Chapter 3
Three
“Boston!” Nic stood by the front door, briefcase hanging off one shoulder. “We gotta go if we’re gonna swing by Mary’s place and still get to the Federal Building by nine.”
Cam had been right. Nic felt better this morning despite the reality of his father’s death sinking in.
While Vaughn was still his number one priority, the gangster wasn’t taking up all his headspace.
He could think calmly about the rest of the to-do list, starting with telling Mary, in person, what had happened.
“I need to oil down this fucking skillet,” Cam hollered from the kitchen. “And the damn cat is trying to trip me up.”
“Try calling him Joe.”
Cam cursed a blue streak, and Nic was still laughing when his phone vibrated, Unknown lighting up the screen.
The first such call in months. Coincidence? Not likely. “This is Nic Price.”
Dead air.
“Hello, who’s there?” Nic tried again, not expecting an answer.
Cam rounded the kitchen corner, instantly on alert. Nic turned the phone toward him, flashing the Unknown on-screen. Cam took one look, made a keep-the-line-open gesture, then whipped out his own phone, texting rapidly. No doubt getting Mel or Lauren up on a trace.
“You haven’t called in a while.”
He thought to say something about Jacksonville or to ask if it was Nicolette Sare on the other end of the line.
They’d traced last spring’s calls to the twenty-seven-year-old woman in North Carolina.
They’d also traced the start of the calls to shortly after his father had stopped making deposits into a secret offshore account.
He could ask about that instead. But all that assumed this mysterious call was connected to the previous ones, and if it wasn’t, he couldn’t disclose any of those facts, especially if this call was from Vaughn.
As far as they could tell, neither Vaughn nor any of Curtis’s other lenders knew about the offshore account or Nicolette, and Nic sure as fuck wasn’t going to lead Vaughn to it either.
“I assume you’re calling about my father,” he said instead. If Curtis’s death hadn’t hit the news yet, it would soon. He wasn’t disclosing any secrets with that statement. “No offer of condolences? A man is dead.”
Click.
“Fuck!” Nic hung up and shoved the phone in his pocket. “Enough?” he asked Cam.
Phone to his ear, Cam raised a finger, motioning for him to wait, as he spoke to someone on the other end. “They hung up.” He listened a moment longer, then his face fell and Nic had his answer. “Too short for an immediate trace,” Cam confirmed. “Mel’s already made the request for carrier records.”
“Timing’s not suspicious or anything.”
“It could be unconnected,” Cam said, approaching. Nic opened his mouth to call bullshit, but Cam beat him to it. “I agree with you, though. It’s too on the nose to be coincidence. It’s likely connected to your father’s death at minimum.”
Nic shouldered his bag again. “And maybe to Jacksonville and those deposits if someone, say Nicolette Sare, wants to make sure they get anything left in that account.”
“Or it could be something more directly related to Vaughn.” Cam reached past him for the doorknob. “Let’s see what Mel finds.” He fought with the uncooperative knob, finally getting it to turn, and swung the door open to a blast of sound that rocked Nic back a step.
“Attorney Price! Agent Byrne!” one reporter called out.
“Mr. Price, care to comment on your father’s death?” asked another. And the shouted questions went on and on . . .
“How’s it feel to lose your dad?”
“Will you be leaving the US Attorney’s Office to take over the family business?”
“Will you be running the day-to-day operations?”
“What will happen to your father’s real estate holdings?”
“How will this affect your relationship with Agent Byrne?”
Cam’s hand on his back pushed him forward, out the door and off the front porch. It was the right move—ducking back inside would have looked like hiding—but for once, Nic didn’t have the words, other than thinking No to every question that was asked and that answer wouldn’t satisfy anyone.
Cam found his press feet faster. “We have no comment at this time.” They pushed past the reporters, along the walkway to Nic’s truck in the driveway. “Attorney Price only learned of his father’s death last night. Please respect our privacy until a statement is made available.”
Fuck, if only they’d cracked the blinds before opening the door or listened more closely, they would have had some clue as to the ambush, but they’d been distracted with the call.
Nic had assumed word of Curtis’s death would get out and be newsworthy—he’d said as much to the caller.
Curtis had been a major player in the local business scene, and he’d been an expert at covering up how far out of that scene he’d fallen.
But Nic hadn’t expected that many reporters or that word would spread that fast. “Who the fuck tipped them off?”
“Someone at the morgue, one of the EMTs from the scene, Harris.”
Nic wanted to turn in his seat and look back to see if there was anyone suspicious at the scene, but doing so would be too obvious. Instead, he pulled down the visor and flipped open the mirror, pretending to straighten his tie while he scanned the chaos on their front lawn.
Turned out the clue he was looking for was ahead of, not behind, them. “Or it was them,” Cam said with a barely perceptible nod at the chromed-out sedan parked at the corner.
Nic used his side-view mirror to get a better look as they rolled past.
Shiny silk suits and a gleaming Rolex reflected the morning light. Vaughn’s goon squad. Not the usual two henchmen who were always with him, but Silicon Valley muscle was unmistakable all the same. “You set the alarm?”
“Yeah. You think that’s enough?”
“Should be. I don’t know why they’d go in.
” Just in case, Nic opened the home monitoring app on his phone and kept his eyes glued to it until they hit the freeway.
All clear, he closed the app and put a hand on Cam’s thigh.
“Thank you for getting us through that. If it’d just been me, I would have barked No at everyone. ”
“That’s not your usual sort of press appearance.”
Nic had to do them occasionally as Assistant US Attorney, but for those planned appearances he made it his business to have answers to all the questions that could possibly be lobbed at him. That was his job as a lawyer. This morning had been a surprise. For them both.
“Yours either,” he said to Cam.
“Maybe not me, but I’ve been out to clubs and events with Jamie enough to know how to counter a press ambush.” Cam’s best friend, and Aidan’s husband, was a former basketball star and now coach. “I learned the value of no comment real quick.”
Nic was reminded of something else Cam had said during their mad dash to the truck. “You said our privacy.”
Cam shot him a sweet smile and dropped a hand over his, weaving their fingers together. “Yeah, baby, because this is our life. I meant what I said last night. You’re not going through this alone.”
Nic was leaning across the console to kiss his lover’s cheek when the phone in his hand vibrated, lighting up with Mary’s picture. “Fuck!” He should have called her right away, before she had a chance to see the news. “Mary, I’m so sorry. I was on my way to tell—”
“Are you okay, Dominic?” Warmth filled her voice and flowed directly to Nic’s chest, her concern for him palpable.
She’d come to live with them when he was six, shortly after his mother’s death, and she’d become a second mother to him.
She’d stayed until almost the bitter end, trying to preserve something for him that wasn’t worth saving, definitely not at the expense of her safety.
Mel had hired her away on a part-time basis until she was ready to fully retire. “Dominic,” she called again.
He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I’m okay.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Take care of you.”
“If I want to take care of you too, I will. Now, what do you want for supper?” Stubborn Italian woman, always trying to feed him.
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m cooking at Melissa and Daniel’s tonight. You and Cameron will join us.”
On second thought, that was a better idea than him leading the press to her doorstep if any were following. Or worse, Vaughn’s goons. “Sounds good. But you call me before then if you notice anyone or anything off.”
“I think I’ll go grab groceries now, then hole up with a book until it’s time for dinner.”
“I think that’s a good idea.” They exchanged dinner details and were about to hang up when Cam whispered, “Heart condition,” reminding Nic of the other reason they’d been headed to Mary’s place.
“Mary, wait,” Nic said, catching her before she hung up.
“Did my father have any concerns lately about his health, his heart in particular?”
“None that I knew of.”
“Okay, thanks. We’ll see you tonight.”
“She okay?” Cam asked once Nic ended the call.
He nodded. “Go on to the office. We’ll meet her tonight at Mel and Danny’s for dinner.”
Cam moved into the far-left lane, gunned the engine, and shot past the slower-moving traffic. “Safer for her too.”
“I hope so.”
“She’s going to be fine.” Cam grasped his knee. “And so are you.”
Nic wasn’t so sure. If Vaughn was behind this morning’s surprise press attack, if he was behind his father’s death, then who or what would the gangster use next to pressure Nic into giving him what was left of his father’s estate?
Or more? Nic needed to make his move—now—before Vaughn made a deadlier one.