Imperial Stout (Trouble Brewing #1)

Chapter 1

One

One kiss.

One drunken, ill-advised kiss was going to ruin this entire fucking operation.

Because Nic was two seconds away from charging out of the surveillance van and telling the man he’d kissed to stand the fuck down.

Nic’s reputation as the calm, cool prosecutor would be shattered.

Never mind that doing so would likely kill any chance of a second kiss.

A second one would be even more ill-advised than the first. Didn’t mean he wanted it any less.

He also didn’t want Agent Cameron Byrne to die.

And if Nic’s reputation went up in flames to save the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, then so be it. It was all going to hell these days anyway. Botching a takedown of one of the most wanted heist crews in operation would be icing on the cake.

But at least Cam would be alive.

Inside the surveillance van, Nic ripped off his suit coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and had his hand over his sidearm, ready to draw and move, when static crackled from the speakers in the wall of monitors.

Cam’s Boston brogue followed. “Alpha team on the move.”

Too late.

Fuck.

“Copy that, Alpha,” replied Agent Lauren Hall, who was running Command from inside the van with him. “Beta, Charlie, report.”

“Beta team in position.”

“Charlie team in position.”

Beta team was on the roof of the luxury apartment building, right above the target penthouse, while Charlie team was a floor below.

Cam and his assault team, kitted out in tactical gear, were moving up the interior stairwell, the camera attached to Cam’s helmet giving Nic and Lauren a bird’s-eye view of their ascent.

Nic should have been with them, should have been leading them.

A former Navy SEAL, he had the training, even if he had spent the past fifteen years in a courtroom.

Not to mention this was his case—a joint task force between his US Attorney’s office and the FBI’s San Francisco field office.

But Cam had pulled rank and sidelined him.

Enough, Dominic! Cam had shouted sometime around the tenth or so round of their argument over who would take lead. I catch the criminals; you lock ’em up. End of fucking story. Technically, Cam had been right.

Didn’t make Nic’s suddenly parched mouth any easier to tolerate.

“Alpha team in position,” Cam reported, voice quieter as they stood by the stairwell door outside the penthouse apartment.

“Alpha, Command,” Beta radioed. “Movement to the south.”

“Hostiles?” Cam barked back.

Nic scanned the monitors. Where the fuck had they come from?

The entire two-block radius around the building had been cordoned off and all the surrounding Financial District buildings cleared.

Relatively painlessly at the ass crack of dawn on a Saturday morning, this area of downtown San Francisco predominately offices.

Had the feds missed something or someone on their checks?

Typing fast and furious, Lauren tapped into a security feed on the opposite side of the apartment building. One of the wall monitors flickered, changing its vantage point. She glanced up from her laptop, relaying, “Two masked individuals carrying assault rifles.”

The dryness crept down Nic’s throat, memories of heat and sand and blood at the edge of his consciousness. Always associated with combat, always there when he was worried, and right now, with new armed players on the scene, his worry for Cam and the teams was magnified.

“Approaching south stairwell,” Lauren said. “Ninety seconds until they reach your position, Alpha.”

“Part of the crew?” Cam said.

Nic swallowed, forcing saliva into his mouth, and uttered a single word. “No.”

He’d investigated this crew for over a year. He knew every detail of every member—height, build, weapon of choice, how they moved—and these two were no one he’d studied. “Third-party rip-off,” he surmised.

“Charlie team, move to intercept,” Cam ordered. “Alpha team moving on primary. Priority one, victim rescue. Two, secure the target. Three, apprehend suspects.”

The target was a portable voice-activated safe containing priceless Serbian artifacts for a museum exhibit next weekend.

Millions in jewels, historical texts and sheet music, and textiles that had been rescued from war-torn Kosovo two decades ago.

The victims were a Serbian dignitary and his wife whose voices were required to open said safe.

They’d only just arrived in town last night, the artifacts and their safe not yet moved to the museum’s secure cage.

“Our CI is not to be harmed,” Nic reminded him. Abigail Monroe was their confidential informant inside the crew.

“Roger that,” Cam replied. “On my count . . .”

Cam got as far as “two” before a hail of gunfire erupted.

Everywhere.

Inside the target apartment, on the floor below, and outside the surveillance van. Shots pinged the metal grill and raced up the hood toward the windshield.

And inside Nic, fear and worry exploded—heat everywhere—before his military training kicked in and his emotions morphed into action.

He was fine, he wasn’t in the desert, he’d been trained in urban combat, and fuck it, he needed to protect his position.

Once that was done, he’d help Cam whether the bullheaded ASAC wanted him to or not.

“Go, go, go!” Cam shouted, dispensing with quiet.

In Nic’s ear, heavy boots pounded up metal stairs, doors slammed open, and gunfire continued to pop, shattering what sounded like wood and glass.

Nic’s balance wavered, whether from the strangled shouts in his ear, a similar clenching of his chest, or the sway of the van under assault, he couldn’t say.

Lauren’s shout of “Command under fire!” snapped him out of it.

And back to the on-monitor view from Cam’s helmet cam, which abruptly wobbled, the agent’s step faltering.

“Boston, go!” Nic yelled. “I got this.”

“Beta, secure Command. Charlie, intercept third party, back up Alpha. Go!” Cam said, before charging out of the stairwell with his team.

Nic tore his gaze from Cam’s feed and focused on the others, searching for the shooter who had paused firing on the van. “Sweep the area,” he told Lauren as he mentally rewound and counted the previous shots. He needed to know how long the next barrage would go on before he could make a move.

Her glittery nails flew across the keyboard, new angles and views of the surrounding Financial District blocks appearing on the monitors.

A bright glare on one screen nearly blinded him. “Stop there!”

Early morning sunlight bounced off glass—a sniper’s scope—on the second story of the under-construction building across the street.

Nic reached for his sidearm, then, thinking better of it, grabbed a rifle and scope out of the van’s cage.

Darting to the front, he crouched between the seats, behind the dash, as bullets slammed again into the windshield.

Cracks snaked across the outside but the reinforced glass continued to hold.

Assured of its strength, Nic lifted his head and peered through the scope, spying the shooter’s nest. “Hall!” he shouted back into the van as he attached the scope to the rifle. “Tell Beta team to lay down cover.”

Lauren relayed the order, and suppressive fire sprayed from the roof of the apartment building.

Nic shoved open the driver-side door and rolled out of the van, using the door as a shield.

Shots pinged the outside while Beta team’s answering fire whizzed overhead.

He counted the sniper’s shots as he lowered the window.

Reload in three, two, one . . . Another break in the fire.

Fist raised, he signaled Beta team to hold and rose, bracing his rifle on the window ledge and lining up his shot. At the first glimmer of sunlight on the shooter’s scope, Nic fired, unleashing a full mag into the nest.

Weapon emptied, he crouched behind the door and waited. No return fire came.

“You’re clear,” Lauren confirmed after several seconds. “No sign of movement.”

Standing, Nic tossed the rifle on the driver’s seat and drew his pistol. “I’m going after the shooter.”

He was halfway across the street when “Alpha team. Agent down! Civilian down!” echoed through the van’s open window. “Radio for EMS!”

Cam.

Nic’s already racing heart sped with another burst of fear-soaked adrenaline. He hung a U-turn and sprinted for the apartment building.

“Get someone in that other building,” he shouted to Lauren as he passed the van. Inside the building, he yanked open the stairwell door and took the steps three at a time, racing toward Cam and the scene. Weapon at the ready, he exited onto the penthouse hallway.

And into eerie quiet. No gunfire. No shouts. Until an anguished cry broke the silence.

Nic ran the last few feet to the target apartment, heart in his bone-dry throat, and skidded inside across the slick marble foyer. The place looked like a disaster area. Sunlight reflected off broken glass, splintered furniture littered the space, and blood stained the walls and floor.

Nic half scrambled, half tiptoed around the cavernous apartment, seeking the source of the blood while trying not to destroy evidence, heart climbing his throat with each step.

Past the foyer, he saw the crew’s ringleader handcuffed to the dining bar’s footrest, and next to him, similarly restrained, their breaking and entering specialist. The former’s right arm was covered in blood, but the graze on his outer shoulder didn’t look life-threatening.

Groaning to Nic’s right drew him into the living room. On the other side of the couch, an agent knelt over another, treating a leg wound. They hadn’t removed their helmets, but Nic could tell neither was Cam. They were thin and lanky, not the broad build of the former baller.

Was this the agent down? Or was Cam down somewhere too? “Where’s—”

“Here, Price.”