Imperial Stout Read online

  Imperial Stout

  By Layla Reyne

  Layla Reyne spins off from her pulse-pounding Agents Irish and Whiskey books with Imperial Stout, the first installment in the Trouble Brewing series

  It’s a good thing assistant US attorney Dominic Price co-owns a brewery. He could use a cold one. Nic’s star witness has just been kidnapped, his joint operation with the FBI is in jeopardy, his father’s shady past is catching up with him and the hot new special agent in San Francisco is the kind of distraction best handled with a stiff drink.

  Kidnap and rescue expert Cameron Byrne has his own ideas about how to handle Nic, but his skills are currently needed elsewhere. The by-the-book FBI agent goes deep undercover as a member of an infamous heist crew in order to save Nic’s witness, break up the crew and close the case before anyone else gets hurt. Nic in particular.

  Things heat up when Cam falls for Nic, and the witness falls for Cam. As the crew’s suspicions grow, Cam must decide how far he’s willing to go—and how far into his own dark past he’s willing to dive—to get everyone out alive.

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

  This book is approximately 62,000 words

  Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Deborah Nemeth

  Dedication

  To the federal agents and public servants who dedicate their lives to keeping us safe

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Single Malt by Layla Reyne

  Also by Layla Reyne

  Chapter One

  One kiss.

  One drunken, ill-advised kiss was going to ruin this entire fucking operation.

  Because Nic was two seconds away from charging out of the surveillance van and telling the man he’d kissed to stand the fuck down. Nic’s reputation as the calm, cool prosecutor would be shattered. Never mind that doing so would likely kill any chance of a second kiss. A second one would be even more ill-advised than the first. Didn’t mean he wanted it any less.

  He also didn’t want Agent Cameron Byrne to die.

  And if Nic’s reputation went up in flames to save the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, then so be it. It was all going to hell these days anyway. Botching a takedown of one of the most wanted heist crews in operation would be icing on the cake.

  But at least Cam would be alive.

  Inside the surveillance van, Nic ripped off his suit coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and had his hand over his sidearm, ready to draw and move, when static crackled from the speakers in the wall of monitors.

  Cam’s Boston brogue followed. “Alpha team on the move.”

  Too late.

  Fuck.

  “Copy that, ASAC,” replied Agent Lauren Hall, who was running Comm from inside the van with him. “Beta, Charlie, report.”

  “Beta team in position.”

  “Charlie team in position.”

  Beta team was on the roof of the luxury apartment building, right above the target penthouse, while Charlie team was a floor below. Cam and his assault team, kitted out in tactical gear, were moving up the interior stairwell, the camera attached to Cam’s helmet giving Nic and Lauren a bird’s-eye view of their ascent.

  Nic should be with them, should be leading them. An ex-SEAL, he had the training, even if he had spent the past fifteen years in a courtroom. Not to mention this was his case—a joint task force between his US Attorney’s office and the FBI’s San Francisco field office. But Cam had pulled rank and sidelined him.

  “Enough, Dominic!” Cam had shouted sometime around the tenth or so round of their argument over who would take lead. “I catch the criminals; you lock ’em up. End of fucking story.” Technically, Cam had been right.

  Didn’t make Nic’s suddenly parched mouth any easier to tolerate right now.

  “Alpha team in position,” Cam reported, voice quieter as they stood by the stairwell door outside the penthouse apartment.

  “Alpha, Comm,” Beta radioed. “Movement to the south.”

  “Hostiles?” Cam barked back.

  Nic scanned the monitors. Where the fuck had they come from? The entire two-block radius around the building had been cordoned off and all the surrounding Financial District buildings cleared. Relatively painlessly at the ass-crack-of-dawn on a Saturday morning, this area of downtown San Francisco predominately offices. Had the feds missed something or someone on their checks?

  Typing fast and furious, Lauren tapped into a security feed on the opposite side of the apartment building. One of the wall monitors flickered, changing its vantage point. She glanced up from her laptop, relaying, “Two masked individuals carrying assault rifles.”

  The dryness crept down Nic’s throat, memories of heat and sand and blood at the edge of his consciousness. Always associated with combat, always there when he was worried, and right now, with new armed players on the scene, his worry for Cam and the teams was magnified.

  “Approaching south stairwell,” Lauren said. “Ninety seconds until they reach your position, Alpha.”

  “Part of the crew?” Cam said.

  Nic swallowed, forcing saliva into his mouth, uttering a single word. “No.”

  He’d investigated this crew for over a year. He knew every detail of every member—height, build, weapon of choice, how they moved—and these two were no one he’d studied. “Third-party rip-off,” he surmised.

  “Charlie team, move to intercept,” Cam ordered. “Alpha team moving on primary. Priority one, victim rescue. Two, secure the target. Three, apprehend suspects.”

  The target was a portable voice-activated safe containing priceless Serbian artifacts for a museum exhibit next weekend: millions in jewels, historical texts and sheet music, and textiles that had been rescued from war-torn Kosovo two decades ago. The victims were a Serbian dignitary and his wife whose voices were required to open said safe. They’d only just arrived in town last night, the artifacts and their safe not yet moved to the museum’s secure cage.

  “Suspect Monroe is not to be harmed,” Nic reminded him. Abigail Monroe was their confidential informant inside the crew.

  “Roger that,” Cam replied. “On my count...”

  Cam got as far as “two” before a hail of gunfire erupted.

  Everywhere.

  Inside the target apartment, on the floor below, and outside the surveillance van. Shots pinged the metal grill and raced up the hood toward the windshield.

  And inside Nic, fear and worry exploded—heat everywhere—before his military training kicked in and his emotions morphed into action. He was fine, he wasn’t in the desert, he’d been trained in urban combat, and fuck it, he needed to protect his position. Once that was done, he’d help Cam whether the bullheaded ASAC wanted him to or not.

  “Go, go, go!” Cam shouted, dispensing with quiet.

  In N
ic’s ear, heavy boots pounded up metal stairs, doors slammed open, and gunfire continued to pop, shattering what sounded like wood and glass. Nic’s balance wavered, whether from the strangled shouts in his ear, from a similar clenching of his chest, or from the sway of the van under assault, he couldn’t say.

  Lauren’s shout of “Comm under fire!” snapped him out of it.

  And back to the on-monitor view from Cam’s helmet cam, which abruptly wobbled, the agent’s step faltering.

  “Boston, go!” Nic yelled. “I got this.”

  “Beta, secure Comm. Charlie, intercept third party, back up Alpha. Go!” Cam said, before charging out of the stairwell with his team.

  Nic tore his gaze from Cam’s screen and focused on the others, searching for the shooter who’d paused firing on the van. “Sweep the area,” he told Lauren, as he mentally rewound and counted the previous shots. He needed to know how long the next barrage would go on before he could make a move.

  Her glittery nails flew across the keyboard, new angles and views of the surrounding Financial District blocks appearing on the monitors.

  A bright glare on one screen nearly blinded him.

  “Stop, there!”

  Early morning sunlight bounced off glass—a sniper’s scope—on the second story of the under-construction building across the street.

  Nic reached for his sidearm, then thinking better of it, grabbed a rifle and scope out of the van’s cage. Darting to the front, he crouched between the seats, behind the dash, as bullets slammed again into the windshield. Cracks snaked across the outside but the reinforced glass continued to hold. Assured of its strength, Nic lifted his head and peered through the scope, spying the shooter’s nest. “Lauren!” he shouted back into the van, as he attached the scope to the rifle. “Tell Beta team to lay down cover.”

  Lauren relayed the order, and suppressive fire sprayed from the roof of the apartment building. Nic shoved open the driver-side door and rolled out of the van, using the door as a shield. Shots pinged the outside while Beta team’s answering fire whizzed overhead. He counted the sniper’s shots as he lowered the window.

  Reload in three, two, one... Another break in the fire.

  Fist raised, he signaled Beta team to hold and rose, bracing his rifle on the window ledge and lining up his shot. At the first glimmer of sunlight on the shooter’s scope, Nic fired, unleashing a full mag into the nest.

  Weapon emptied, he crouched behind the door and waited. No return fire came.

  “You’re clear,” Lauren confirmed after several seconds. “No sign of movement.”

  Standing, Nic tossed the rifle on the driver’s seat and drew his pistol. “I’m going after the shooter.”

  He was halfway across the street when “Alpha team. Agent down! Civilian down!” echoed through the van’s open window. “Radio for EMS!”

  Cam.

  Nic’s already racing heart sped with another burst of fear-soaked adrenaline. He hung a U-turn and sprinted for the apartment building.

  “Get someone in that other building,” he shouted to Lauren, as he passed the van. Inside the building, he yanked open the stairwell door and took the steps three at a time, racing toward Cam and the scene. Weapon at the ready, he exited onto the penthouse hallway.

  To eerie quiet. No gunfire. No shouts. Until an anguished cry broke the silence.

  Nic ran the last few feet to the target apartment, heart in his bone-dry throat, and skidded inside across the slick marble foyer. The place looked like a disaster area. Sunlight reflected off broken glass, splintered furniture littered the space, and blood stained the walls and floor.

  Nic half scrambled, half tip-toed around the cavernous apartment, seeking the source of the blood while trying not to destroy evidence, heart climbing his throat with each step. Past the foyer, he saw the crew’s ringleader handcuffed to the dining bar’s footrest, and next to him, similarly restrained, their breaking-and-entering specialist. The former’s right arm was covered in blood, but the graze on his outer shoulder didn’t look life-threatening.

  Groaning to Nic’s right drew him into the living room. On the other side of the couch, an agent knelt over another, treating a leg wound. They hadn’t removed their helmets, but Nic could tell neither was Cam. They were thin and lanky, not the broad build of the former baller.

  Was this the agent down? Or was Cam down somewhere too?

  “Where’s—”

  “Here, Price.”

  Nic’s eyes shot up, connecting with Cam’s black ones across the room. Helmet off, dark hair ruffled, Cam looked fine, if tousled from a fight. A quick up and down of his person revealed no obvious injuries.

  “Boston,” Nic breathed on a grateful sigh. “You okay?”

  Cam nodded and Nic wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them, to claim that second kiss, to wet his worry-parched mouth with Cam’s lips and breath. The epitome of stupid and unprofessional. His haywire instincts were derailed by another agonized cry like the one he’d heard from the hallway. Grim, Cam tilted his head toward the room behind him. “You better come see this.”

  Civilian down, Nic recalled, dread racing up his spine.

  Was it Abby?

  Following Cam into the room, Nic was relieved to see Abby kneeling on the bed, her springy dyed curls unmistakable, bouncing in the breeze from the open window. Relief, however, died a quick death as she shifted back onto her haunches.

  Abby’s hands were covered in blood, but they were nowhere near as coated as the Serbian dignitary’s, pressed to his wife’s chest, fighting a losing battle against the life draining out of her.

  * * *

  Hours later, Cam stood outside a sleeping Stefan Kristić’s hospital room, watching through the door’s narrow window as a nurse tended to his IVs. After they’d told him his wife had died, the inconsolable husband had had to be sedated and his ruptured stitches resewn. Kristić had been shot in the shoulder—a through-and-through, not a fatal chest wound like his wife’s—but painful nonetheless.

  “He sure did make a mess of things,” the nurse muttered, as she stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

  “He’ll be okay, though?” Cam asked.

  “As well as can be expected,” she said with grim sympathy for the man in the bed, and for a beleaguered Cam.

  He tried to put on a smile, figuring she’d had enough bleakness for one day. “You got a soda machine around these parts?”

  The smile, or his accent, must have been convincing enough, drawing a small grin from her. “Soda and snacks.” She snaked an arm through his and tugged him down the hall. “Follow me, handsome.”

  His own gray mood unfortunately returned as he stared at the little red lights on the vending machine. Thank God Nurse Adams, who’d slipped him her number, had been called away before his horror at the prices registered. After eight months in the Bay Area, he shouldn’t be surprised—everything cost a fucking fortune here—but two-fifty for a can of soda? Resigned, and in desperate need of caffeine, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. A lonely dollar was all that greeted him. The horrors today just kept mounting.

  Though Cam only had himself to blame for the earlier one.

  What was supposed to have been a straightforward takedown had turned into a bloodbath. He’d had three teams in position, all his best agents, and the tip had been solid. Scott Chestnut’s crew had moved on the artifacts. What Cam hadn’t foreseen was one of Scott’s crew turning on him, his second-in-command, Rebecca Wright, who it appeared was working with the third party who’d tried to rip off the heist. The artifacts hadn’t been stolen, and all but one of their primary suspects were in custody, but things had gone sideways as fuck in the process.

  Maybe he should have let Nic lead. The ex-SEAL was certainly capable, even if an Assistant US Attorney leading an FBI team into a raid wasn’t exactly protocol
. But if that had been Nic in the middle of the firefight...

  Cam banished the thought, only to hear Lauren’s voice in his head, shouting that Comm was under fire. At the pop of rifle fire hitting metal and glass, he’d faltered a split second, feeling disconnected, helpless and overcome with worry for Nic. Was that when Stefan or Anica Kristić had been shot? Or his agent? Had someone taken a bullet because he was distracted? He’d made that mistake before, getting distracted by what he wanted, and someone’s life had been stolen in the process.

  Someone dear to him.

  Wallet still in hand, he withdrew the laminated library card he always carried, running a thumb over a name that wasn’t his. The card had been faded and wrinkled decades ago—well-used—and if not for the effort to preserve it, he wouldn’t have this reminder of what—who—had been lost, when he’d been young and distracted.

  This was why he had rules.

  This was also why you weren’t supposed to get involved with colleagues. Granted, it had worked out for his best friend, but Jamie and Aidan were no longer colleagues.

  Not that he and Nic technically were either—colleagues or involved. They worked for separate agencies and one kiss did not a relationship make, even if they had been dancing around an attraction to each other for months.

  An attraction that had boiled over in that one kiss...

  Slipping the card back in his wallet and pocketing the leather billfold, Cam slumped against the wall and closed his eyes, recalling the icy hot glare of Nic’s blue ones from across a hotel elevator. Returning to their rooms after Jamie and Aidan’s wedding, he and Nic had been arguing when Cam’s beer-and-whiskey-addled brain decided the best way to win the argument and shut the other man up was to put his mouth to better use.

  Two strides across the elevator cab and he’d shoved Nic against the mirrored wall, grabbing his sharp, angular jaw and slamming their mouths together. Never one to back down, the prosecutor had argued back, as was their way, but with his tongue instead of words. Forcing his way into Cam’s mouth, he’d taken control of the kiss and owned it. Owned him. Seconds later, when Nic had pushed him out of the elevator onto his floor, Cam had been an aching, turned-on mess.