by Layla Reyne
He started to stand but Cam laid a hand on his knee beneath the table, keeping him seated. “Go on in,” Cam told Matt and Jamie. “Need to check one more thing with Justice. We’re right behind you.”
Matt was about to say something, but Jamie pushed him on ahead.
As soon as they rounded the corner, Nic’s attention whipped back to Cam. A blush stained his high cheekbones, highlighting his handsome, angular face, and made Cam want to do more than just talk.
But talk was what they had to do, before moving forward on the case or otherwise. “Thank you for wrangling with the DOJ,” he said.
“You can quit thanking me. I told—”
Cam squeezed his knee, then inched his hand higher. “But I didn’t tell you, not everything.”
Nic laid a hand atop his, stopping it from climbing higher. He left it there, though, tangling their fingers. “You’re not out to your family.”
Of course he’d figured it out; he was one of the smartest men Cam knew. “It was never the right time, and now...”
“I’m not going to ask you to, Cam. That’s your decision.”
Cam’s gaze shot up from their hands. “I expected you to argue.”
Nic shook his head. “Not about this. It’s one hundred percent your call.”
“I feel like a coward. You, Aidan, and Jamie, you’re all out, and I—”
Nic squeezed his fingers. “There’s no one right time, Boston. No one right way. It’s different for each person. Sometimes a person comes out all at once, to everyone, which was the case for me. Sometimes it’s bit by bit, like Jamie, like you. In any event, it should always be by choice, not because they’ve been outed, issued an ultimatum, or had their hand forced. I’m not going to do that to you.”
The conviction of his words and in his fierce blue eyes made Cam wonder and worry more about Nic’s own coming out. There was more to it than he’d let on last spring, Cam was sure. And he was increasingly certain it had something to do with GS and the cypress tree inked on Nic’s back.
Nic turned over their hands and put something in his palm. “But if you want to build something here, Boston, you’re going to have to, eventually. I’ll give you time, but I don’t want to hide forever. I can’t anymore.”
He withdrew his hand and slid off the bench, headed for the station’s entrance. Cam waited until he’d turned the corner to open his palm. In it was a folded airplane napkin. He peeled back the corners to reveal a rough sketch of a new Gravity label.
Fighting Boston Imperial. An Irish Stout. Gravity’s falling apricot logo was the top third of a Celtic clover.
Cam lost his breath, his heart too.
The future he wanted was right there—in his hand and walking into the station house to help solve a case that’d haunted Cam for half his life. Yet it felt like the future he wanted—with Nic—was slipping away, the rope coming untethered and Cam floating farther out to sea.
Chapter Fifteen
“How’d the ransom demand come in?” Cam asked.
He sat on one side of the conference table—Nic on his right, Jamie and Matt on his left. Di was facilitating at the head of the table. On her other side, across from the federal contingency, sat Murphy, looking even more wrecked today, together with Smith and a BPD union rep.
Di pushed an evidence bag Cam’s way, a generic burner phone inside. “Video on the phone. It was dropped off at Murphy’s home.”
“Anyone see the courier?” Matt asked.
Murphy shook his head.
Cam drew the bag toward them. “Evidence has processed?”
Di nodded, and he pulled the phone out. Flipping it over, he opened the Photo app and pressed play on the only item there. A single video.
Nic and Jamie crowded close, while Matt stood behind him, viewing it over his shoulder. They collectively noted details as they watched.
“Basement,” Nic said, and Cam agreed, judging by the diffuse light coming from what looked like a sidewalk-level transom.
“Commercial building,” Matt said. “Electrical panel’s too big for residential.”
“A garage of some sort,” Jamie added. “The boxes stacked along the wall are from an auto parts dealer.” The gear-head would know. Cam recognized them too.
A figure appeared onscreen, wearing a ski mask. Given their size, it was a male, the voice confirmed it a second later. “I have your daughter, Officer Murphy.”
Cam detected an accent not too far from his own. “Boston native.”
“If you want her back, here’s what you’re gonna do...”
The suspect went on to describe how Murphy was to steal evidence that was in the D-4 evidence locker.
“You do this,” the man said, “you’ll get Shannon back.”
The camera panned and rotated to the side of the room they hadn’t seen yet, and in the corner, on a thin stained mattress, huddled a teenage girl. Legs folded against her chest, she’d buried her face in her knees.
“Smile for the camera,” the man said, and the girl looked up.
Cam sucked in a breath. She looked so much like Erin. Dark hair, dark eyes, tears streaming down her face. In his periphery, he saw Nic’s hand twitch, like he’d been about to put it on Cam’s leg, but then his fingers curled around his own thigh instead. Cam shifted, brushing their knees together under the table. After their earlier conversation, after watching this and knowing that could have been Erin too, twenty years ago, he needed the connection. Nic didn’t move away, and that link helped Cam stomach the rest of the video. Through a close-up of Shannon’s tear-streaked face, another repetition of the kidnapper’s demands, and where to meet them for a handoff later that night. When the video ended, Cam closed the app and slowly slid the phone back in the evidence bag, letting his adrenaline bleed out as he gathered his thoughts.
“Do you have any idea who might be behind this?” he asked Murphy, once he’d passed the bag back to Di.
Murphy wiped at his own tears. “I didn’t recognize the voice.”
“That’s not what Agent Byrne asked,” Matt said, reclaiming the seat on the other side of Jamie. “Is Koehler behind this?”
Murphy visibly trembled. “We need assurances,” the union rep said.
Nic withdrew a folded paper from his jacket pocket. He’d been on a call when Cam had come in from the courtyard. This must have been why. He slid the paper across the table to Murphy. “Immunity from federal obstruction charges.”
“What about my job?”
“DOJ can’t guarantee that,” Nic said. “That’s BPD’s call.”
Murphy looked from the union rep to Di, then to his captain.
“You’re compromised, Billy,” Smith said.
“This is your daughter.” Cam drew Murphy’s attention back to him, back to what was important. “Is your job more important than her life?”
He hung his head, chastened. “No, of course not.”
“Do you have a pen?” the union rep asked.
“And a pad of paper,” Murphy added.
Di got him both, and Murphy signed the deal, then started scribbling names on the legal pad. “Who I think might be involved.” He pushed the pad across the table to Cam. “But like I said, I didn’t recognize the voice on the recording. Or that place.”
“But they know who you are.” Cam handed the pad of names to Jamie. “Run these, and let’s see if we can also trace the call origin.”
He nodded, already typing a mile a minute on his phone. “I’m on the boxes too.”
“We can go at this from two sides,” Matt said.
“Agreed. One team on the handoff, one team on the garage.” Cam turned back to Murphy. “Can you handle the meet?”
“It has to be me,” he said, voice shaking. “Me and me alone. No cops. That’s what he said.”
“You’ll be wired.”
“He won’t see the tech I’ve got,” Jamie replied. “And I can make the evidence look like it’s gone. Create a ghost of the record.”
“And we can mock up something for the handoff,” Matt said. “Embed a tracker.”
“All right,” Cam said, hearing all their bases covered. “The video said midnight. We’ve got work to do.”
Everyone around the table stood and hopped to it. Matt off with Di to call in the FBI from Chelsea, Jamie off to tech, and Murphy, with his captain and rep, off to a holding room.
When it was just him and Nic left in the room, the last half hour came crashing down and the remaining adrenaline rushed out of Cam. Eyes closed, he rested back against the edge of the table. Heat hit his side and Nic’s fingers brushed over his.
“Breathe, Boston.”
He sighed, head falling back. “She looks so much like Erin.”
“And yet we have a pretty good idea why she was taken, if not where.”
Cam righted his head, brow furrowed. “What are you saying?”
“You need to be prepared for Shannon’s case not to be connected to Erin’s. This may just be a runaway who got caught up with the wrong people, who are using her as leverage.”
“Since when are you questioning the victim?” Cam made to snatch his hand back, and Nic held tighter. Forcing him to listen.
“I haven’t heard from the victim in this case. I’m giving her and her father the benefit of the doubt.” He glanced significantly at the immunity agreement on the table. “But I also talked to Becca—she looks just like them too—and she was a runaway, plain and simple.”
He was right of course. The investigator side of his brain knew that was the more likely scenario. That this wasn’t connected to Erin at all. But the brother and son part of his heart desperately wanted it to be.
Nic scooted closer, their shoulders brushing. “You need to be Special Agent Byrne, with the FBI, not Cameron Patrick Byrne, grieving son and brother. Can you do that?”
Gazes locked, he reached for the grounding those blue eyes offered. “Regardless of whether she left voluntarily or was kidnapped, I don’t want her family to go through what mine did. They need to know.”
Nic smiled, small but satisfied. “So Agent Byrne it is.”
He nodded, focused again. “I’ll catch ’em.”
“And I’ll lock ’em up.”
* * *
“Enough, Dominic!”
Cam yanked a Kevlar vest over his head, and Nic wanted to grab him by the straps and shake him. He couldn’t believe they were having this fucking argument again.
Within earshot of Jamie and other agents no less.
Cam reached for a helmet and Nic slapped down his hand, demanding his undivided attention. He was sure it drew others’ attention too, but fuck it. They were already eavesdropping. “Do not leave me in a fucking van again,” Nic gritted out. Sidelined during the Kristić raid, listening as the op had gone south, had been maddening.
Dark eyes snapped to him, all business. “While it would have been unorthodox, you could have—maybe should have—led the team on the Kristić raid, but these agents don’t know you. This is my team, my people. Not yours, not Aidan’s. And this is my case, my specialty.”
The agent-voice rankled, even if every word Cam said was true. It also rankled that he’d been left out of the tactical planning. Cam had probably anticipated this argument and had hoped to avoid it. Tough shit. Even if he wasn’t going in, he needed to know what Cam was charging into.
“Why are you leading this team?”
They were parked a block away from the garage they suspected the ransom call had originated from. Jamie had traced the call to a nearby cell tower, then had even better luck tracing the auto parts boxes to one of Koehler’s South End garages. While they converged on the garage, Matt was leading a separate team across town at the supposed exchange site.
Cam uncrossed his arms, a measure less defensive. “I’m leading this team because there’s nothing to suggest the people who took Shannon will actually hand her over at the exchange. She’s too valuable as leverage. They want to see that Murphy is cooperating. Following their orders with no cops or feds involved. That’s what that meet is about.”
“But there are feds there.”
Cam held up a finger. “One team. Because they’re unlikely to show there, at least not until Murphy steps into the zone and proves himself. They’ll call, from a distance, and ask to see proof. Then it’s an easy snatch and grab, of either Murphy or the evidence they think he has. Matt’s team is there for protection and intercept.”
“And the three teams here?” Nic asked.
“Rescue, if Shannon is being held here. And this is my old hood, from when Bobby and I were teens. That’s why I’m leading the team here.”
Nic dragged a hand over his jaw, scruff growing in thicker while his patience thinned hour by hour. He dropped his arm and lowered his voice, imploring, “I cannot be on the other end of the line again, listening and only half knowing what’s going on. I don’t need to be the lead. Just your backup.”
“And I cannot watch you get tossed over the hood of a car again, or worse.”
Stalemate, which Cam broke, in dirty cheater fashion.
“Besides, do you want to be the one to tell Aidan you left his husband out here alone in the surveillance van?”
“Please, Jamie could drive this thing out of here before anyone ever caught him.”
Cam smiled, and Nic realized the trap he’d stepped into.
“Which is why you’re staying in the van,” Cam said, victorious.
“Fuck you,” Nic spat back.
Cam leaned closer, voice a whisper. “If it keeps you alive, so I can do that later, then fine by me.” He turned on his heel, grabbed a helmet, and walked over to the bank of surveillance monitors where Jamie and the other agents were checking comms.
Nic stood in his corner, stewing. Cam’s parting shot was the best thing and worst thing Nic could’ve heard right then. Cam still wanted him—good—but they were trapped in a fucking van with other agents, in the middle of a time-sensitive op. He couldn’t do a damn thing about the kiss he wanted to give Cam. He could have used the raid to channel some of that energy, but Cam was sidelining him, again. Frustration assailed him from every direction, boiling over as he watched Agent Byrne go through the pre-op motions.
“Everyone in position?” Cam asked into the comm mic.
Beta and Charlie teams checked in, then Matt from the exchange site. “We’re set with Murphy here,” he said. “Just waiting for your mark.”
“We’re a go in five,” Cam said, signing off.
Turning away before he did or said something he shouldn’t, Nic ducked into the front cab, collapsing into the passenger seat and staring out the front windshield. The night went from dark to darker as it slipped into the next day, no sign of life on this industrial block in the wee hours of the morning.
After another couple minutes, Cam appeared through the dividing curtain. “You gonna stay mad at me?” he asked, dropping into the driver’s seat as the curtain swung back closed.
“This argument isn’t over.”
“Says the attorney.”
Nic rolled his eyes, not fighting his smile. The exchange, while frustrating as hell, felt like normal. Like them. Not like the weird limbo they’d been in earlier that day.
“You strapped under the coat?” Cam asked.
Nic flicked back the front flap of his jacket, flashing his Beretta.
Cam nodded. “Try not to get into trouble.”
“Says the man in tactical gear.”
Sliding forward, Cam angled toward him, brushing their knees together and dropping his voice low. “It’s the only thing keeping me from jump
ing you right now.”
Nic tilted his head toward the back of the van, on the other side of the curtain. “That and your best friend in there.”
Cam clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Low blow, Price.”
“Says the man telling me to stay in the fucking van. Again.”
Cam glided his knee inside Nic’s, higher up, pushing his legs apart. Doing what his hands couldn’t, in case anyone saw through the window. “You’re my rope. I can’t have it severed. So yes, I’m ordering you stay in the fucking van.”
Losing the battle to frustration and desire, Nic shot out a hand, grabbed a vest strap, and yanked Cam closer. Not all the way into his lap, because there was only one place that would lead, which was a no-go with other agents in back. But close enough to smell the lingering traces of Cam’s soap, to feel the heat of him beneath the gear, to press his cock against Cam’s knee between his thighs. “I’ll stay in the fucking van,” he growled. “But you hold tight to the rope.”
Cam grinned, wicked. “Count on it.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Half past,” Jamie radioed, and Cam gave the signal for his team to move. On quiet approach, he was depending on Jamie cycling through position checks to gauge where each of the teams were, including Matt’s across town.
Cam led his team down an alley a building over from their target. Peering around the corner, he looked for the gate in the target garage’s back fence. Every other building on this street was a garage and most of them had caged-in yards where cars were parked overnight. The fences around the garage yards usually had two entrances. A big rolling gate for cars to pass through and a smaller swing gate easier for people to enter and exit. A better-than-average B&E guy, Cam had always counted on those pedestrian gates for quick and easy access.
He spotted the smaller gate on this side of the target, near the back of the garage structure. Good, they wouldn’t have to expose themselves darting across the yard. He signaled his team to move again. They crouched low, sliding along the back of the neighboring building, hiding in the shadows.
At the near corner, before they crossed the next alley, Cam signaled his team to stop and did a one-eighty sweep with his eyes and helmet cam, trusting Jamie to double-check the alley and target building.