Cask Strength, page 4
Jamie’s gaze landed on Nic exiting the opposite building. The prosecutor’s brown hair was perfectly coiffed and his bright blue eyes were locked on Aidan.
Aidan waited for him to jaywalk, then handed Jamie his umbrella and darted under Nic’s, hand extended. “Thanks for the tip.”
Nic drew Aidan in for a buss on the cheek. “Happy to help.”
Jamie muffled his scoff and hung back.
Scott drew alongside him. “I thought we didn’t like the federal prosecutors?”
“Some are friendlier than others.”
“I’d say.”
Fist clutching the umbrella handle, Jamie’s blood simmered. “Where are Nelson and Rollins?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Couldn’t divert them,” Nic answered. “They’ll be out front in five.”
Cursing, Jamie turned on his heel and jogged down the street, the others trailing.
“What’d you tell them?” Aidan asked Nic.
“That we needed to speak on a different matter. Make yourselves scarce—” Nic aimed a pointed look at Jamie “—if that’s possible.”
Eyes rolling, Jamie wandered toward the curbside coffee truck.
“So, it’s just you Nic doesn’t like?” Scott said.
A smart retort was on the tip of his tongue when awareness prickled the back of Jamie’s neck, foreboding creeping up his spine.
He scanned the surrounding buildings, looking for anything amiss. The courthouse steps were completely exposed, with clear lines of sight from any direction across the open plaza. He spun once, twice, looking for rooftop movement or sniper rifle flares.
Nothing.
Given the drizzly gray day, maybe it was just the wavering barometric pressing giving him vertigo. But his sense of unease grew heavier, like the other shoe would drop at any minute.
Aidan ducked under his umbrella. “You don’t like this?”
“Not one bit.” Jamie handed him the umbrella and shifted open one side of his trench, placing a hand over his sidearm. He turned in another slow circle.
Aidan did the same, the red-and-white umbrella rotating over his shoulder. “I don’t see anything.”
“Those your detectives?” Scott stretched out an arm toward the courthouse.
Nelson and Rollins, in uniform, were walking down the steps toward Nic. “Go,” Jamie said. “I’m going to hang back and cover.”
Aidan’s gaze locked with his, communicated “Be safe” without speaking a word. Jamie nodded and Aidan corralled Scott. They’d almost reached the gathered group when something red tripped the periphery of Jamie’s vision.
Head whipping around, he frantically searched the street, the crowd, the buildings, until he picked up the broken red line in the drizzling rain.
A laser sight.
Foreboding sharpened into certainty and Jamie’s breath hitched, held, as he followed the red line from the rooftop of a building across the plaza to the courthouse steps.
To a spot in the middle of Nelson’s chest.
The exact spot Aidan was about to step in front of.
Fear lanced through him, stopping his heart.
Not again, not now, not yet.
“Gun!” Jamie shouted, drawing his own. “Talley, get down!”
Aidan turned, wide-eyed, a split second before the shots rang out.
Rapid fire, automatic, one after another.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat...
Nic ducked for cover behind his umbrella.
Rollins and Nelson ran up the cement stairs.
Screaming pedestrians darted every direction, arms over their heads.
And Jamie watched in horror as Aidan’s body jerked once, twice, and fell forward on top of Scott, taking them both to the ground.
He’d been hit. He was wearing a vest, but Aidan had been hit. Fuck. Blood rushed in Jamie’s ears, his heart pounded in his chest, and there was a sea of chaos between him and his partner.
“FBI! Get down!” Jamie hurried ahead in a crouch, desperately trying to wade through the panicked crowd. His heart revolted, propelling his feet forward, while his mind went into crisis mode, shouting for bystanders to stay down and trying to control the scene.
More gunfire rent the air—tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—from the same direction as the last round.
Jamie hit the deck, arms thrown out over pedestrians, holding them down until the gunfire ceased. “Everybody stay down!” he shouted.
He counted the seconds it took to reload, waited for the gunfire to resume, and when it didn’t, slowly lifted his head. He searched for the glimmering red laser sight, saw nothing but gray sky and an empty rooftop, and cautiously stood.
A long second of silence later chaos resumed.
Bystanders rose from their hiding places, yelling for loved ones. Sirens wailed. Cops and armed guards poured out of the surrounding government buildings.
Jamie shoved his way toward Aidan but was intercepted by the officer in charge. He held up his badge. “FBI, Agent Jameson Walker. I’ve got an agent down. Shooter’s on the roof.” He indicated the building from which he’d seen the laser sight. “Get me medics here and a team up there, now.”
Orders were shouted down the line—secure the building, set up a perimeter, no one in or out—but Jamie had moved on, his world tunneling in on his partner.
Aidan lay unconscious on the sidewalk, an officer working over him, Scott crouched at his side. Heart in his throat, stomach on the ground several feet back, Jamie skidded to a halt beside them. Kneeling, he gazed in terror at Aidan’s pale, blank face.
“Move, move!” Jamie pushed the other officer off and palmed one side of Aidan’s face. “Come on, Irish, wake up.” He ripped open Aidan’s coat, hands skittering over the vest. No bullet had come through.
“He must have hit his head when we fell,” Scott said.
“Help me turn him.”
Scott nodded, and Jamie levered Aidan onto his side. He pushed his coat aside, searching. Metal glinted, and he pulled two bullets from the center of the vest over Aidan’s back.
If they hadn’t been wearing the Kevlar...
Aidan’s limp body twitched in his arms and he groaned low. Jamie returned him to his back and held his face. “That’s it, Talley, wake up.”
Aidan blinked his eyes open and gingerly pushed himself to seated. “Fucking hell,” he rasped.
“You were hit,” Scott said.
Aidan’s eyes flickered down to his chest.
“In the back,” Jamie added. “The vest stopped it.”
Wide autumn eyes shot to his, and the reality of another near miss hit Jamie full force. He shook his head, breaths coming short, vision blurring, as fuzzy memories of waking up in a smoking car flooded him.
Blood dripping down the side of Aidan’s pale slack face.
Autumn eyes dimming.
Body listing forward into his chest.
A hand on his face, then and now.
Aidan’s voice drifted through the haze. “I’m fine, Whiskey. Vest did its job.”
“Agents,” an officer called.
Jamie couldn’t move.
Not again, not now, not yet.
Aidan patted his cheek more firmly. “Jamie, snap out of it.”
His name in Aidan’s voice for the first time in months jolted him out of the mire. He stared into Aidan’s clear alert eyes, took in his blood-free face, and sucked in a shaky breath.
“There he is.” Aidan’s fingers coasted down his cheek. “You need to go lock down the shooter site. I’ll coordinate here. Stick to the story.” Jamie nodded. “Now stand me up before you go.”
He threw Aidan’s arm over his shoulder and rose, Scott supporting him on the other side.
“Medic!” Jamie shouted, as Nic’s voice rang out from several steps up. “Talley!”
Turning, Scott inhaled sharply and Aidan listed against Jamie’s side, giving him more of his weight.
Aidan had narrowly escaped. Nelson and Rollins hadn’t been so lucky.
Nic inched back, sidestepping the pool of blood oozing from the detectives’ lifeless bodies. “They’re dead.”
* * *
Sticking to the story proved harder than Aidan anticipated. First had been the investigating officers at the scene and now SFPD Chief Williams stood across his hospital room, grim-faced and in a grilling mood. “I need a better explanation for why two of my men were gunned down.”
Wincing as he shrugged into a clean scrub top, Aidan adjusted the shirt on his sore torso and sat on the end of the bed. “As I told your officers at the scene, we arranged with Assistant US Attorney Price—” he tilted his head toward Nic, who stood by the window on the phone “—to meet with Nelson and Rollins about a person of interest in a cybercrime case.”
“I saw you and that partner of yours hanging around the station this week, waiting for Nelson and Rollins.”
Aidan straightened, his tone sharp. “Because your detectives were less than cooperative.”
“Maybe if you’d brought the matter to SFPD through proper channels.”
“Chief.” Nic held the phone away from his ear, finger hovering over the mute button. “They cleared it with me.”
“Yeah, a federal prosecutor.”
Delightful. A jurisdictional pissing contest. Just what Aidan needed at the end of an already too long day.
“Chief,” Aidan said. “It’s just as likely this incident was connected to one of Nelson and Rollins’s other cases, if they were intentionally targeted at all.”
“Looks pretty damn intentional to me. This was not a random act of violence.”
Aidan shrugged. “It’s as good an explanation as any, until we know more.”
“And you? Wrong place at the wrong time? Bad habit of yours, Agent Talley.”
Aidan rocketed off the bed, aching back protesting, but the chief’s words had hit too close to home. “What the hell are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything.” He closed the distance between them, an accusing finger prodding Aidan’s chest. “People around you have a way of dying, Mr. FBI, and you just took down two of my best detectives.”
“Best?” Aidan scoffed, anger warring with the biting truth. Before he unwisely waded further into the mud, a commotion erupted outside.
“Where’s my partner? Where’s Aidan Talley?”
All Southern pleasantries gone, Walker sounded strung out and exhausted, with zero patience for the nurse’s visitation rules. They’d been separated at the scene. Walker had joined the unsuccessful chase for the suspect, then returned to the shooter’s perch to oversee evidence collection. Aidan, with Nic and the local police, had processed the gruesome scene on the courthouse steps.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about your rules,” Walker barked outside. “I’m going in there. He’s my partner.”
Nic pocketed his phone and moved toward the door. “I’ll let him know you’re finishing up.”
Aidan threw out an arm, blocking his path. Sending Nic out to calm Walker would only add fuel to the fire. “Are we done, Chief?”
The older man looked far from done, but the younger one beating down the door seemed enough to dissuade him from further questioning. “I want the details of the case you were working.”
“Of course,” Aidan lied, as he resettled on the end of the bed.
With an incredulous huff, Williams pushed his way out and Walker barged in. His frantic gaze bounced from Aidan’s face to his torso to Nic at his side. Worry vanished and anger flared. “You too. Get out.”
“Hey now, I just covered for you,” Nic said, revealing himself to be smarter than Aidan gave him credit for. The prosecutor stepped closer to the bed, and Walker’s entire frame went fighter-ready. “That story about a cybercrime case crossing paths with one of Nelson and Rollins’s is utter horse shit. And I lied through my teeth to back it. So if I want to be here, I’ll fucking be here.”
“Irish, get him out of here.” Walker glared at Nic like an unwelcome intruder, not like someone who’d risked his reputation to do them a favor. But that didn’t register for his overprotective partner right now. Aidan had to persuade Nic to leave before Walker burned a bridge they might later need.
Aidan angled toward Nic and put a hand on his arm, drawing a menacing growl from Walker. “Nic, we appreciate your cooperation.”
The prosecutor staggered back, baffled and affronted. “My cooperation?”
“You should go,” Aidan said. “I promise I’ll explain later.”
Walker leaned against the end of the bed, his thigh brushing Aidan’s hip. “You don’t have to explain shit to him.”
“Please go, Nic,” Aidan urged.
Glancing between them, Nic’s eyes widened the instant he put it together. “Fuck, Talley, I didn’t think you were this stupid.”
“Get out,” Walker snapped.
“You leave those marks on him last weekend?”
Walker inched closer, pressing his side along Aidan’s back and laying a claiming hand at the nape of his neck. “Damn straight I did. Want to see the ones I got to match?”
“Enough!” Aidan clipped over his shoulder, before turning back to Nic.
“He’s why you won’t—” Nic started, and Aidan cut him off. “Later, please.”
Nic shook his head. “Fuck you, Talley, and fuck later. We’re through, here and elsewhere. And don’t count on me to cover for you again.” He stalked out of the room with a muttered, “Fools.”
The door swung closed behind him and Aidan rounded on Walker. “That wasn’t smart. He—”
The rest of his words were silenced by a searing openmouthed kiss that was anything but smart and everything Aidan needed after the day they’d had.
After another close call.
Walker moved between his legs, the hand at his neck drawing him up while the one on his ass lifted him against his strong, hard body. Powerless to resist, Aidan curled his legs around the backs of Walker’s thighs and, despite the pain in his back, curled his arms over Walker’s shoulders, locking him in a tight embrace. Fingers tunneling through silky brown locks, Aidan scraped his nails over Walker’s scalp, eliciting a growl of a different sort. He licked into Walker’s mouth, tongues tangling, tasting and savoring, swept under by the force of everything in his partner’s kiss.
Relief, life, need, love.
Terrifying love.
Wrenching their mouths apart, Aidan gasped for breath and rested his forehead against Walker’s.
“You okay to leave?” Walker asked.
Aidan nodded, bringing their lips in brushing distance again. “All clear.”
“Good. Let’s go home.”
Aidan’s panic ballooned, making him lightheaded.
Home.
His mind instantly went to the three-story Edwardian in Bernal Heights. Walker’s house, not his. Aidan knew the place as well as his own. Just like his intimate knowledge of Walker’s body. How fingers trailed over his scalp guaranteed a moan. How he liked fingers and teeth sinking into the tattoo on his chest. How he preferred to be taken hard and rough. Walker had the same knowledge of his wants and desires. How he liked to be kissed hungrily, blanketed by a big body, and touched possessively.
Home, body, life, love.
All of it could have been torn away today.
As the chief rightly stated, people had a nasty habit of dying around him.
Nelson and Rollins weren’t the only targets. He had the mottled bruise on his back to prove it.
Three attempts on his life. Two that could have also claimed Walker’s and the tattered remains of Aidan’s heart. He couldn’t go there again.
Time to throw up blockades.
“I can’t,” he said. “I need to go talk to Nic.”
Walker tore out of his embrace. “Are you fucking kidding me? I could have lost you today and you’re gonna go fuck someone else.”
“I said talk, not fuck.”
“Bullshit!”
“You lost focus in the field today.” Aidan gestured between them. “Because of this.”
“Oh, so you’re admitting this—” Walker mimicked the motion “—is something?”
“Something casual. We talked about this, Ja—”
“Don’t,” Walker snapped. “Don’t you dare fucking ‘Jamie’ me right now.”
“Whiskey,” he tried again, only to be cut off by Walker’s hands on his face, hauling him in for another kiss.
“I could have lost you today. My partner, my lover. Someone tried to kill you. Again. So yes, baby, for two seconds I lost focus because I care about you.”
“You agreed—”
“I’m changing the terms.” Walker’s gaze shone with love and determination. “I’m done fucking sharing. I want all the time I can get with you. Today just proved how short that could be.”
Aidan closed his eyes, unable to watch the light, the love, die in Walker’s. “That’s why it has to end.”
Chapter Four
Aidan arrived late the next morning. To an empty office.
Pens and colored file folders still littered Walker’s desk, but his laptops were gone, the coffeemaker cold, and the silence unnerving. He stepped between the desks, glancing at Walker’s phone display. Calls were being forwarded—to an extension in the cave, the interior boardroom Cyber Division had converted to its office, the one Walker worked out of before they were partnered.
Panic rising, Aidan shuffled through the folders and papers, looking for a transfer request. Nada. He checked the printer next. Likewise cold and silent.
Indecision rooted him to the spot. What was he supposed to do? After yesterday’s scene at the hospital, he couldn’t blame Walker for distancing himself. But distance at the office spelled ruin for their professional partnership. He’d killed the personal one, but he hadn’t meant to slaughter this one too. Walker was talented, a damn fine agent. His instincts yesterday had saved Aidan’s life. He owed him a thank-you, if nothing else. He’d beg for more, if he had to.
Aidan waited for him to jaywalk, then handed Jamie his umbrella and darted under Nic’s, hand extended. “Thanks for the tip.”
Nic drew Aidan in for a buss on the cheek. “Happy to help.”
Jamie muffled his scoff and hung back.
Scott drew alongside him. “I thought we didn’t like the federal prosecutors?”
“Some are friendlier than others.”
“I’d say.”
Fist clutching the umbrella handle, Jamie’s blood simmered. “Where are Nelson and Rollins?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Couldn’t divert them,” Nic answered. “They’ll be out front in five.”
Cursing, Jamie turned on his heel and jogged down the street, the others trailing.
“What’d you tell them?” Aidan asked Nic.
“That we needed to speak on a different matter. Make yourselves scarce—” Nic aimed a pointed look at Jamie “—if that’s possible.”
Eyes rolling, Jamie wandered toward the curbside coffee truck.
“So, it’s just you Nic doesn’t like?” Scott said.
A smart retort was on the tip of his tongue when awareness prickled the back of Jamie’s neck, foreboding creeping up his spine.
He scanned the surrounding buildings, looking for anything amiss. The courthouse steps were completely exposed, with clear lines of sight from any direction across the open plaza. He spun once, twice, looking for rooftop movement or sniper rifle flares.
Nothing.
Given the drizzly gray day, maybe it was just the wavering barometric pressing giving him vertigo. But his sense of unease grew heavier, like the other shoe would drop at any minute.
Aidan ducked under his umbrella. “You don’t like this?”
“Not one bit.” Jamie handed him the umbrella and shifted open one side of his trench, placing a hand over his sidearm. He turned in another slow circle.
Aidan did the same, the red-and-white umbrella rotating over his shoulder. “I don’t see anything.”
“Those your detectives?” Scott stretched out an arm toward the courthouse.
Nelson and Rollins, in uniform, were walking down the steps toward Nic. “Go,” Jamie said. “I’m going to hang back and cover.”
Aidan’s gaze locked with his, communicated “Be safe” without speaking a word. Jamie nodded and Aidan corralled Scott. They’d almost reached the gathered group when something red tripped the periphery of Jamie’s vision.
Head whipping around, he frantically searched the street, the crowd, the buildings, until he picked up the broken red line in the drizzling rain.
A laser sight.
Foreboding sharpened into certainty and Jamie’s breath hitched, held, as he followed the red line from the rooftop of a building across the plaza to the courthouse steps.
To a spot in the middle of Nelson’s chest.
The exact spot Aidan was about to step in front of.
Fear lanced through him, stopping his heart.
Not again, not now, not yet.
“Gun!” Jamie shouted, drawing his own. “Talley, get down!”
Aidan turned, wide-eyed, a split second before the shots rang out.
Rapid fire, automatic, one after another.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat...
Nic ducked for cover behind his umbrella.
Rollins and Nelson ran up the cement stairs.
Screaming pedestrians darted every direction, arms over their heads.
And Jamie watched in horror as Aidan’s body jerked once, twice, and fell forward on top of Scott, taking them both to the ground.
He’d been hit. He was wearing a vest, but Aidan had been hit. Fuck. Blood rushed in Jamie’s ears, his heart pounded in his chest, and there was a sea of chaos between him and his partner.
“FBI! Get down!” Jamie hurried ahead in a crouch, desperately trying to wade through the panicked crowd. His heart revolted, propelling his feet forward, while his mind went into crisis mode, shouting for bystanders to stay down and trying to control the scene.
More gunfire rent the air—tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—from the same direction as the last round.
Jamie hit the deck, arms thrown out over pedestrians, holding them down until the gunfire ceased. “Everybody stay down!” he shouted.
He counted the seconds it took to reload, waited for the gunfire to resume, and when it didn’t, slowly lifted his head. He searched for the glimmering red laser sight, saw nothing but gray sky and an empty rooftop, and cautiously stood.
A long second of silence later chaos resumed.
Bystanders rose from their hiding places, yelling for loved ones. Sirens wailed. Cops and armed guards poured out of the surrounding government buildings.
Jamie shoved his way toward Aidan but was intercepted by the officer in charge. He held up his badge. “FBI, Agent Jameson Walker. I’ve got an agent down. Shooter’s on the roof.” He indicated the building from which he’d seen the laser sight. “Get me medics here and a team up there, now.”
Orders were shouted down the line—secure the building, set up a perimeter, no one in or out—but Jamie had moved on, his world tunneling in on his partner.
Aidan lay unconscious on the sidewalk, an officer working over him, Scott crouched at his side. Heart in his throat, stomach on the ground several feet back, Jamie skidded to a halt beside them. Kneeling, he gazed in terror at Aidan’s pale, blank face.
“Move, move!” Jamie pushed the other officer off and palmed one side of Aidan’s face. “Come on, Irish, wake up.” He ripped open Aidan’s coat, hands skittering over the vest. No bullet had come through.
“He must have hit his head when we fell,” Scott said.
“Help me turn him.”
Scott nodded, and Jamie levered Aidan onto his side. He pushed his coat aside, searching. Metal glinted, and he pulled two bullets from the center of the vest over Aidan’s back.
If they hadn’t been wearing the Kevlar...
Aidan’s limp body twitched in his arms and he groaned low. Jamie returned him to his back and held his face. “That’s it, Talley, wake up.”
Aidan blinked his eyes open and gingerly pushed himself to seated. “Fucking hell,” he rasped.
“You were hit,” Scott said.
Aidan’s eyes flickered down to his chest.
“In the back,” Jamie added. “The vest stopped it.”
Wide autumn eyes shot to his, and the reality of another near miss hit Jamie full force. He shook his head, breaths coming short, vision blurring, as fuzzy memories of waking up in a smoking car flooded him.
Blood dripping down the side of Aidan’s pale slack face.
Autumn eyes dimming.
Body listing forward into his chest.
A hand on his face, then and now.
Aidan’s voice drifted through the haze. “I’m fine, Whiskey. Vest did its job.”
“Agents,” an officer called.
Jamie couldn’t move.
Not again, not now, not yet.
Aidan patted his cheek more firmly. “Jamie, snap out of it.”
His name in Aidan’s voice for the first time in months jolted him out of the mire. He stared into Aidan’s clear alert eyes, took in his blood-free face, and sucked in a shaky breath.
“There he is.” Aidan’s fingers coasted down his cheek. “You need to go lock down the shooter site. I’ll coordinate here. Stick to the story.” Jamie nodded. “Now stand me up before you go.”
He threw Aidan’s arm over his shoulder and rose, Scott supporting him on the other side.
“Medic!” Jamie shouted, as Nic’s voice rang out from several steps up. “Talley!”
Turning, Scott inhaled sharply and Aidan listed against Jamie’s side, giving him more of his weight.
Aidan had narrowly escaped. Nelson and Rollins hadn’t been so lucky.
Nic inched back, sidestepping the pool of blood oozing from the detectives’ lifeless bodies. “They’re dead.”
* * *
Sticking to the story proved harder than Aidan anticipated. First had been the investigating officers at the scene and now SFPD Chief Williams stood across his hospital room, grim-faced and in a grilling mood. “I need a better explanation for why two of my men were gunned down.”
Wincing as he shrugged into a clean scrub top, Aidan adjusted the shirt on his sore torso and sat on the end of the bed. “As I told your officers at the scene, we arranged with Assistant US Attorney Price—” he tilted his head toward Nic, who stood by the window on the phone “—to meet with Nelson and Rollins about a person of interest in a cybercrime case.”
“I saw you and that partner of yours hanging around the station this week, waiting for Nelson and Rollins.”
Aidan straightened, his tone sharp. “Because your detectives were less than cooperative.”
“Maybe if you’d brought the matter to SFPD through proper channels.”
“Chief.” Nic held the phone away from his ear, finger hovering over the mute button. “They cleared it with me.”
“Yeah, a federal prosecutor.”
Delightful. A jurisdictional pissing contest. Just what Aidan needed at the end of an already too long day.
“Chief,” Aidan said. “It’s just as likely this incident was connected to one of Nelson and Rollins’s other cases, if they were intentionally targeted at all.”
“Looks pretty damn intentional to me. This was not a random act of violence.”
Aidan shrugged. “It’s as good an explanation as any, until we know more.”
“And you? Wrong place at the wrong time? Bad habit of yours, Agent Talley.”
Aidan rocketed off the bed, aching back protesting, but the chief’s words had hit too close to home. “What the hell are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything.” He closed the distance between them, an accusing finger prodding Aidan’s chest. “People around you have a way of dying, Mr. FBI, and you just took down two of my best detectives.”
“Best?” Aidan scoffed, anger warring with the biting truth. Before he unwisely waded further into the mud, a commotion erupted outside.
“Where’s my partner? Where’s Aidan Talley?”
All Southern pleasantries gone, Walker sounded strung out and exhausted, with zero patience for the nurse’s visitation rules. They’d been separated at the scene. Walker had joined the unsuccessful chase for the suspect, then returned to the shooter’s perch to oversee evidence collection. Aidan, with Nic and the local police, had processed the gruesome scene on the courthouse steps.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about your rules,” Walker barked outside. “I’m going in there. He’s my partner.”
Nic pocketed his phone and moved toward the door. “I’ll let him know you’re finishing up.”
Aidan threw out an arm, blocking his path. Sending Nic out to calm Walker would only add fuel to the fire. “Are we done, Chief?”
The older man looked far from done, but the younger one beating down the door seemed enough to dissuade him from further questioning. “I want the details of the case you were working.”
“Of course,” Aidan lied, as he resettled on the end of the bed.
With an incredulous huff, Williams pushed his way out and Walker barged in. His frantic gaze bounced from Aidan’s face to his torso to Nic at his side. Worry vanished and anger flared. “You too. Get out.”
“Hey now, I just covered for you,” Nic said, revealing himself to be smarter than Aidan gave him credit for. The prosecutor stepped closer to the bed, and Walker’s entire frame went fighter-ready. “That story about a cybercrime case crossing paths with one of Nelson and Rollins’s is utter horse shit. And I lied through my teeth to back it. So if I want to be here, I’ll fucking be here.”
“Irish, get him out of here.” Walker glared at Nic like an unwelcome intruder, not like someone who’d risked his reputation to do them a favor. But that didn’t register for his overprotective partner right now. Aidan had to persuade Nic to leave before Walker burned a bridge they might later need.
Aidan angled toward Nic and put a hand on his arm, drawing a menacing growl from Walker. “Nic, we appreciate your cooperation.”
The prosecutor staggered back, baffled and affronted. “My cooperation?”
“You should go,” Aidan said. “I promise I’ll explain later.”
Walker leaned against the end of the bed, his thigh brushing Aidan’s hip. “You don’t have to explain shit to him.”
“Please go, Nic,” Aidan urged.
Glancing between them, Nic’s eyes widened the instant he put it together. “Fuck, Talley, I didn’t think you were this stupid.”
“Get out,” Walker snapped.
“You leave those marks on him last weekend?”
Walker inched closer, pressing his side along Aidan’s back and laying a claiming hand at the nape of his neck. “Damn straight I did. Want to see the ones I got to match?”
“Enough!” Aidan clipped over his shoulder, before turning back to Nic.
“He’s why you won’t—” Nic started, and Aidan cut him off. “Later, please.”
Nic shook his head. “Fuck you, Talley, and fuck later. We’re through, here and elsewhere. And don’t count on me to cover for you again.” He stalked out of the room with a muttered, “Fools.”
The door swung closed behind him and Aidan rounded on Walker. “That wasn’t smart. He—”
The rest of his words were silenced by a searing openmouthed kiss that was anything but smart and everything Aidan needed after the day they’d had.
After another close call.
Walker moved between his legs, the hand at his neck drawing him up while the one on his ass lifted him against his strong, hard body. Powerless to resist, Aidan curled his legs around the backs of Walker’s thighs and, despite the pain in his back, curled his arms over Walker’s shoulders, locking him in a tight embrace. Fingers tunneling through silky brown locks, Aidan scraped his nails over Walker’s scalp, eliciting a growl of a different sort. He licked into Walker’s mouth, tongues tangling, tasting and savoring, swept under by the force of everything in his partner’s kiss.
Relief, life, need, love.
Terrifying love.
Wrenching their mouths apart, Aidan gasped for breath and rested his forehead against Walker’s.
“You okay to leave?” Walker asked.
Aidan nodded, bringing their lips in brushing distance again. “All clear.”
“Good. Let’s go home.”
Aidan’s panic ballooned, making him lightheaded.
Home.
His mind instantly went to the three-story Edwardian in Bernal Heights. Walker’s house, not his. Aidan knew the place as well as his own. Just like his intimate knowledge of Walker’s body. How fingers trailed over his scalp guaranteed a moan. How he liked fingers and teeth sinking into the tattoo on his chest. How he preferred to be taken hard and rough. Walker had the same knowledge of his wants and desires. How he liked to be kissed hungrily, blanketed by a big body, and touched possessively.
Home, body, life, love.
All of it could have been torn away today.
As the chief rightly stated, people had a nasty habit of dying around him.
Nelson and Rollins weren’t the only targets. He had the mottled bruise on his back to prove it.
Three attempts on his life. Two that could have also claimed Walker’s and the tattered remains of Aidan’s heart. He couldn’t go there again.
Time to throw up blockades.
“I can’t,” he said. “I need to go talk to Nic.”
Walker tore out of his embrace. “Are you fucking kidding me? I could have lost you today and you’re gonna go fuck someone else.”
“I said talk, not fuck.”
“Bullshit!”
“You lost focus in the field today.” Aidan gestured between them. “Because of this.”
“Oh, so you’re admitting this—” Walker mimicked the motion “—is something?”
“Something casual. We talked about this, Ja—”
“Don’t,” Walker snapped. “Don’t you dare fucking ‘Jamie’ me right now.”
“Whiskey,” he tried again, only to be cut off by Walker’s hands on his face, hauling him in for another kiss.
“I could have lost you today. My partner, my lover. Someone tried to kill you. Again. So yes, baby, for two seconds I lost focus because I care about you.”
“You agreed—”
“I’m changing the terms.” Walker’s gaze shone with love and determination. “I’m done fucking sharing. I want all the time I can get with you. Today just proved how short that could be.”
Aidan closed his eyes, unable to watch the light, the love, die in Walker’s. “That’s why it has to end.”
Chapter Four
Aidan arrived late the next morning. To an empty office.
Pens and colored file folders still littered Walker’s desk, but his laptops were gone, the coffeemaker cold, and the silence unnerving. He stepped between the desks, glancing at Walker’s phone display. Calls were being forwarded—to an extension in the cave, the interior boardroom Cyber Division had converted to its office, the one Walker worked out of before they were partnered.
Panic rising, Aidan shuffled through the folders and papers, looking for a transfer request. Nada. He checked the printer next. Likewise cold and silent.
Indecision rooted him to the spot. What was he supposed to do? After yesterday’s scene at the hospital, he couldn’t blame Walker for distancing himself. But distance at the office spelled ruin for their professional partnership. He’d killed the personal one, but he hadn’t meant to slaughter this one too. Walker was talented, a damn fine agent. His instincts yesterday had saved Aidan’s life. He owed him a thank-you, if nothing else. He’d beg for more, if he had to.
