by Layla Reyne
Besides, Mel was already blazing the warpath for them. “You will not talk about my agents or colleagues that way. If you persist, I’ll have your goddamn badge.”
“How you gonna do that?” Williams folded his arms over his puffed-out chest, attempting to project the man-in-charge image.
Mel’s posture couldn’t have been more different. Relaxed. Confident. Terrifying, as Aidan had once said. “I have a file on you, Chief. A thick one.”
Williams tried to cover his rock back as a change in stance, but Jamie saw the motion for what it was. Fear and apprehension. “This is our scene.”
“It’s ours now,” she replied with a nod to the order. “As the last crash investigation you botched should have been. I won’t let you fuck up another one. Not on my watch.”
Bullish, Williams looked like he was going to argue, but then he turned on his heel and shouted at his techs, “Wrap it up. Feebs are taking over.”
They hung back as the police team handed things over to the FBI crew, the transition smooth. Williams aside, the SFPD techs were more than happy to call it a night.
“Where’s your partner?” Nic asked, as they waited.
“Different assignment.” Aidan and Lauren were both absent, owing to their covers.
Nic tapped the folded paper against his wrist. “So, not your partner anymore?”
The bait was right there and it was all Jamie could do not to take it. But with FBI and SFPD teams looking on, they needed to present a unified front, even if both his hands had balled into fists.
“Thank you, Price,” Mel said, interrupting their stare-down. “It was a late call; you didn’t have to answer.”
Jamie’s irritation ebbed, knowing it was Mel, not Aidan, who’d called in the favor.
“Direct your thanks to Judge Booth next time you see him. He didn’t overly appreciate the late-night visit. Haven’t heard that much swearing since boot camp.”
Given Nic’s slick appearance, his last name that was synonymous with Bay Area real estate, and his part ownership in a local brewery, Jamie hadn’t believed the Navy history either until he’d done his research on the prosecutor.
“You want in on this case, officially?” Mel asked.
Nic cut his eyes to Jamie. “Appears I can’t avoid it.”
While they discussed administrative details, Jamie limped around the mangled carcass of Weiss’s car. Glass, parts and other debris were strewn wide, the impact severe. The driver-side door, which had been wedged in and required the jaws to pry it out, lay crumpled on the street. Jamie circled to the rear bumper where their senior crime scene tech stood reviewing SFPD’s notes. “Give me the rundown,” Jamie said.
“Direct hit to the driver-side door. Given the degree of damage, I’d say the other car was going at least sixty-five.”
Consistent with Jamie’s observations, and this time of night, on Geary Boulevard, the same cross-town expressway where Aidan’s accident had occurred, a car could get up to that speed.
“We’ll need the autopsy results to conclusively rule cause of death, but with this degree of damage and—” the white-haired tech glanced at the stretcher and the black bag on top “—the AD’s injuries, I think it’s safe to say he died on impact.”
Small mercies, to have died instantly. Not to be trapped inside the car, in the smoke and flames. Jamie’s breath quickened, his eyes watered, and the ache in his leg intensified, the memories from Cuba like a haunting. Smoke filling his lungs, the scorching floor burning his back, the overhead flames blinding his eyes.
Mel’s hand on his elbow pulled him out of the waking nightmare. “What do we know about the other vehicle?”
“Vehicles,” Jamie answered. “Skids marks, there—” he nodded at the marks directly perpendicular to the driver-side door “—and there.” He indicated another set veering off to the right behind the Cadillac. “Impact marks are from an SUV. One that slammed into the Caddy, then reversed and drove away. The other, given the tread width and lack of distinction in the markings, I’d guess was a sports car.”
“Good guess,” the tech agreed. “Seen enough track photos in my life to confirm.”
Jamie said to Mel, “The way the second set of marks peeled off, the sports car must have been chasing Weiss.”
“Or following,” Nic said.
“Or following,” Jamie conceded.
“Could have been a signal car,” Mel said.
Recalling how Tom had signaled ahead last time, Jamie looked around for another body bag. “Was there anyone else in the car?”
“That’s the odd thing,” the tech said.
“Odd thing?”
He circled to the passenger side, Mel and Nic following, Jamie hobbling behind.
“AD Weiss was the only body we found in the car, but the passenger door was open and the passenger airbag sliced when SFPD arrived on the scene.”
Nic stepped closer. “There’s no evidence of impact.”
The prosecutor was right. No shattered glass, no blood on the door frame or airbag, no sign that anyone had been in the passenger seat. “The seat’s pushed all the way forward,” Jamie said. “No way a passenger survives a crash like this seated so close to the windshield. Gloves,” he motioned to the tech.
“What’re you thinking?” Mel asked.
He caught the tossed ball of blue neoprene and snapped on the gloves. “The person in that trailing car wanted something out of the backseat.” Stepping by Nic, Jamie braced his hand on a relatively intact piece of door frame and peered inside. There was nothing immediately visible in the lightly charred seats or on the ash-dusted floorboards. He moved to lean in farther, to stretch an arm under the seats, and grimaced, a sharp pain shooting up his leg.
“That leg’s killing you,” Nic said, low and close at his side. “Let me.”
Jamie appreciated the discretion. The last thing he wanted was to be yanked off this case and forced back to desk duty. He moved aside, and Nic knelt by the open door, sweeping a gloved hand under the passenger seat.
“Nothing.”
“Check under the driver’s,” Jamie said.
Nic reached across the divider and stretched his long arm under the driver’s seat. “Found something.”
Backing out of the car, he rose from his crouch and opened his palm, revealing the bane of Jamie’s existence the past seven months.
Another fucking flash drive.
Chapter Seven
Jamie lumbered into the cave, Nic hot on his heels. The attorney had hopped into the back of the Uber with him, uninvited, and not wanting to air their case or their dirty laundry to the random driver, Jamie hadn’t said a word. He hadn’t said anything in the elevator either, knowing it was monitored. He’d futilely hoped Nic would punch the button for the eleventh floor and exit there, but the prosecutor stayed with him to the thirteenth and followed Jamie into the cave.
“What do you think is on it?” Nic said, as soon as they cleared the server racks. “If AD Weiss—”
Jamie rounded on him. “Shut up!”
Nic’s hand at his side balled into a fist, and Jamie was certain it would have connected with his face had Jamie not held a finger up to his lips. He mouthed the word bugs and circled his finger in the air around them. Nic’s anger transformed into apprehension, his icy glare following Jamie as he swept the area with a sweeper. It was probably overkill, checking the cave after he’d already done so once today, but with Weiss dead on the heels of Renaud’s arrival, Jamie wasn’t taking any chances. He cleared the room and came back around the desk, stashing the sweeper in the top drawer where it now lived.
He shrugged out of his coat, heaved it at one of the other desks, and collapsed into his chair, keeping his eyes on Nic instead of letting them roll back in relief. “Now, why the fuck are you following me?�
�
“Chain of custody.” Nic tossed the plastic evidence bag containing the flash drive onto the desk. “That hasn’t been officially processed yet.”
“Because we can’t risk losing it this time.”
“I agree. And as a result, it’s here, and also still in my custody, so I’m here too.”
“You think I’d destroy evidence?” Jamie snagged a pair of gloves out of a drawer.
“Of course not. But I’m not going to see this case mishandled like the one involving Tom’s and Gabe’s deaths.”
Jamie halted mid-reach for the bag. How much had Aidan told Nic? Or if Aidan hadn’t told him, what had Nic already figured out? After all, Nic had investigated the murder of two cops Renaud had killed to cover up the truth about the accident. “You know?”
“I know the file on Aidan’s crash is too thin to have been investigated properly, and the findings make no sense. That crash wasn’t an accident. It was a hit, like the one that killed AD Weiss tonight.”
Nic had put together a lot of the pieces, short of tying it all to Renaud, the most important piece he didn’t have yet. What additional pieces might be on this new flash drive? And how was Jamie going to go about accessing them with a federal prosecutor sitting right across from him?
Nic slid back in the guest chair and rested an ankle atop his knee. “We gonna sit here all night or are you gonna make a copy so I can log the original into evidence?”
Jamie cracked a smile. He withdrew the drive as the laptop booted up, and once alive, plugged it in and copied its contents to his remote server. While the files transferred, Jamie opened a separate program that allowed him to retrieve footage from traffic cams in the area of Weiss’s crash. He fast-forwarded to the approximate time of the accident, pressed play, and the screech of tires and smash of metal blasted out of his speakers.
“What’s that?” Nic said, at once alert.
Jamie gestured him over. “Footage of tonight’s crash from traffic cams.” Nic stood behind him, and Jamie rewound the footage so Nic could see the trailing car veer to the right, just before Weiss’s Caddy was rammed by an SUV.
“Back it up again,” Nic said, and Jamie restarted it. A half second in, Nic said, “Stop,” and Jamie paused the video. Reaching an arm over Jamie’s shoulder, Nic tapped the sliver of red and yellow at the top of the frame. “That’s a Wells Fargo ATM. Can you pull footage from their camera?”
“Good catch,” Jamie said, impressed. That ATM would give them a closer view. “You want to look away for a second?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Walker, I know you’re a hacker. Get on with it. I’ll get the bank’s permission first thing in the morning.”
Grinning, Jamie back-channeled into the ATM’s security feed, and once accessed, cued the footage up. Hitting play, they watched a man step out of a trailing Mustang, open the Cadillac’s passenger door, and check first Weiss for a pulse then the car for something else.
The flash drive.
The man’s search was interrupted by sirens. He withdrew from the car, tossed a lighter inside it, and ran back to his Mustang. He peeled out, followed by the waiting SUV with its crumpled front fender, before the first responders arrived.
“You recognize the driver?” Nic asked.
“Too fuzzy.” Jamie rewound to the best face-forward screen capture he could grab. “Let me clean it up and run it through facial recognition. Maybe we’ll get something.”
Nic nodded. “Can you get me shots of the plates and VIN numbers too?”
“On it.” Jamie zoomed in on each for the SUV and Mustang. Stationary, those were easier to capture and read. “Sending them to the printer.” He moved to get up, and Nic laid a hand on his shoulder. “Stay off that leg.”
Nic crossed the cave to the printer, while Jamie tried to blink away his shock, their strange détente throwing him for a loop. It also threw into sharp relief the unwarranted grudge Jamie held against the other man. He knew what he needed to say, but before he got the chance, his computer beeped, signaling the file transfer was complete. He double-checked that everything was copied, wiped the traces of his activity from the flash drive, and ejected it. He sealed it back in the evidence bag and tugged off his gloves.
“These should be good enough for warrants,” Nic said, returning with the printouts. “I’ll get those, right after I call Wells Fargo, of course.” He picked up the evidence bag and turned to leave. “Keep me posted on the facial recognition.”
“Nic, wait.” Jamie pushed to his feet; he needed to stand for this. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For the way I behaved in the hospital that day.”
“We were all on edge.”
Jamie shook his head. “Not an excuse. You did us a favor and almost got shot for it. Then you did us another favor, and I acted like an ass.”
The tension in Nic’s broad shoulders eased. “That’s one way to put it.”
“A jealous ass would be more accurate.”
Nic nodded to his wrists, to Aidan’s clover cufflinks in Jamie’s shirt sleeves. “Not without cause, it would seem.”
Jamie stopped his thumbs from swiping over the jewels. “Again, I’m sorry.”
“You’re not the one who owes me an apology.”
“He’s right. I do.”
Nic’s head whipped around, and Jamie’s eyes shot over his shoulder, landing on his partner who stood at the opening of the server racks.
Fuck, how he’d missed that sight—Aidan, here at the office with him, be it in the cave or their main floor space. But as glad as he was to see him, to have Aidan back where he belonged, he wasn’t supposed to be here. “Irish—”
“It’s fine, Whiskey,” he said, before shifting his attention to Nic. “I’m the one who owes you an apology, and I realize I never said the words, even when we talked after. I’m sorry, Dominic. I should have been clearer it was casual.”
Tension rushed back into Nic’s frame, his shoulders and back snapping taut. “You think that’s why I’m upset? Fuck, Talley, I wasn’t looking for serious either. I’ve got enough complications without a relationship. I figured there were others for you too, but I didn’t figure one of them was your partner.” He threw an arm out at Jamie and looked back and forth between them. “This could only go one way. You used me as a roadblock. That much was clear in the hospital. Use me for my dick, fine, but like that, not cool.”
It was a stinging, accurate assessment, and by Aidan’s bowed head and slumped shoulders, he felt the burn. “You’re right, and I’m sorry.”
Nic’s rigid tension eased a fraction, but he had no further words for Aidan. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow,” he said to Jamie, then stalked down the aisle between the racks, the cave door banging shut behind him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Jamie said, and the next thing he knew, Aidan was around the desk, cutting off his objection with a searing kiss.
Jamie gave into it, no persuasion necessary. He moaned into the kiss, running his hands under Aidan’s jacket and over his ass, yanking him closer, picking up where they’d left off at the Tavern. Groaning, Aidan thrust his hips and shuffled them back toward the wall.
Until Jamie’s leg gave out. He clutched at Aidan, not because he wanted him close, but because he was the only thing holding him up.
“Whoa, big man,” Aidan teased. “That leg getting the better of you?”
“I’ve been on it all day,” Jamie said, as he fell into his chair. “Finally decided to give.”
“It’s braced?”
Jamie hiked up his pant leg, showing off the conditioning brace. “It’s designed for rehabbing athletes, since we can’t sit still for shit. Allows for increased mobility, but today’s been more than recommended. By a long shot.”
Aidan knelt before him, checking it out more closely. “You need to go home and get some rest.”
Smiling, Jamie shrugged one shoulder. “Pot, kettle.”
Aidan chuckled as he began loosening the brace. He seemed to know the gist of it, likely from his time with Gabe, and had it off in no time. Pushing Jamie’s pant leg higher, Aidan worked both hands up and down his lower leg, messaging and kneading the sore, overworked muscles.
Head falling back, Jamie closed his eyes. “Mmm, that feels good.”
“You doing PT?”
“Yeah, but I missed today’s appointment.”
Aidan made a “tsk, tsk” sound behind his teeth, the rebuke belied by the hand creeping up Jamie’s calf, fingers brushing lightly behind his knee, under the edge of his boxer briefs, closing in on where Jamie wanted him most. He righted his head on a breathless, “Aidan.”
“Hush,” Aidan said, working open his fly.
Eyes darting toward the door, Jamie covered Aidan’s hands with his. “What if—”
Aidan levered up and kissed him silent, stoking what was fast approaching a painful need. “Door’s closed and it’s deserted out there. Need you, baby.”
That did it. He was putty in Aidan’s hands after hearing that endearment, gentle again yet rough with his Irish brogue. Jamie’s legs fell open and his fly followed in short order. Aidan’s hand dove inside and freed his cock, stroking, while his lips worked their way down his body. A nip and kiss at the spot on Jamie’s neck, right behind his ear. Suction just shy of bruising over his Adam’s apple. A longer tongue lashing at the crevice of his throat where his shirt collar parted. Dropping a last kiss through his shirt, atop his tattoo and heart, Aidan sank to his knees and ran his hands up his thighs.
His gaze lifted, and Jamie saw in the darkening autumn his own want, his own need, reflected. “Missed you,” Aidan said, stroking him. “Missed your taste too.”
Jamie thrust into the grip, Aidan’s mouth so close after weeks without. “You’ve got me laid out like a buffet.”
A smirk turned up one corner of Aidan’s tempting mouth. “More like an appetizer.”
