He wouldn’t have gotten a chance anyway, Nic suddenly dropping his arms.“Did Harris know about this?Did he prepare these?”
“That’s on my list of questions,” Aidan said.“If he shows up.”
Nic glanced at his watch.“He missed his appointment, didn’t he?”
Aidan nodded.“We sent agents after him.”
“Maybe he’s passed out drunk somewhere,” Lauren offered, then quelled when Nic shot her an icy glare.“Sorry, sorry.”She turned back to the computer.“I’ll go back to decryption.”
“How much longer?”Aidan asked.
“Where’s your husband?”she shot back.“I’m working as fast as I can, but it would go faster with another me.”
Cam bit back a laugh.
Aidan, not so much, snickered aloud.“He’ll be back from Washington tomorrow.”Jamie was up there for a game, then a couple days of scouting.
“Vaughn wants it to go faster,” Nic spoke up.“The press this morning, the new loans, murdering my father.We need to be moving faster.”
Moore pushed aside a stack of bags, exposing a lockbox.“Maybe something in here will help.”He pushed it toward the center of the table.“We found it at the residence.”He looked to Nic.“This is skirting the warrant.I’m willing to open it, but you need to be onboard too.”
“It’s a gun case, isn’t it?”Nic said.“We have evidence of illegal weapons.There may be more in there.”He turned to Aidan.“You want to do the honors?”
Aidan smirked, withdrawing a slim leather pouch from his inside coat pocket.Lockpick tools.Nic could have asked Cam to do it or Cam could have offered—he’d be faster at it than Aidan—but Nic wouldn’t put him in that situation again.And Cam wouldn’t offer unless it was necessary.They were already toeing enough lines.
As it was, Aidan, a better-than-average lockpick, a skill shared by the Talley brothers, had it open in minutes.“It’s not guns.”He narrowed his eyes as he turned the box around.
Cam and Nic both stood, leaning over to get a better look inside.
At pictures.
Polaroids, snapshots, negatives.All of the same woman.
She was beautiful and not in Duncan Vaughn’s typical arm-candy model sort of way.Strawberry blond hair, hazel eyes, and an easy, natural smile.
And by Duncan’s appearance in the ones he shared with her, they were around the same age.Some of the photos had to be decades old, faded and curling at the corners.Cam moved to pick one up, and Nic grabbed his wrist, holding him back.
Cam turned and gasped.He’d never seen Nic look so pale, so surprised.He wouldn’t have thought that level of shock possible on the former SEAL.
“Who is she?”Cam whispered.
Nic loosened his grip and reached forward, snagging one of the woman.He stared down at the Polaroid and Cam realized it wasn’t only shock in his eyes.There was sadness and longing there too.It was like he’d seen a ghost, one he missed very much.
“You know her, Price?”Moore asked.
“Victoria Scott.”He laid the photo down reverently, then looked up, not hiding his pain from anyone.“She was almost my stepmother.”
Seven
Cam pulled the truck to a stop outside Mel and Danny’s condo, on the curb of the neighborhood park that anchored South Park, and Nic couldn’t help but shiver.Earlier this year, they’d had a mission go sideways here, Bowers throwing a wrench into their sting and Nic getting thrown over the hood of a car as a result.
“Think it’d be too much to ask them to move?”Cam mumbled.
Nic glanced at the mind reader in the driver’s seat—surprised and not.They were so in sync, had both lived through that night, that Nic wasn’t shocked Cam’s thoughts had mirrored his own.What was surprising was how fast they’d gotten here.In what felt like no time at all, he’d gone from meeting and knowing Cam as Jamie’s best friend to needing him like he was the other half of his soul.
Only one other time had he fallen so quickly and so completely.
Memories of Garrett flooded his mind as he stared out the window, eyes lighting on the perfectly arranged trees around the park, fall colors glowing in the halos of the streetlamps.Garrett’s mother, Victoria, an arborist and landscape artist, had been brought in to save the cypress trees on the family property.She’d been a quiet, unassuming presence, unfailingly kind, and a breath of fresh air after loud and brash wife number two who hadn’t lasted a year.Even his father’s mood was improved by Victoria at first.When he was gone on business trips, when he wasn’t there to look down on his son for doing “yard work,” Victoria would encourage Nic to help, would teach him about plants and bringing things to life.Each day was a new discovery, a new ounce of self-confidence, Victoria having a positive effect on him and on the environment around him.Then one day at the start of the summer, she’d brought her son and discovery was too simple a word for the ways Nic’s life had changed forever.
