Noble Hops (Trouble Brewing #3)

Chapter 1

One

Cam had seen Nic in all manner of dress.

And undress.

Suited was his default, the workaholic spending most of his waking hours in Assistant US Attorney mode.

The gray one paired with the ice-blue tie that matched his eyes was Cam’s favorite.

When he switched from lawyer to brewery owner, Nic would trade the suit for worn jeans and a snug black Gravity tee.

Cam liked that look a helluva lot too. Even better was when they were at home and Cam could rid him of all his clothes, strip him down, and kiss every inch of his tattooed skin.

Tonight’s outfit, though, blew all the rest out of the water and confused the fuck out of Cam. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted Nic to never take off his Navy dress blues or if he wanted to rip them off him this very second.

“You’ve got that look again,” Nic murmured at his side.

“What look is that?”

Mischief sparkled in Nic’s eyes, joined by the sparkle of the red, white, and blue lights that dangled over the USS Wisconsin’s deck. “Like you want to find the nearest empty cabin and fuck.”

Cam raised a brow. “Is that an option? Because yes.”

Nic threw his head back and laughed.

The sight and sound did Cam no favors in the turned-on department. “You’re gonna pay for this back at the hotel room.” When they weren’t on a battleship in the Elizabeth River surrounded by hundreds of other current and former sailors.

“We barely got out of the hotel room as it was.”

“What did you think was going to happen when you put on that uniform?”

“I might have misjudged your reaction.” Sliding his arm along the rail behind him, Nic nuzzled his freshly shaven cheek. “And my reaction to you in a tux.”

“You saw me in a tux at Aidan and Jamie’s wedding. It had fucking tails.”

“Oh, I remember,” Nic whispered hotly. “And now that I can do more than just kiss you breathless in an elevator, I’ve got all kinds of ideas.”

Biting back a groan, Cam shifted closer. “One, I kissed you breathless. Two, please tell me your ideas involve getting me out of this fucking suit.” He hated formal wear and had had to wear entirely too much of it lately.

“Piece. By. Fucking. Piece.” Each word was punctuated with a kiss.

Cam poked a finger through a gap in the buttons of Nic’s jacket and yanked him closer. “Not fast enough.”

“Captain Price.”

Nic did groan then, only loud enough for Cam to hear, before he plastered on a fake grin and turned to face the interruption. His grin turned true, however, when his gaze fell on the man of the hour.

“Admiral,” he said, drawing out of Cam’s arms and giving the older gentleman a back-slapping hug. “You throw a good party.”

The admiral returned the hug, then claimed a spot on the rail next to Nic. “Wish you would’ve let me throw you one when you retired.”

“I didn’t have a lifetime of service like you.”

“Twenty years’ worth, Price. Nothing to scoff at.”

Nic stood a little taller, and Cam couldn’t help but concur. “He’s still serving as one of the best federal prosecutors in San Francisco.”

“You’re not biased or anything,” Nic said with a smile.

He shrugged. “You make my life easier, that’s for damn sure.”

“You work with Nic?” the admiral asked.

Nic placed a hand on his back, ushering him slightly forward. “Admiral Bailey, let me introduce my boyfriend, Cameron Byrne, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI field office in San Francisco.”

The admiral looked impressed, greeting him warmly, and Cam was doubly surprised.

One, that they hadn’t gotten any shit, including from the admiral, over their relationship.

And two, that Nic had so fully embraced their no-more-hiding decision.

He suspected the former was a testament to the respect Nic had earned as a SEAL sniper, then JAG attorney.

As for the latter, they’d revealed their relationship to friends and family two months ago, officially moved in together, and Nic had filled in a 2 on the RSVP card for tonight’s event for Nic’s commanding JAG officer’s retirement.

It had been everything Cam wanted and more, and so far, without any blowback.

On Veterans Day, Nic deserved to be honored as well.

Celebrating the victories, as he’d told Nic they needed to do more of, and Cam had another celebration in mind for here at the party, before the naked celebrating they’d do in private later.

He waited until the admiral moved on to other guests, then tangled his fingers with Nic’s, tugging him off the rail and into the crowd.

“You need another drink?” Nic asked.

“No, I need something else.”

Nic trailed close beside him, snaking his arm around his waist. “There are no stairwells open to below deck. They’re all roped off. I already checked.”

Good to know he wasn’t the only one dealing with a case of want-to-jump-my-boyfriend. He kissed the underside of Nic’s jaw, inhaling his spicy aftershave. “Want to hold you close and do something else.”

The crowd parted for them at the edge of the dance floor, and Nic slammed on the brakes, shaking his head. “Nuh-uh, no way.”

“What exactly do you have against dancing?”

“I don’t do it.” Nic’s gaze was locked on the parquet floor, some memory giving his eyes a pained gleam.

Cam had thought Nic’s aversion to dancing had more to do with his inner control freak, but that look on his face indicated something else.

And only encouraged Cam to press. Nic had helped him past some of his biggest fears; Cam wanted to return the favor for the man he loved.

Positioning himself between the dance floor and Nic, Cam slid his hands under the hem of Nic’s jacket and flared his fingers over his hips.

“That’s a lie.” He coasted his hands farther back, teasing the top of Nic’s firm, round ass.

“I’ve seen you at Gravity, moving to the music when you think no one’s watching.

” Cam swayed, trying and failing to move Nic with him. “Dance with me, baby.”

Torture flared in his eyes and tinged his voice. “The last time . . .”

Cam lifted a hand, cradling his cheek. “So it’s not that you can’t dance? Or that you don’t want to?”

Nic nuzzled his palm. “There’s nothing I don’t want to do with you.”

Heart swelling, trying to beat out of his chest, Cam followed it to Nic’s lips, capturing them in a soft, gentle brush. “Don’t think about the last time,” he whispered. “Just think about this time here with me.” He moved again, a slight shift of his feet, and Nic swayed with him.

Cam wanted to cheer. He wanted to celebrate like his seventh-grade-self had done after his first middle school dance with no injured toes. Nic’s small, relieved sigh made him want to do it all the louder—on the dance floor. He wove their fingers together again and pulled Nic forward.

One shiny wingtip hit the parquet, then Nic froze.

“You can do—” Cam started.

“Call.” Nic brandished his phone, the screen lit with an incoming call from Aidan—Cam’s FBI partner and their friend and landlord.

Cam muttered an Irish curse at the Irishman for interrupting, but if it was about work, the house, or their cat Aidan was pet sitting, they needed to know what was going on.

Cam rolled his eyes with a nod, and Nic, smiling, lifted the phone to his ear. “Talley, what’s up?”

A moment later, Nic’s lean, muscled frame stiffened, his smile vanished, and his hand around Cam’s tightened, nearly cutting off his circulation.

“When?” Nic clipped, then, after an answer Cam couldn’t hear, said, “We’re on our way.

” He meant it too, hauling ass toward the exit, dragging Cam behind him.

Picking up the pace, Cam darted in front of him, needing Nic to slow down and explain what the fuck was going on because his own mind was careening along the road of worst-case scenarios they dealt in far too often.

The mix of fury and unguarded pain on his lover’s face made him stumble back a step. “What’s happened?”

Nic’s grip was bone crushing. “My father is dead.”

Not every story got a happy ending.

Nic had resigned himself to his own unhappy ending decades ago.

There wasn’t a happily ever after out there for him.

But over the past two years, his luck had seemed to turn.

There were enough Irishmen in his life to make it so and enough signs that pointed to a proverbial pot of gold.

The something special he and Cam were building—living together, working cases side by side, hanging out at the brewery—had lulled him into a false sense of security.

It was too good to be true.

Standing over a sheet-covered body in the county morgue, Nic felt his newfound life, his hope of a happy ending, burning away like the remembered desert heat.

“You ready?” Aidan asked. The FBI Special Agent in Charge stood on the other side of the table next to the coroner.

When Nic didn’t reply, a hand settled on his lower back. “Maybe we should go home,” Cam said. “Get some sleep and come back in the morning.”

Nic shook his head, licking his lips and forcing moisture into his parched mouth.

He hadn’t pulled every string in the book to catch a military lift to DC so they could make the last flight out to San Francisco to not get this over with as soon as possible.

His father wasn’t going to be any less dead five hours from now.

“Go ahead,” he said with a nod to the coroner.

Dr. Elizabeth Jong pulled back the sheet and Nic was surprised his wasted-away father didn’t vanish into dust alongside the smoldering ashes of his happy ending.

The bags under Curtis’s eyes were purple, his blond hair turned white was all but gone, a bruise bloomed on one side of his head, and the deep lines around his mouth made the perma-frown he wore in life even more pronounced in death.

The personification of the miserable man he’d been.

“Cause of—” Nic started to ask, only to be cut off by Aidan.

“You need to make the identification first.”

Nic lifted his chin and cleared his throat, making sure his voice was clear for the recorder hanging above the autopsy table.

He’d seen cases go sideways before due to inaudible identifications.

He wasn’t about to let that happen in this one.

“Assistant US Attorney Dominic Curtis Price, only son of Curtis Stanton Price, identifying the body tagged”—he looked to Jong, who rattled off the number from the toe tag, then continued—“as Curtis Stanton Price.” It was a cold, clinical identification, which was all Nic could manage at the moment with his mind miles ahead of his emotions.

“Cause of death?” he asked, returning to his previous question and gesturing at the bruising. “Blunt force trauma?”

Jong shook her head. “Preliminary exam indicates a heart attack as cause of death.”

Cam sucked in a sharp breath. They’d almost lost Cam’s mother to a heart attack two months ago. She’d pulled through, unlike Curtis.

“He didn’t have a heart condition or risk factors,” Nic said.

“Would you have known?” Aidan asked.

Fair point. Until recently, he and Curtis had been estranged for almost three decades.

“I’ll talk to Mary.” The former housekeeper would know better than anyone if his father had had any warning signs or recently diagnosed conditions.

But no matter what Mary told them, Nic had tried enough cases to know heart attacks could be induced.

And Curtis, with his mountains of debt, was a prime target.

He didn’t think Curtis would poison himself—he was too proud for suicide—but at least one of his lenders, Duncan Vaughn, was under investigation by the FBI for a whole host of crimes, including murder. “Who found him?” Nic asked.

“Harris Kincaid.” His father’s executive assistant, also Vaughn’s nephew-in-law who Nic had flipped months ago. “At the family office.”

“Any indications of foul play?”

“None on the preliminary examination,” the coroner answered.

“I want a full autopsy including a comprehensive tox screen.”

“It’ll delay the disposition of the estate,” Aidan said.

Nic had looped him in on his father’s situation this past summer, and as a lawyer-trained-agent, Aidan recognized that administering Curtis’s will, liquidating his assets, and paying off his lenders as fast as possible was in everyone’s best interest. Not that there was going to be enough cash to satisfy all of them.

But Nic wasn’t about to let months of work building a case against the worst one go to waste.

Not when he was this close to nailing Duncan Vaughn and not when he and his team had control over the evidence for a change.

“I can make it look like the disposition is proceeding,” Nic said. “Meet with the family lawyer. Get it rolling. Give us time to complete the autopsy.”

“Figured you’d say that, so I already filled out the paperwork.” Aidan held out an arm toward the adjacent office. “You just have to sign it.”

“Let’s go do that, then.” He turned toward the metal swinging doors, but Cam stopped him, fingers grasping his wrist.

Dark eyes swung from him to the table and back. “Don’t you want—”

Whatever Cam was going to say, the answer was “No.”

The only thing Nic wanted to do was get out of this cold, antiseptic-smelling room.

He had a call to make. A follow-up to the one he’d made two months earlier when he’d learned Vaughn was out of the country “on business.” More accurately, out of the country sheltering assets.

The slow trickle of funds out of domestic accounts into foreign ones and the movement of goods via international freight were not enough to violate any laws or trigger any red flags if you weren’t looking.

But Nic was looking and the pattern was unmistakable.

He had all the orders ready, handed down by the grand jury—asset seizure, search warrants, the full RICO and financial crimes spectrum—and no Vaughn to serve them on.

Sure, he could serve them on Vaughn Investments but many of the charges were against Vaughn as an individual.

More than that, Nic wanted to see his face when he did it.

He wanted the gangster-fronting-as-investor to know he hadn’t been intimidated.

That he would be the one to take him down.