Imperial Stout

by Layla Reyne

  He had to trust Lauren to see the extra deposit, coming sooner than anticipated. To tell Nic and Aidan and for them to realize the robbery was going down, tonight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Motion denied.”

  The judge’s gavel fell, smashing some of Nic’s confidence with it.

  All he’d asked was to push the preliminary hearing from Monday to Friday. A routine motion, uncontested by the attorneys representing Mike and Scott. After a week of questioning and plea negotiations, it’d become clear their clients weren’t talking because they didn’t know jack shit. Becca was the crew’s mastermind, not Scott, who was as surprised as them when she’d turned. As such, they and their attorneys were on board with more time for the FBI to prove they hadn’t called the shots, especially the one that had killed Anica Kristić.

  The motion should have been granted, given the circumstances. Their star witness was MIA, on the government’s behalf, in what, if things went according to plan, was a sting that would wrap this case up tight, with all the suspects and players in custody. But according to the judge, those circumstances were outweighed by others.

  A development Nic hadn’t foreseen. Hadn’t had any warning about. And not even questioning Harris or Percy earlier in the week had prepared him for this.

  Fuming, he waited for the judge and bailiff to exit, for Scott and Mike to be led out, and for their attorneys to follow, scurrying to their next hearings, before he drove his hand into his pocket for his phone.

  “No need, Price,” came a voice behind him.

  Nic spun, finding Aidan at the back of the magistrate’s courtroom where they were hiding again from the hounding press. Nic pushed through the swinging galley door and charged between the rows. “Did you know about that?”

  “I got a call fifteen minutes ago. I sprinted up the stairs to tell you, but the judge had started early.”

  “Kristić’s doctors cleared him to travel?”

  Aidan shook his head. “Against medical advice.”

  The judge’s ass had barely hit the chair when he’d been handed a statement from the clerk. From the Serbian embassy, on behalf of its citizen Stefan Kristić, the letter stated that Kristić would present himself for testimony and questioning on Monday, as scheduled, but a matter of state and personal security required him to fly home that same evening.

  Nic had countered, but his argument had been a thin one. They had no basis to keep Kristić here. He wasn’t a suspect or person of interest, merely a witness, who could provide a written statement, if he didn’t want to testify. They could try to compel him, hold him in contempt of court, but he was a grieving widower who wanted to take his wife’s body home. He wanted to do right by her memory—have the show and the fund-raiser, which was a special cause to her—then he wanted to be on his way. How would throwing him in contempt look in the court of public opinion? Bowers would have Nic’s ass. Hell, they were lucky Kristić was sticking around at all. So when the judge had given him the option of Kristić’s testimony Monday or no chance to question him at all, Nic had to take the opportunity, which meant he had to keep the prelim scheduled for Monday.

  Which meant even more pressure on Cam to get them what they needed, to make the bust, this weekend.

  The one thing Nic could do to help Cam, to take some of that pressure off and protect his family, and he’d failed.

  “He’s going to leave, with the artifacts?” Nic said, still disbelieving. “Does he realize they may be at greater risk back in Serbia?”

  “According to the person I spoke to at the embassy, Kristić thinks he and the artifacts are at greater risk here.”

  “Maybe not greater,” Nic half conceded. If someone in Serbia was bankrolling this, they’d be in jeopardy there too. But here, someone was actively trying to steal them. “Does he know the payoff came from Serbia?”

  “Still safer at home, they think.”

  “Can we use the secure line to get word to—” Nic cut himself off as the courtroom door swung open. Turned out he didn’t need to.

  “No,” Lauren said, blustering in. “His phone’s been jacked. The alert was waiting for me when I got in this morning. Doesn’t matter anyways.”

  Nic scoffed. “Doesn’t matter?”

  “Cam probably already knows something is up.”

  “Get to the punchline, Hall,” Aidan said, voicing Nic’s frustration. As much as he valued Lauren, she had an infuriating tendency to hide the ball behind a ramble.

  “Another deposit just hit Becca’s account. Double the first one. And part of it’s already been transferred to Brady’s.”

  “They know the schedule’s been accelerated too,” Nic reasoned.

  Aidan nodded. “I’m betting they make another attempt tonight.”

  “Good,” Lauren said, and when both their faces whipped her way, she added, “Already called in tactical teams for a brief in thirty.”

  “Pull Cam’s rescue plan and disseminate it.”

  “Rescue plan?” Nic said.

  “This is his specialty,” Aidan said. “He gave us a few scenarios to work with it.”

  “What about Bowers? Finding out who’s really pulling the strings?”

  “Fuck him,” Aidan bit out harshly. “This is about closing our case and getting our people out. Now. We can make one bust, protect the artifacts, and keep Kristić, Cam, and Abby safe. I won’t compromise all that for your boss’s ego.”

  “All right, Counselor,” Nic said, breathing a little easier. “Not gonna fight you on this motion.”

  Aidan smirked. “Figured you wouldn’t.”

  * * *

  In his father’s home office, Nic pawed through desk drawers, looking for anything that might give him a better picture of Curtis’s financial situation. He needed a distraction from worrying over Cam, and after two, maybe three attempts on his person, he needed more information about his father’s debts. What little he’d gleaned so far was from Vaughn’s goons, his conversation with Harris, and the mail he’d flipped through with Harris in the office. And from the angry lender voice mails left on the family office number. Harris had replayed all of those for Nic too. While Duncan had the most might, he wasn’t Curtis’s only lender.

  If his father’s in-town office hadn’t been locked the other day, finding a laptop inside would have been Nic’s primary objective. Copy its contents or swipe it for Lauren to hack. Lock notwithstanding, Harris hadn’t thought it would be there. Curtis usually carried it on him. And it wasn’t here at home now either, consistent with Harris’s assertion. Neither were the financial documents Curtis had supposedly relocated. Nic hadn’t found them anywhere. Built in the 1920s, the Hillsborough estate house was huge, with plenty of hiding places. Curtis could have stashed the documents in any of them. But Mary, the last of his father’s household staff, who’d all but raised Nic, didn’t recall seeing boxes of documents ever come home. Was Harris lying, or had Curtis stored or ditched them elsewhere?

  If they did exist, Nic could use them for his case. Could maybe even get some of the pressure off his father. Until recently, Nic hadn’t wanted to concern himself with any of this. A big part of him still didn’t. Didn’t want to know how bad the situation really was, and didn’t want to involve himself in his father’s life any more than he had to. Vaughn, however, wasn’t giving him a choice. How much longer before someone else his father was in debt to exerted pressure? Came after Nic with that same pressure? Or after his new family, as improbable as that still seemed?

  A loud crash, followed by Mary’s hollered curse, shattered the silence. Sound carried under the high-pitched roof of the big old house. Nic barely flinched at the ruckus, accustomed to those sorts of sounds here. He did, however, act swiftly, something he’d been unable to do as a frightened kid. Bolting out of the study, he ran the length of the long back hallway—past the master suite, through the caverno
us, empty living room, most of the furnishings sold off, according to Mary, through the conservatory full of drafty windows, several of the panes cracked, to the kitchen with its outdated tile countertops and white plastic appliances.

  Nic skidded into the room through the open door, barely avoiding the shards of glass on the floor, just as his father bellowed, “Why the hell did you let him in?” and threw his coat the direction of the table, knocking over more crystal. Another pile of shattered glass joined the other on the floor, together with his briefcase, which must have caused the first crash.

  Curtis moved Mary’s direction, and Nic stepped into his path, blocking his advance. “That’s enough!”

  Dressed in a suit that had fit twenty-lost-pounds ago, with his blue eyes dull and his thinning blond hair gone white, Nic’s once regal, terrifying father looked like a fuming bag of bones. “This is my house. I’m in charge here. She had no right to let you in.”

  To her credit, Mary didn’t flinch either. “Mr. Dominic asked nicely, and I keep your house, so I let him in. I wanted to see him.”

  “You work for me!”

  “For how many years, Mary?” Nic asked, without taking his eyes off Curtis, ready to divert any further advance.

  “Since you were six, Mr. Dominic.”

  Four months, two weeks, and fifteen days after his mother had died, to be exact. Ninety-one days until his father had decided a potential investment in Wine Country was more important than parenting his confused, grieving child. She’d found him in the backyard, crying beneath the cypress trees. It was only supposed to be temporary, but she’d lasted when no one else had, mostly, Nic suspected, for him.

  “She’s right,” Nic said. “She runs this house, has for years when no one else would, especially not you. She deserves your respect.”

  “Respect,” his father muttered. “Like you’d know anything about that. Twenty-seven years, not a word, and the first thing you do is come in here and try to give me orders. No respect.”

  One eye remaining on his father, Nic angled toward Mary. “Would you give us a moment?” He didn’t want to have this conversation with an audience.

  “I’ll go get a broom and dustpan,” she said.

  “Leave it outside the door. I’ll clean it up when we’re done.”

  “You don’t—”

  Nic held up a hand. “Please, Mary, let me take care of it.”

  He waited for her to exit and pull the kitchen door shut, before rotating back to Curtis.

  “You were always too soft,” his father chided.

  Too soft.

  He’d said those same words the day Nic had stepped between Curtis’s fist and another good woman’s face. He wouldn’t let her take another hit for him. Eighteen and scrawny, still in his graduation gown, he’d gone to the ground, the punch nearly breaking his jaw. Too soft, his father had said. Too soft, he’d said again, after Nic, trying to distract his father long enough for them to get away, had confessed he was gay. The second punch his father landed had broken his jaw, and Mary had had to take him to the hospital. But it’d worked. And Nic had sworn away soft the next day.

  Twenty years in the Navy—seven of them in combat, five as a SEAL sniper, before injury sidelined him. Instead of taking a discharge, he’d spent the next thirteen years as the JAG officer with the best courtroom record. Seven years after military retirement, he’d climbed to second-in-command of the USAO and become the FBI’s go-to prosecutor. He also brewed beer and moved around boxes and barrels for a second fucking living. He was a long fucking way from soft, and his hand closed into a fist, wanting to prove just how far to his father. But if he raised that fist, if he hit a defenseless old man, Nic would be no better than the devil himself.

  He uncurled his fingers and walked slowly over to the table, gathering his patience as he picked up his father’s briefcase. “I’m not trying to give you orders,” he said. “I am giving them. You will not disrespect Mary or anyone else helping you, including Harris Kincaid.”

  “I’ll do whatever I want in my own goddamn house.”

  “Is it, still? Or have you mortgaged it to the hilt as well?”

  His father glared, but no denial accompanied the milky-blue stare. Heat prickled over Nic’s skin, his mouth going dry. He’d counted on at least some equity in the house to pay off Vaughn. It was worth nearly ten million, and unlike the commercial properties, there were no recorded liens filed against it—he’d checked—but that didn’t mean Curtis hadn’t used it for collateral elsewhere. Off the books. Which is what Nic had been looking for in the office. Seems he had his answer now. “Did you promise it to Duncan Vaughn? Or someone else?”

  “You stay out of my business.”

  Nic talked over him. “I need to know what I’m dealing with, because if there’s nothing but debts, it’s only a matter of time before Vaughn kicks you out or burns it to the ground for the insurance proceeds.”

  “What did that little shit Kincaid tell you?”

  “He didn’t have to tell me anything. I’m smart. I figured it out myself, after Vaughn’s goons tried to attack me.”

  His father turned his face away, staring out the opposite window. “I’m handling it.” Still lording over his crumbling kingdom, stubborn to a fault, something Nic had admittedly inherited.

  “You’re not handling it well,” Nic said. “I can help you.”

  Curtis’s interest in the backyard didn’t waver. “With that fancy legal degree of yours?”

  Fancy, in the deriding tone Nic had heard every day for so many years, but a picture from his JAG commissioning was one of those in Curtis’s office, according to Harris. Which meant Curtis had either been there, or gone through the trouble of calling the Navy’s office to get it. “Yeah, with my fancy legal degree, if you’ll let me help you.” Nic stepped to his father’s side. “But that’s not all. I laid out two of his goons already, and I’ll do the same if he or your other creditors send more. You be sure to tell them that.”

  His father’s gaze swung back to him. “Hardened up, huh? See, I did do something good for you after all.”

  “You didn’t do shit,” Nic said, taking no small amount of satisfaction that Curtis shrank back a step. “I made me the man I am. And I won’t let your mistakes jeopardize everything I’ve worked for.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The area around San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art was dotted with galleries and museums, a culture cluster as Becca had described it. Bars and restaurants also filled the bottom floors of the skyscrapers, making the live-work-party area not altogether deserted on a Friday night. Or rather, Saturday morning. Just past last call, they weren’t the only ones skulking about the streets. Dressed as they were, mostly in black, a group of punk-looking thirtysomethings hanging on to each other, they blended in with the rest of the staggering bar hoppers and club-goers.

  Except they weren’t drunk and they were far more aware of their surroundings than they appeared. Hopefully not too observant, Cam prayed, as they passed a familiar red Mini and a Dodge Ram with a Boston Red Sox cap on the dash. It must have killed Nic to put it there, but it was the sign Cam needed. His team had followed the deposits, realized the schedule had been accelerated, and were in position.

  Good thing too, as something felt off. The expedited schedule, the too-easy flow of funds, the tingling at the back of his skull that set his teeth to grinding and kicked his senses into overdrive.

  Reaching the museum building, they darted down a side street, and the staggering-friends facade fell away as they pulled ski masks down over their faces. Jared took point, Cam, Becca, and Abby the middle, and Russ, Becca’s other bruiser, brought up the rear.

  Jared halted at the building corner, checking the back alley, then waved them around, their group gathering at the museum back door. “You’re up, Brady,” Jared said.

  Cam pushed to the front, chec
king out the dual security system. Electronic keypad by the door, state-of-the-art locking mechanism on it. With Jared shining a penlight for him, Cam pushed up the sleeves of his camo jacket and went to work on the keypad first. No card to swipe or insert so he’d have to do it the old-fashioned way—pop the cover and cut the right wire before the open cover triggered a silent alarm. Wire cutters in his mouth, he used his multipurpose knife to unscrew the cover, then with the flat end of the wrench from the lock-pick set, popped the cover the rest of the way off, right into Jared’s waiting hands. Wire-work already in mind, Cam dropped the cutters out of his mouth, into his gloved hand, and aimed for the wire. Sniping the right wire, the blinking yellow alarm light died, and after a few crossed wires, relit green.

  “That’s one layer down,” Cam said.

  He dropped to a knee in front of the door lock, was about to call Jared lower with his penlight, when scratches on the lock, rough beneath his thumb, made him pause. The lock had already been tampered with. He ran his thumb over it again, but with gloves on, he couldn’t tell if the damage was fresh or if it’d been there a while. He glanced down, subtly checking the ground. No metal fibers reflecting in the moonlight.

  Why would the FBI need to pick the lock? If they were inside already, they wouldn’t have needed to, and if they did, they wouldn’t have made such a sloppy job of it. Neither Danny nor Aidan, who’d taught Danny to pick locks, would leave that kind of mess. Was a third party on-site? Another third-party rip-off in the making?

  “Problem, Hot Stuff?” Becca asked behind him.

  “Nope, just getting a feel of things.” He didn’t mention the lock damage, in case he needed to use it, or what it might mean, to his advantage.