hell was that?”

  From Nic’s other side, Bowers spoke, his words clipped and strident. “I’m trying to find the person calling the shots.”

  Eyelids heavy, Nic listened to their voices echo around him in stereo, the beeping of a heart monitor like a metronome keeping the cadence of their argument. “You lost us Becca and Abby,” Cam said. “And you got Percy and your best AUSA injured in the process.”

  “My best.” Bowers scoffed. “You were the one running the op. Your agents should have adapted to the change in course.”

  “Percy is not a fucking agent. We didn’t prep him for an insertion.”

  “Whose fault was that?” Bowers retorted.

  “We had a game plan, and you called an audible without warning.”

  “I warned you yesterday.”

  “Then you said we could run the op our way.”

  A third voice entered the fray, Irish lilt pronounced. “We cannot change an op in progress if we don’t have the right personnel in place,” Aidan said. His thicker-than-usual accent, startling but not surprising after ten days in his mother country, had finally unstuck Nic’s eyelids so that he witnessed the direction of the SAC’s chiding.

  “You’re back,” Nic croaked, and three faces swung to him.

  “We’re back,” came a fourth voice.

  Nic lolled his head on the pillow, following the direction of the Southern drawl. In the back corner of the hospital room, Jamie and Lauren huddled behind two laptops open on the tray table. Nic gave a nod, then movement at his side drew his attention forward again.

  “Hey,” Cam said, stepping closer, all trace of harshness in his voice gone. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I was hit by a fucking car.” He braced a hand in the mattress, wincing, and assessed the physical damage. Sore, but no sharp pains and no casts on his limbs. Some bruised ribs, judging by the wrap around his torso, and scrapes and bruises under more bandages elsewhere. But nothing broken, on him.

  “Easy there,” Cam said, lifting a hand toward his shoulder.

  Nic batted it away, pushed through the ache and levered himself up to seated. He leaned back against the mound of scratchy pillows.

  “Percy’s injured?” he asked, recalling Cam’s earlier words.

  “One of Becca’s guards knocked him out as they made their escape. Broken nose and a concussion. He’s shaken up more than anything.”

  “Escaped? Into the car that hit me?”

  Cam shook his head. “Oddly, no. They used the confusion to take cover in a shop, then gave us the slip.”

  “And the car?”

  “Rammed two cruisers as it sped out of the west end of the park.”

  “I did get a partial on the plate,” Lauren said. “Running it now.”

  “A distraction,” Bowers said. “So Becca could make a break for it.”

  Which meant the car would have had to have been there already, the driver lying in wait. Just like their people had been. Did that make any sense? Wouldn’t the driver have noticed them and warned Becca away?

  Wasn’t it more likely the car was unconnected, like Saturday’s shooter? Another attempt to threaten him, personally. Maybe an attempt to eliminate him altogether. But how’d they know where he’d be? About the bust? And for that matter, h
ow had they known about the last raid?

  “You’re lucky you survived,” Aidan said from where he stood at the end of the bed.

  “No, I’m lucky the Navy taught me how to roll.” Yanking the IV out of his arm, he tossed it aside and moved to swing his feet off the bed. Cool air hit his back, and he belatedly realized he was wearing a hospital gown. He’d have to wait for some privacy unless he wanted to show his ass, and his ink, to everyone. Which he did not. He straightened against the pillows instead.

  “Do we have a location on Becca and Abby?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Cam said, finally delivering some good news. “A condo in SoMa. Percy planted the card on the guard just before he took Percy out.” Not perfect, but as long as the guard stayed with Becca, and didn’t find or otherwise toss the card, they could track them.

  But Nic guessed everyone’s presence here meant they weren’t going directly after Becca again. “What’s our next move?”

  “We are going to change the game plan, but we’re going to do it right,” Cam said, eyes cutting to Bowers and back. “Becca’s going to lead us to the person in charge.”

  “How do you know she’s not?”

  “We cracked the money trail,” Jamie answered behind him.

  Nic rotated, wincing. “To?”

  “Not a person, yet,” Lauren replied. “But a place. Serbia. And it’s the same place the deposits to Scott originated from.”

  Nic’s mind whirred, fighting through the painkillers to make the pieces of his case fit. “So, one, someone didn’t trust Scott to get the job done.”

  “Or hired Becca to eliminate him,” Aidan speculated. “Once the job was done.”

  “Has to be considered,” Nic said with a nod. “And, two, someone in Serbia is trying to steal the Serbian artifacts.”

  “My guess,” Cam said, “before the exhibit opens.”

  “Close the exhibit,” Nic replied.

  “Tried that,” Aidan said, then proceeded to lawyer back at him, counting off the issues. “One, it’s a fund-raiser. Two, Kristić still wants to do it, as a tribute to his late wife.”

  “We need someone inside,” Cam said. “And if we’re gonna do an insertion, we have to do it right this time, like you said. One of ours, not another Percy.”