Groaning to Nic’s right drew him into the living room.On the other side of the couch, an agent knelt over another, treating a leg wound.They hadn’t removed their helmets, but Nic could tell neither was Cam.They were thin and lanky, not the broad build of the former baller.
Was this the agent down?Or was Cam down somewhere too?“Where’s?—”
“Here, Price.”
Nic’s eyes shot up, connecting with Cam’s black ones across the room.Helmet off, dark hair ruffled, Cam looked fine, if tousled from a fight.A quick up and down of his person revealed no obvious injuries.
“Boston,” Nic breathed on a grateful sigh.“You okay?”
Cam nodded and Nic wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them, to claim that second kiss, to wet his worry-parched mouth with Cam’s lips and breath.The epitome of stupid and unprofessional.His haywire instincts were derailed by another agonized cry like the one he’d heard from the hallway.Grim, Cam tilted his head toward the room behind him.“You better come see this.”
Civilian down, Nic recalled, dread racing up his spine.
Was it Abby?
Following Cam into the room, Nic was relieved to see Abby kneeling on the bed, her springy dyed curls unmistakable, bouncing in the breeze from the open window.Relief, however, died a quick death as she shifted back onto her haunches.
Abby’s hands were covered in blood, but they were nowhere near as coated as the Serbian dignitary’s pressed to his wife’s chest, fighting a losing battle against the life draining out of her.
Hours later, Cam stood outside a sleeping Stefan Kristic’s hospital room, watching through the door’s narrow window as a nurse tended to his IVs.After they’d told him his wife had died, the inconsolable husband had had to be sedated and his ruptured stitches resewn.Kristic had been shot in the shoulder—a through-and-through, not a fatal chest wound like his wife’s, but painful nonetheless.
“He sure did make a mess of things,” the nurse muttered as she stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her.
“He’ll be okay, though?”Cam asked.
“As well as can be expected,” she said with grim sympathy for the man in the bed and for a beleaguered Cam.
He tried to put on a smile, figuring she’d had enough bleakness for one day.“You got a soda machine around these parts?”
The smile or his accent must have been convincing enough, drawing a small grin from her.“Sodaandsnacks.”She snaked an arm through his and tugged him down the hall.“Follow me, handsome.”
His own gray mood unfortunately returned as he stared at the little red lights on the vending machine.Thank God Nurse Adams, who’d slipped him her number, had been called away before his horror at the prices registered.After eight months in the Bay Area, he shouldn’t be surprised—everything cost a fucking fortune here—but two-fifty for a can of soda?Resigned, and in desperate need of caffeine, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.A lonely dollar was all that greeted him.The horrors today just kept mounting.
Though Cam only had himself to blame for the earlier one.
What was supposed to have been a straightforward takedown had turned into a bloodbath.He’d had three teams in position, all his best agents, and the tip had been solid.Scott Chestnut’s crew had moved on the artifacts.What Cam hadn’t foreseen was one of Scott’s crew turning on him—his second-in-command, Rebecca Wright, who it appeared was working with the third party who’d tried to rip off the heist.The artifacts hadn’t been stolen, and all but one of their primary suspects were in custody, but things had gone sideways as fuck in the process.
Maybe he should have let Nic lead.The former SEAL was certainly capable, even if an Assistant US Attorney leading an FBI team into a raid wasn’t exactly protocol.But if that had been Nic in the middle of the firefight...
Cam banished the thought, only to hear Lauren’s voice in his head, shouting that Command was under fire.At the pop of rifle fire hitting metal and glass, he’d faltered a split second, feeling disconnected, helpless, and overcome with worry for Nic.Was that when Stefan or Anica Kristic had been shot?Or his agent?Had someone taken a bullet because he was distracted?He’d made that mistake before, getting distracted by what he wanted, and someone’s life had been stolen in the process.
Someone dear to him.
Wallet still in hand, he withdrew the laminated library card he always carried, running a thumb over a name that wasn’t his.The card had been faded and wrinkled decades ago—well-used—and if not for the effort to preserve it, he wouldn’t have this reminder of what—who—had been lost when he’d been young and distracted.
This was why he had rules.
This was also why you weren’t supposed to get involved with colleagues.Granted, it had worked out for his best friend, but Jamie and Aidan were no longer colleagues.
Not that he and Nic technically were either—colleagues or involved.They worked for separate agencies and one kiss did not a relationship make, even if they had been dancing around an attraction to each other for months.
An attraction that had boiled over in that one kiss...
Slipping the card back in his wallet and pocketing the leather billfold, Cam slumped against the wall and closed his eyes, recalling the icy hot glare of Nic’s blue ones from across a hotel elevator.Returning to their rooms after Jamie and Aidan’s wedding, he and Nic had been arguing when Cam’s beer-and-whiskey-soaked brain decided the best way to win the argument and shut the man up was to put his mouth to better use.
Two strides across the elevator cab and he’d grabbed Nic’s sharp, angular jaw and slammed their mouths together.Never one to back down, the prosecutor had argued back, as was their way, but with his tongue instead of words.Forcing his way into Cam’s mouth, he’d taken control of the kiss and owned it.Owned him.Seconds later, when Nic had pushed him out of the elevator onto his floor, Cam had been an aching, turned-on mess.
Neither had spoken of the kiss in the two weeks since.Nic probably thought he didn’t remember it.There had been hours of beer and whiskey shots and dueling pianos preceding it.Nic sure as fuck remembered it, though.His pale blues strayed to Cam’s mouth more often, he stood just that bit closer whenever they were in the same room, and he argued with him more hotly.Like he wanted, consciously or not, to incite another explosive reaction.
