Imperial Stout

by Layla Reyne

  Inserting the wrench, he tested left and right for tension—right—then withdrew the other two lock-pick tools. He swept the rake across the inner pins and found the binding pin. He traded rake for pick, set the binding pin, then reinserted the rake, ticking off the other pins in the order he’d earlier assessed. On the third pass of the rake, the lock disengaged and he nudged the wrench right.

  The door opened.

  Grinning, he stood and tucked his tools back in their pouch. “And that’s what you pay me the big bucks for.”

  Jared entered first, gun drawn. Becca pushed Abby over the threshold next, then waited for Cam to step forward. “Don’t get cocky.” She palmed him through his jeans. “Yet.” She followed Abby inside, and Russ waved him on through, pulling the door shut behind them.

  They crept along the inside of the outer wall, avoiding the infrared security around each exhibit block in the open space. Cam watched for any sign of movement, feds or otherwise, as he asked Becca the question that’d been nagging him since she’d laid out their plan for this heist. “You mentioned earlier that the vault is like a Russian nesting doll. Multiple layers. The dual system on the exterior entry. The vault door. Then, inside the vault, the voice-activated safe.”

  “That’s right.”

  “For the last, you need two voices. Abby’s got the wife’s. What about the husband’s? Who’s going to mimic his voice?” There was no way he could pull off a Serbian accent, and he’d be shocked as shit if Jared or Russ were hiding that in their bag of thug tricks.

  Becca shot him a sly grin. “Don’t you worry about that,” she said, as they approached the in-wall vault door. “You worry about this instead.”

  Cam continued to work over her answer as he worked over the vault door, first, hacking the electronic lock, then pulling the tools he needed out of his bag and getting back on the bike for the physical bolt. Same as last night, a thrill ran up his spine, a rush of adrenaline pumping blood and excitement through his veins. He came up on his line in the sand fast and slammed his eyes shut, bringing to mind the smiles and voices of his older, wiser brother, his nieces and nephews, his friends who’d become his family here. The library card in his pocket. The ball cap on the Dodge’s dash, the taste of his new favorite stout, magnificent ink over hard muscle and pale skin.

  Nic. His here and now.

  Using the thrill—not letting it use him—Cam channeled the energy into his hands cracking the safe and into Agent Byrne hovering just beneath Brady Campbell’s skin.

  After another minute’s steady work, the lock on the vault door disengaged. He stepped back, pulling the reinforced steel door open for Becca and Abby. “I believe you’re up now.”

  “You remember the script, baby,” Becca said to Abby.

  She nodded, and they approached the voice-activated safe together, Becca texting someone on her phone. It vibrated in her hand a moment later. Becca brought it to her ear. “We’re ready,” she said, as she entered an unlock code to start the process. It signaled for the voice-activated commands, and Abby spoke first in a dialect unlike anything Cam had ever heard.

  One light turned green.

  Becca hit speakerphone and the next instant, a man’s voice filled the room, in what Cam vaguely did recognize as Serbian. Spoken clearly, assertively, like someone well-educated and powerful, and somehow also familiar, even though Cam didn’t understand the words.

  The second light turned green.

  Who’d called Becca? From where Cam stood, he couldn’t see her phone screen, but he’d bet it was a random number. He’d also bet his team was right. A native Serb, or someone who’d spent enough time there to speak like a native, was bankrolling this venture.

  And Cam had a pretty good idea who that person was now.

  The bright glare from Jared’s penlight shining on glittering objects drew Cam’s attention back to where they were pulling a shelf from the safe.

  Then to where a red light suddenly appeared, aimed right at Becca’s head.

  “Gun, get down!” Cam shouted, as shots rent the air.

  Becca yanked Abby to the ground, while Jared and Russ crowded on either side of the vault doorway, returning fire at the rafters.

  “Who the fuck is shooting at us?” Becca hollered over the ping of bullets on metal and the pop and crash of shattering glass.

  For a second Cam had thought it was his people, but no one on his team, not even Bowers, would have given the order to take Becca out. They needed her. Someone else, the person or team who’d tampered with the lock, was in here with them.

  He ran back over to the safe, shoved the tray inside, and slammed the safe door shut.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” Becca demanded.

  “Because a third party is not getting their hands on our prize.”

  “Shit!” Becca cursed. “Someone else must have gotten wind of it.”

  “Or your boss doesn’t trust you to get the job done either.”

  Becca gave him a look, affronted, but not totally surprised.

  “We need to get the fuck out of here. Jared,” Cam hollered ahead of him. “Clear us a path. Russ, close the vault door behind us. We can’t let them in here.”

  The bruisers nodded, then sprang into motion, and Cam covered Becca and Abby between them. “Go! Go! Go!” he shouted, as shots continued to pound the ground and walls around them, one slicing a gash across his outer arm. “Fuck!”

  Adding to the chaos, glass shattered at the front of the museum and shouts of “FBI!” rang through the open space. The cavalry had arrived, clearly getting the picture that all was not right inside.

  Cam had a split second to decide. End this now, or find out who was on that call with Becca? If his suspicion was correct, there was only one choice to make. “Head for the back!” he shouted, while Jared and Russ laid down more cover fire. Finally, they made it out the back door and bolted down the alley. At the next intersection, Cam hauled Abby to his side. “We have to split up and divide their efforts. Becca, take Jared and Russ. I’ve got Abby. We’ll meet back at the condo.”

  Becca protested, even as Russ began to drag her the opposite direction. “I’m the one calling the shots here.”

  “The two voices needed for the safe can’t be in the same location,” he explained. “You’ve got access to one. I’ve got the other.”

  She pressed her lips together, stymied. “Fine, go! We’ll meet back up at the condo.”

  Cam grabbed Abby’s hand and off they ran, around another building and past more alleys. “What the hell is going on?” Abby panted behind him. “Are you on Becca’s side now?”

  “I need to know who Becca’s working for. But first, I need to get you safe.” He glanced down the next alley, toward the main street. Bingo!

  He charged forward, dragging Abby behind him, until they hit the main drag. Right in front of Nic’s truck. After cracking through two vault-level doors, the lock on the truck’s door was a piece of cake.

  He jimmied it open and hoisted Abby into the cab, with a “Stay down.”

  Ripping off his mask, he circled around front to the driver’s side, and Abby leaned over, popping the lock for him. She fell back into the passenger seat as he climbed in. “Where are we going?”

  “Safe house.” He reached under the dash, grabbing the two wires he needed to spark a hotwire. Thank God Nic still drove an older model.

  Next to him, Abby turned in her seat to sneak a peek out the back window. “Someone’s coming!”

  The hotwire sparked, the truck roaring to life. Cam righted himself, grabbed the ball cap off the dash, and yanked it down on his head.

  As he peeled away from the curb, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Nic’s blue eyes glowing in the moonlight. Cam hoped he’d read the message in his actions for what they were.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The dim cone of l
ight at Nic’s feet wobbled, as did the man holding its source, Aidan’s curses coming in a steady stream of Gaelic.

  “We’re almost at the top,” Nic said. He’d taken the lead, knowing the path well and used to scaling mounds of sand. He didn’t need the phone light, or even the weathered wood steps, to make his way up to the cliffside patio. But Aidan and Lauren did.

  “Are you sure this is where they went?” Aidan huffed.

  “According to my truck’s GPS.”

  “Someone else could have stolen the truck.”

  “And come here? I told Cam to use this place as a safe house.”

  Lauren piped up from between them. “Then why are we scaling this fucking cliff? I’m a fan of Lord of the Rings and all but screw this many-steps shit. I don’t want to live it.”

  Chuckling improbably, Nic crested the last step onto the stone patio and held out a hand to Lauren, helping her the rest of the way up. “We came this way because we don’t know who’s with Cam.” He’d recognized Cam in the truck, met his dark eyes in the mirror and watched him don that fucking BoSox cap, but in the dark, he hadn’t been able tell if the woman with him, in a ski mask, was Becca or Abby.

  “Oh, I think we do,” Lauren said.

  Nic whipped his head around, from where Aidan was throwing a leg over the patio ledge, to the big bay window of Eddie’s house perched above the patio at the top of the cliff. Backlit by the glow of house lights, Cam sat shirtless at the kitchen table. Abby stood close to his side, wrapping a bandage around his upper arm.

  A low burn simmered in Nic’s gut. It kicked up to boiling when Abby leaned in, kissing Cam’s shoulder, then his neck, then his lips.

  Cam lifted a hand, resting it on her waist. Maybe he was holding her back, but he sure as fuck wasn’t pushing her away.

  “This was the other reason he was perfect for the job,” Aidan said, knocking the sand off his shoes.

  “Because he’s hot,” Lauren replied, and Nic shot her a deadly glare.

  Aidan, thankfully, didn’t notice the exchange. “According to Jamie, he was a legend at BC, in both the frat and sorority houses.”

  “Really?” Lauren said, surprised. “He’s generally so by-the-rules at work.”

  “Not outside of it.”

  “So, what, you want him to fuck his way onto the crew too?” Nic barked at Aidan.

  Aidan did notice that remark, and the tone. “If he needs to, yes. Or he can just steal more of my chocolate for bribes.”

  Rolling his eyes, Nic glanced again at the house. Cam had leaned away from Abby. She nodded at something he said, then with a tired smile and another lingering kiss to his shoulder, disappeared from view. A few seconds later, the lights a floor down, where the bedrooms were, clicked on and Abby moved around, getting ready for sleep.

  Upstairs, Cam slid off the stool, walking back into the kitchen and lifting the phone receiver off the wall. Nic had his phone in his hand when it buzzed.

  “Boston,” he answered, voice clipped, quiet.

  “Where are you?”

  “Back patio.”

  Cam spun around, staring out the window.

  Nic held up his phone, the light from the screen letting Cam know exactly where they were. “Get down here. Leave the spotlights off.”

  “On my way.”

  “We’re not going up?” Lauren asked.

  “Not until we get a read on the situation,” Nic said, glancing to Aidan, who nodded.

  They crossed the patio to the tiny writer’s cottage tucked into the hill at the corner of the property. Nic flipped the lights on and gestured to the desk for Lauren to set up. Dropping into the chair, she booted up her computer, while Nic and Aidan pushed the other furniture to the outer walls, making room. The space was meant as a retreat for one. Four was going to be tight.

  Tighter than anticipated when Cam entered, puffed up and full of something Nic couldn’t read. Leaning back against a bookshelf, Nic held his tongue, not wanting to say something he’d regret, one way or the other, especially in front of Aidan and Lauren.

  Aidan rested on the arm of a chair and nodded at Cam’s arm. “You okay?”

  “Just a graze.”

  “Need stitches?” Aidan asked.

  Cam shook his head. “Couple of butterfly bandages under the wrap. What’s the latest from the scene?”

  “We cleared out about an hour ago. One suspect from the other crew is in custody. The museum’s security personnel are on-site now.”

  “Did anyone else get into the safe?”

  “Nope,” Lauren said. “The other crew scattered when Becca’s did.”

  “Becca back at the condo?”

  “Don’t know,” Aidan said. “Tracker went offline, and she and her two bruisers are off the grid.”

  “Could she have traced the truck’s GPS, if she saw us get into it?”

  “Negative, I’m jamming it.” Lauren brandished her phone before turning back to her computer.

  “Anything out of the suspect you did catch?”

  “Nothing, yet,” Aidan answered. “I’ll question him again in the morning. We do have an ID, and we’re tracing his accounts. What the fuck happened? Who was the other crew?”

  Cam flopped into the other chair and propped his elbows on his knees, running his fingers through his blue-tipped hair. It looked so out of place on him, especially in this conversation, but Nic couldn’t deny he liked it. Which only pissed him off more in his current pissed-off state.

  “One of three scenarios,” Cam said, and Nic checked back into the conversation. “Someone else got wind of the heist, and it was a pure third-party rip-off.”

  “Or?” Aidan prompted.

  “Whomever Becca’s working for, and she is working for someone, which I’ll get to in a minute—” he split a glance between them “—either didn’t trust her to get the job done or didn’t want to pay her the rest of her fee.”

  “Contingencies,” Aidan said, as he hitched a foot up.

  Cam nodded. “And to protect his identity.”

  Death would be the only surefire way to protect that, Nic thought, as Aidan asked, “The ringleader’s a ‘he’?”

  “Stefan Kristić,” Cam said.

  Aidan’s foot slipped off the seat cushion and hit the floor. Lauren’s tap-tap-tap likewise abruptly ceased. And Nic sucked in a breath, awaiting the rest of Cam’s reasoning, even as his own brain fast-forwarded, putting together pieces. Kristić’s unavailability for an interview. His emergency need to flee. “Interrupting” the initial raid, which had led to his wife’s death. Asshole husbands strike again. Nic forced himself to remain still, grinding his teeth against his own instinct to rage.

  “Becca had someone on the phone,” Cam explained. “A male voice to read the male part. I’d bet every cent to my name, which granted isn’t much, that it was Kristić.”

  “Was there any unusual activity on his accounts?” Aidan asked Lauren.

  “None, and I checked it for connections to Rebecca Monroe too.”

  “What about the deposits to Monroe?” Cam asked. “Where are we on that trace?”

  “Brick wall. I can’t get through, and the bankers won’t talk either.”

  “Because he’s an oligarch in the new Serbia,” Nic said, finally breaking his silence. “I’ve seen this on Russian cases. Check all of his companies, particularly the ones that do business in the States. We have legal standing to get access to those records. If we can find a matching outlay, that’s how we usually nail them.”

  “We only have the weekend to do it,” Aidan said.

  “You didn’t get the continuance?” Cam said, eyes on Nic.

  “Kristić’s flying back Monday,” he said, “after giving his testimony.”

  “Getting clear with the artifacts more likely.”

  “I don’t get it,�
� Lauren said, twisting in her chair. “He’s got the artifacts. He’s the dignitary overseeing their transport.”

  “But who actually owns them?” Nic said. “His deceased wife? Her heirs? The government? I’m guessing not him. We need to see the bill of lading on those pieces, and the wife’s will.”

  “What’s his end game?” Cam said. “Sell them on the black market?”

  Nic nodded, as Aidan added, “Something tells me his flight plan will change Monday.”

  “After he kills or puts away the people who worked for him,” Cam said, and Nic didn’t like that determined glint in his eye one bit. “I’m going back in.”

  “No,” Nic snapped, pushing up off the wall. Two steps and he was standing right in front of Cam. “You’re safe, here, now.” He glanced out the window, toward the house. “And so is Abby.”

  “He’ll make another run at the artifacts, probably at the show tonight or Sunday. We can’t risk more people getting hurt.”

  Desert sand and heat settled in Nic’s gut, suffocating and uncomfortable. “So we risk you instead?”

  Cam shot to his feet, the space between them narrowing more. “This is my job, Price.”

  “And your case is circumstantial, prosecutor,” Aidan added from his spot on the other armchair. Fucking traitor. “If Cam can get direct evidence that it’s Kristić pulling the strings...”

  Cam glanced over at him. “I can get it.”

  “Kristić knows who you are,” Nic reminded him.

  Cam had taken off his mask and helmet in the penthouse after the heist that started all this. And he’d been in Kristić’s hospital room after.

  “If he ever shows his face,” Cam said, “I’ll convince him Abby turned me. That I’ve gone rogue.”

  “That why you kissed her?” The words were out before Nic could stop himself.

  Aidan cut in before the argument could go further. “She’ll have to go back in with you.”

  “I’ll protect her.”

  Of course he would.

  “This is a fucking suicide mission,” Nic gritted out.