Chapter 17 #2
“Well, then, I’m guessing your quick-take research didn’t yield that Brady Campbell’s backstory isn’t made up. It’s mine.” Most of it anyway.
Becca arched one of her dark brows. “And the FBI still let you in?”
“They offered me something I couldn’t get elsewhere.”
“What’s that?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Cam said, gut burning at the memory of his greatest failure, preserved on his sister’s laminated library card in his wallet. The one case that still eluded him and continued to cast a gray cloud over his family. “They couldn’t deliver.” Neither could he.
“And now?” Kristi? said, drawing him back to the present.
“And now they offer nothing,” Cam said, throwing his booted feet up on the glass coffee table.
“If you haven’t checked my real bank account yet, let me go ahead and tell you the balance.
Two hundred fifty-three dollars and twenty-four cents.
I’m tired of being a broke-ass government servant, especially living here. ”
“So, it’s about the money?”
“Isn’t that what all of you are in it for?”
“I’m in to get what’s rightfully mine,” Kristi? said.
“The artifacts?”
“They belong to me. Not the government.”
Cam would lay odds they’d actually belonged to his wife. He prayed Lauren was getting him the goods to back up that hunch because this asshole had to go.
“Tell me,” Cam said, deflecting but also getting at something else that had to be addressed. “How are we supposed to trust you? You’ve tried to rip off your own heist, twice. They were shooting to kill in the museum.”
“Because I didn’t trust all the players.” He looked over to Becca, saying, “I do now,” before glaring back at Cam. “Except you.”
Cam figured it had more to do with protecting his identity and killing all the players to keep the money for himself. And Becca had been paid enough to be fooled those weren’t still Kristi?’s objectives.
“I don’t believe you’re in it just for the cash,” Becca said. “You entered the FBI for something more. A guy like you, you’re leaving for a reason too.”
“My partner, my boss, my best friend’s husband you mentioned . . . He slept with the guy I’m fucking.” Not exactly but if it sold the story, he’d use it.
Becca bought it. “Oh-ho, so that’s why you were reluctant to have fun with us?” She clutched Abby to her side. “Like the men, do you?”
“I like men and women for what it’s worth.” Becca’s eyes lit until he shut her down. “I just decided not to get in the middle again.”
Becca seemed to understand, lifting a hand and backing off, but at her side, Abby looked utterly shocked. And that, more than anything, sold his story.
For everyone except Kristi?. “I’ll decide if you’re lying after I have the artifacts.”
Nic sat at the conference table in his war room, thumbing through Anica Kristi?’s will. Across from him, Aidan sifted through customs forms, looking for the one documenting the artifacts’ entry into the county. He looked about as happy with his stack as Nic was with his.
The will had been poorly and hastily translated from Serbian, and Nic was having to look up every third word with regard to certain items that didn’t have a direct English translation.
Didn’t help that every other minute his mind flashed back to last night.
To the way Cam had felt inside him, over him, blanketing him in everything he’d wanted for months.
It was messy, in part because of the man across from him and his husband, and in part because of Nic’s own screwed-up family and past, the tattoo on his back the epitome of all that had gone wrong before, but Christ, last night with Cam had been perfect.
Wanting it again, Nic rode the roller coaster of desire and worry. Cam was playing a dangerous game undercover with Becca’s crew. The sooner he and Aidan found evidence that Stefan Kristi? was behind the heists, the sooner they could get Cam and Abby out of there.
“Any luck?” he asked Aidan.
“It’s like looking for a needle in a fucking haystack.
” The SAC pitched another customs form into the discard box on the floor and tilted back in his chair, guzzling his third coffee of the morning.
“It should be easy. The Kristi?s and their belongings came in on a diplomatic visa, but do you have any idea how many diplomatic visas clear SFO daily?”
“More than a few?”
“More than a few,” Aidan said with a nod. “Any luck there?”
“We need someone who speaks Serbian,” he said. “And someone who understands wills and trusts better than me.” He had a working knowledge from the occasional case, but it wasn’t his specialty.
“Switch,” Aidan said, pushing his remaining stack across the table. “I used to help with the estate docs for the family before it got too damn big. I’ll at least know where to look.”
Nic welcomed the change for twenty minutes or so before his eyes started to glaze over.
“Hold on a sec,” Aidan mumbled from across the table, intent on a page midway through the will. “I think—”
“You want to know what I think?” an angry voice interrupted. Nic looked up to find Bowers in the doorway, his beady eyes intent on Aidan. “I think your boy’s gone rogue.”
Aidan lifted his coffee cup like he was looking for patience and salvation at the bottom of it, then glared when he realized it was empty. He turned his glare on Bowers. “That was the plan. To make the crew think that.”
“Is that why he robbed Elton Moore this morning?”
Nic startled, but Bowers was too focused on Aidan to notice.
“It’s part of the cover,” Aidan said, not an ounce of surprise in his voice or on his face. Nic could see why he’d been so damn good at undercover work before he took the desk job. Or maybe Aidan had been privy to the information, in which case, why the fuck hadn’t he told him?
“To rob an FBI Assistant Director?” Bowers squawked.
“One, Moore knows, I talked to him already.” Well, that answered that question, but again, why the fuck hadn’t Aidan told him?
A question for another time. “We’ll recover the flash drives that were stolen when we take down the crew,” Aidan continued.
“Moore doesn’t think the encryption on them can be cracked before then.
Two, Cam and Abby were off the grid for hours last night, and Abby’s already been in custody once.
They had to prove themselves loyal to Becca, not us. ”
“Or Byrne’s gone rogue,” Bowers insisted.
“We met with him last night and discussed this plan,” Nic said. “It’s an act. He’s not gone rogue.”
“You sure about that?” Bowers threw down a file, a photo sliding out.
A younger Cam with dark hair and dark eyes grinned up at Nic from the picture, the overall look remarkably like Brady Campbell, right down to the same camo jacket.
Aidan grabbed the rest of the file, flipping through it. From the markings on the outside of the folder, Nic could tell it was an FBI personnel file. Agent Cameron Byrne’s.
“How the hell did you get this?” Aidan growled.
“I’m DOJ too.”
Except when it came to personnel files—even Nic knew they were supposed to be kept separate to, among other reasons, avoid any conflicts of interest. The only time he’d ever delved into FBI personnel files was when he had an agent testifying in a high-stakes case and he needed to assess his expert’s credibility.
Before doing so, Nic had always gotten the sitting SAC’s or AD’s permission.
There was no way he’d release any of his people’s files without the same courtesy.
What other files had Bowers gotten access to?
“Breaking and entering. Grand theft auto. Larceny,” Bowers rattled off, a more extensive list than even Nic knew about.
“He was never charged.” Aidan stood, hands braced on his desk. “And those are exactly the reasons we sent him under on this case. He can do the job.”
Despite his head still spinning, Nic added his two cents. “Cam’s using all that to infiltrate Becca’s crew and find out who’s in charge, which is what you wanted.”
“If we don’t have that person in custody by Monday,” Bowers said, “I’m bringing charges against Byrne. DOJ’s orders.”
Bowers stormed out, not giving them time to object or to tell him they had a lead.
Nic, however, wasn’t sure he wanted to tell Bowers about Kristi? yet.
His boss’s current bone had Cam’s name on it.
No telling what he’d do given another. Hell, he’d probably try to argue Cam and Kristi? had been working together all along.
“Is it just us he hates?” Aidan asked. “Or is he this way to everyone?”
“He’s generally not pleasant,” Nic replied. “But it’s worse with this case. And us.”
“Politics?”
“Maybe,” Nic said, contemplating again why this case in particular had dinged Bowers’s radar so hard. Justice was in turmoil from the top down and dead diplomats would bring State down on them too, but Bowers’s vehemence was enough to scratch a mental note to have Mel check his bank accounts too.
“I’ll be ready for you to inherit,” Aidan said, jarring Nic out of his thoughts.
Nic shook his head. “Don’t get your hopes up. And the far-off, unlikely future is not my concern right now.”
“Later,” Aidan grumbled. “In any event, Bowers doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”
“Technically, he does,” Nic said. Legally speaking, crimes had been committed, including by Cam. “But if we get this closed and Kristi? in custody, it’ll be gone.”
“We need answers,” Aidan said. “And I know where to get them.” He shoved the will and remaining customs forms into a folder and headed for the stairs at the back of the office.
Nic followed him up two flights to the FBI’s floor, then around the corner into “the cave,” the interior boardroom that had been converted to the cyber agent bullpen.
Through the stacks they found Lauren hunched behind three open laptops, at least one unofficial. “Agent Hall,” Aidan said, announcing their presence.
Her head bobbed up, blue eyes wide. “How’d you find me?”
Aidan dropped into a visitor chair. “What would Whiskey do?”
Lauren clapped, absurdly loud in the otherwise deserted room. “Oh! We should get W-W-W-D bracelets!”
“No,” he and Aidan said together.
She stuck out her bottom lip in a pout. “I’m going to grow a sense of humor tree in the corner.”
“In the cave?” Aidan said, gesturing at the windowless room they occupied.
“Touché,” she conceded. “A girl can dream.”
Nic claimed the other visitor chair. “Can a lady tell us what she’s found so far?”
She shot him a sly grin. “You’re picking up his habits.
” She was perceptive as hell, an analyst first, specializing in human behavior before she’d become an agent.
She must have also read his hesitance to say anything about it or Cam in front of Aidan, because she mimed sealing her lips and launched into her findings.
“We have an answer on Kristi?,” she said. “He’s definitely the one behind it.”
“Freeze all of his finances and travel,” Aidan ordered. “He may think he’s leaving Monday but not if he’s officially under suspicion.”
“Already made the requests,” Lauren said. “But it’s the weekend. It might not trickle down to some agencies until Monday.”
“Fuck,” Aidan cursed.
“And if there’s anyone at the bank I just tapped who’s friendly with Kristi?, they’ll tip him off.”
“Where is he?” Aidan said. “I’m assuming not in the hospital.”
“Checked himself out against medical advice,” she confirmed.
“When we came in, you said it was Kristi? for sure,” Nic said. “What else do you have on him?”
Lauren spoke as she rotated one of her laptops toward them. “Going on what you said last night, or rather this morning, I found the deposits to Rebecca Monroe.” She struck a few keys, highlighting deposits. “Account numbers match.”
“And this one’s Kristi?’s?” Nic said, pointing at the sender account number.
More keystrokes and more account records populated the screen. “One of his shell companies, emphasis on his.”
“Meaning?” Aidan said.
“Kristi? set this company up personally. He signed all the paperwork, and it’s three affiliates deep behind one of his US-registered companies. It’s also not tied to any accounts he shared with his wife. She didn’t have access.”
“She probably didn’t even know about it,” Nic reasoned. “Do we know why?”
Lauren spun one of the other laptops around, browser windows open. On one, the museum’s page with details on tonight’s exhibit opening and the artifacts on display. The other, a Wiki page on the Kosovar Romani displaced in Serbia during the Balkan War. “He was trying to steal her heritage.”
“I thought the artifacts were Serbian, same as Kristi?,” Nic said.
“No,” Aidan said. “They’re Romani.” He grabbed the folder off the floor, yanked out the will, and riffled through its pages, finger eventually jabbing at one in particular. “They go back to her people after her death, a heritage museum in Kosovo.”
He shoved the page under Nic’s nose, and now some of the Serbian-Not-Serbian made sense. “They were never going to him,” Nic said. “How much are they worth?”
“Exactly the right question, Attorney Price.” Lauren pulled up another screen. “The last assessment from the insurance forms they updated before traveling.”
The number on-screen boggled Nic’s mind. “He can’t just take them either,” Nic said. “It has to look like a robbery, unconnected to him.”
“Which they could do under the cover of the gala opening tonight.” Aidan was up and already moving toward the exit. “Briefing in thirty.”
Nic shot out of his seat and grabbed him by the arm. In the excitement over Kristi?, they’d lost focus on one critical element, the most important person to him. “Cam—”
“Is undercover for the FBI,” Aidan said, not missing a beat. “He’s one of the best agents I’ve worked with, and I trust him completely. More importantly, he’s family. I won’t leave him behind.”
Words Nic’s SEAL brain could understand even if his insides still tossed and turned with worry.