Nic shook his head. “Not about this. It’s one hundred percent your call.”
“I feel like a coward. You, Aidan, and Jamie, you’re all out, and I?—”
Nic squeezed his fingers. “There’s no one right time, Boston. No one right way. It’s different for each person. Sometimes a person comes out all at once to everyone, which was the case for me. Sometimes it’s bit by bit, like Jamie, like you. In any event, it should always be by choice, not because they’ve been outed, issued an ultimatum, or had their hand forced. I’m not going to do that to you.”
The conviction of his words and in his fierce blue eyes made Cam wonder and worry more about Nic’s own coming out. There was more to it than he’d let on last spring, Cam was sure. And he was increasingly certain it had something to do with GS and the cypress tree inked on Nic’s back.
Nic turned over their hands and put something in his palm. “But if you want to build something here, Boston, you’re going to have to eventually. I’ll give you time, but I don’t want to hide forever. I can’t anymore.”
He withdrew his hand and slid off the bench, headed for the station’s entrance. Cam waited until he’d turned the corner to open his palm. In it was a folded airplane napkin. He peeled back the corners to reveal a rough sketch of a new Gravity label.
Fighting Boston Irish. An imperial stout. Gravity’s falling apricot logo was the top third of a Celtic clover.
Cam lost his breath, his heart too.
The future he wanted was right there—in his hand and walking into the station house to help solve a case that had haunted Cam for half his life. Yet it felt like the future he wanted—with Nic—was slipping away, the rope coming untethered and Cam floating farther out to sea.
Fifteen
“How’d the ransom demand come in?” Cam asked.
He sat on one side of the conference table—Nic on his right, Jamie and Matt on his left. Di was facilitating at the head of the table. On her other side, across from the federal contingency, sat Murphy, looking even more wrecked today, together with Smith and a BPD union rep.
Di pushed an evidence bag Cam’s way, a generic burner phone inside. “Video on the phone. It was dropped off at Murphy’s home.”
“Anyone see the courier?” Matt asked.
Murphy shook his head.
Cam drew the bag toward them. “Evidence has processed?”
Di nodded, and he pulled the phone out. Flipping it over, he opened the photo app and pressed Play on the only item there. A single video.
Nic and Jamie crowded close, while Matt stood behind him, viewing it over his shoulder. They collectively noted details as they watched.
“Basement,” Nic said, and Cam agreed, judging by the diffuse light coming from what looked like a sidewalk-level transom.
“Commercial building,” Matt said. “Electrical panel’s too big for residential.”
“A garage of some sort,” Jamie added. “The boxes stacked along the wall are from an auto parts dealer.” The gearhead would know. Cam recognized them too.
A figure appeared on-screen wearing a ski mask. Given their size, it was a male. The voice confirmed it a second later. “I have your daughter, Officer Murphy.”
Cam detected an accent not too far from his own. “Boston native.”
“If you want her back, here’s what you’re gonna do . . .” The suspect went on to describe how Murphy was to steal evidence that was in the D-4 evidence locker. “You do this,” the man said, “you’ll get Shannon back.”
The camera panned and rotated to the side of the room they hadn’t seen yet, and in the corner, on a thin stained mattress, huddled a teenage girl. Legs folded against her chest, she’d buried her face in her knees.
“Smile for the camera,” the man said, and the girl looked up.
Cam sucked in a breath. She looked so much like Erin. Dark hair, dark eyes, tears streaming down her face. In his periphery, he saw Nic’s hand twitch, like he’d been about to put it on Cam’s leg, but then his fingers curled around his own thigh instead. Cam shifted, brushing their knees together under the table. After their earlier conversation, after watching this and knowing that could have been Erin too, twenty years ago, he needed the connection. Nic didn’t move away, and that link helped Cam stomach the rest of the video. Through a close-up of Shannon’s tear-streaked face, another repetition of the kidnapper’s demands, and where to meet them for a handoff later that night. When the video ended, Cam closed the app and slowly slid the phone back in the evidence bag, letting his adrenaline bleed out as he gathered his thoughts.
“Do you have any idea who might be behind this?” he asked Murphy once he’d passed the bag back to Di.
Murphy wiped at his own tears. “I didn’t recognize the voice.”
“That’s not what Agent Byrne asked,” Matt said, reclaiming the seat on the other side of Jamie. “Is Koehler behind this?”
