Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
“We’re unassailable?” Elton asked the line of attorneys across the table from him.
They were an impressive bunch, all still in their suits at half past midnight: Northern California’s top prosecutor, US Attorney Dominic Price; one of San Francisco’s best defense attorneys, Helena Madigan; her legal mentor and the city’s other best defense attorney, Oakland Ashe; and Talley, the FBI SAC whose patio they’d crashed several hours ago.
On Elton’s not-an-attorney side of the table were Nic’s husband, ASAC Cameron Byrne, San Francisco Chief of Police Maya Thompson, and former SAC Melissa Cruz, Aidan’s sister-in-law and the most well-connected and deadliest woman Elton had ever met.
Even more so than Helena, whose after-hours job involved doing murdery things as the queen of her family’s murder-for-hire empire.
“Nothing’s completely unassailable,” Oak said. “Not with this admin.”
Helena flicked a sheet of paper with her manicured nail. “All of you”—her ice-blue gaze sliced through each of them with a badge—“need to get out.”
“Until we can do that,” Nic said, acknowledging the truth each of them was coming to accept, “as far as the Ninth Circuit would be concerned, and as far as I’m concerned as the person who would have to bring any case against you, yes, you’re in the clear.”
“So,” Maya said, “I can go into my meeting with the mayor and the governor tomorrow and tell them this is the plan?”
“You take your orders from them,” Oak said. “Not Justice.”
“And we’ll have your back,” Talley said.
Maya’s gaze swung to Elton, and he was not about to leave one of the few Black women chiefs of a major metropolitan police department hanging. “We have your back,” he reiterated. “Let’s go through the plan one more time so you can go into that meeting with zero doubts.”
No one objected despite the late hour.
Would Elton have rather stayed in Sonoma and finished his dinner and wine with Archer? Or better yet, packed up what was left of their food and taken it back to Archer’s cabin to snack on after they’d—
He cut off the mental image before it got any further than Archer pressed between him and the cabin door.
Of course Elton would rather have seen where the evening with Archer led.
He’d been right on the verge of Maybe now, ready to act, when Talley’s call had come in.
When the real world had rained down such a mess that Maybe now became Not now, his reprieve cut short.
He was used to a raft of executive orders whenever a new administration came in but this . . .
“El, you still with us?” Cam said.
“Yeah, sorry.” He gave his head a shake, clearing the unsettling cocktail of what might have been and what might never be and tuned back in to the final run-through of what had to be.
By the time the informal, probably illegal but he was smart enough not to ask, meeting broke up, he was confident they could execute and he was confident in the outcome, but the in-between—how much pushback they’d get from Justice—was a giant question mark. He hated question marks.
“You keep drifting,” Mel said from beside him on the curb outside Aidan and Jamie’s home. “It’s not like you.”
Her husband, Danny, had insisted on coming to pick her up, and Elton had insisted on waiting with her. Not for her safety—that was a laughably unnecessary notion—but because Mel was the person among tonight’s group that he’d known the longest and he trusted the most. “Truth?”
“Always.”
“I’m fucking terrified.”
He would never confess that to anyone else around that table tonight. They looked to him as the ranking officer, as the agent who’d climbed the ladder and who danced at the intersection of law and politics. Artfully so for two decades.
And over those twenty-plus years, he’d gotten to know Melissa Cruz, to respect her, to learn that it wasn’t only working together that had bound them.
It was the color of their skin and the expectations they’d each grown up with.
It was the secrets they’d shared and protected for each other.
Most of hers had come to light the more tangled she’d become with the Talleys, but despite the now uneven balance between them, she still kept his.
Those secrets no doubt informed the smirk turning up one corner of her mouth. “You went back to the winery.”
“And?”
“You asked me to look into Archer Scott.” Warmth roasted his cheeks, and her smirk broadened into a smug smile. “He gives Nic and Oak a run for their money in the hottest silver fox competition.”
“Four contestants,” Elton said, “if you count Ezra.”
She laughed loud enough to wake the neighbors. “Five, if we add Ezra’s ex-wife. Eight with Brax, Marsh, and Wags.”
“Good lord.” Chuckling, he looped an arm through hers and huddled with her against the chilly bay breeze whipping around them. “I’m fucking doomed.”
“Not if you already chose.” Dark, knowing eyes stared up at him. “What about Archer Scott, other than his silver fox status, caught your attention last fall?”
“Fifteen years before then,” he said, and her eyes widened. He’d surprised her for a change. “The first time I saw him was at a party Tanya and I went to in SoCal.”
She quickly ran the mental calculations. “The kind of party you asked me to make sure you weren’t connected to once Vaughn started sniffing around?”
Duncan Vaughn had been Silicon Valley’s equivalent of a gangster, using his money to leverage local law enforcement and politicians, real estate developers, and everyday businesspeople who’d gotten into his debt one way or the other.
He’d long been on Justice’s radar, and once Elton had been in a position to do something about it, Vaughn had started nosing into his personal life, digging for ways to leverage him.
There’d been multiple reasons, professional and personal, why Elton had supported Nic’s crusade to bring Vaughn down.
“When we still went to them, Tanya and I didn’t scene with others, so I put Archer out of my mind. But after the divorce . . .”
“He snuck back in there.”
Not immediately. Elton had been so hyperfocused on work, throwing all his energy into the job, into climbing the ladder, that there’d been no time for hookups, much less relationships, and definitely not with someone of the same gender.
But then Mel and her lot had drawn him in and the Maybe now thoughts had started.
Had become Maybe Archer when he’d uncovered the chain and clamps from the party that night in a box in his closet.
He’d fondly remembered Tanya—and the hazel-eyed man with a sprinkling of gray in his beard who’d watched them from across the room, who’d locked eyes with him and sent a wave of warmth crashing over Elton.
Warmth he’d happily drowned in the past couple days.
Archer acted the part of prickly grump, but the consideration and care he showed his vines, his friends, and his employees, the fact that he, Ezra, and Al had stayed tight all these years, the way he’d offered Elton refuge, a task to do and an ear to listen, all pointed to a gentle soul beneath the rough and rugged exterior.
“He’s everything our world isn’t, and it’s—”
The roar of an engine and the squeal of tires pierced the quiet night. She smiled. “A breath of fresh air.”
A sigh of relief.
He ran a hand over his head. “This could not come at a worse time.” The first person since Tanya he’d been seriously interested in—who’d made him want more—right when their world was on fire.
Mel laughed out loud again. “That’s kind of our thing.”
“Still even?” he said. Maybe when the Duncan Vaughns of the world were the evil du jour, but now, when the entire system seemed stacked against them . . . “When we were at the winery last fall, I had hope, I thought . . .”
She squeezed his arm in hers. “We all did. But those days are gone.”
He glanced the foot down to meet her no longer playful gaze. “That’s not helping.”
“That’s reality,” she said. Matter of fact, no bullshit. He’d always counted on her for that. “For all of us, but especially for melanated people like you, me, and Maya. I’m fucking terrified too, for my family, my friends, and myself.”
Her confession was barely audible over the growl of the bright yellow Maserati that screeched to the curb in front of them.
The passenger window lowered, and Daniel Talley leaned across the center console, his adoring gaze landing on his wife.
“Your chariot awaits, chica,” he called to Mel, then flashed Elton a wide smile. “Hey, El.”
“Danny,” he said with a nod.
Mel withdrew her arm from his and patted his chest. When he glanced back down, her gaze was still serious but full of her trademark determination.
“Holding on to the people I love, to the moments of laughter with everything I have, is what makes the other side of terrifying worth the battle.” She rose on her toes and kissed his cheek.
“You’re allowed—you need—to love and laugh too. ”