Chapter 6
Six
Scott and Mike’s arraignment was scheduled to start in ten minutes, and Cam had no idea where it was actually going down.
Ear pressed to the stairwell door on the sixteenth floor, he could hear the muffled chaos on the other side, a crowd of people as equally confused as him.
He checked his phone again—still no reply from Nic.
The court calendar listed the arraignment on the seventeenth floor, but that federal courtroom was empty.
Probably why all the squawking press had trampled down to the clerk’s office on sixteen.
Cam had known this was the plan for Abby’s safety, but this morning’s radio silence from Nic was complicating matters, for him at least.
Taking a fortifying breath, he swiped his all-access card over the security lock and pushed out of the stairwell.
He flashed his FBI badge at the guard posted on the door, nodded at the cute law clerk he passed in the melee, then smiled and cajoled his way through the crowd of reporters to the court clerk’s front desk.
“Agent Byrne,” the desk attendant greeted him.
“Please tell me you’re here to rescue me.
” Mandi usually delivered that line with a wink and toss of her long blond hair, but today she looked like she actually meant it.
Expression pinched, hair yanked back in a severe bun, she’d put the kitten away and unleashed the tiger.
And it was a very tired and grumpy cat. Not that the press weren’t still trying to shove proverbial chairs at her.
Cam had come prepared with a different, hopefully more effective strategy. He reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew a bar of dark chocolate from one of those ridiculously overpriced San Francisco factories. Aidan would probably never notice it had disappeared from his desk drawer.
Flirt turned up, Cam held out the bar to Mandi, tempting. “How about I rescue you and you return the favor?”
She snatched the chocolate out of his hand and sniffed it, eyelashes fluttering in ecstasy.
“Well, it’s not an airlift but it’ll work.
” She unlocked the service counter swing door and held it open for him to pass through.
“Karen, cover me for a minute,” she said to one of the other attendants before leading Cam around the corner.
Out of view and out of earshot, Mandi ditched her heels with a relieved sigh and propped a bare foot against the cinder block wall, giving Cam a view of her toned thigh under a hitched-up pencil skirt.
Not the only show she was putting on either.
Pretty brown eyes with lips that were just this side of decent, she slowly peeled back the foil candy wrapper, eyeing him through long lashes.
“You looking for Attorney Price?” she said.
He’d unwrapped the bombshell a time or two, back when he’d only just swung through town for a case or to visit Jamie.
Before he’d moved here, before . . . Mandi spoke again, saving him from jumping through avoidance hoops. “He’s down on fifteen, Courtroom C.”
“Magistrate’s chambers?”
“You saw that out there.” She waved the chocolate bar toward the lobby. “It’s worse on seventeen.” Where the main federal district courtrooms were. “Vultures won’t look for them on fifteen.”
Grinning, he leaned in close, a forearm against the wall by her head. “I always did say you were the smartest person here.”
“Don’t you forget it.” Her cherry-red lips closed around the chocolate bar, over the line of decent, but his mind was already a floor away.
She read him like a book, dropping the seduction and chuckling. “Use the internal staircase,” she said, tilting her head back and right. “Thanks for the chocolate.”
“Thank you for the assist,” he said with a wink before he took off for the stairs.
He exited onto the fifteenth floor, in the staff hallway behind the courtrooms. Halfway down the corridor, Tony stood outside one of the holding rooms. “Agent Byrne,” the guard said.
He blew out a dramatic huff. “Had to run the gauntlet to get here.”
The door opened, and Nic stood there in all his full-suited glory.
Light gray three-piece, crisp white dress shirt, and monochrome blue tie that matched his eyes.
Sharp. Add to that the barely contained excitement vibrating through him, the hype of the coming courtroom, even for a perfunctory arraignment, and Cam forgot how to make words.
Nic filled the silence, albeit with a knowing smirk. “Sorry, the gauntlet was my fault.” He opened the door wider for Cam to step through. “Just give us a minute.”
Closing the door behind them, Nic turned back to Abby, who sat at a small table reading through a stack of documents.
She wound her earbud cord through her fingers, the motion gaining speed when she looked up and caught sight of Cam.
He’d backed off the bad cop routine but she was still skittish toward him.
He leaned back against the wall, as nonthreatening as possible, while Nic claimed the chair across from her.
“Do you have any questions on the affidavit? On your testimony?”
Cam had thought that was what the papers might be.
Nic had spent the rest of Sunday in Holding Room Two with Abby, taking her official statement and preparing her for questioning.
Yesterday, he’d been a ghost, locked in his own war room preparing court documents, save for a brief meeting with Scott’s and Mike’s attorneys, then an early departure to take care of something at the brewery, he’d said.
“I didn’t misrepresent anything you said, did I?” Nic asked gently.
She abandoned the tablet and cord for the pen next to the papers, mashing the clicker end against the table. “No, everything’s right.”
“Clearly something isn’t. What’s got you nervous?”
“Besides the obvious,” Cam added, gesturing at their surroundings, then at Nic. “He lives for this shit. Fucking junkie. The rest of us . . .” He wrinkled his nose in exaggerated disgust. “Not so much.”
“Hey!” Nic twisted in his seat, looking over his shoulder. “You give your fair bit of testimony.”
“Because your ass drags me in here.” He pushed off the wall and slid into the chair next to Nic.
“It’s not just you, sweetheart.” People tended to overlook his suit and badge when he lengthened his vowels, letting himself sound like a blue-collar garage rat from South Boston.
Which he was. Before he’d become an Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the FBI.
Worked on Abby too, finally chipping through her nerves and also, it seemed, her reluctance toward him. Good; if she betrayed them again, he’d use that. She chuckled, relaxing in her chair and laying the pen down. “Do I have to go in there with Scott and Mike?”
“I’m going to try to avoid that.” Nic nudged the stack of documents with his index finger.
“This is your statement about Saturday’s events, plus my and Agent Byrne’s recommendations to waive any charges against you, as a cooperating informant and witness.
You sign the affidavit and the recommendation, which Agent Byrne and I already signed, then I’ll hand the papers, together with Stefan Kristi?’s statement”—he pulled a trifold sheet of paper from his inner coat pocket—“over to the judge.”
“Then why did I have to come here?” Abby asked.
“In case the judge has questions about your statement or our recommendations. Same reason I asked Agent Byrne to join us. Mr. Kristi?, unfortunately, hasn’t been released from the hospital yet.”
“Isn’t this just an arraignment?” Cam asked, mentally scratching his own head, not that he minded seeing a pre-court-jazzed Nic. “Scott and Mike walk in, plead not guilty, and you move for prelim or trial.” He’d seen more than a few of these too.
“It’s felony murder,” Nic explained. “Someone was killed in the act of committing a felony, the attempted robbery. Neither Scott nor Mike pulled the trigger, but they’re on trial for murder.
” Abby shivered, no doubt realizing that could be her on trial for murder too. “I’m covering all my bases,” Nic said.
“Where do I sign?” Abby said, almost a squeak.
Nic walked her through where she needed to execute each document, finishing just as two swift knocks sounded against the door. Tony opened the door to the court bailiff. “Attorney Price,” the bailiff said. “Judge O’Donnell is ready to start. Courtroom C.”
“We’ll be right there,” Nic replied.
Seeing Abby jolt, Cam reached across the table, covering her trembling hands. “Hang tight. Shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes, twenty at most.”
“Can Tony wait inside?” she asked.
“Don’t see why not,” Cam said as he stood. The big man could do his job on either side of the door.
Nic followed Cam to his feet. “How far are you into the book?” he asked Abby.
“Chapter eleven, I think.”
“That’s a good one.” He collected the legal documents, putting them all in a bucket folder, and left behind the pen and a legal pad. “Big conclave between the warring factions. Lots of interesting voices.”
Abby had the earbuds back in before Tony even closed the door.
As they walked down the hallway toward the courtroom, an air of confidence came over Nic that made Cam doubly wish the damn bailiff wasn’t waiting for them by the courtroom doors. Nic’s firm, round ass in perfectly fitted suit pants didn’t help either.
“This is the part you like best, isn’t it?” Cam said.
“It’s the one thing I’ve always been good at.”
“Arguing?”
Nic smirked. “Exactly.”
Outside the courtroom door, the bailiff turned to head in, and Cam gave in to the urge, as much as he could under the circumstances. He darted out a hand, copping a feel of Nic’s ass in the guise of a “Go lock ’em up” tap.
“You’ll pay for that,” Nic murmured, smirk tipping up into a smile.
Biting back his own grin, Cam slipped into the courtroom behind Nic, impressed to find the room all but deserted. Just him and Nic, the judge, clerk and bailiff, and Scott and Mike, and their attorneys. Nic’s ploy had worked, and the clerk’s office had definitely done them a favor, more than a few.
The pounding of the gavel called the court to order, and true to Cam’s word, it was eighteen minutes, start to finish.
Not guilty pleas. A short argument over whether Scott and Mike would be released on bail, which Nic obviously won.
The criminals were too much of a flight risk, and with Becca still at large, too much of a risk for another attempted felony gone wrong.
Then some back-and-forth over calendaring to set the preliminary hearing for next Monday.
“I’m surprised opposing counsel didn’t want to push the prelim out,” Cam said as they walked back to the holding room.
“Part of that gauntlet you ran earlier was the press on sixteen, yes?”
“Yeah, it was a fucking nightmare up there.”
“That will only get worse the longer this drags on,” Nic replied.
“Scott’s and Mike’s attorneys aren’t stupid.
This is a relatively open-and-shut case, especially if we capture Becca in the meantime.
Now I spend the next week negotiating plea agreements.
That should be enough time. And if it isn’t . . .”
The gleam in those blue eyes was telling. Maybe the prosecutor didn’t want to agree on the pleas. “If it isn’t,” Cam said, “you get to trial faster.” Nic’s smile could have lit the hallway. As it were, it lit Cam’s blood to boiling. “You are good at this.”
“I know.”
That confidence, that smile, and that fucking suit and tie finally got the better of Cam.
Fuck but this man made him want to break all his rules.
And truth be told, he’d never been that good with them when it came to sex, the wild side he’d buried long ago needing some outlet.
And right now, Nic was the matador in an irresistible cape of gray and blue.
He intercepted Nic’s arm mid-reach for the holding room door, using it to swing him around.
Cam closed the distance between them, pressing Nic back against the wall.
“You’re good at other things too. The way you handle case assets.
Legal strategy. Making beer.” Cam’s gaze roved over Nic’s face.
Blue eyes wide and darkening. A blush staining his high cheekbones.
Parted lips that Cam couldn’t shake the taste of.
Wanted to taste again. “Kissing,” Cam whispered.
“Boston, there are cameras in this hallway.” It wasn’t so much a warning as barely restrained desire, Nic’s voice low and gravelly.
“How much do you really care right now?”
Nic’s gaze strayed to his mouth, and Cam had all the answer he needed. He clasped one side of Nic’s freshly shaven jaw and angled his face so he could devour him. The muted whimper from the back of Nic’s throat made Cam even hungrier.
He moved to rid the inches between them, to slake his hunger with Nic’s mouth, only to have the distance spring back into reality, the holding room door banging open.
At first, instinct startled them apart.
Then shock kept them that way, attention suddenly focused elsewhere.
Tony fell through the open doorway, hand slipping off the inside doorknob as he collapsed onto the floor.
They both kicked into emergency mode.
“Tony!” Nic slid onto his knees next to the unconscious guard, ripping through layers of clothes, searching for a wound, while Cam leaped over them.
Into the empty room.
No sign of Abby anywhere.
Just the legal pad and tablet left behind.