Chapter One
Tonight was a top-shelf whiskey kind of night.
Cleared by the Bureau to return to work after an eight-month absence. Three-piece suit cleaned, pressed and ready for his first day back. New partner and new assignment waiting for him. Aidan didn’t know the identity of either yet, but that didn’t matter. He needed something—anything—besides alcohol and playgroups to dull the crushing survivor’s guilt.
Pushing aside half-empties in the kitchen cabinet he’d repurposed as a bar, he dug the Macallan 18 out of the back corner and set it on the granite countertop. He’d just grabbed a crystal tumbler out of the adjacent cabinet when the doorbell rang. He pulled out a second glass, not altogether surprised by his late-night visitor. He left the glasses and scotch on the dining room table and crossed the living area to his door.
Checking the peephole, he confirmed his visitor’s identity and swung the door open. “I wondered if you’d make the drive down tonight.”
Melissa Cruz breezed past him, tossed her oversized Fendi bag on the couch, and toed off her studded Valentino sandals. “Least I could do, seeing as starting tomorrow you’ll be making the drive up to San Francisco every day again.” The offspring of an African-American ballerina and a towering Cuban refugee-turned-restaurateur, his sister-in-law, and now boss, sashayed on model-long legs across the living room while pulling her thick fall of dark curls into a ponytail. Aidan had never met anyone as graceful, or as deadly.
“Please,” he said, closing the door behind her. “I know you’re just here to mooch my whiskey.”
“And you know I’d rather drink tequila.” She pulled the cork out of the tall, slender bottle of scotch and sniffed, wrinkling her nose. “Gabe never could break you of this nasty habit.”
Aidan pressed the heel of his hand to his stinging chest and swallowed hard, struggling for words. “Mel,” he managed hoarsely.
“You ready for tomorrow?” she asked, obligingly changing the subject. She poured two fingers worth into each tumbler and held one out to him.
Taking the glass, he fell into the chair across the round wooden table from her. “I don’t know, boss lady, am I?”
Mel had been promoted to Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s San Francisco field office two months ago. A well-deserved promotion to a position she’d been gunning for since Academy.
“Your medical and psych evaluations say so, but Dios sabe, you’re smart enough to fool just about anyone.”
He took a swig of his drink, eyeing her over the rim of the glass. “Except you.”
“Except me.” She pinned him with her dark brown eyes, full of sympathy and concern. “I hurt too, Aidan, same as you.”
He drowned his rebuttal in another swallow of scotch. He loved Mel like a sister, and he didn’t doubt her pain, but no way was it the same kind of agony he suffered every day. From the hole in his chest where his world used to be, to the pins in his arm that, with every move, reminded him of all he’d lost. She’d lost her brother and a colleague, but Gabe had been his husband, and Tom Crane, his FBI partner for fifteen years.
“If you’re not ready, you don’t have to come back yet,” Mel said. “Or at all for that matter. Between your trust fund and the inheritance from Gabe, you’re set.”
Aidan tossed back the rest of his whiskey, letting the burn slide down this throat and fill his hollow chest with fleeting warmth. As much as he’d enjoyed spending extra time with his niece and goddaughter, Katie, he’d finished his physical therapy, passed his psych evals, and was eager for the distraction of work. At forty-two, he still had plenty of agent years left in him.
“What’ve you got for me, SAC Cruz?” he asked, making his stance on work clear.
Mel emptied her drink and turned the glass over on the table. “You’re off undercover work and long-term assignments. I want to keep an eye on you awhile longer.”
“No argument here.”
Gabe, an investment banker who’d worked all hours, hadn’t minded his interminable absences. Now, though, with his family still tender after losing Gabe and almost losing him, Aidan didn’t intend to disappear for weeks on end in the barrios chasing drug dealers or in grimy mob bars working over informants.
“Good.” She tapped her manicured trigger finger against her glass, a tell that meant she was holding something back.
“What else?”
“I don’t think it was an accident.”
The same words he’d ranted for a month after waking from his two-week coma, only his allegations had been born out of shock and denial. He couldn’t cope after learning his husband and partner were dead. Eight months removed from that terrible night, he’d progressed past pain and guilt-induced conspiracy theories, past angry finger-pointing at incompetent local detectives, to accept they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. That he hadn’t swerved fast enough out of the way of an oncoming SUV.
The entire time, Mel hadn’t spoken a word to him about the accident and now she was saying his grief-crazed notions had been right?
“What the hell?” He slammed back from the table, toppling his chair and surging to his feet. He kicked the chair out of the way and paced the narrow strip of hardwood floor between the table and wine racks. “Why are you telling me this now and not eight months ago? I drove myself crazy for weeks, thinking I’d missed some clue or that I should be out there catching the assholes responsible for their deaths. And fuck if I wasn’t right.”
She let him burn out his anger raging and pacing. Once he’d gathered himself, righted his chair, and sat back down, she rose and went to her bag on the couch. Returning with a small black flash drive and a red-striped restricted personnel file, she pushed the former across the table to him first. “This arrived for me on the day of my promotion.”
He picked it up and turned it over in his hand. It was a generic model, something anyone could buy at any office supply store. “What’s on it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“The files are encrypted. It was delivered to my home, no return address. I tried opening it on my personal computer, but I can’t get past the file directory.”
“You didn’t have our guys try to crack it?”
“Given the circumstances of its delivery and the attention I received with the promotion, I didn’t want to risk it.”
“Because you think this—” he held up the flash drive “—has something to do with the accident?”
“Every file on it is dated the day of the crash.”
He dropped the jump drive as if he’d been burned. It bounced, end over end, to the center of the table. “So that’s my next assignment? Uncover the truth behind the accident?”
“No, that’s not your assignment.”
He furrowed his brow. “I don’t follow.”
“This investigation—” she tapped the flash drive with her nail “—is off the books for now. Someone above me shut it down as soon as SFPD ruled it a hit-and-run. Until we know for certain it wasn’t, and who and why the investigation was shuttered, we fly under the radar.”
He nodded toward the personnel file. “Is that someone you suspect is involved?”
“No.” She nudged the folder toward him. “This is your new assignment.”
Opening the file, he read as far as the top line, which identified the department the file belonged to, and slammed it shut. “Cyber?” He shoved the folder back at her. “What the fuck?” He reached for the bottle of scotch and poured himself another double. He’d agreed no undercover work, expecting she’d assign him to a local field team. Maybe legal or financial crimes, given his law and business degrees. Cyber had never crossed his mind. Sure, he was technically competent and logged an embarrassing mountain of hours playing “Destiny,” but he was no hacker, nor did he know how to track one. “Do you really think Cyber’s the best use of my skills?” He glared across the table, willing Mel to change her mind.
“Your skills as an investigator and field agent are the very reason I’m putting you in Cyber. Your partner and mentee has the hacker end of things covered.”
“And who are you partnering me with?” He slouched in his chair, downing half his whiskey. A split second later, once her words sank in, he bolted to the edge of his seat. “Wait, did you say ‘mentee’? Are you partnering me with a rook? That is the last thing—”
“Calm down. I’m partnering you with Walker.”
“The Whiskey kid?”
Mel nodded, pushing the personnel file back in front of him. “Jamie’s the best we’ve got in Cyber. He also shows promise as a field agent, though he hasn’t been out there much in his three years since Academy. That’s why I need you to mentor and assess him. He’s committed to Cyber for two more years, so you’ll work cybercrimes cases that take you out in the field.”
“You’ll never be able to put him undercover. His ugly mug was all over ESPN when he played.”
Mel raised a disbelieving brow. “Ugly?”
She had him dead to rights on that lie. Opening the file again and flipping past the cover sheet, Aidan stared down at the younger agent’s headshot. Light brown hair—short on the sides, long and wavy on top—piercing blue eyes, high cheekbones, a wide, easy smile. Ugly wasn’t a word anyone ever used to describe Jameson Walker, dubbed Whiskey by the national sports media given his first and last names. As a married man, though, ugly was what Aidan had told himself anytime the sinfully handsome two-time NCAA champion crossed his path.
“Fine.” He pushed the file away and threw back the rest of his whiskey. “The kid’s never met a reporter or camera that didn’t love him, which only reinforces my point. He’s blown for UC work. Way too recognizable.”
“That doesn’t preclude him from all fieldwork.” Frustration laced her voice. “He’s got potential; you’ll bring it out in him.”
Aidan didn’t want to rile Mel; he’d been on the receiving end of her temper more than once. But he didn’t see how a partnership with Walker would work. He had no interest in cybercrimes and no interest in being partnered with someone so goddamn attractive while he was still reeling from the losses of eight months ago.
He scrubbed his hands over his face and into his hair, clenching the blond strands. “Hermana, this is a bad idea, for so many reasons.”
Standing, she rounded the table and rested a hip next to where he’d propped his elbows. Hands that could snap a man’s neck wrapped gently around his wrists, tugging his hands from his hair and holding them in hers. “Trust me, hermano. It may not seem like it with your first case back, or the second, or even the third, but I’m giving you everything you need.”
“Everything I need for what?”
Her fingers tightened around his. “To solve their murders.”
* * *
Standing inside the cave door, Aidan tucked the file he carried under his arm and peeked through the server racks. Interior to the thirteenth floor with no view of the outside world, “the cave” was what everyone called the converted boardroom housing Cyber Division. A few other agents sat at their workstations along the back wall but there was no sign of Walker.
Good.
Aidan needed the extra minutes to pull himself together. He’d caught maybe two hours of sleep last night. After Mel left, he’d booted up his personal laptop and plugged in the flash drive. He made it as far as the Finder window’s directory of files with the date that made his chest ache, and got no further, though not for lack of trying. Realizing the encryption was beyond his skill level, he’d pinged a couple tech-savvy informants, and when they failed to get him through the wall, he logged into Xbox Live and messaged his “Destiny” buddies, hoping to find a hacker among the gamers. No such luck. By sunup, he was on his youngest sister’s doorstep, laptop and doughnuts in hand, offering to get his niece ready for preschool if Grace would take a crack at the encrypted files. As head of IT at Talley Enterprises, she worked magic with computers, but in the two hours she’d given him, she managed only one wave of the wand, cracking a file containing two bank account ledgers Aidan couldn’t make heads or tails of.
A voice inside his head, one that sounded an awful lot like his boss and sister-in-law, reminded him the quickest path to solving the riddle of the flash drive was right through those server racks—or should have been. Last night, between bouts of beating his head against the wall, he’d reviewed Jameson Walker’s file. BS, with honors, in computer science from North Carolina, top of his crypto doctorate class at MIT, one of the Bureau’s top cyber agents in only three years. But Aidan was reticent to trust a thirty-year-old kid he hardly knew.
A kid who’d broken every road course record at Quantico, stripped the test car afterward, rebuilt it overnight, and broke his own record the next day, which was why Aidan had spent the better part of his first day back culling vehicular data from his accident reports and redacting all identifying information. Walker knew how cars moved. Would he see something in the tire tracks the SFPD detectives had missed? Would something in the way Aidan’s Tesla had crumpled lead them to the dark SUV that had never been found?
Before he started to spiral into the doubt and guilt that always colored his thoughts about that night, Aidan shook off the memories and straightened his tie. He was nervous enough as it was for a meeting with a man he’d passed in the hallway countless times. It wasn’t just the jump drive in his pocket or Walker’s good looks making him uneasy. He’d been partnered with Tom Crane right out of Quantico. They’d learned the ropes together and built a solid foundation of trust that kept them at the top of the Bureau’s clearance board. He and Tom had been a well-oiled machine for fifteen years. Aidan didn’t think he’d ever be so professionally well-matched again—definitely not with a partner twelve years his junior and in a division where he had little experience. He didn’t know how to be a mentor. He’d never flown solo or been in one place long enough to take on that role. The pressure of doing so now was a responsibility he hadn’t counted on when returning to work.
“No need to get gussied up for me.”
Aidan startled at the deep, Southern drawl behind him. Despite the other man’s presence around the office and on television, Walker’s North Carolina accent always threw him for a loop. Not something heard often in the Bay Area and one of the many reasons sportscasters and every secretary on the floor loved him. More disturbing, though, was the fact Aidan had been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard Walker approach. Was he that out of practice or was the other agent that quiet on his feet, despite his six-foot-five shooting-guard frame? Banking the question for later, Aidan turned to face his new partner.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Whiskey.”
Grinning, Walker leaned his muscled shoulder against the doorjamb. “You’re the one straightening his Windsor knot and playing with those shiny cufflinks.”
Aidan stopped his thumb from absently swiping over the gold and emerald clovers Gabe had given him on their wedding day. Tugging his jacket sleeves down, he gave Walker a discreet once-over, not letting his eyes linger more than professional courtesy allowed. Dusty, worn Chucks, battered Levis, a gray Giants jersey hanging open over a snug black tee, revealing a sculpted torso and cut biceps. It took all of Aidan’s considerable undercover work to hide the spark of desire rocketing through him. Eight months since his husband’s death, ten years since he’d felt a flicker of interest in another man besides Gabe, and it was this one—his new partner, his mentee, a straight man by all accounts—who stoked those embers to life again.
“I’m sorry.” Aidan shook off the disturbance. “Did I miss the casual-day memo?”
“Easy, Irish.” Walker removed his baseball cap and ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the flattened waves. “Boys and Girls Club outing at AT&T Park this afternoon.”
“Irish?”
Walker’s blue eyes sparkled like he’d solved an impossible puzzle. “The cufflinks, the brogue in your voice that slips sometimes...” He leaned forward and Aidan fought not to react to the heady tropical scent of White Cristal cologne. “And I’ve only ever seen eyes that color on natural redheads.”
“What color is that?” Aidan asked, putting aside the fact Walker had seen through the disguise he’d worn for three decades.
“Autumn,” Walker answered, voice dropping an octave. “Like a pile of fall leaves back home, right after it rains. Dark brown swirled with brick red and flecks of gold.”
Coffee with a dash of Goldschlager, Gabe used to say. But damn if Walker’s description, spoken in that seductive drawl, didn’t send another flare of desire scorching through him.
A flare instantly doused by guilt and propriety, compelling Aidan to snap, “Awfully poetic for a jock.”
The sparkle in Walker’s eyes died and all affability bled from his face. Shouldering past him through the server racks, Walker lowered himself behind the messiest desk in the mini-bullpen. On either side of two laptops, stacks of files teetered, pens lay uncapped, and empty soda cans rolled. He pushed aside a file heap, paid no mind to the papers he sent flying, and threw his heels up on the desk corner. “I don’t think you came here to talk poetry, Agent Talley. What do you need from Cyber?”
Shit.
In his haste to shut down his own traitorous reactions, Aidan had swung too far the opposite direction. Walker was his partner, his mentee, and slinging insults would not earn his trust. Instituting damage control, he circled the desk and hitched a hip up on the opposite corner. “Mel didn’t tell you?”
“Mel?”
“SAC Cruz.”
Walker shook his head, and Aidan added another bottle of scotch to her IOU tally. “You’ve got a new partner.”
“Who?” He dropped his legs and shot to his feet so fast Aidan barely had time to get out of the way. “Am I getting transferred out of Cyber?”
“No.” Other agents were staring. Aidan waved them off and beckoned Walker to sit back down. “We’ll be doing a bit of both. Mel wants you assessed for fieldwork.”
“We?” Walker appeared adorably dumbfounded. “You’re working Cyber now? But you and Agent Crane were this office’s top field agents.”
Aidan ignored the kick to his gut elicited by Walker’s mention of his former partner and fell back on arrogance to hide his vulnerability. “You’ll be learning from the best then.”
“But I’m good with computers.”
The hesitation and disappointment in Walker’s tone surprised Aidan. Surely a guy his size, one who’d taken his fair share of bumps on the court, wasn’t afraid of a little fieldwork. Aidan had also read the medical reports in Walker’s file. The injury that cut short his NBA rookie year was no longer an issue. In fact, if Aidan had read the report correctly, it healed before the start of what would have been Walker’s second season, if he’d returned. Something about his decision not to and his reluctance to leave the cave now set off Aidan’s alarm bells. He’d have to dig into that and determine if it was going to be an issue going forward. For now, though, he had more pressing matters to deal with.
“I hear you’re also good with cars.” He tossed the accident file on Walker’s desk. “These are field reports from a hit-and-run. I want your read on them.”
Walker pulled the file toward him and thumbed through its contents. “What are you looking for?”
“The other car, which was never found. Deductions you make about the accident—speed at impact, directionality, etcetera. Any discrepancies between your conclusions and the existing accident reports. I want a new set of eyes on this.”
“I’ve got a few identity theft matters to wrap, and court testimony tomorrow and Friday for a piracy case. I can look at this over the weekend and have a report ready Monday. Will that work?” The coolness was still there in Walker’s tone but his eyes had warmed with a detective’s hooked curiosity.
Aidan could work with that. He’d been married to a former athlete. Competition and achievement were powerful motivators for people like Gabe and Walker. “Monday it is.” He deliberately infused his eyes and words with unconcealed challenge. “Impress me.”