by Layla Reyne
“I can’t grant you a deal,” Nic growled.
“Then I’m not telling you shit,” Reid said, struggling.
Nic wrenched his arm higher. “If you don’t tell us where to find Harper, I can assure you this. I’ll make it so you to go Cedar Junction. Maximum security. Do you know what they do to people who hurt or help hurt little girls in places like that? And just think, how many people does your boss have up there? Think he’ll let you live? Will he trust a junkie lowlife to keep his mouth shut? Or will he decide to shut you up, permanently?”
With Cam wrapped up in Jamie’s arms, Matt crouched on the other side of the table, eye-level with Reid. “It’s in your best interest to cooperate, Porter. Where does Harper have Shannon?”
“At his grandparents’ old farmhouse. Out in Lincoln.”
Chapter Twenty
Cam wanted to move on the house in Lincoln as soon as they could suit up. But Matt showed him an aerial shot of the property, and he knew it would be sundown before they could move. A big old house in the middle of big open fields—dense forest two hundred yards behind the house, a two-lane state highway in front of it, then a thin buffer of trees on the other side of the road, before the land opened up again into another field. No way they could get at the house, from either direction, without being seen in broad daylight.
Especially if Harper was on the lookout for them via the security cameras on each corner of the structure and on the door.
They mapped out the approach, moving in through the property across the street. Down the drive with its line of trees, thick with foliage from the summer, to the gully behind the copse of trees across the highway from Harper’s house. The backyard was a more direct route, but converging from across the street provided the most cover and the least amount of exposure.
Less time for Harper to detect them, become desperate, and possibly injure himself or Shannon.
Mother Nature helped a little, bringing in a late afternoon storm that darkened the skies and poured down visibility-obscuring rain.
An hour ahead of schedule, Cam lay in the gully across the street, target in view.
“Lights on, no movement,” Matt said beside him. “No cars either.”
A surveillance drone dropped out of the low clouds right over the house, out of the range of the cameras. “Drone isn’t picking up any heat signatures,” Jamie reported through the comm in Cam’s ear. His visit to MIT had certainly paid off.
“Lights on in the subbasement too,” Nic said on his left side. He pointed at the half windows visible just above the ground.
“Drone can’t detect below grade,” Jamie said.
Rain pounded Cam’s back, pouring off the vest and FBI windbreaker, flowing under his arms and down his neck. It was a hot, suffocating, late summer rain, and he could barely get in a breath that didn’t weigh him down more.
Fingers nudged his left hand, Nic’s tangling with his. Cam was done asking him to stay in the van. He needed him here. Visors up, Cam looked him in the eyes, the icy blue calming, solid, pushing back the humidity and giving Cam the fresh air he needed to breathe.
To act.
“Visors down and move on my count,” he said.
The agents and officers lined along the gully snapped their gear into place.
“Whiskey,” Cam said. “Ready to kill the cameras?”
“On your count. If he’s watching, you won’t have long.”
“Roger that.” He moved into a crouch and the others followed suit, ready to cross the road and converge on his mark.
“Three, two, one.”
“Cameras are down,” Jamie confirmed.
“Go, go, go!” Cam ordered, and the line of LEOs in tactical gear moved in a dark line across the street.
Still no movement in the house.
The same sinking feeling Cam had had when they’d pulled Reid over settled deep in his gut again. Was this going to be another dead end?
They fanned out around the house, checking the exterior for explosives. Whispered calls of “Clear” echoed over comms, one position after another. Cam stood by the door facing the open field behind the house. Hearing the last “Clear,” he reached out and tested the knob.
Locked.
And there were five additional deadbolts on the door.
Harper might not be here, but something worth protecting was.
He could take the ten or so minutes he’d need to pick them all. Or he could signal for the battering ram, which would take care of the wooden door in seconds. It’d make a racket, sure, but at that point, if Harper was even here, he’d know they were too.
Signaling for the ram, Cam grabbed one set of handles as it was passed up, Nic across from him took hold of the other. They reared back, he counted it off—“Three, two, one”—and they heaved. The door shattered, in concert with all the first floor windows, shouts of “FBI!” and “BPD!” ringing out as they stormed inside.
Cam entered ahead of Nic, gun drawn, prepared for battle, only to be greeted with calls of “Clear” from each room.
Visors flipped up, the team heads met in the middle of the kitchen.
“First floor empty,” Matt confirmed.
“You go up,” Cam told Matt. “Di, take your team out back. We’ll take the basement.” The teams broke, Cam and Nic leading a group of agents toward the basement stairs that led off from the kitchen.
More locks. The battering ram came back out and they were through it in seconds.
To shouts of “Help! I’m down here!”
Cam made to run, but Nic grabbed him by his jacket, holding him back. “She might not be alone. Don’t run to your death.”
“Shannon Murphy?” he shouted.
“Yes, please, help!”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes, please, get me out of here before he comes back.”
“Slow, Boston,” Nic cautioned.
Cam took his advice, and they crept down the stairs, weapons at the ready. At the bottom, the other agents fanned out around them.
“Shannon, where are you?”
“Back here!”
They turned, spying another passage beneath the stairs.
“Flashlights on,” Cam said, and they followed the short hallway back.
“Here! Here!”
Cam shined his light toward her voice, and there, in the beam of his flashlight, on a grungy mattress was a handcuffed Shannon Murphy. He swept over the area with his light, Nic doing the same beside him, and once they confirmed the small confined area was clear, Cam moved closer. “FBI, we’re here to help.”
“Oh, thank God.” She started sobbing into the oversized T-shirt she wore, and Nic approached her other side, slowly, taking off his rain jacket and wrapping it around her.
“We’ve got you. You’re going to be okay.”
“Somebody find the lights,” Cam shouted.
“Located,” one of the other agents called, and clicked the switch.
Shannon squinted at the sudden flood of light, burrowing into Nic’s side. Her dark hair was matted, the T-shirt dirty, and Cam didn’t want to contemplate the stains on the mattress. But for as pale as she was, Nic suddenly blanched whiter. “What is it?” Cam asked.
“Turn around, Boston.”
He whipped around, then fell on his ass on the end of the mattress, all the wind knocked out of him.
The entire back wall was covered in pictures.
Of Erin.
Taken outside her school. On the playground. At the library. At the docks. Hell, in front of their house.
In this room.
His stomach lurched, and if not for Nic ripping his helmet off at the last possible second, he would have doomed the tactical gear to retirement. Instead, he managed to roll off and empty the contents of his stomach in the corner.
Nic was by his side when he uncurled, kneeling and heaving for breath. He looked over his shoulder, seeing one of the other agents carrying Shannon out. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for, Boston.”
“Contaminated the scene.”
“One tiny corner of it. And you didn’t hit any evidence.”
Evidence.
He started to look again toward the wall, but Nic grabbed his chin, forcing his gaze to him instead. “Can you stand?”
Cam nodded, but kept a hand wrapped around Nic’s as he wobbled to his feet. “Don’t look,” Nic said, putting himself between Cam and the wall of pictures as they walked past.
“But it’s evidence,” Cam argued. “It might tell us where she is. We have to—”
“You have to breathe first.”
Air, however, continued to be in short supply as they reached the main floor to a grim-looking Matt and Jamie. “There’s something you need to see,” Jamie said. “Drone picked it up, out back.” He moved to his other side. “Hold on,” he said, whether to him or Nic, Cam didn’t know.
In the end, it applied equally. Cam needed them both to hold him up when they reached the door, looked out over the big open field, and counted the flags the agents were sticking in the ground. A single stone sat atop each mound of dirt that was being cleared of weeds and flagged.
“Are those...” Cam couldn’t finish, the reality, the horror, too much to bear on top of everything else the last few days.
Nic gripped him firmly as Jamie confirmed the morbid truth. “Graves.”
* * *
They waited on-site for the Medical Examiner and two teams of techs—BPD and FBI—to arrive, working in concert to find out just how many victims Harper had claimed. Nic counted the flags once more as they prepared to leave. Ten, and he expected the number to grow. More bodies to examine to determine if any of them were Erin. Before they left, they spoke with the ME, Cam giving him as much identifying information as he could about Erin at the time of her disappearance, including braces on her teeth, a childhood break to her pinky finger that had left it crooked, and the St. Andrew’s medallion with its inlaid topaz she always wore. They left with the ME’s promise to contact them as soon as they found anything or made any determination as to whether one of the graves might be Cam’s sister’s.
From there, they swung by the station where Matt was already questioning Reid again on Harper’s possible whereabouts. Reid claimed not to know any other places Harper might be. Claimed not to know Harper that much at all, including that he was a serial kidnapper and murderer. According to Reid, Harper had hopped around the South End garages for decades, had had a nasty divorce, and mostly kept to himself. He also occasionally ran jobs for Koehler, so that was why Reid had roped him into helping take Shannon, to gain leverage on Murphy, an impressionable young cop from the same neighborhood who’d been under their thumb, and to win points with his boss. It was only supposed to be temporary. Harper had disappeared with Shannon after the garage fire, and Reid had thought Harper was just securing her elsewhere, maybe at the house in Lincoln, not disappearing with her for good. And certainly not adding her to the morbid collection in the backyard that Reid claimed to have no idea about.
It was well into the night by the time they made it back to Tufts Medical, and Nic had a feeling the night was far from over. They stopped to check on Shannon in the trauma unit, leaving Jamie in the hall as he tried to hack his way to some trail on Harper. He was no further when they rejoined him to head up to Edye’s room, and he stopped the search altogether, pocketing the phone, when they turned the corner onto the ICU ward. Good thing as walking-zombie Cam came to life at the sight outside his mother’s room. The entire family was gathered, together with a priest. It took both Nic and Jamie’s hands around his biceps to keep Cam from charging angrily forward. The crowd parted, and Bobby slipped away from the group.
“What’s going on?” Nic asked, as Cam demanded to know, “What the fuck is Father Patrick doing here?”
“Her blood pressure and temperature dropped a couple hours ago.”
“Why did no one call me?”
“We didn’t know—”
“They’re giving her last rites, just in case,” Bobby said, though there was no hope in his voice that Nic could detect, and by the way Cam crumpled, he’d heard the absence of the same.
It took everything in Nic not to step forward. Not to wrap his arms around the man he loved and try to ease his suffering.
Loved.
He loved Cam, plain and simple, and that’s what people did for those they loved. What he’d done once before and held himself back almost three decades from doing again. Until Cameron Byrne had walked into his life and not given him an option. Fuck, why had he ever wanted to hide this? How he felt about Cam was real, and the ache in his chest was as real as the pain he’d felt after the fall that’d ended his SEAL career.
Real and life-changing.
But he was held back, first by his own fear, and now by a choice that wasn’t his own to make, one that he had to respect.
He shot Jamie a pleading glance, desperate for someone to do the thing he couldn’t without potentially exposing more about their relationship to Cam’s family than Cam wanted out there. With a slight nod, Jamie moved to Cam’s side, drawing him into his long arms, and Nic wasn’t the least bit jealous. Yes, he wanted to be that person, but right now, he was just grateful Jamie was here to do what he couldn’t.
What he could do though was check on the status at the scene. Maybe bring Cam and his family peace another way. He excused himself, stepping back around the corner and dialing Matt.
“Matt, this is Price,” he said when the agent picked up. “Have we heard anything back from the ME?”
“Just got off the phone with him. Based on his preliminary inspection, none of the remains match the hallmarks Cam provided for Erin, and he doesn’t think any of the graves date back far enough to be hers.”
“Fuck. We need to know something, soon.”
“Cam’s mom?”
Nic braced his hand against the wall, leaning his forehead into it. “It’s not looking good.”
“We’ll keep processing. ME could be wrong. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
“Wait,” Nic said, catching him before he hung up. “Any leads on Harper’s whereabouts?”
“Nothing yet. We’re going to let Reid stew for a couple hours, then question him again.”
“Okay.” Nic dropped his arm, looking up to find Jamie and Cam rounding the corner. “Keep us posted.” He ended the call and dropped the phone back in his pocket.
“What’d they find?” Cam asked.
“Doesn’t look like any are Erin.”
Cam looked gutted but not all that surprised. “She’s the first kill. She’s probably someplace special. I need to go.”
He was already turning for the elevator when Nic shot out a hand, grasping his wrist.
“No, you need to be here with your family. I’ll go.”
Cam’s “No!” was loud, and just this side of desperate.
“I’ll go,” Jamie said. “Keep you both updated.”
Nic clasped his shoulder. “Thank you.”
Jamie nodded. Then to Cam, “Whatever you need.”
“I need you there.”
And by the death grip Cam had on Nic’s wrist, he needed him here.
The ache in Nic’s chest eased, a little.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cam slumped on the end of his hotel bed, shower-damp ends of his hair dripping water down the sides of his face and neck and over his chest, the latter heaving every so often. Whenever he remembered the wall of pictures of Erin in that basement, or all those graves in Harper’s backyard, or the fact that his mother could die at any minute.
He’d still be at the hospital if it
hadn’t been for his nieces and nephews, who’d refused to leave unless Uncle C left, thinking he knew best. That if Uncle C thought it okay to leave, then Nonna would recover, or at least hang on until they came back. Uncle C didn’t know that. What Cam knew was the kids needed sleep and the least he could do for his family was encourage that, seeing as he’d brought them nothing else but misery this past week. While it looked like Harper had likely taken Erin, they didn’t know where he or Erin were, what he’d done to her, or why she’d been taken in the first place. He had nothing to tell his mother, who was in a coma, barely hanging on, as if she was waiting for an answer he still didn’t have.
“You should lie down for a few.”
Cam shifted his gaze from the darkness outside the window to Nic standing in the doorway, coffee cup in hand. Hair likewise damp, he’d swung by his room, showered, and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. Further than Cam had gotten in just his boxer briefs.
“You shouldn’t have brought me coffee if you mean for me to sleep.”
“I didn’t actually believe you would.” Nic crossed the room and sat next to him, handing him the cup with a smile.
He drank, but the warm beverage failed to chase away the cold that’d settled inside him. “Any word from Matt or Jamie?”
Nic shook his head. “Checked in with them while you were in the shower. Still chasing down leads.”
“We should get going.” Cam threw back the rest of the coffee and started to stand.
Nic’s hand on his shoulder pushed him back down. “You need to breathe, Boston.”
“I’m breathing just fine.” He tried to shake off Nic’s hand, and when that didn’t work, tried forcefully pushing it away.
In moves too swift for his exhausted brain and body to keep up with, Nic knocked the cup from his hand, grabbed his wrist, crossed his arm in front of Cam’s body, and swung a leg behind him. The end result was Cam locked in Nic’s arms, his back to Nic’s chest. He tested the hold, and Nic tightened it. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Cam growled in frustration. “Dominic, we need to go—”
“Do you remember what you said to me last April, in your kitchen?”