Chapter 10 #2
“It’s like I don’t even know you.” Eddie shook his head with exaggerated disgust.
Cam laughed. “You win your motion?”
“Of course I did.” Nic lowered the half-empty glass. “You got something to nail Bowers?”
“Of course I do,” Lauren chirped from where she sat at the table.
“Good, because if his ass isn’t nailed to the wall by the time this is all said and done, I’m going to—”
Eddie slapped a hand on the bar. “Wait! Let me get out of the room before something you say becomes not privileged.”
“You taught him well,” Aidan said.
“No,” Nic replied. “He just slept with half my law class.”
“And a few of those prosecutors too. What can I say, men in suits are my crack.” Consistent with the man who seemed to have condoms stashed everywhere.
Stretching over the bar, Eddie yanked Nic’s tie the rest of the way off, laughing, then shoved it into Cam’s palm.
“But don’t you worry, yours is one suit I never touched.
” He shook his ass as he shimmied out from behind the bar to raucous laughter.
Even at his expense, Cam appreciated that Eddie’s joke had loosened the stubbled jaw on his favorite suit.
But it wasn’t enough to turn all of Nic’s anxiety off. “We set on extra security?” he asked Eddie before the brewmaster escaped.
“Yep. Team members are going to chip in this week and weekend. And those three”—Eddie waggled a finger at Mel, Jamie, and Lauren—“double-checked and updated the security system. We’re set.” He held out a fist for a bump. “Taste your brew and leave me notes.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Nic said, bumping back.
Eddie disappeared down the hallway and Cam came around the other side of the bar, glass in hand.
“Your brew? Or my brew?” At home, between the pages of a romance novel he’d snagged from his mom in Boston, Cam had preserved the airplane napkin Nic had given him there, on it a drawing of the logo for Gravity’s Fighting Boston Irish Stout. A new imperial brew formulated with Cam in mind.
The mention of it now dissolved more of Nic’s tension and drew him closer, an affectionate, sexy smile sneaking out. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Okay, lovebirds.” Lauren strode past on the way behind the bar for a top off.
“Was that you and Agent Cole I saw taking a coffee break together this afternoon?” Nic asked.
“Maybe it was.” She held a pinky to the corner of her mouth, waggling her brows, oblivious to the foam on her top lip, which destroyed any semblance of evil mastermind.
Nic wasn’t buying it either, looking like he might object, and Cam, realizing he hadn’t brought him up to speed, laid a hand on his back. “She chose those words deliberately. Let the woman work.”
Nic raised a brow. “She’s playing him?”
Cam directed him toward the tables. “I think so despite the whole failing at Dr. Evil thing.”
“Where’s Moore?” Nic asked, as they claimed their chairs.
“Dinner with the mayor and DEA’s deputy admin,” Aidan answered.
“Do we know what that’s about?”
Cam had a speculative answer, but then he lost it, whatever he was going to say flitting away as Nic stretched an arm across the back of his chair.
It wasn’t anything new, but it was something normal after forty-eight hours full of abnormal.
Until that moment, Cam hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed that too.
He’d been so worried about Nic, so focused on doing whatever he could to keep Nic grounded and to move the case along, that he’d barely taken the time to breathe himself.
They’d been so deep into Attorney Price and Agent Byrne mode that Nic and Cam felt too far away.
So if he lost his thought, took an extra moment to lean back into the warm comfort of Nic’s arm and pretend everything was normal, Nic and the rest of the team would have to forgive him.
Nic, watching out for him, tapped his outer shoulder, bringing him back to the convo just as Aidan was saying they’d catch Moore up in the morning.
“All right,” Nic said. “So what’d I miss between the interrogation and now? You got something on Bowers?”
“Let me start with toxicology.” Cam grabbed the two folders from the center of the table. “We got results back from Jong. She rushed Harris’s.”
Another smile. “Finally, a break.”
“More than that.” Cam handed him Harris’s folder first. “Harris was given a drug that made him prone to suggestion.” He handed over the second folder. “And your father was injected with two different drugs that when combined made his heart blow up, literally.”
Nic flipped open each folder, scanning the reports, before he tossed them back on the table. “They trace back to Vaughn?”
Mel shoved another file across the table, SFPD’s crest printed on the front cover. “Last year one of Vaughn’s thugs was accused of date-raping a woman he picked up in a club. Scopolamine was found in her system.”
Nic’s eyes flared icy hot. “And the asshole is still a free man?”
“The charges were dropped. Erased, in fact.” Mel nodded at the folder. “That file isn’t supposed to exist.”
And yet here it was, which was why Mel was the best at what she did on and off the books.
“The arresting officer received sizable but not triggering wire transfers from an offshore account.” Lauren slapped a bank record down on top of the files, and Nic drew the stack closer, riffling through the documents.
“Do we know where he got the drugs?”
“Probably a dealer on the club circuit,” Mel said.
“You got enough for warrants?” Cam asked.
Nic closed the file, tucking the bank records inside. “Yes, on the goon and probably on Vaughn too, especially taken together with the reconveyance to Beth.”
“He recorded it, today after the interrogation,” Aidan said. “Over the counter to make sure it hit the record by close of business.”
“Wow,” Nic scoffed. “He’s just flaunting it now.”
“Is he?” Cam turned slightly toward him. “If he says he’s just helping out his niece, what looks worse, to hold it now or record it?”
“Fair point,” Nic conceded. “He’s only doing what he told us he would.”
“But you were also right in the interrogation,” Cam said. “We need to prove it’s not his normal course of business.”
“I’ll cycle back through Vaughn’s laptop,” Lauren said. “Look for others.”
“Ghosts, too,” Jamie said. “And I’ll also run a search through land and corporate.”
As they techno-babbled back and forth, Nic shifted in his chair, knees bumping Cam’s. “Why did you want to start with the tox results? And I’m still waiting for the nail in Bowers’s coffin.”
“Sheldon and Amy over there”—he jutted a thumb at Jamie and Lauren, got two middle fingers in return—“were also segmenting lists like you suggested for those with any pharmaceuticals connection.”
“You found a connection to the drugs Curtis was injected with?”
Cam looked to Mel, who slid another SFPD file across the table. “The new SFPD chief is much more helpful than that old guy.”
“Thank fuck,” Aidan huffed.
Nic opened the folder, then tilted his head a moment later, brows drawn as he scanned the charge sheet. “This is a manslaughter case. Wrong drugs administered by a health care professional.”
Cam understood his confusion; he hadn’t immediately seen the connection either. “A manslaughter case your boss yanked from SFPD last week.”
“Chief’s likewise none too fond of Lou Bowers,” Mel said.
Nic rapidly flipped pages, the crease between his brows deepening. “But this case isn’t on our docket. It wasn’t even discussed in our weekly status meeting.”
Cam held his hand out to Aidan, who put a stack of photos in them. Cam spread them out in front of Nic. “Those nails you requested. Plural,” he said with a wink. “Bowers wasn’t after the case. He was after the evidence.”
The pictures showed Bowers at the evidence locker downstairs after hours, carrying out the box of evidence SFPD had sent over, including an insulated cold container on top.
“The log still shows the box and vials as there,” Cam said. “Bowers never intended to bring a case. No one would go looking for it.”
“Did he think we wouldn’t see this?”
“He tried to wipe the video,” Jamie said. “I found it.”
“It’s on a flash drive in the safe in your office,” Cam said.
Nic stacked the photos slowly and set them atop the folders on the table.
Then he sat back in his chair, thumbs tumbling, mind no doubt racing through all the scenarios that had run through Cam’s head earlier when he’d seen the video. Had Bowers actually been the one to kill Curtis? At least that was where his investigator’s brain had gone.
But Nic’s had zeroed in on the question he needed answered most. “What does Vaughn have on Bowers? Because this”—he gestured at the stack—“is almost the complete story. Someone give me the fucking hammer.”
“Witness tampering,” Mel said.
“What?” Nic exclaimed. Only Cam’s hand on his knee kept him seated.
“He was an up-and-coming AUSA. Needed to win a big case to seal his promotion. There was a witness for the defense that cast doubt on his case, on the charging officer. The witness changed their tune.”
Lauren placed a balance sheet on the table. “Right about the time Bowers made a significant outlay of cash.”
Nic recognized the entity name from the deeds they’d seized. “To Vaughn.”
Cam nodded. “That’s why we didn’t find a deposit in Bowers’s account. It was a withdrawal.”
“Vaughn’s had him by the balls ever since.
” Nic propped his elbows on the table, face in his hands.
Cam barely heard Nic’s curse, but Nic’s misery when he dropped his hands was impossible to miss.
“I have to take this to DOJ.” Nic was nothing if not a loyal officer of the court, of justice. This was the highest betrayal.
And Aidan was asking him to wait. “Not yet, Price.”
“Talley,” he growled.
“Aidan’s right,” Cam said, and Nic’s angry gaze whipped to him.
“You’ve all but proven Bowers is a carrier pigeon for Vaughn.
Let’s use him to feed Vaughn the info we want him to have and also use him to confirm who the moles are in our offices.
That witness tampering isn’t going to go away.
You can spring it anytime—at the right time—when we need it. ”
“But he could tamper with other cases in the meantime.”
“I checked the docket,” Aidan said. “Nothing of any interest to Vaughn that could be affected. And Bowers is too busy playing politics or covering his ass to even try cases right now.”
“He’s on the board,” Cam said. “But he’s our pawn now. We determine how and where to move him.”
Nic finally cracked a grin. “Didn’t know you liked chess, Boston.”
“I fucking hate it,” he admitted. “But ‘we determine where to bury the casket’ seemed a little too on the nose.”
Nic’s laugh was music to his ears as were the words that followed. “Okay, the pawn is ours. Let’s use him. But there’s still another piece on the board we can’t forget. Maybe even the queen.”
“Who’s that?” Cam asked.
“Rebecca Wright.”
Cam startled at first, surprised at hearing her name come up again.
“From the case last April?” Aidan said, likewise surprised.
But Cam had shaken his off, catching on to where Nic was headed.
Rebecca had been the leader of the heist crew Cam had gone undercover to infiltrate on the Kristi? case, and there had been a series of tests he’d had to pass to prove his skill and loyalty, including . . . “The flash drives I stole from AD Moore’s condo. It was a job for Vaughn.”
“Knowing how Vaughn operates,” Nic said, “he would have had someone else contact her. Deliver the order. What if it was Bowers?”