Imperial Stout

by Layla Reyne

  She sucked in a deep breath, then lifted her chin, meeting his gaze. “I don’t want anyone else to die. That’s why I have to do this.”

  Under different circumstances, if Abby weren’t a source, if she weren’t the kidnap victim he was sent to rescue, and if Cam had never met Dominic Price, he’d probably try to charm a date out of her. He liked Abby. She had spunk, a good heart, and no denying she was beautiful. Even more so as she straightened her spine, let loose her hair, and fluffed out her curls.

  Game face on, she gave him a nod, as the elevator doors opened. “After you.” He followed her out, she hooked her elbow around his, and they walked arm-and-arm to Unit 4042. Abby knocked on the door, a pattern of short and long raps to announce her arrival. The peephole darkened, someone peering through it, then after several clicks of a lock, Russ opened the door. The bruiser stopped them in the shadowed foyer for pat downs, checking for any weapons or wires.

  “I take it we’re in the right place,” Cam said.

  Ignoring him, Russ called, “They’re clear,” over his shoulder, and Becca replied with an “In here” from around the corner. If the layout was the same as the condo upstairs, the foyer led to a parlor of sorts with a grand view of the Bay. To the parlor’s left was an open-plan kitchen and living area, and to the right, a hallway to bedrooms and bathrooms.

  Cam and Abby started forward, Cam’s hand at her lower back. As soon as they hit the opening of the foyer, they were separated. Abby was pushed forward, yelping, while Jared jumped him, wrenching his right arm back and forcing him down. Russ was on him the next instant, knee to his back. Despite the blinding pain in his arm, the same one grazed last night, Cam could have thrown them off. Scrapping had never been a problem for him, even less so once he’d been professionally trained, but Becca’s gun trained on a shaking Abby guaranteed his compliance.

  “You’re going to answer my questions,” Becca said. “And you’re going to tell me the truth or I’ll put a bullet in her head.”

  “She’s your girlfriend,” he replied, appealing to that part of Becca he thought might have genuine feelings for the other woman.

  Becca ignored the comment; maybe she didn’t after all. “Near as I can tell, things started to go sideways when you entered the picture.”

  “Hey, I replaced your old B&E guy. Near as I can tell, things were fucked before I got here.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Becca pressed the gun’s muzzle against Abby’s temple. “Maybe she’s the one throwing curveballs.”

  “Or your boss,” Cam countered. “Was that him you called from the museum?”

  She dodged his question, asking Abby, “Where’d you go last night?”

  “A house on the coast,” Abby replied, voice trembling yet dry-eyed, doing her damnedest to hold it together despite the betrayal that had to be coursing through her.

  “A buddy of mine’s place in Half Moon Bay,” Cam said, trying to draw Becca’s attention off Abby. “He was out of town. No one saw us.”

  “How’d you get back here?”

  “Boosted a car.”

  “The same one from last night?”

  “I’m not a fucking amateur,” he sniped back. “I ditched the one from the City in San Mateo. Boosted a second and drove over the mountain to the beach. Ditched that one and stole a third this morning.”

  “Describe them,” she demanded, as they moved into the living area.

  He rattled off specs, ones he pulled from his memory as easily as he put one foot in front of the other. Convinced, for now, Becca nodded and the bruisers let him up. Becca dropped her arm, and Abby bolted over to him.

  “Ooh,” Becca said, voice dropping into a lower register. Less severe, more interested. “Did someone have fun last night? You’re supposed to share, baby.”

  “What’s the plan now?” Cam said, redirecting the conversation again.

  Becca grabbed a still smoking joint from an ashtray and tucked herself into the far corner of a sectional. She waved Abby over, took a long draw on the joint, then held it out, waiting for Abby to take a drag. Becca beckoned him to the cushion on her other side. “You’re going to prove who you are.”

  He relied on his charm, hoping to avoid crime. “What is it you want me to do, sweetheart?” He reached for the joint, but Becca offered him her mouth instead, inviting him to shotgun the hit. Smoke seeped out from between their lips as they kissed, and there was nothing sweet about the pungent smell. It reeked, made his stomach churn with disgust, an accurate reflection of his tortured conscience. Yes, this was still his cover, but after sharing last night with Nic, everything about this felt wrong. He clutched at that feeling, at the rope keeping him tied to Nic and Agent Byrne, even as Becca pulled Abby onto her lap, shotgunning another drag with her, then waiting for Cam and Abby to do the same. Cam clawed at the rope tighter. He hated using Abby like this, hated manipulating the genuine interest he felt in her kiss and in her gentle hands last night.

  “You got some of that last night?” Becca asked when they parted.

  “Not enough,” Abby said, her eyes dark green.

  “You’ll have to wait for more.” She shifted Abby off her lap, back to her other side. “Brady, here, has a safe to break into first.”

  Crime it was, then. “Didn’t I already pass your trial run?” he asked, stalling. Not because he didn’t want to do it. Charm had been leading him down a worse path. No, he stalled because if he were in Becca’s position, he’d demand a reaffirmation of loyalty too.

  “I want to know if you’re willing to steal from the FBI.”

  He forced himself not to jerk. “The FBI?”

  She nodded toward the bedrooms down the hall. “Assistant Director Moore’s safe is in the master.”

  He snagged the joint from her, taking another drag to hide his surprise. “This is his place?” Swanky local digs for their regional assistant director who hopped between here, Sacramento, and the North Coast.

  “Nice work getting in here,” he said, assuming Moore had better than decent security.

  “Know the building manager,” Becca said with a wink.

  “Cheater,” he winked back. Standing, he retrieved the bag he’d dropped on his way in and headed down the hallway, Jared and Russ on his heels. He found the relatively basic safe in the master and knelt in front of the lock, getting it open in short order. He’d have to talk to Moore about that next time the AD was in the office.

  He reached inside, expecting stacks of cash or jewelry, something a high-profile heist crew would be after, and drew out three flash drives instead. He palmed the plastic and returned to the living room, flopping down on the couch. “Flash drives?” he said, handing them to Becca.

  “That’s what my client was after.”

  Not Kristić, Cam realized. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Smart.”

  He reached for the joint again, but Becca held it out of reach. “Also smart because I like to know who’s working for me.”

  Cam’s stomach sank, another realization dawning. Becca knew.

  “Yes,” came a polished, assertive Serbian voice from down the bedroom hallway.

  A voice Cam recognized, from last night and a week ago. Whipping around, his suspicions were confirmed, Stefan Kristić standing in the parlor.

  “Tell us, Agent Byrne. How far is an FBI agent willing to go?”

  There was no time for surprise, no time for panic. Cam had to put his contingency plan into play, right this instant. He leaned back into the cushions, playing it cool. “What is it you think you know about me?”

  “Cameron Patrick Byrne. Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge of the San Francisco FBI field office,” Kristić rattled off, and Becca’s eyes grew wide. He must not have told her everything. “One of the Bureau’s best kidnap and rescue agents.”

  “The best,” he corrected, which was why he’d do everything h
e could to get Abby out of this alive, including playing the turncoat.

  “Recently moved to the Bay Area from Boston for the ASAC job, working with his best friend’s husband,” Kristić carried on. “Big Irish family back in Boston.”

  Cam glanced over his shoulder at Becca. “Didn’t lie about that one.”

  “Three brothers,” Kristić said.

  Cam swung his gaze back around. “And a sister.” Kristić paused, tilting his head. “Didn’t look back far enough, did you?”

  “I only just realized it was you who was Brady last night.”

  “Well, then, I’m guessing your quick-take research didn’t yield that Brady Campbell’s backstory isn’t made up. It’s mine.” Most of it anyway.

  Becca arched one of her dark brows. “And the FBI still let you in?”

  “They offered me something I couldn’t get elsewhere.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Cam said, gut burning at the memory of his greatest failure, preserved on his sister’s laminated library card in his wallet. The one case that still eluded him and continued to cast a gray cloud over his family. “They couldn’t deliver.” Neither could he.

  “And now?” Kristić said, drawing him back to the present.

  “And now they offer nothing,” Cam said, throwing his booted feet up on the glass coffee table. “If you haven’t checked my real bank account yet, let me go ahead and tell you the balance. Two hundred fifty-three dollars and twenty-four cents. I’m tired of being a broke-ass government servant, especially living here.”

  “So, it’s about the money?”

  “Isn’t that what all of you are in it for?”

  “I’m in to get what’s rightfully mine,” Kristić said.

  “The artifacts?”

  “They belong to me. Not the government.”

  Cam would lay odds they’d actually belonged to his wife. He prayed Lauren was getting him the goods to back up that hunch, because this asshole had to go.

  “Tell me,” Cam said, deflecting, but also getting at something else that had to be addressed. “How are we supposed to trust you? You’ve tried to rip off your own heist, twice. They were shooting to kill in the museum.”

  “Because I didn’t trust all the players.” He looked over to Becca, saying “I do now,” before glaring back at Cam, “Except you.”

  Cam figured it had more to do with protecting his identity and killing all the players to keep the money for himself. And Becca had been paid enough to be fooled those weren’t still Kristić’s objectives.

  “I don’t believe you’re in it just for the cash,” Becca said. “You entered the FBI for something more. A guy like you, you’re leaving for a reason too.”

  “My partner, my boss, my best friend’s husband you mentioned...he slept with the guy I’m fucking.” Not exactly, but if it sold the story, he’d use it.

  Becca bought it. “Oh-ho, so that’s why you were reluctant to have fun with us?” She clutched Abby to her side. “Like the men, do you?”

  “I like men and women, for what it’s worth.” Becca’s eyes lit, until he shut her down. “I just decided not to get in the middle again.”

  Becca seemed to understand, lifting a hand and backing off, but at her side, Abby looked utterly shocked. And that, more than anything, sold his story.

  For everyone except Kristić. “I’ll decide if you’re lying, after I have the artifacts.”

  * * *

  Nic sat at the conference table in his war room, thumbing through Anica Kristić’s will. Across from him, Aidan sifted through customs forms, looking for the one documenting the artifacts’ entry into the county. He looked about as happy with his stack as Nic was with his.

  The will had been poorly and hastily translated from Serbian, and Nic was having to look up every third word with regard to certain items that didn’t have a direct English translation. Didn’t help that every other minute his mind flashed back to last night. To the way Cam had felt inside him, over him, blanketing him in everything he’d wanted for months. It was messy, in part because of the man across from him and his husband, and in part because of Nic’s own screwed-up family and past, the tattoo on his back the epitome of all that’d gone wrong before, but Christ, last night with Cam had been perfect.

  Wanting it again, Nic rode the roller coaster of desire and worry. Cam was playing a dangerous game, undercover with Becca’s crew. The sooner he and Aidan found evidence that Stefan Kristić was behind the heists, the sooner they could get Cam and Abby out of there.

  “Any luck?” he asked Aidan.

  “It’s like looking for a needle in a fucking haystack.” The SAC pitched another customs form into the discard box on the floor and tilted back in his chair, guzzling his third coffee of the morning. “It should be easy. The Kristićs and their belongings came in on a diplomatic visa, but do you have any idea how many diplomatic visas clear SFO daily?”

  “More than a few?”

  “More than a few,” Aidan said with a nod. “Any luck there?”

  “We need someone who speaks Serbian,” he said. “And someone who understands wills and trusts better than me.” He had a working knowledge from the occasional case, but it wasn’t his specialty.

  “Switch,” Aidan said, pushing his remaining stack across the table. “I used to help with the estate docs for the family, before it got too damn big. I’ll at least know where to look.”

  Nic welcomed the change, for twenty minutes or so, before his eyes started to glaze over.

  “Hold on a sec,” Aidan mumbled from across the table, intent on a page midway through the will. “I think—”

  “You want to know what I think,” an angry voice interrupted. Nic looked up to find Bowers in the doorway, his beady eyes intent on Aidan. “I think your boy’s gone rogue.”

  Aidan lifted his coffee cup like he was looking for patience and salvation at the bottom of it, then glared when he realized it was empty. He turned his glare on Bowers. “That was the plan. To make the crew think that.”

  “Is that why he robbed Elton Moore this morning?”

  Nic startled, but Bowers was too focused on Aidan to notice.

  “It’s part of the cover,” Aidan said, not an ounce of surprise in his voice or on his face. Nic could see why the other man had been so damn good at undercover work before he took the desk job. Or maybe Aidan had been privy to the information, in which case, why the fuck hadn’t he told him?

  “To rob an FBI Assistant Director?” Bowers squawked.

  “One, Moore knows, I talked to him already.” Well, that answered that question, but again, why the fuck hadn’t Aidan told him? A question for another time. “We’ll recover the flash drives that were stolen when we take down the crew,” Aidan continued. “Moore doesn’t think the encryption on them can be cracked before then. Two, Cam and Abby were off the grid for hours last night, and Abby’s already been in custody once. They had to prove themselves loyal to Becca, not us.”

  “Or Byrne’s gone rogue,” Bowers insisted.

  “We met with him last night and discussed this plan,” Nic said. “It’s an act. He’s not gone rogue.”

  “You sure about that?” Bowers threw down a file, a photo sliding out.

  A younger Cam with dark hair and dark eyes grinned up at Nic from the picture, the overall look remarkably like Brady Campbell, right down to the same camo jacket.

  Aidan grabbed the rest of the file, flipping through it. From the markings on the outside of the folder, Nic could tell it was an FBI personnel file. Agent Cameron Byrne’s.

  “How the hell did you get this?” Aidan growled.

  “I’m DOJ too.”

  Except when it came to personnel files—even Nic knew they were supposed to be kept separate to, among other reasons, avoid any conflicts of interest. The only time he’d e
ver delved into FBI personnel files was when he had an agent testifying in a high-stakes case and he needed to assess his expert’s credibility. Before doing so, Nic had always gotten the sitting SAC’s or AD’s permission. There was no way he’d release any of his people’s files without the same courtesy. What other files had Bowers gotten access to?

  “Breaking and entering. Grand theft auto. Larceny,” Bowers rattled off, a more extensive list than even Nic knew about.

  “He was never charged.” Aidan stood, hands braced on his desk. “And those are exactly the reasons we sent him under on this case. He can do the job.”

  Despite his head still spinning, Nic added his two cents. “Cam’s using all that to infiltrate Becca’s crew and find out who’s in charge, which is what you wanted.”

  “If we don’t have that person in custody by Monday,” Bowers said, “I’m bringing charges against Byrne. DOJ’s orders.”

  Bowers stormed out, not giving them time to object or to tell him they had a lead. Nic, however, wasn’t sure he wanted to tell Bowers about Kristić yet. His boss’s current bone had Cam’s name on it. No telling what he’d do given another. Hell, he’d probably try to argue Cam and Kristić had been working together all along.

  “Is it just us he hates?” Aidan asked. “Or is he this way to everyone?”

  “He’s generally not pleasant,” Nic replied. “But it’s worse with this case. And us.”

  “Politics?”

  “Maybe,” Nic said, contemplating again why this case in particular had dinged Bowers’s radar so hotly. DOJ was in turmoil, from the top down, and dead diplomats would bring State down on them too, but Bowers’s vehemence was enough to scratch a mental note to have Mel check his bank accounts too.

  “I’ll be ready for you to inherit,” Aidan said, jarring Nic out of his thoughts.

  Nic shook his head. “Don’t get your hopes up. And the far off, unlikely future is not my concern right now.”

  “Later,” Aidan grumbled. “In any event, Bowers doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

  “Technically, he does,” Nic said. Legally speaking, crimes had been committed, including by Cam. “But if we get this closed, and Kristić in custody, it’ll be gone.”