Dr.Elizabeth Jong pulled back the sheet and Nic was surprised his wasted-away father didn’t vanish into dust alongside the smoldering ashes of his happy ending.The bags under Curtis’s eyes were purple, his blond hair turned white was all but gone, a bruise bloomed on one side of his head, and the deep lines around his mouth made the perma-frown he wore in life even more pronounced in death.The personification of the miserable man he’d been.
“Cause of—” Nic started to ask, only to be cut off by Aidan.
“You need to make the identification first.”
Nic lifted his chin and cleared his throat, making sure his voice was clear for the recorder hanging above the autopsy table.He’d seen cases go sideways before due to inaudible identifications.He wasn’t about to let that happen in this one.“Assistant US Attorney Dominic Curtis Price, only son of Curtis Stanton Price, identifying the body tagged”—he looked to Jong, who rattled off the number from the toe tag, then continued—“as Curtis Stanton Price.”It was a cold, clinical identification, which was all Nic could manage at the moment with his mind miles ahead of his emotions.
“Cause of death?”he asked, returning to his previous question and gesturing at the bruising.“Blunt force trauma?”
Jong shook her head.“Preliminary exam indicates a heart attack as cause of death.”
Cam sucked in a sharp breath.They’d almost lost Cam’s mother to a heart attack two months ago.She’d pulled through, unlike Curtis.
“He didn’t have a heart condition or risk factors,” Nic said.
“Would you have known?”Aidan asked.
Fair point.Until recently, he and Curtis had been estranged for almost three decades.“I’ll talk to Mary.”The former housekeeper would know better than anyone if his father had had any warning signs or recently diagnosed conditions.But no matter what Mary told them, Nic had tried enough cases to know heart attacks could be induced.And Curtis, with his mountains of debt, was a prime target.He didn’t think Curtis would poison himself—he was too proud for suicide—but at least one of his lenders, Duncan Vaughn, was under investigation by the FBI for a whole host of crimes, including murder.“Who found him?”Nic asked.
“Harris Kincaid.”His father’s executive assistant, also Vaughn’s nephew-in-law who Nic had flipped months ago.“At the family office.”
“Any indications of foul play?”
“None on the preliminary examination,” the coroner answered.
“I want a full autopsy including a comprehensive tox screen.”
“It’ll delay the disposition of the estate,” Aidan said.
Nic had looped him in on his father’s situation this past summer, and as a lawyer-trained-agent, Aidan recognized that administering Curtis’s will, liquidating his assets, and paying off his lenders as fast as possible was in everyone’s best interest.Not that there was going to be enough cash to satisfy all of them.But Nic wasn’t about to let months of work building a case against the worst one go to waste.Not when he was this close to nailing Duncan Vaughn and not when he and his team had control over the evidence for a change.
“I can make it look like the disposition is proceeding,” Nic said.“Meet with the family lawyer.Get it rolling.Give us time to complete the autopsy.”
“Figured you’d say that, so I already filled out the paperwork.”Aidan held out an arm toward the adjacent office.“You just have to sign it.”
“Let’s go do that, then.”He turned toward the metal swinging doors, but Cam stopped him, fingers grasping his wrist.
Dark eyes swung from him to the table and back.“Don’t you want?—”
Whatever Cam was going to say, the answer was “No.”
The only thing Nic wanted to do was get out of this cold, antiseptic-smelling room.He had a call to make.A follow-up to the one he’d made two months earlier when he’d learned Vaughn was out of the country “on business.”More accurately, out of the country sheltering assets.The slow trickle of funds out of domestic accounts into foreign ones and the movement of goods via international freight were not enough to violate any laws or trigger any red flags if you weren’t looking.But Nic was looking and the pattern was unmistakable.He had all the orders ready, handed down by the grand jury—asset seizure, search warrants, the full RICO and financial crimes spectrum—and no Vaughn to serve them on.Sure, he could serve them on Vaughn Investments but many of the charges were against Vaughn as an individual.More than that, Nic wanted to see his face when he did it.He wanted the gangster-fronting-as-investor to know he hadn’t been intimidated.
That he would be the one to take him down.
Two
Cam closed the front door and leaned back against it, watching Nic soldier across their living room.He’d changed out of his dress blues and into a suit before they’d left Dulles but every other part of Nic was still on-mission.
Spine straight, shoulders back, step determined as he rolled their suitcase with one hand and held the phone to his ear with the other, barking orders.After signing the autopsy paperwork, he’d immediately started making calls, not letting Cam get a word in edgewise.
He was the FBI agent, yet it was Nic on the horn, rallying the troops.First to Eddie, his former SEAL teammate and brewery co-owner, giving him a heads-up to keep his sidearm close and put extra security on Gravity and their employees, though not telling him why.Then to Lauren Hall, their cyber agent team member, and Mel, former Special Agent in Charge and Jill of all trades, as he set up an all-hands meeting for the ass crack of dawn.
Never mind that the ungodly daybreak was only a few hours away.
Never mind that they’d been awake since the last sunrise.
Never mind that Nic’s father had died.
