“If I can get him to actually confess on record . . .”
“By seducing him.” Aidan, very not calm, shot out of his chair, sending it slamming back into the metal table. “You’re walking a thin line of entrapment.”
“Entrapment requires I induce him to commit a crime he wouldn’t otherwise commit. He’s gonna commit a crime. I’m not talking him into anything.”
“No,” Aidan said, pacing in front of him. “It’s just you talking yourself into an early grave.”
Nic stood, squaring off against him. He wasn’t angry or upset. He was actually humbled by Aidan’s concern, by his commitment to protecting his family, including him.
But the same held true for Nic. “Vaughn’s gunning for me, my livelihood, and my family.” He punctuated the last word with a significant glance around the room at the members of his family gathered here. “If I don’t start talking soon—if I can’t find a different song to sing—then I’m going to be dead anyway. And I refuse to take any of my family to the grave with me.”
Ten
Run out of his mom’s room by the night nurses, Cam traded the chair by her bed for the one in the hallway. She’d come through the bypass fine, though she was still mostly asleep, only waking once during his shift—he checked the time on his phone—which ended shortly. He was starting to fade too after a day of searching through books and archives. Not even the atrociously uncomfortable hallway chair was stalling the nodding off.
He checked his phone again. Almost midnight there; he’d still be awake.
Nic picked up on the second ring. “You on night shift again?”
“West Coast time, relatively,” he said around a yawn. “Dad can go home and sleep, and Bobby and Quinn can be with their families.”
“You need to sleep too.”
“Keith comes on at three. Only God and the Marine Corps know what time zone his body is set to. I’ll sleep then.”
Nic laughed, low and soft. “I remember that, never quite sure where or when you are.”
Cam slouched in his chair, closing his eyes against the florescent lights and white walls. He could commiserate with them both. Not quite sure where and when he was. He needed to be here with his family, and today at the station, he was reminded of the people he missed working with. But Nic’s voice, his laugh, made Cam want to be someplace different too. He felt grounded in Nic’s presence, adrift without him.
“Hey, Boston, you still there?”
“Yeah, sorry.” He opened his eyes and ran a hand through his hair, tugging it as if he could tug himself into the here and now. Awake. “Zoned out there a minute.”
“That thing I mentioned about sleep . . .”
“Zip it, smart-ass.” Nic laughed again, and Cam hated to have to upend the easy mood of the only easy conversation he’d had today, but he needed an update worse and a distraction worse still. “Anything new on Vaughn?”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
Cam gritted his teeth and righted himself in the chair. “I’ll worry about you if I goddamn want to.”
“I said you don’t need to worry about that because I brought in Aidan and AD Moore like you suggested.”
Cam unclenched his jaw and released a giant sigh. “Thank fuck.” He’d still worry, no stopping that, but this was progress. More people on the team meant maybe they’d fix this shit with Vaughn and Curtis before more bullets flew. At Nic.
“We’ve got the full FBI files now,” Nic went on. “We’re following the money, looking for Vaughn’s Bureau and USAO sources. Fucking game of whack-a-mole but we’ll get there.”
“And when you do?”
“Pressure, and if I make a run at Vaughn directly?—”
Cam launched out of his chair. “If you do what?”
“It’s fine, Boston.”
“The fuck it is,” he shot back, hand braced on the opposite wall, trying to stop himself from punching through it. “I should be there.”
“You should be right where you are. I can take care of me.”
