Single Malt

  Single Malt

  By Layla Reyne

  Eight months after the car crash that changed everything, FBI agent Aidan Talley is back at work. New department, new case and a new partner. Smart, athletic and handsome, Jameson Walker is twelve years his junior. Even if Aidan was ready to move on—and he’s not—Jamie is off-limits.

  Jamie’s lusted after Aidan for three years, and the chance to work with San Francisco’s top agent directly is too good to pass up. Aidan is prickly—to put it mildly—but a growing cyber threat soon proves Jamie’s skills invaluable.

  Jamie’s talents paint a target on his back, and Aidan is determined to protect him. But with hack after hack threatening a high-security biocontainment facility, time is running out to thwart a deadly terrorist attack. They’ll have to filter out distractions, on the case and in their partnership, to identify the real enemy, solve the case and save thousands of lives, including their own.

  Book one of the Agents Irish and Whiskey series

  This book is approximately 68,000 words

  Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Deborah Nemeth

  Dear Reader,

  I’m practically cackling and rubbing my hands with glee at the amazing books we have in store for you this month. You’re going to fall in love with the newest additions to the Carina Press author lineup while enjoying the very best of our returning authors. Forgive me for saying it but...whee! Read on for the goodness...

  This month Lucy Parker brings us her much anticipated sequel to contemporary romance Act Like It. Pretty Face returns readers to the highly acclaimed world of the London stage with laugh-out-loud wit and plenty of drama. Iconic director Luc Savage is in for a surprise with his new show—not to mention a May-December romance with its feisty star!

  New-to-Carina-Press author Rhenna Morgan kicks off her new super-sexy contemporary romance series with Rough & Tumble. With his badass don’t-take-no-for-an-answer approach to life, Jace Kennedy is everything Vivienne Moore swore she never wanted in a man—especially after the rough lifestyle she grew up in. But Jace sees the hidden wild side in Vivienne, and he won’t give up until he shows her the safest place is in the arms of a dangerous man. By the way, Jace might be a badass, but he’s no alphahole. This is a guy every inch in love with his lady and willing to treat her like gold.

  We return to Lauren Dane’s Cascadia Wolves series with Wolf Unbound. We meet Tegan—a Pack Enforcer who, after the death of her mate, thought she’d be alone forever. Until she meets Ben, handsome, dominant...and human.

  Amber Bardan returns with a stunning new stand-alone sultry contemporary romance in King’s Captive. In Julius’s world, on his island, he is King. Money and power mean he rules all around him—including her.

  In fan-favorite A.M. Arthur’s newest male/male romance, As I Am, scarred shut-in Taz finally braves the outside world for intensely shy Will, but secrets from both of their pasts could destroy their fragile new love.

  Fans of Scott Hildreth’s The Gun Runner be prepared! Michael Tripp is back and as bad as ever in The Game Changer. Tripp and Terra are moving toward their happily-ever-after, but first they have to overcome the secrets they’re still keeping from each other—and her mafia family’s inexorable determination to pull Tripp into la famiglia.

  We’re introducing three debut authors this month. First, join Agents Irish & Whiskey in Single Malt, Layla Reyne’s debut male/male romantic suspense. Widowed FBI agent and Irish ex-pat Aidan Talley falls hard for his handsome younger partner, Jameson “Whiskey” Walker, as they investigate cybercrimes and the murder of Aidan’s late husband.

  In Mark of the Moon, a hookup with a vampire goes wrong when Dana Markovitz is scratched by a jealous were-cat. You won’t want to miss this sexy new urban fantasy series from debut author Beth Dranoff.

  From debut author Sarah Hawthorne comes Enforcer’s Price, book one in the Demon Horde series. In this romantic motorcycle club romance, Colt is just starting to trust again, but Krista is hiding something big. Can he still love her when she reveals sex and money go hand in hand for her?

  Don’t miss this amazing lineup of new and returning authors, and look for their next books in the upcoming months!

  Next month: Don’t miss Shannon Stacey’s return to the world of everyone’s favorite blue-collar family, the Kowalskis, with a heart-warming and funny all-new romance that also reunites you with all your favorite Kowalskis.

  As always, until next month, my fellow book lovers, here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  Angela James

  Editorial Director, Carina Press

  Dedication

  To my KrnuL Panik: For the countless hours of “Destiny,” bottles of whiskey and years of love that made this dream possible.

  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

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Layla Reyne

  About the Author

  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 c
hanging 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.