Single Malt

by Layla Reyne

  Gary favored him with a sympathetic smile. “Oscar will be back soon with those pain meds, and I’ll keep an eye on him until you two are up and running again.”

  “There’s something else we put together during the breach this morning.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When the breach occurred, all the EMS vehicles left the Port area.”

  Gary nodded. “Headed to GNL, that’s right.”

  “We think GNL could be a distraction, in whole or in part. We need to be sure adequate response teams remain at the Port. I was going to mention it to Detective Helms, but we didn’t exactly hit it off. I think the order would be better received from you.”

  “I’ll make sure he gets it,” Gary assured him, just as Oscar returned.

  “Ask and you shall receive.” He handed Jamie soda and chips, but no pain pills. “Doc said you have to wait another hour for more meds.”

  “Worth a shot.” Jamie opened the soda and dug into the snack. He was halfway through the bag when Barnes came around the corner with doctors Altman and Griffin.

  “Agent Walker.” Dr. Griffin moved ahead of the other two and took his free hand in hers. “We came as soon as Agent Barnes told us what happened. Is Aidan okay?” Despite having been raised in the South with a mother who hugged everyone, Jamie was getting damn tired of all the contact from virtual strangers here. The only person he wanted to have any sort of contact with right now was lying unconscious in a bed down the hall.

  “Talley got his head rattled,” Gary answered for him. “We’re waiting for him to wake up.”

  “I’m sorry about this,” Altman murmured from where he stood, separated from the rest. “I never expected Terry to be involved in something like this.”

  Dr. Griffin’s head snapped to the side. “Really, Henry? How many times did I tell you he shouldn’t be working here?”

  “Terry wasn’t living up to his potential. I thought working in the lab would motivate him to reenroll and finish his PhD.”

  “That backfired,” the woman spat.

  From their interview with her on Sunday, Jamie knew Dr. Griffin wasn’t a fan of Altman, but her claws were out and extra sharp today. He wasn’t sure where the added animosity came from. He doubted it was mere concern for his partner. Angling for his job, maybe? Hiding something herself?

  Altman spread his hands. “I made a mistake. Is there anything I can do to help fix it?”

  Jamie withdrew his hand from Dr. Griffin and straightened in his chair, fighting not to cringe in pain. “Did you show him a picture of Jo Ann?” he asked Todd.

  “Not yet. Dr. Griffin insisted we rush right here.”

  “Pull it up on your phone,” he told Todd, since his was dead in the box.

  “Here you go,” Todd said, handing Altman the phone.

  Recognition dawned on the doctor’s face.

  “You recognize her?” Jamie said.

  “I thought her name was Emily. She and Terry dated off and on. Nice girl. They met at GNL during one of the times Terry helped me with a project. She’s involved in this too?”

  “We think she’s responsible for the security breaches.”

  Altman gasped. “They were working together? Did she bring him into this?”

  “More likely the other way around,” Oscar said. “They were working with another man, Eric Hamilton. Do you recognize that name?”

  “He’s the fellow from the docks Terry moved in with. Only met him once. Intense guy.”

  “And you let your son move in with him?” Dr. Griffin said.

  “Terry’s a grown man, Naomi.”

  “And you’re still trying to run his life, like you do everyone around you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jamie had had enough of the byplay he didn’t understand. He glanced back and forth between the two scientists. “Is there something more going on here we should know about?”

  “They were married,” Todd said, and Jamie understood Aidan’s frequent instinct to strangle Agent Hipster for hiding the ball.

  “Is Terry your son, Dr. Griffin?” he asked.

  “No,” Altman answered. “I had Terry with my second wife.”

  “Four months after our divorce was finalized,” Dr. Griffin snipped.

  That explained the hostility, though the tangled web made Jamie’s headache reappear. Rubbing a temple, he glanced again at Dr. Altman. “Hamilton and your son are missing. Do you have any idea where they might have gone?”

  “I’m sorry, no. We’ve only spoken a couple times since he moved out.”

  “Talk to Jo Ann,” Jamie said to Todd. “See if she has any ideas.”

  “There’s a string of no-tell motels out on I-45, on the way to Houston,” Oscar added. “I’ll make some calls, see if anyone fitting their description has checked in.”

  Jamie nodded and sank back in his chair, eyes closed against the intensifying headache. The pain must have shown on his face. He heard Gary’s heavy footfalls and lowered voice ushering the doctors out, Dr. Griffin insisting the entire way she be kept updated on Aidan’s status.

  “You doing okay?” Oscar asked, sitting next to him.

  “Yeah. Head’s just hurting from the feuding lab coats.”

  Oscar laid a hand on his back, rubbing his shoulders, and Jamie jerked away. He was deciding between an apology and an argument when chaos erupted down the hallway.

  “What am I doing here? Where’s my husband? Where’s my partner?” Aidan’s sleep and brogue-roughened voice rang out, followed by the clatter of metal. “They were in the car with me. Take me to them. Take me to them now!”

  Standing faster than he should, Jamie swayed on his feet and was forced to accept a steadying hand from Oscar. Once the world stopped spinning, he hurried down the hallway and entered Aidan’s room behind two nurses and a security guard. Hands out, they tried to calm his snarling partner, who was backed into a corner, holding his IV pole like a weapon.

  Jamie moved in front of the nurses and guard. “Irish, calm down,” he said, voice far steadier than he felt.

  “Who the hell are you?” Aidan’s autumn eyes were wide with bewildered terror, the whites bloodshot and the rims red from smoke and tears.

  “I’m your partner,” Jamie said.

  “The hell you are. Tom Crane is my partner.”

  “Aidan, you’re at UT Med in Galveston.” He approached slowly, step by careful step. “I’m Jameson Walker. I work in Cyber. We’re newly partnered.”

  “Where’s Gabe? Where’s Tom?”

  Closing the last few steps between them, Jamie clasped Aidan’s shoulder with one hand and his face with the other, bracing for impact. “They’re gone. Killed in a car crash eight months ago.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You and I were in a similar accident this morning.” He ran a thumb across the matching bandage on Aidan’s right temple. “Things may have gotten a little rattled in there. You’re confusing our accident today with the other one, the one that killed Gabe and Tom.”

  Aidan blinked twice, slowly, and moisture pooled in his eyes as the confusion cleared. “They’re gone,” he whispered. “They’re gone, Whiskey.”

  Jamie breathed a sigh of relief at the same time his heart broke, glad to have pulled Aidan out of the past but hating to force him into the painful present. He glided his hand from the side of Aidan’s head to the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Irish. It’s just you and me now.”

  This time when Aidan fell forward, Jamie caught him, wrapping him in his arms and holding tight.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Aidan stared out at the ocean, inky black waves rising, falling, and crashing into the dunes as the tide rolled in under the full moon’s light. Into the phone at his ear, he recited Katie’s favorite bedtime stor
y. He’d memorized most of it sometime around the fiftieth read. By now, closing in on one hundred repetitions, he knew the words by heart and most of his attention was on Walker making noise in the kitchen behind him—rustling around in the pantry, running water, clattering mugs, the whirring noise and beep of the microwave. After the day they’d had, after the horrible, black emptiness that had descended on him in the hospital, as dark and violent as the waves below, he needed the constant connection to the man moving about his condo. Since coming back to himself, to the present, in Walker’s arms, he hadn’t let his partner out of his senses’ reach.

  And those senses, once restored, couldn’t let go of the afternoon’s trauma. One second, he’d recall the screech of tires and the smell of burnt rubber as Walker swung the Rover out of the path of the oncoming SUVs, and his head would pound with the remembered impact. The next, the ghost of Walker’s lips would whisper across his own and his stomach would flip, reacting to the phantom kiss. A kiss he’d forgotten those first few minutes of wakefulness in the hospital. The next, he’d recall the measured sound of his partner’s voice and the concerned look in his tired blue eyes as he’d coaxed him out of the corner of that room, when he’d been calling out for his late husband and former partner. The last, the boulder in his chest and gut as he’d collapsed in Walker’s arms, realizing his loved ones were gone. It was as if the past eight months had been honed into a single moment of grief and despair, drowning him under the tidal wave.

  The same defeat colored his voice now, despite his effort to remain upbeat for Katie. Hip to the balcony rail, Aidan leaned heavily against it. The doctors had wanted to keep him in the hospital overnight, but he’d insisted on sleeping in his own bed. He was still feeling it, though. Holding the phone to his ear with one hand, he curled the other around his neck, massaging the lingering pain just above the collar of his T-shirt.

  Shuffling feet alerted him to his partner’s approach and Aidan dropped his hand. Walker had removed the bandage at his temple, a bruise forming there around the gash held together by butterfly strips. The perfect façade marred just a little, but otherwise he was whole and here with him.

  Walker set a mug on the wide stucco railing and laid two pills next to it, then made to retreat. Aidan shot out a hand and circled his wrist. Half on, half off the balcony, Walker looked to him for direction. Aidan wanted him closer, wanted to feel that big warm body sheltering his again, wanted that phantom kiss, the taste of life, to be real. With a slight tug, Aidan pulled him closer and Walker came at once, allowing Aidan to shift his weight from the railing to him. He paused briefly in his bedtime story to Katie to take the pills and chase them with coff—tea—which he tried not to taste as he swallowed down the meds. He pitched the rest of the revolting liquid over the railing and Walker chuckled, the soft rumbling noise from inside the broad chest drawing Aidan closer.

  Continuing to drink from the other mug, Walker grew warmer with each sip, the heat radiating through his tee and into Aidan’s side. On the edge of his periphery, Walker’s free hand flailed, but once Aidan relaxed further into him, he skimmed it up his arm and over his shoulder, around to the back of his neck where he’d been rubbing earlier. Digging his fingers into the knot there, Walker massaged gently enough not to do harm yet firm enough to cause the muscle to kick and release. Aidan became putty in the other man’s hands, sinking fully into him, wrapping his dangling arm around his waist. They hadn’t been this close since the Tavern and it felt just as right now as it had then.

  And just as wrong, but Aidan was rapidly losing the will to fight, especially once Walker abandoned his mug on the balcony and circled him with both arms, holding him loosely until he finished the bedtime story with a whispered, “The End.”

  “Katie?” Aidan called for a response and hearing none, added, “Night, sweetie.”

  He lapsed into Gaelic as he spoke to his mother next, letting her know he was okay and that they’d likely be delayed getting back. “Oíche mhaith, máthair,” he finished, clicking off the phone and setting it face down on the balcony railing.

  When Aidan didn’t immediately move away, Walker gave him a tug and Aidan turned fully into him, wrapping his arms around his waist and burrowing against his chest. His breath hitched, his shoulders shook, and he fought not to choke on the strangle of memories and a too reminiscent present. He shouldn’t be here in another man’s arms, his partner’s, but he’d almost lost him. His mind, his body, his heart, before he’d really gotten a chance to know any. Nearly snuffed out the same way he’d lost the last man he—Aidan cut off the thought before it ran further, admitting instead that if he’d lost Jameson Walker today, it would’ve been a tragedy, any way he cut it.

  Any way he lied to himself.

  Walker cinched his arm around Aidan’s waist and threaded his other hand through his hair, soothing him. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

  “Today was too close. If you’d turned like I said, if you hadn’t played it the way you did...” Aidan’s words trailed off as his hold tightened, pressing his face into Walker’s neck. The lingering aftershave and day-old scruff fired all his senses.

  “Just doing my job.”

  “You did a good job, better than I did.”

  Walker palmed the side of his face. “We’ve been over this. There’s nothing you could have done. Don’t go back there. Leave the past where it belongs.”

  Easier said than done. Aidan shook his head, his gaze drifting past Walker’s shoulder and out over the dark ocean. “The past was right there when I woke up in the hospital. I thought...”

  “You were confused. It was understandable, given the circumstances.”

  So willing to let him off the hook, but Aidan couldn’t let himself off so easily. His gaze swung back, meeting a strange mix of doubt and anticipation in Walker’s baby blues. “Was it understandable that I kissed you?”

  “Who were you kissing?”

  A spear lodged in Aidan’s chest. That was the last thing he expected Walker to say, the last impression he’d wanted to give him. When he’d first come to in the car, when he’d realized where and when he was, there’d been only one person’s life on his mind, only one person’s life he’d wanted so desperately to taste.

  He laid his hands flat on Walker’s chest. “You, Whiskey. I was kissing you.” Walker’s heart pounded beneath his palms, and Aidan curled his fingers into the cotton of his tee, wishing he could reach inside and feel the beating pulse of that organ, the very evidence Walker was alive and whole.

  “Tell me why then,” Walker said, “And I’ll tell you if it’s understandable.”

  Leaning forward, Aidan laid the side of his face between his still-clenched hands, just above Walker’s heart, listening to the steady, reassuring rhythm. “Understandable,” he said after a moment. “Not the word I thought we’d use to describe our first kiss.”

  Walker’s words rumbled beneath his ear. “You’d thought about it?”

  Aidan chuckled without mirth. “Too damn much.”

  “Why then, Aidan? Why today finally?”

  Fingers uncurling, he flattened his palms over Walker’s now racing heart and leaned back, meeting the other man’s eyes, needing to dispel those doubts still swirling in his worried gaze. “Because you saved us. Because we were alive. Because I needed to remember what that felt like.” He’d been dead inside for months. Actually being near death had brought that fact into startling focus.

  Walker pulled him back into his arms, cheek to cheek. “Understandable.”

  “I need...” The corner of his mouth brushed Walker’s jaw.

  “What do you need?” Walker angled his face in, more than a mere brush, noses nudging each other, mouths inches apart.

  Life—big, beautiful life—and an end to the emptiness was right there for the taking.

  Aidan’s hands drifted up his chest, coming to rest at the
base of his neck, thumbs stroking his hammering pulse. “I need to feel alive again.”

  Walker’s heartbeat kicked at the words, at the gentle caress. “Then kiss me, Talley,” he whispered, and Aidan wasted no time crushing their open mouths together, his tongue diving right in. Hauling Walker close, he angled his head as he licked, nipped and sucked, exploring every possible fit until he found the one that fused them together best. Fingers weaving through silky strands, he scraped his nails across Walker’s scalp, eliciting a shudder.

  Aidan’s body reciprocated, trilling for more than just a kiss.

  Reading correctly, Walker shuffled them back, pressing him against the balcony door, not hiding his body’s interest. Moaning, Aidan drove a hand down his backside, grabbing his ass, and Walker answered with a powerful thrust of his hips. Heat spiraled through Aidan, aimed straight for where their cocks were grinding together, his own unleashed desire equally apparent.

  Walker snaked a hand under his shirt, ran it up his abs and chest, hot and greedy, and Aidan threw his head back on a gasp. His hand on Walker’s side clenched at the welcome attentions on his touch-deprived skin and then just as suddenly he was left cold and bereft, the branding touch and solid weight gone.

  “Are you okay?” Walker asked, voice concerned as his hands skimmed just over Aidan’s clothes in a clinical manner. He must have misread the earlier reaction for pain, but the meds had dulled any aches Aidan should have been feeling while amplifying the rippling pleasure.

  Aidan righted his desire-fueled gaze. “Don’t stop, Whiskey.”

  Walker’s smirk hitched up one side of his mouth and Aidan grabbed his shirt again, yanking him back against his body with a groan. Bending his head, Walker ran his tongue along Aidan’s ear and nipped at the lobe. “What do you need, Irish? What do you want?”

  There was only one possible answer to that complicated question. Skirting a hand between them, Aidan cupped him through denim. “You, Jamie,” he answered, with a slow, tortuous stroke down the impressive length. “All of you.”

  Rocking back and grabbing him by the shoulder, Walker pulled him off the doorjamb and aimed them inside. Arms wrapped around him from behind, Walker yanked his shirt off over his head. Aidan was usually the one calling the shots during sex, but with one of Walker’s big hands grabbing greedily at his chest while the other worked his fly, he was too overcome with sensation to do anything but let his partner lead.