Nineteen
Cam was in an unmarked BPD Mustang with Jamie, racing after Smith and Murphy. They’d traced the Camaro from the botched exchange last night to one of the chop shops where Reid Porter worked doing the books—or cooking them. If Reid thought he was getting a meet with Cam, that he might leverage Cam’s past against him, then, taken together with that smug-sounding voicemail, it stood to reason that Reid would actually show up for this meet. He’d think it in his benefit, a power play, which Cam hoped would leave Shannon relatively unguarded at either the chop shop or Reid’s residence for Nic and Matt to rescue.
They were on their way to check those out while Cam and Jamie led two other teams to the meet. Cam had had to firmly and finally trample the instinct to sideline Nic for his protection. They needed Nic’s deft touch with abuse victims on the rescue end of this one, and Nic could protect himself, no doubt. Didn’t make Cam any less anxious about sending him into a potentially dangerous situation. The difference this time, though, was that Cam had accepted his nervousness as being more about himself than Nic. He couldn’t lose Nic, not when it was increasingly apparent he needed Nic to ground him, to remind him not to compromise Agent Byrne when Cameron Byrne, brother, was clawing beneath the suit.
“He’s more than capable,” Jamie said, reading him like a book. “And Matt and his whole team are with him.”
“I know that.” Cam drummed his thumb on the passenger windowsill. “Still too many variables.”
“You’ve dealt with more before.”
True, except Cam hadn’t dealt with the variable of being in love before. Of sending the object of his affections into the line of fire. He propped his elbow on the windowsill and stared out at the passing landscape.
“You ready to talk about what’s really going on?” Jamie asked.
“Me putting my family through hell again,” he deflected. “No thanks.”
“We can talk about that. Or we can talk about you being in love with Price and not knowing how to tell your family.”
Cam dropped his arm and leaned his head back, eyes closed. “Daily cursing myself for recruiting you into the FBI.”
Jamie chuckled. “What are friends for?” Jamie shot him a side-eye then focused again on the road, weaving in and out of traffic at a breakneck pace, closing in on the red dot displayed on the phone. “He makes you happy?”
“And frustrates the hell out of me.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Before, it was him who wanted to hide.”
“But Price is out.”
Cam shook his head. “Not about that,” he said, drawing a raised brow from his friend. “Reason that isn’t mine to tell, which he’s translated to a need to protect me.”
Jamie scoffed. “Fuck, y’all are perfect for each other.” He shifted the car into a higher gear, throwing Cam back against the seat and interrupting the middle finger he’d been about to shoot at him. “So, your family, then?”
“Not exactly the time to spring this on them.”
“Maybe not, but you had to know it could go this way. That you might have to have this conversation with them one day.”
“But it could just as easily have gone a different way.”
“But it didn’t.” Jamie smiled, the lovesick-fool grin that meant he was thinking of Aidan. “Love doesn’t care.”
Would his family though?
The police radio unit crackled, positions reporting in.
“How can you drive like a bat out of hell and have this conversation?”
“This is all muscle memory.” Jamie’s grin morphed from lovesick to sly as he kicked the Mustang into sport mode, revving it faster. Someone was having fun with the souped-up police vehicle.
Cam was mid-eye roll when Jamie swerved around a slow-moving Prius, and the back end of a fire-engine red, mid-nineties Camaro came into view three cars ahead. Not the police cruiser they’d been after, but Cam knew this car. From the footage of Murphy’s meet last night and from high school.
“That’s Reid,” he said. “He’s had that car since high school.”
“What do you want to do?” Jamie asked.
“Stay on them.” Cam reached for the police radio. “Murphy, Smith, pick up!” He tried to raise them twice more with no luck. “Beta team, this is Alpha. In pursuit of suspect Porter. Beta, intercept Murphy and Smith.”
