Barrel Proof (Agents Irish and Whiskey)

by Layla Reyne

  “Call me if anything happens.”

  “You have my word.”

  They rode the elevator up in silence, conversation prevented by others in the cab. At the eleventh floor, Jamie followed Nic out and through the main office area. Rather than agents in a bullpen with only a few large, outer offices like on their floor, the US Attorney’s office was organized more like a law firm, with secretary and paralegal cubicles in the middle and more outer offices with solid walls.

  “Is Aidan gonna be okay?” Nic asked.

  “Mel’s more hopeful than I am.”

  “I tend to agree with you.”

  Of course Nic would, after almost being shot. And while Jamie didn’t like to think about it, Nic had had some sort of relationship with Aidan, even if only casual. Jamie fished his phone out of his pocket, opened the tracking app, and flashed it at Nic. “Aidan’s still in the building where he’s embedded.”

  “What is that?”

  “Tracking app. Closest thing I’ve got to a leash.”

  “Funny, I would have thought you were the one that needed a leash.” He mocked a growl, similar to the one Jamie had given him in the hospital.

  Jamie hung his head. “Yeah, okay, I probably deserved that.”

  Nic smirked. “No probably about it.”

  They came to a stop outside a door at the far end of the floor. “Bobby,” Nic said to the guard standing watch. “This is Special Agent Jameson Walker. He’ll be questioning Mr. Westley with me.”

  Jamie handed over his badge for the guard to examine. The big man gave it a cursory inspection, then handed it back. “I’ll be out here if you need me.”

  “Thanks,” Nic said, before opening the door to their suspect.

  To one of the ghosts Jamie had been chasing for months.

  Dressed in dark jeans and a maroon Henley, Martin Westley sat casually back in a chair on the other side of a rectangular conference table. He gave Nic a passing glance before his dark brown eyes settled on Jamie, gaze shifting from disinterested to disdain.

  Knowing what this man had done to Gabe, to all the people he’d leveraged in Renaud’s name, Jamie stared back with more than mere disdain. He hated Westley, almost as much as he hated Renaud.

  Despite his aching leg, Jamie remained standing, propped against the wall opposite Westley. Nic slid into one of the chairs on their side of the table, pulled out his phone, and activated the microphone app, setting the device in the middle of the table to record. “Assistant United States Attorney Dominic Price and FBI Special Agent Jameson Walker for the Department of Justice, questioning suspect Martin Westley.” He rattled off a few more details for the record, then said to Westley, “State your name for the record.”

  “You just said it.”

  “State it for the record.”

  Westley leaned forward, eyes drifting up Nic to Jamie. “Martin Westley also known as Mason West also known as...” The son of a bitch recited a dozen different aliases, many Jamie recognized from various Project Angel documents. Westley had been Renaud’s behind-the-scenes guy, the jack-of-all-trades who made the machine work.

  “I’ll remind you that you have the right to an attorney during this interrogation,” Nic said.

  Westley raised his chin, the mannerism haughty, cocky. It reminded Jamie of someone else, but he couldn’t place it. The curiosity, however, perished in an anger-fueled blaze with Westley’s next words. “I don’t need an attorney. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Jamie scoffed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Tell me what exactly I’ve done wrong, Agent Walker.”

  “Aside from pretending to be a dozen different people, we’ll start with setting up shell companies to launder money for a terrorist.”

  Westley shrugged. “A businessman.”

  “You, by one name or another, signed all those corporate formation documents for Renaud.”

  He put a hand to his chest, gasping in mock surprise. “You mean I did my job? As a paralegal?” He dropped his hand, narrowed his eyes, and leaned forward, speaking right into the phone. “I believe the person moving money around was Gabriel Cruz, your lover’s husband.”

  Jamie shoved off the wall and braced both hands on the table. “After you leveraged him into it. You’re the one who’s spent the last two years, if not more, blackmailing pawns, including Gabe, on your boss’s behalf.” Nic’s hand curled around his biceps and Jamie shook it off. “You’re the criminal here. Not Aidan, not Gabe.”

  “And not you, right? With all your illegal software and off-the-books investigations. I know at least two police officers who wouldn’t be dead, if not for you.”

  “Listen, you piece of shit—”

  Nic interrupted his escalating tirade. “We’ve got you at the scene of AD Weiss’s death last night.”

  Westley picked at his nails, as if he were bored. “This good cop, bad cop routine is cute.”

  “It won’t be cute much longer if you don’t answer the question.”

  “What’ve you got? A blurry photo that a computer program, one he—” Westley jutted his chin at Jamie “—could have hacked and manipulated to resolve into a picture of me. I can have it resolved the other way just as fast.”

  Jamie straightened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said with an evil grin.

  “How do you explain your rental car at the scene?” Nic asked, redirecting.

  “It was in the hotel parking lot when I checked in last night and it was there this morning. Someone must have taken it during the night.”

  Jamie wanted to pivot in a different direction, the direction every road led when Renaud was involved. He slid into the chair next to Nic. “What’s he got on you?”

  Westley’s right eye twitched.

  Bingo.

  “No one works for Renaud because they want to. You’re a pawn like all the rest, and he moves his pawns with leverage. So what’s he got on you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Westley tried to play dumb, but that involuntary eye twitch gave him away.

  “That’s it, then,” Jamie said. “It’s not what Renaud has on you but on someone you care about it. Who is it?”

  Westley’s chin dipped and he crossed his arms, going on the defensive. “I’m done talking. Lawyer.”

  “Not so cocky now, are you, asshole?”

  “Lawyer,” he repeated.

  Jamie smacked the table, bellowing, “Who is it?”

  Westley’s gaze shifted to Nic. “Badgering the witness, Counselor.”

  “I think we can declare you hostile,” Nic said to Westley, and Jamie smiled, as evil as Westley had earlier.

  Frantic rapping against the door tempered the short-lived victory.

  “Better go see what that is,” Westley sing-songed, knowingly, and Jamie’s smiled died, a knot forming in his gut. Outside, a frazzled-looking older woman waited.

  “Sandi, what it is?” Nic said.

  “SAC Cruz called. She asked for Agent Walker, immediately.”

  Which meant Aidan was in trouble. “I have to go,” Jamie said.

  “I’ll continue working Westley,” Nic said. “Go. Keep me posted.”

  “Same,” Jamie threw over his shoulder, already running for the elevator.

  He punched the buttons on either side of the lobby, waited ten seconds, then slammed through the stairwell door, taking the stairs three at a time, sore leg be damned. He banged through the door on the thirteenth floor and turned toward the cave.

  “Jamie,” his secretary called out, stopping him short. “They’re in your other office.” She tilted her head toward his and Aidan’s main floor space. Hope bloomed, hope that “they” meant Mel and Aidan, but then Mel shifted and he
saw it was Lauren, not Aidan, in there with her.

  “Is Aidan okay?” their secretary asked, worried.

  “He will be,” Jamie said with more confidence than he felt. All eyes on him, he hid his limp as much as possible and calmly crossed the bullpen.

  “Tell me,” he said, once the office door swung closed behind him.

  “Aidan was right,” Mel said. “He’s being set up.”

  He leaned a hip against the desk, shifting weight off his bad leg. “How?”

  “After you hung up,” Lauren said, “Security took him. They said he was the one who sent the encrypted sell message.”

  He hobbled behind his desk, collapsed in his chair, and opened the monitoring program on his computer. “Time of the trade message?”

  “Ten-thirteen.” Lauren moved behind him, looking over his shoulder. “I checked the encryption key already. It’s Aidan’s.”

  “But we know he didn’t send it,” Mel said. “I thought it was Spencer’s encryption key.”

  “That must have been a fabricated log too.”

  “By whom?”

  Jamie searched his cache for the Aurora messages he’d programmed his system to automatically copy there. He scrolled down to the one that set off this whole mess. “Come look at this.” He waited for Mel to cross behind him, then pointed at the two windows. “Before and after.”

  “They don’t match,” Mel said. “Who the hell is in the system?”

  “I’ll give you one guess.” Jamie tunneled back though the Aurora directory to the real source of the message. Before it had been re-tagged to Spencer’s, then Aidan’s, encryption key. It took less than a minute, and led right where he expected. A sword pierced the knot in his gut, doubling the twisting pain, rivaled only by the fire in his right leg.

  “By your face,” Mel said, “I’m guessing I don’t need that guess. Wald.”

  Renaud was there. He’d engineered this so Aidan would take the fall. And once isolated, Renaud would take him. A face-to-face with the devil. Alone. Jamie couldn’t let that happen. Rising, he pulled out his phone and checked the tracking app. “According to this, he’s still in the Pearl building.”

  He was halfway to the door when Mel caught his arm. “Jamie, wait. What are we walking into?”

  “He’s got Aidan. I don’t care.”

  “Think, Jamie.” Her hand tightened on his biceps. “What does Aidan have that Renaud wants?”

  He struggled to wrench his arm free to no avail. “Besides his life?”

  “Renaud’s been here two days. If he wanted Aidan dead, he’d be dead by now. We both know that.”

  He closed his eyes to the terrible truth in her dark eyes. Shoved it to the back of his mind where his other worst nightmares of smoke and fire lived. Fear tucked away, the answer to Mel’s question came into focus.

  Renaud was after the very thing Jamie had just accessed. “Not Aidan,” he said, opening his eyes. “Talbott. Legal Compliance has full access to the Aurora directory.”

  Mel dropped her hand. “Explain.”

  “He can get to the Aurora directory via Aidan’s encryption key,” Lauren said. “He can access all the Aurora users and send messages that appear legit.”

  “He can start a mass sell-off,” Jamie said, putting it all together.

  Renaud’s endgame—financial chaos—was an encrypted message away.

  Chapter Ten

  Aidan came to in a much different place than Pearl’s conference room. Preserving his cover, and hoping for the best, a chance to dig further into Pearl and Aurora, he’d allowed himself to be led into the same room Spencer had been held in. But once Greg had handed him a cup of coffee that tasted worse than the usual office sludge, Aidan knew he was looking at the worst-case scenario. A face-to-face with the devil.

  He wondered if Greg was one of Renaud’s pawns, or if, as Peter Wald, Renaud had asked to sit in on the interrogation and given Greg a cup of coffee, saying he’d be right behind them. Had Greg seen him pass out from whatever drug was in the coffee or had Wald made some excuse by then to get Greg out of the room? The chemical had acted so fast Aidan couldn’t remember.

  Things were hazy still, but even half out of it, Aidan knew he’d never seen this room in Pearl’s offices, much less in any Class-A office building. Windowless and lit by a single flickering UV panel, the room was ten-by-twelve at best with a concrete back wall, three sheetrock others and a single door. It looked more like a nondescript interior room in a mechanic’s garage, furnished only with the cheap folding chair he was slumped in.

  Woozy, he stood slowly, and hand to the wall, made his way to the door.

  Locked. He hadn’t expected otherwise.

  He leaned back against the wall and inhaled deep. This place smelled like a garage too. Petrol, grease, exhaust and overheated machine parts, all things Aidan had smelled before at shipping ports, but without the overpowering stench of stagnant saltwater. Salt did linger on the air, though; they were close to water, just not on top of it. Perhaps still in the Bay Area, then. Maybe he hadn’t been transported far. Except that through the thin walls, he could hear the crank and thump of a prop jet. The distinctive noise faded, giving way to approaching footsteps.

  Aidan patted down his pockets. No phone, no business card, no tracker.

  Shit.

  He could hide behind the door and try to disable his visitor, but with the world still unsteady, he’d be just as likely to take himself down. He stumbled across the room instead.

  It wasn’t the devil Aidan expected who stepped through the door. But it was a devil nonetheless. The last person he’d ever wanted to see again. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, voice rough.

  That attractive, much-despised tan face broke into a smug grin. “Special Agent Talley, never a pleasure,” Oscar Torres replied. The former agent, who’d made his interest in Jamie known, had been on their side when they’d foiled Renaud’s attempted bombing in Galveston, and once again last winter when he’d helped Aidan rescue Jamie.

  Torres stalked toward him, and Aidan staggered the opposite direction, the two of them circling the room like cage fighters. Only this time there was no Jamie to referee. Slowed by the drugs, Aidan found himself quickly backed into a corner.

  “I’ve waited months for this day,” Torres taunted.

  “I thought you weren’t happy to see me.”

  “Well, the chance to do this makes it a little better.” Torres slammed a fist into Aidan’s face, knocking him to a knee.

  Hand to his jaw, Aidan worked it open and spit blood. “What the hell?” Sure, the two of them had never gotten along, but Aidan had thought they’d reached a sort of grudging detente. Where the fuck was this coming from now? And why the fuck was Torres even here?

  “You know, Jamie had it right in the beginning, but after you two used me, your conclusion won out.”

  Aidan pushed up and leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Had what right? What conclusion?”

  “Who the bad guy was.”

  Aidan’s eyes shot to Torres’s, the radiant hazel swirling with resentment. Resentment he and Jamie had put there by using Torres to sniff out Renaud’s FBI mole. Aidan had suspected Torres, and Jamie had pretended to be interested in the ex-agent, faking a tiff with Aidan so the mole would show himself. He eventually did, though it had been Torres’s SAC. But apparently in carrying out their ruse, Aidan and Jamie had pushed Torres too far. Right into their enemy’s hands.

  “That’s when Renaud recruited you?”

  “What is it you Irish folk say...? Aye.”

  The glint in his eye, that satisfied smile, stoked Aidan’s ire. It was a short fuse, where Torres was concerned. He summoned his strength and charged, but reflexes dulled, he wasn’t fast enough. Torres dodged and landed another punch to his cheekbone
.

  “Careful now. Don’t want to mess up that pretty face for your boyfriend.”

  “Why would you work for Renaud?”

  “He saw what I could do with a computer and needed a hacker.”

  Aidan edged along the wall toward the door. “Ah, I see. Fed that enormous ego of yours, did he?”

  Torres looked like he wanted to punch him again but kept his balled fist at his side. “The pay was better, than the Bureau or private security.”

  “Enough to become a terrorist?”

  “Our interests aligned.”

  There it was.

  “You mean he leveraged you. That’s what Renaud does, leverages everyone to do his bidding. What’d he promise you? Aside from money?”

  “The chance to get back at you.”

  “I don’t believe you. There has to be more.” More than greed and vengeance. Aidan needed to stall—to find what Renaud had over Torres, to get a message to Jamie, to get the hell out of here, wherever the fuck here was. “What do you want with me?”

  “Agent Talley, I thought you were San Francisco’s best agent.”

  Why had the hacker with a grudge kidnapped him? Aidan realized the answer before he even finished the question. “You—Renaud—need my access to the encrypted Aurora directory.”

  “There he is.” Torres lifted his chin, arrogant as always. “Step one, and you already gave it to me.”

  “Already gave it to you?”

  “Find him, Oscar,” Torres said in a perfect imitation of his Irish accent. A perfect repetition of the words he’d said to Torres when he’d needed his help to rescue Jamie... When he’d asked him to hack Jamie’s remote server.

  “I gave you access to his server, to the monitoring program.”

  Torres clapped slowly. “I’ve been a ghost in both your systems since.”

  “If access was step one...”

  “We want more. To crack back through the directories, through the programming, to the other companies using Aurora.”

  “And you need Jamie,” Aidan sneered. “Because he’s a better hacker than you.”