Chapter 3 #2
Red-hot rage surged through Nic. He kept a lid on it, barely, taking a measured breath and keeping his aim steady, an idle tune flitting through his head. “I asked who sent you here.”
Goon One reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a card. He held it out to Nic. “Our employer wants to be sure you’re aware of the issue.”
A mind-boggling dollar amount was scribbled on the back of the heavy ecru cardstock. Nic turned it over and bit back a curse as he read the printed block letters.
VAUGHN INVESTMENTS.
He should have fucking known. Duncan Vaughn, the man Nic’s father was apparently indebted millions to, was a prominent “real estate investor,” among other things. Crook was more accurate.
“That what those shots at me earlier today were about?” Nic asked.
Silence from the Goon Squad.
“I haven’t spoken a word to my father in twenty-seven years,” Nic carried on, “and I don’t want a fucking cent of his money. Never did. He sells his properties, Vaughn can take the money. Leave me and my brewery the fuck out of it.”
“Your last name Price?” Goon One said.
Nic gritted his teeth.
“We’re just here to remind you.”
“Take your reminders and shove them up your ass.”
Goon Two smirked. “I hear you’re fond of shoving things in asses.”
Nic snapped. He shot out a leg, sweeping the thug’s out from under him, dropping him to the ground, and shoved the pistol in his face, all the while keeping the other weapon trained on Goon One.
“I don’t want to see either of you here again.
If you set one foot on these premises or inside the brewery, or harass any of my staff, I’ve got weapons deadlier than these. And I know how to use them.”
He stepped back, far enough for Goon Two to scramble to his feet.
He could take these two into custody right now.
Cuff them and call the cops or Cam to come get them.
But in the past, he’d seen Vaughn’s goons get off with barely a slap on the wrist. Nic would get more out of this encounter by letting them go, tracing the weapons, and fishing for more information, without letting on that he was going to cause trouble.
“Give those back to us,” Goon Two said, jutting his chin at the pistols.
“No way in hell.” Nic’s aim didn’t waver. He’d held weapons aloft for much longer than this before. “Now get the fuck out of here.”
The dark-haired one moved, preparing to attack, but Blondie had had enough. He put a hand out, holding him back. “Another time, Mr. Price.”
Nic sure as fuck hoped not.
They disappeared out the back lot, a car roaring to life and peeling away seconds later. Clicking on the pistols’ safeties, Nic shoved them in his back waistband and picked up the phone he’d dropped in the scuffle.
The Unknown caller had hung up. No way to call back either. “Shit!”
Hurrying inside, he slammed the door closed behind him, the plate glass rattling, and forced his keyed-up self to wait for the lock to reengage.
Once it glowed red, he headed for the tasting bar, laid the handguns and phone out on a bar towel, then poured himself another pint of Pils.
He quenched his dry mouth and waited for his pulse to slow.
For his mind to move past worry—for his brewery, his business, his future—and on to formulating a plan to save it.
He needed information. And backup.
The unofficial sort if he wanted to keep whatever mess his father had gotten into from fucking up his own life.
Or worse, threatening someone he cared about, the list of targets having grown alarmingly long over the past year.
Before, it had been a short list—his SEAL team, Eddie, Gravity, the handful of people who worked for them.
He’d held everyone else back, had avoided relationships beyond the professional or very casual nonprofessional context.
People got hurt in his orbit even when he tried to do right, and after the pain he’d caused already, he didn’t deserve more than what he allowed.
He didn’t want to cause anyone else that sort of pain again.
But then he’d gotten tangled up with Aidan’s lot, including the ASAC Nic wanted, against his better judgment, to know in a decidedly more than professional or casual context—whether he deserved to or not.
Taking another long swallow of beer, Nic picked up his phone and activated the secure call app. He scrolled to the most resourceful person among the six contacts listed there.
“Price,” Melissa Cruz answered, instantly alert. “Talk to me.”
They’d worked together often when Mel was the FBI SAC before Aidan, and their working relationship had continued despite her retirement from the Bureau.
Chief of Security for the Talley family’s shipping company by day, bounty hunter—maybe also mercenary, Nic knew better than to ask—by night, she’d delivered more than one wanted criminal to him.
Now he needed her assistance dealing with the criminal element threatening his own life.
“I need your help.”
“With?”
“Couple things.”
Headlamps blasted through the plate glass windows, lighting up the interior entryway.
Nic’s pulse hammered, two beats of worry that the goons had returned—perhaps with reinforcements, or worse, with tanks of gasoline and a lighter—before the rattle of a blown-out muffler reached his ears.
He released the breath he’d been holding, shaking his head as he wondered how Cam had made it cross-country in that junker.
“I’ve got company,” he said to Mel.
“Friendly or foe?” she asked, voice clipped.
“Friendly.”
“What you need, can it wait until morning?”
A trace on the handguns and Unknown call? He didn’t see how eight hours was going to make much difference on either. And he could do some searching of his own during that time. “It’ll hold.”
“I’ll text you a time and place.” She clicked off just as the noise outside died.
Nic wrapped the pistols in the bar towel and hightailed it to his office. He swung aside the framed map of the world’s beer regions and opened the safe behind it, shoving the weapons inside. He was readjusting the picture when Cam banged on the main door.
“Let yourself in,” Nic hollered. This time of night, Cam should’ve been able to hear him.
And hopefully he remembered the key code Nic had given him a couple of months back.
Sure enough, by the time Nic reentered the tasting room, Cam was behind the bar, helping himself to a pint of the imperial stout.
“Make yourself at home,” Nic greeted.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Cam set a full pint of stout on the bar top, then tipped another glass toward him. Nic nodded, and Cam filled the second glass with pilsner.
“I was about to call you,” Nic said.
“I’d rather debrief over a beer if it’s all the same to you?”
“No complaints here.”
Approaching, Nic let his eyes rove over the agent, checking for any cuts or bruises he hadn’t noticed earlier.
Cam’s dark hair was mussed and exhaustion weighed down his broad shoulders, but otherwise he looked as he had when they’d parted ways in the Federal Building elevator that afternoon.
More importantly, nothing in Cam’s demeanor indicated Lauren had told him about this morning’s shooter.
If she had, Cam would have stormed in here in high-gear agent mode, demanding protection for Nic.
“How’d you know I was here?” Nic asked, climbing onto a barstool.
Cam set the pint of pilsner in front of Nic, next to the phone. “You weren’t in your office when I left.” Rounding the bar, he claimed the stool beside Nic. “Thought I’d swing by on my way home.”
“You could have called.”
“One, you’re on the way.”
True. Cam’s house, which he rented from Aidan, was a ten-minute drive, at most, from the brewery, right off the highway exit Cam would take to get home.
“And two, beer,” Cam added, before taking a long swallow of the stout, cheek dimpling on a satisfied smile.
Lowering the glass, he licked the foamy head from his full upper lip, and Nic had to look away, remembering the heady taste of his beer on Cam’s lips the night they’d kissed.
He silently cursed the charmer for not leaving a stool between them.
“How long you been here?” Cam asked after another sip.
“Fifteen minutes.” If he didn’t count the Goon Squad’s attack.
“Went that well with Abby?”
“Needed to give her time to calm down, then we talked, and then I had to fill out a ream’s worth of paperwork to get her into rotating safe houses. I think she’s settled for now.”
Cam gave him a sideways glance, then a once-over he didn’t bother to hide.
Nic turned the curses on himself, realizing he hadn’t bothered to straighten his hair or shirt since the altercation in the parking lot.
But by the dark look spreading over Cam’s face, his brain had gone an entirely different direction.
“What did it take to get her settled?” he asked.
“I don’t swing that way,” Nic replied, staring into his beer. “Also helped Eddie load some cases when I got here.”
“You’re lying. Your tight-ass shoulders are up to your ears, you’re avoiding my eyes, and you’re drumming your fingers on your glass.”
Fucking well-trained FBI agents. Nic stilled, forced his shoulders down, and tore his gaze from his phone where they’d drifted. “Don’t FBI me.”
“Don’t attorney me.” Cam nodded at the phone. “What’s going on?”
He could give him part of the truth. Maybe it would satisfy the hound. “Odd hang-up right after I got here.”
“Connected to the case?”
“Don’t know.” It was possible, though Nic suspected it was more likely a diversion by the goons so they could sneak up on him. He needed Mel to run an off-book trace to confirm it.
“Get Jamie to hack it.” The former cyber agent, who now coached college basketball, still “consulted” on the side for the FBI and Talley Enterprises.
“Think he’s probably pretty busy at the moment.”
The last thing Nic wanted to do was draw them near his father’s shit.
Let them believe the sanitized version in the media, that his father was a Bay Area real estate tycoon who was winding down his business.
Certainly safer than the unsanitized version Nic suspected and had further proof of tonight.
That Curtis Price was a real estate failure up to his eyeballs in debt.
Nic would get to the bottom of that mess with Mel without putting the rest of them in the crosshairs.
“What’d you get out of Scott and Mike?” Nic asked, diverting Cam to the promised debrief.
“Not a damn thing. Flipping them is going to hinge on Abby.”
“She’s convinced Becca will make another run at her and at the artifacts.”
Cam raised a brow. “At the museum?”
Nic nodded.
“They’re in a voice-activated vault there too, right? The prototype of the one in the Kristi?s’ apartment?”
Nic nodded again.
“Then Abby’s right. Becca will need her.
” Cam drained the rest of his beer. “She’ll have to make her move soon.
The show opens next weekend assuming Kristi? doesn’t take the artifacts back home with his wife’s .
. .” Cam’s words drifted off, as did his gaze.
Twisting on the stool, his back to Nic, he slid off and cleared his throat. “You in tomorrow?”
“After I get some paperwork done here.” Or rather, after he met Mel.
“We’ll go over security plans for the arraignment then. I want everyone safe.” Cam slapped the bar with the flat of his hand, a parting gesture.
Wanting to offer some comfort, Nic shot out a hand, covering Cam’s on the bar. “Kristi?’s lucky to be alive. He has you to thank for that.”
“They both should be alive.” Cam brushed his thumb along the side of Nic’s, and Nic barely hid his shiver.
Barely stopped himself from closing the distance between them.
But he had to get his father’s shit sorted before he started anything with Cam. Probably not a smart play either, definitely more than he deserved, but he wanted that second kiss, badly.
After he cleared the other hazards from the road.
He withdrew his hand, wrapping his fingers around his glass and hiding his words behind the rim. “Later, Boston.”