He withdrew his hand, wrapping his fingers around his glass and hiding his words behind the rim.“Later, Boston.”
Four
Cam paused the playback of yesterday’s operation footage.On the monitor, Nic froze mid-stride, halfway between the surveillance van and buildings, standing in the middle of the street.Exposed, in the line of fire, with only Beta team overhead for cover.The image had plagued Cam all of yesterday, only waning in Nic’s presence at the brewery last night.It had come creeping back in his dreams, haunting him straight through to morning.It should have been the memory of Anica Kristic, pale and bleeding out on the bed, that tormented him, but every time he’d closed his eyes, he imagined Nic bleeding out in the street instead.
“Byrne!”
Aidan’s sharp bark from the speakerphone snapped Cam out of his waking nightmare.He was so used to Aidan calling him by his first name now that the last name address was jarring.Rankled more than a bit too.
Taking a measured breath, Cam leaned forward and braced his elbows on his desk.“This isn’t my first rodeo, Talley.”
Aidan sighed heavily on the other end of the line, and Cam pictured him raking a hand through his red hair.“I know that, and I didn’t mean to imply it was or that you couldn’t handle this.Just please tell me you’re not blowing smoke up my ass.”
“I blow smoke up Bowers’s ass, not yours.Everything’s under control, partner.”
There was a sharp knock on his door, and before he could answer, Lauren stuck her head inside.He flagged her in and gestured at the visitor chairs.
“I want status updates every four hours,” Aidan said.
Lauren dramatically rolled her eyes and Cam bit back a grin.“Roger that,” he managed.“Now get back to enjoying the whiskey.Both kinds.”
Irish expat Aidan had taken his new husband, nicknamed “Whiskey,” to the motherland for their honeymoon.The jokes were too easy.
Lauren’s hand flew to her mouth, trying and failing to stifle her laughter, as Cam hung up on Aidan’s Gaelic curses.She spoke behind her fingers, nails a shiny shade of purple this morning.“Sorry, I couldn’t help it.”
“At least someone found it funny.”
“Aidan would too, if he weren’t a control freak not in control right now.”
“No shit.”Cam wasn’t one of the FBI’s best K&R agents for nothing, but he could also understand that this was Aidan’s first big case as SAC and it had gone sideways without him, not that any of them could have predicted Becca’s betrayal.
“So’s that one,” Lauren said, pointing at the freeze-frame of Nic.“Do you think he wears a suit on his days off too?”
Not always.Cam remembered that tasting at the brewery a few months back.Remembered Nic dressed down in beat-up jeans and a snug Gravity tee, his muscles outlined in black cotton and the dark ends of a tattoo peeking out from beneath his short sleeves and crew neck.Lord only knew what was hiding beneath his daily suits and business wear.
“For what it’s worth,” Lauren said, “I’m a fan of the weekend dressed-down policy you’ve got going while the boss is gone.”
Cam tried not to wince.It was a professional rule he hated breaking and would have never considered it in Boston.But dry cleaning here cost twice what it had back home, and he’d frankly run out of clean dress clothes.
Seeing as designer jeans and a vanity tee counted as business casual in San Francisco, his washable Dockers and knitted polo certainly fit the bill and lowered his dry cleaning costs.
“Enjoy it while it lasts.”Cam snapped closed his laptop and gave Lauren his full attention.“What’d you find on Becca?”
She ran a hand across the computer in her lap.Not standard issue, given its alien-head logo and plethora of stickers.“Don’t ask how,” she said.
Cam held up his hands.“Not asking.”With a hacker for a best friend, he’d learned that lesson years ago.
Opening the laptop, Lauren spoke as her fingers flew across the keyboard.“Before, we were focused on Scott’s accounts.”
He peered at the account numbers on the case board in the conference room between his and Aidan’s offices.Nic had a bigger war room two floors down, but they had a robust setup here too.Including teetering stacks of financial records.“We checked each crew member.”
“We did, but once we identified the job down payment in Scott’s, we paused our deep dive into wonky finances of the other crew members.”
“Wonky?”
She glared up at him, kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed.“Yes,wonky.”
If Cam didn’t know better, he’d take her for a smart-mouthed teen.But the thirty-year-old analyst-turned-agent was wicked smart, too observant for her own good, and a frighteningly good shot with a Colt 1911 in her tiny hands.Almost as good as she was with a computer, which was truly frightening.
