Single Malt

by Layla Reyne

  Jamie sank back in his seat. “I’d feel better with extra customs security checking bags.”

  “I don’t want to spook anyone yet by sending in a bunch of law enforcement agents. They know we’re sniffing around, and if there’s a leak in the field office, they’ll know even faster. Let’s keep an eye on things tonight and see what happens.”

  A prickle crawled across Jamie’s skin. “I don’t have a good feeling about this, Aidan. There’s something we’re missing.”

  “Good field instincts. We still don’t know if Hamilton’s the head of all this or if he’s a mercenary for hire and someone else is calling the shots. Or why they’re doing it. Or even what they’re doing.”

  “That’s a lot we don’t know.”

  Aidan tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel. “But I think we’re getting closer.”

  * * *

  Sprawled across the front seats, ass in the driver’s seat, legs thrown over the console, Jamie was decrypting Hamilton’s phone data and digging through background searches on Dr. Altman’s son when Aidan’s “getting closer” speculation proved true.

  The little red dot on his tracking app died and two seconds later alerts rang from every electronic device in the car—the computer open in his lap, his phone propped on the steering wheel, the tablet lying on the dashboard, the phone somewhere on his sleeping partner in the backseat.

  Aidan shot up, eyes squinting against the rising sun. “What the hell is that?”

  “There’s a breach occurring.” Jamie swung his legs around and Aidan clambered over the console into the front passenger seat. “And Hamilton killed the tracker.”

  After shooting off a quick text to the GNL security team letting them know he’d be working beside them, Jamie opened the portal he’d built into the network security mainframe and started activating countermeasures.

  Beside him, Aidan had Todd on speakerphone. “You guys seeing this on your end?”

  “We’re on it,” Todd replied. “Oscar’s in the system, tag-teaming with Agent Walker.”

  Jamie nodded. Oscar had flagged him two seconds ago.

  “The tracker’s dead?” Aidan asked him.

  Splitting his attention, same as he’d done at the shooting range, Jamie continued to work as he answered Aidan’s questions. “Two seconds before the alerts.”

  “Were you able to get all the data off his phone?”

  “Yes, but it’s still decrypting.”

  “What did you find on Terry Altman?”

  “Definitely didn’t live up to his father’s expectations. Squeaked by in community college. Dad used his influence to get him into the UT grad program. Dropped out after a year. His paychecks from UT Med line up with his dad’s publications, which syncs with what Griffin said. He’s got a steadier gig at the Port. Driver’s license says he lives at home still.”

  “Negative,” Todd chimed in. “Terry moved in with one of his dock buddies four months ago. Three guesses who.”

  “Hamilton,” Jamie and Aidan answered together.

  “Yes, sirs. We checked out their place an hour ago. Warrant didn’t come through until this morning. It’s in a similar state as Jo Ann’s. Looks like they left in a hurry.”

  “Until thirty seconds ago, Hamilton was still on-site,” Aidan said. “We didn’t see him leave, Barnes. Check in with the other teams.”

  Sirens wailed outside the car, and Jamie glanced up. Police cars and fire trucks streamed by them, racing away from the Port toward GNL.

  His computer dinged again, regaining his full attention. “Shit! They’re through the internal firewall. It has to be someone with system access. Jo Ann, wherever she is.”

  “Negative,” Todd repeated. “I’m staring right at her.”

  Aidan leaned forward, hand clutching the dash. “What do you mean?”

  “Sorry, sir. I should have started by telling you the Marshals brought her in an hour ago. They picked her up after she used one of Emily’s credit cards.”

  “So then who the hell did I just boot from the system?” Jamie said.

  Aidan’s head swiveled. “You shut it down?”

  Straightening out of his hunch over the keyboard, Jamie stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles. “Yeah, but not before they accessed all the inner lab doors and the locking mechanisms on two cabinets.”

  “Barnes,” Aidan commanded. “Make sure GNL is locked down. No one and nothing goes in or out.”

  “Yes, sir. First responders are en route.”

  An incoming call from Danny flashed on Aidan’s phone. “Hold a minute, Barnes.” Aidan switched to the other call.

  Danny didn’t bother with pleasantries. “One of those names on the list is at the Port right now, off schedule.”

  “Altman?” Aidan said.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Barnes said they were gone.” Jamie shut his laptop and handed it off to Aidan.

  “Altman’s meeting Hamilton here, and they don’t want us to follow.” Aidan uncurled from where he was bent, tucking the laptop into the bag on the floorboard. “You drive.”

  Not that Jamie planned to waste time switching. He was the faster driver anyways. Cranking the car, he familiarized himself with the controls, found the sport mode in two clicks, and launched them out of the bank parking lot.

  “What else can I do?” Danny said.

  “Nothing, that’s it, Daniel.” Aidan’s voice brooked no argument. “I’m not sure what we’re walking into, but you stay the hell out of it.”

  “Ai, Jamie, be safe.”

  “Love you, bro.” Aidan rang off and switched the call back to Todd. “We’ve got Hamilton and Altman at the Port. Walker and I are headed in. Tell the other teams to converge.”

  “Yes, sir,” Barnes replied, and Aidan hung up. “Faster, Whiskey.”

  Jamie gunned the Rover through the sparse early morning traffic, passing another fire truck and two more police cars headed the opposite direction.

  “You noticing a trend?” Aidan said.

  “All the emergency response vehicles are leaving the area.”

  “Perfect time for something illegal to go down at the Port.”

  “You think the hacks are a distraction?”

  Aidan nodded. “In some part, yes. It’s all connected somehow.”

  “Let’s hope Hamilton and—”

  Jamie’s words were cut off by a jolt to their rear fender. An oversized dark blue SUV had burst out of an alley and rammed into the Rover’s back end.

  “What the fuck?” Aidan shouted.

  Wrenching the steering wheel, Jamie fought the skid, stopping them from spinning out and aiming them down the next alley instead. “We’ve got company.” He kept one eye on the road ahead and one on the rearview mirror. The SUV on their tail accelerated, gaining faster in the path Jamie cleared for them. Impact was inevitable. “Shit, hold on!”

  The other car rammed them again, hurtling the Rover forward, he and Aidan straining their seat belts. He switched the LR4 into manual and tapped the shifter paddles, gaining some separation from their pursuer.

  He cleared the alley, finding they’d been diverted away from the Port.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Aidan was white-knuckling the oh-shit handle above his door, torso twisted to look behind them, his face paler than Jamie had ever seen it.

  “Someone doesn’t want us at the Port.” Pulling a hard right, Jamie aimed them down another street leading right back there.

  And into the path of a second oncoming SUV.

  A horrified “Oh God, no” escaped from his partner just as Jamie saw an under-construction on-ramp ahead on the left, orange-and-white-striped barrels blocking the entrance. He pressed the gas pedal to the floor and headed straight for the oncoming tru
ck.

  “Whiskey!” Aidan cried, head spinning forward and back. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Their pursuers were closing in on either side, as bypassed alleys flew by left and right.

  “You’re headed straight for them. Turn, goddammit!”

  But turning down one of those alleys would leave them cornered. There was only one path to escape.

  Jamie grabbed the back of Aidan’s head and pushed it toward his knees, screaming, “Hold on!”

  At the last possible second, he veered left, out of the path of the oncoming SUVs and into the barrels. The SUVs in front and behind plowed into each other, exploding in their wake, the blast momentum propelling the Rover farther than Jamie had intended.

  Through the barrels and past the unfinished on-ramp.

  Through the guardrail.

  And down the cliff on the other side.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Aidan came to slowly. The acrid smell of smoke stung his nostrils, something wet dripped down the side of his face, and his head throbbed like someone had taken a hammer to it. Eyes closed, shattered glass tinkled all around as he lifted a hand to his temple. Massaging the point of pain, his fingers came away sticky and wet.

  His aching brain was slow to catch on. One by one, it put together the pieces, and the terrible familiarity of his situation came into focus, knotting his gut and tearing at his chest.

  Blood.

  Broken glass.

  Engine smoke and airbag fumes.

  Not one but two SUVs barreling toward them.

  Car accident.

  Again.

  Present events collided with past memories of a similar, horrible night eight months ago.

  Tom clutching the dashboard with one hand and the handle above the Tesla’s passenger door with the other, bracing for impact, his face aghast in the oncoming high beams of the vehicle speeding toward them.

  Gabe’s frightened black eyes meeting his own in the rearview mirror, a second before his body was thrown sideways in the back seat, the crash of his skull against the window louder in Aidan’s mind than the grinding metal and splintering glass.

  Aidan’s insides tossing and turning with each flip of the car, free fall at its most terrifying. The scrape of asphalt against his arm, metal piercing skin, twisting and turning, as death pinned him in its grip.

  A weak gurgling cough yanked Aidan back to the present.

  Whiskey.

  Eyes popping open, he squinted against the bright morning light and gasped at the pain piercing his head and radiating down his right side. Fighting the blackness encroaching on the edges of his vision, he turned his head left, searching for his partner.

  His partner who’d driven the Rover with stunt-worthy precision out of the way of two oncoming SUVs, through a barrier, and down a cliff into a ravine.

  The hard landing had knocked Aidan out, but he’d woken upright and in one piece, relatively. Walker, just coming to, was held back against the driver’s seat by the taut seatbelt. He had his left hand up by his hairline, and when it fell limply into his lap, his fingertips were covered in blood. The strained belt snapped, and he began to crumple forward.

  “Whiskey.” Swatting the deflated airbags out of the way, Aidan reached over to hold Walker upright, pressing him back into the seat. “Stay with me.”

  Groaning, Walker rotated his head, his lashes dark against colorless cheeks. Bright red blood seeped from a gash at his hairline.

  Ignoring the pain in his side and the anvil in his head, Aidan unbuckled his seatbelt and stretched across the console to hold Walker’s face in his hand, giving his unshaven cheek a firm but careful pat.

  “Come on, Jamie. Open those beautiful blue eyes for me.”

  Walker’s forehead wrinkled and his eyelids fluttered open, the gaze beneath them hazy and unfocused. “Irish?”

  Pure relief and blinding need propelled Aidan across the console. Fingers digging into Walker’s neck, he slammed their mouths together and tasted the precious life flowing from his partner’s lips. Aidan had wanted this the past three weeks, but he’d denied the attraction between them. Because they were partners. Because he was still grieving. But in the aftermath of this latest accident, too much like the one that’d stolen the last man he’d loved, Aidan needed to know the man beside him, the man he could but couldn’t love, was alive.

  Walker gave a surprised jerk, then, catching on, angled his head and parted his lips, his warm breath rushing into Aidan’s mouth. Granted entrance, Walker’s slow kiss was no match for Aidan’s desperation.

  For the fear that laced each swipe of his tongue.

  For the longing that shook his fingers and caused him to groan.

  For the darkness that grew closer with each stolen breath.

  “You’ll be okay, Whiskey,” he whispered against his lips.

  Relief for Walker’s safety, for his life, made Aidan’s slide into darkness smooth, not the tossing and turning of his nightmarish memories.

  “Irish, hold on,” was the last thing he heard before falling forward into Walker’s big body and letting oblivion take him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  In the waiting area down the hall from Aidan’s hospital room, Jamie answered the local police detective’s questions, most of which he’d already answered for two officers before him.

  “You sure you didn’t recognize either driver, Agent Walker?”

  Elbows on his knees, head hanging in his hands, he absently picked at the bandage on his left temple. “I’m sure, Detective. I was too busy trying to save our lives.”

  “Anything else you can remember?”

  “As I told your officers, both drivers were white men, early-to-mid thirties. One had a beard, dark; the other was clean-shaven. Both wore sunglasses, Ray-Bans the one, Oakleys the other. Ray-Ban had a ball cap on, Oakley a hoodie. The SUVs were the same make and model—Ford Expeditions, navy blue, early two thousands. Other than the front windshield, the windows were tinted. I’d guess beyond the legal limit. No other individuals in the cars that I saw.”

  “That’s a lot of details, and yet you didn’t recognize either driver?”

  Jamie was done with this. His head hurt, his body ached, and all he wanted to do was get back to Aidan’s bedside and talk his partner into waking the fuck up. “I remember the details, because it’s my job. I didn’t recognize either driver, because I don’t know them.”

  “And they weren’t this—” the detective looked down at the small notepad in his hand “—Eric Hamilton or Terry Altman that you and Agent Talley suspect are involved in your investigation?”

  “No, they weren’t Hamilton or Altman. They’re in the wind.”

  Gary entered the waiting area, Oscar on his heels, carrying a small file box, and two other agents behind them. “Helms,” Gary said, addressing the detective. “Agent Walker’s been through enough today. He’s already given you more than your average witness.”

  “This isn’t an average accident, Gary.”

  “Understood, and you have our full cooperation. My agents here—” Gary gestured to the agents behind him and Oscar “—will accompany you, and you’ll have the Bureau’s full resources at your disposal in identifying the dead bodies pulled from the wreckage. Of which there were only two, correct?”

  Jamie appreciated Gary’s smooth backhanded verbal slap.

  “I’ll want to question Agent Talley as soon as he wakes.”

  “Assuming he wakes tonight, you can question him at the field office first thing tomorrow.”

  The bulldog-faced detective was not pleased. However, confronted by a wall of federal agents, he conceded. He handed Jamie his business card. “Please call me if you remember anything else.” Helms left with his new FBI escort, probably not what he’d intended
, and Jamie couldn’t help but laugh, which in turn caused him to wince.

  Oscar knelt beside him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Brought you a get-well present, of sorts.” He handed him the file box and Jamie removed the lid. Inside were his laptop, tablet, and both his and Aidan’s phones. “I couldn’t bring them back to life, but maybe you can.”

  “Thank you,” he said with a weak smile. By the look of the beat-up devices, he didn’t hold much hope for rescuing the data on them, including the clone of Hamilton’s phone. He had spares at the condo but the past twelve hours would be lost.

  The other agent put a too-familiar hand on his knee. “Is there else anything I can get you?”

  Presented with the opening, Jamie took it. He needed to bring Gary up to speed, and his doubts about Oscar had solidified over the past twenty-four hours. “I’d love a soda and some chips. And another few pain pills, if the doc says it’s okay.”

  Oscar squeezed his knee and stood. “Let me see what I can do.”

  “What’s going on there?” Gary asked, once Oscar cleared the door.

  “You mean your agent relentlessly hitting on me?”

  The older man chuckled and took the seat next to him. “Oscar hits on every attractive man or woman who crosses his path. He’s a player, as my nephew would say. I meant, why did you send him away just now?”

  Jamie had to approach this delicately. He needed to think like Cruz and Aidan would on how to handle the politics of the situation. Carefully choosing his words, he said, “I know you’ve already questioned and cleared your agents, but—”

  Gary held up a hand. “The door was not properly cleared at Jo Ann’s house yesterday, and Oscar’s a better-than-average hacker. With Jo Ann in custody during the last hack, he’s your next best suspect.”

  “You’ve already considered this?”

  “I didn’t get to be an SAC by being the worst agent in Texas.”

  Jamie laughed and winced again, leaning back in his chair with a hand over his side. “Shit. Bruised ribs. Forgot how not fun this is.”