Chapter 4
Four
Cam paused the playback of yesterday’s operation footage.
On the monitor, Nic froze mid-stride, halfway between the surveillance van and buildings, standing in the middle of the street.
Exposed, in the line of fire, with only Beta team overhead for cover.
The image had plagued Cam all of yesterday, only waning in Nic’s presence at the brewery last night.
It had come creeping back in his dreams, haunting him straight through to morning.
It should have been the memory of Anica Kristi?, pale and bleeding out on the bed, that tormented him, but every time he’d closed his eyes, he imagined Nic bleeding out in the street instead.
“Byrne!”
Aidan’s sharp bark from the speakerphone snapped Cam out of his waking nightmare. He was so used to Aidan calling him by his first name now that the last name address was jarring. Rankled more than a bit too.
Taking a measured breath, Cam leaned forward and braced his elbows on his desk. “This isn’t my first rodeo, Talley.”
Aidan sighed heavily on the other end of the line, and Cam pictured him raking a hand through his red hair. “I know that, and I didn’t mean to imply it was or that you couldn’t handle this. Just please tell me you’re not blowing smoke up my ass.”
“I blow smoke up Bowers’s ass, not yours. Everything’s under control, partner.”
There was a sharp knock on his door, and before he could answer, Lauren stuck her head inside. He flagged her in and gestured at the visitor chairs.
“I want status updates every four hours,” Aidan said.
Lauren dramatically rolled her eyes and Cam bit back a grin. “Roger that,” he managed. “Now get back to enjoying the whiskey. Both kinds.”
Irish expat Aidan had taken his new husband, nicknamed “Whiskey,” to the motherland for their honeymoon. The jokes were too easy.
Lauren’s hand flew to her mouth, trying and failing to stifle her laughter, as Cam hung up on Aidan’s Gaelic curses. She spoke behind her fingers, nails a shiny shade of purple this morning. “Sorry, I couldn’t help it.”
“At least someone found it funny.”
“Aidan would too, if he weren’t a control freak not in control right now.”
“No shit.” Cam wasn’t one of the FBI’s best K&R agents for nothing, but he could also understand that this was Aidan’s first big case as SAC and it had gone sideways without him, not that any of them could have predicted Becca’s betrayal.
“So’s that one,” Lauren said, pointing at the freeze-frame of Nic. “Do you think he wears a suit on his days off too?”
Not always. Cam remembered that tasting at the brewery a few months back.
Remembered Nic dressed down in beat-up jeans and a snug Gravity tee, his muscles outlined in black cotton and the dark ends of a tattoo peeking out from beneath his short sleeves and crew neck.
Lord only knew what was hiding beneath his daily suits and business wear.
“For what it’s worth,” Lauren said, “I’m a fan of the weekend dressed-down policy you’ve got going while the boss is gone.”
Cam tried not to wince. It was a professional rule he hated breaking and would have never considered it in Boston. But dry cleaning here cost twice what it had back home, and he’d frankly run out of clean dress clothes.
Seeing as designer jeans and a vanity tee counted as business casual in San Francisco, his washable Dockers and knitted polo certainly fit the bill and lowered his dry cleaning costs.
“Enjoy it while it lasts.” Cam snapped closed his laptop and gave Lauren his full attention. “What’d you find on Becca?”
She ran a hand across the computer in her lap. Not standard issue, given its alien-head logo and plethora of stickers. “Don’t ask how,” she said.
Cam held up his hands. “Not asking.” With a hacker for a best friend, he’d learned that lesson years ago.
Opening the laptop, Lauren spoke as her fingers flew across the keyboard. “Before, we were focused on Scott’s accounts.”
He peered at the account numbers on the case board in the conference room between his and Aidan’s offices. Nic had a bigger war room two floors down, but they had a robust setup here too. Including teetering stacks of financial records. “We checked each crew member.”
“We did, but once we identified the job down payment in Scott’s, we paused our deep dive into wonky finances of the other crew members.”
“Wonky?”
She glared up at him, kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed. “Yes, wonky.”
If Cam didn’t know better, he’d take her for a smart-mouthed teen. But the thirty-year-old analyst-turned-agent was wicked smart, too observant for her own good, and a frighteningly good shot with a Colt 1911 in her tiny hands. Almost as good as she was with a computer, which was truly frightening.
Chuckling, he relaxed back in his chair. “So there’s wonky stuff with Becca’s financials?”
“Not exactly.” She slid her laptop onto his desk, turning it to face him. “This is an account statement for Rebecca Monroe.”
It took less than a second for it to click. “Rebecca Wright and Abigail Monroe. A joint account?”
“Yes and no.” Lauren rotated the laptop half around so he could see while she clicked through windows, reaching one with an Account Holder Agreement opened. “Becca’s listed as the account holder and signatory. Becca and Abby are both listed as beneficiaries.”
“Did Abby know about this? Did she access it?”
Lauren shook her head, long strands of brown hair escaping from her pencil bun. “Only one user has ever logged in, from a single mobile device we don’t have on record. I’d bet that’s Becca.”
“On a burner.” He ran a hand over his jaw, prickly since he’d skipped his morning shave two days in a row. “They could have shared the login.” While Nic seemed convinced of Abby’s cooperation, Cam wasn’t sold. Even less so now that they’d found a bank account with her name on it.
One with multiple sizable deposits. “Are those—”
“The third-party payoffs,” Lauren said with a nod. “We were only looking at Scott’s account for the bankroll.”
Cam glanced back at the board and the list of deposits. “He had them.”
“The payouts to his crew too, but these”—she pointed at her screen—“don’t match up. They’re bigger than Scott’s fee.”
“By a lot,” Cam said. “Have you traced the origin yet?”
“Hitting private bank walls. I’ve got calls with Switzerland and the Caymans on my agenda tomorrow when they reopen.”
“We need to update Nic.”
“Already texted him that we had a development.” She closed her laptop, slid it off the desk, and stood. “He said he had a meeting this morning and would be in around noon.”
As keen as she was at reading people, Cam hoped Lauren’s own movements had distracted her from noticing his.
Nic had told him he was doing paperwork at the brewery this morning.
Maybe he was meeting someone there. Or maybe the prosecutor was lying about something.
The same something that had ruffled Nic last night, even if he hadn’t wanted Cam to see him off his cool, collected game.
How was Cam supposed to help the man who’d grown to mean more to him than he should if Cam didn’t know what the fuck was going on?
He shook his head. Beside the point right now. He needed to focus on the case, not distractions.
“All right,” he said. “I want all our bases covered. Keep running down that account and dig for others with wonky aliases or activity.” Lauren smiled at his use of her word, the deflection working.
“Dig deeper into Abby too. I’m going to bring her in for questioning. Would be great to have more to go on.”
“You got it.” She breezed out the door, and Cam waited for her to turn the corner before drawing his own laptop back in front of him. He logged back in and the screen came to life.
To the picture of Nic.
The man who was hiding something from him.
Nic clutched his steering wheel, debating whether this was the right call.
Last night, in the heat of the moment after Vaughn’s thugs had tried to jump him, consulting Mel had seemed like the best plan.
He trusted Mel more than most, professionally and personally, and she had the connections and discretion to get him what he needed.
Answers. But would her other connections—to the Talleys—require disclosure when Nic required secrecy?
She wouldn’t put her family in danger, which was exactly what Nic was also trying to avoid, but would she see it that way?
That said, he didn’t really see any other option.
He couldn’t trace the handguns and call himself without triggering flags, and there would be a dozen more of those if he took this to the feds.
He’d be walled off, ethically, and Aidan and Cam would be so far up his ass that he wouldn’t get another moment’s peace, much less what he really wanted from the latter.
Or worse, they wouldn’t want anything to do with him at all.
He didn’t want to admit he’d become attached, but yeah, that list of his was fucking growing all right.
He pulled Vaughn’s business card out of his pocket, turning it over in his hand.
He’d have to play this carefully. Try to feel Mel out with the handguns and call trace before he showed all his cards, this one in particular.
He resigned himself to losing up against someone so well-trained in interrogation and torture, but with his SEAL training, he could hold out longer than most.
Maybe.
Pocketing the card, he grabbed the briefcase off the passenger seat and climbed out of his truck.
He approached the private marina’s guardhouse, badge in hand, ready to prove his identity to the rent-a-cop on duty, but the uniformed guard greeted him with a smile and waved him on through.
He didn’t need to ask which of the dozen or so docked yachts was the one he wanted.
The American and Irish flags flying from its stern were a dead giveaway.
As was the striking and imposing woman waiting for him on deck, her brown skin glowing under the morning sun.