“Wow, if we’d thought of that five hours ago that would have been nice,” Nick grumbled.
Emma hopped up from the couch. “We’re on it!” she said, tapping Marley on the shoulder. “Want us to look for anyone who looks like a rock-bashing psychopath, right?”
“Ideally, yeah,” Ty told her. “Find anything of Milton you can so we can track his movements.”
“There’s a movie room,” Livi told them. She stood as well. “I think you can attach your camera to the equipment and watch the footage on the big screen. I’ll show you where it is.”
The three of them headed off, Marley lugging the camera on his shoulder.
“What are the odds he caught the murder on camera while he was eating or something and we can all go back to being common wedding guests?” Zane asked under his breath.
Park and Frost both shook their heads. “Nope,” Frost said.
They all turned their attention back to Nick. He looked exhausted and frustrated.
“Hey, Irish, you want to get some real food before we powwow on this?” Ty asked him.
“Yeah. I also wanted to take one more look at the body, see if we can pull something off that watch, so I’ll just head for the kitchen.”
Kelly smacked his ass. “We’ll come with.”
Zane snorted and stood. They said good-bye to the two Snake Eaters, who had to go take their shifts, and left Deuce to retrieve Amelia from her nanny. The four of them headed for the kitchen.
They were halfway down the winding steps to the kitchen when Nick stopped abruptly and Ty bowled into him from behind. They barely caught themselves from tumbling down the steps.
“What the hell, man?”
“That smell,” Nick whispered. He backed up a step, reaching wildly. His hand landed on Ty’s stomach and he clutched at Ty’s shirt. His other hand grabbed for the gun he had tucked in the small of his back. Ty hadn’t even known Nick was carrying.
He immediately recognized the panic in the other man, and he knew what happened when Nick panicked. Going for the gun himself would’ve gotten Ty killed, so he grabbed Nick from behind, wrapping him up so he couldn’t get it either. Ty felt like he’d just grabbed a tiger by the tail.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said urgently. He pulled Nick backward, lifting him and swinging him up the steps, away from the kitchen. Nick kicked against the stone stairwell wall, slamming Ty against the opposite wall. His breath left him in a rush and he saw stars.
They struggled silently for several more seconds, until Nick was hyperventilating and Ty had given up on getting him up the steps. Zane and Kelly crowded closer.
Ty fell to his back on the steps, using the weight of his own body to drag Nick down. Kelly reached for them and Nick lashed out at him.
“What the hell triggered it?” Kelly asked. “When did he start doing this shit?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen this!” Ty answered, voice strained.
“I’m okay,” Nick gasped.
Ty could feel Zane hovering behind him, obviously at a loss. Zane had become well versed in how to handle Ty’s flashbacks and panic attacks, but he’d never seen Ty react like Nick just had. Ty’s instinct when the memories got too close was to freeze and curl up and wait for them to pass.
But Nick’s instinct had always been to stand and fight. He’d go on the offensive before he could be hurt. He’d expose himself to whatever triggered him until it no longer caused a reaction. And if he got lost enough in a flashback, he could be downright dangerous to anyone and everyone near him. He’d once nearly taken out an entire med bay on ship before he was sedated.
“I’m sorry,” Nick offered, voice hoarse and weak. “I’m okay.”
“Like hell you’re okay,” Kelly said softly. He shook his head at Ty. “He’s done. I’m pulling medic rank. No more of this shit today.”
Ty nodded. Kelly would find no argument from him.
“No!” Nick grunted. He took a deep breath. His entire body was trembling, though, and he couldn’t even look toward the bottom of the stairs. “We have to go down there.”
“I’m going to vote no on that one,” Zane said under his breath.
“You have to,” Nick insisted. He twisted in Ty’s arms, his muscles flexing. Ty loosened his grip, and Nick instantly began to relax. “The smell . . .”
“What was the smell?” Ty asked.
“Copper. Blood.” He reached to the small of his back and brought out his Glock, handing it to Ty. “It’s blood, Ty. Get down there.”
Ty left Nick and Kelly on the steps, and he and Zane hustled to the kitchen. He led with the weapon, clearing the kitchen silently as Zane remained in the stairwell, then signaled for Zane to join him.
Zane stood over the pool of deep dark blood spreading across the pristine white tile of the gourmet kitchen. The copper scent was almost overwhelming.
“He’s got one hell of a nose on him,” Zane said.
Ty nodded, taking in the gruesome scene. The cook lay sprawled on the floor, the blood still trickling from a wound in her back. One of her expensive knives was protruding from her spine, and her fine white hair was caked with blood. Ty bent to check her pulse. She was still warm, but there was no heartbeat and far too much blood on the floor for her to have lived long.
“Doc!” Ty called out anyway.
Ty turned when he heard the scuff of a shoe on the stairs. Kelly stood there, face pinched in concern. “Blood?” he asked.
“Lots of it,” Ty answered. “Don’t let Nick down here, okay?”
Kelly shook his head, but a second later Nick appeared at his side, peering into the kitchen. He was pale and shaken, and he was holding his shirt over his nose to prevent another bout of scent-induced panic. But he was there and he looked determined to stay.
“Victim?” he asked, his voice muffled.
“Cook’s dead. Knife to the back,” Ty answered.
Kelly moved toward them and bent to check her regardless.
Ty was watching Nick, though. “Irish, you don’t need to be here.”
The apprehension in Nick’s eyes said he completely agreed, but he shook his head. “Where’s Milton’s body?”
Ty glanced around for the walk-in freezer, making his way carefully over to it. There were no signs of a struggle in the kitchen, nothing out of place or messy. He covered his hand with his sleeve when he opened the freezer door to prevent his fingerprints from contaminating the scene. Not like they could fingerprint anything, but still.
He peered into the freezer and was immediately knocked back by what he found inside. He turned his head away from the sight, gagging and covering his face with his sleeve as he shoved his shoulder into the door to close it.
“Oh God,” he managed to groan.
“What is it?” Zane asked, voice laced with dread.
“He’s been gutted. He’s hanging from a meat hook.” Ty squeezed his eyes closed, trying to erase that visual from the databanks.
“That seems so unnecessary,” Kelly muttered.
“And hard,” Zane added. “Took at least two people. Or one very big one.”
“Need to find that big Snake Eater,” Ty said.
Kelly came closer, joining Ty at the freezer to crack the door open and look inside for himself. He didn’t have the reaction Ty’d had, but then, Kelly had always been able to compartmentalize with wounds and death and gore.
Nick sat on the bottom step and lowered his head between his knees. Ty knew why the smell of blood threw Nick back into a moment of terror. He was surprised Nick was managing to hold it together at all right now.
“He’s been disemboweled,” Kelly told them, then stepped into the freezer.
“Oh, please, no,” Ty whimpered as Kelly disappeared. “Please come back. Kelly. Kelly! Doc! I’m not coming in there! I’m not.”
Kelly’s voice echoed from inside the freezer. “They cut him open good. Looks like they were looking for something.”
“Looking for something?” Zane
asked. “Inside him?”
“Means whatever it is, it’s small enough to swallow,” Nick offered. He sounded positively ill. “Is his watch still on him?”
“No, it’s gone. O, get out of here,” Ty said, almost as desperate to have Nick leave as Nick probably was. When Nick raised his head, Ty hardened his expression. “Consider that an order if you must.”
Rather than getting pissy about Ty pulling rank on him, Nick gave him a grateful nod and retreated up the stairs.
Kelly stepped out of the freezer wearing a pair of black butcher’s gloves that went up to his elbows. He was holding a section of Milton’s insides. He showed it to Ty and Zane with a frown, then squeezed it between his fingers. Ty backed away from him, covering his lower face with his arm. Zane coughed and put a hand over his mouth.
“I don’t think they found what they were after,” Kelly concluded with another experimental squeeze. It made a wet, squishing sound.
“What is wrong with you?” Ty cried. “Put that down! Jesus Christ!”
Kelly looked from him to the gore in his hand. “What? I’m wearing gloves.”
Ty gagged and had to turn away. “I can’t,” he said pitifully, and made his way to the stairs to follow Nick’s retreat.
“Why don’t you think they found what they were looking for?” Zane asked Kelly as soon as they reached the top of the stairs.
“They cut open his stomach, which is probably where anything he swallowed in the last day would still be. Then they started on his intestines. But I can tell you right now, it wouldn’t have made it that far. I think they stopped because they were interrupted by the cook, not because they found anything.”
Zane curled his lip in disgust.
“Unless we’re dealing with a straight-up psychopath who likes playing with people’s insides,” Kelly added. “I mean, low probability, but it is you and Ty, so anything’s poss—”
Zane held up a hand to get Kelly to stop talking.
Kelly patted his shoulder in sympathy.
After Ty and Nick had both vacated the kitchen, Zane sent Kelly to go find Stanton. Night was falling, they now had two bodies on their hands, and one of those was the wife of the head butler. Deuce had been forced to sedate the man when he’d been told. The staff was a shambles, the members of the wedding party had all locked themselves in their rooms for the night, and the Stanton family was beginning to eye the Gradys like this was all somehow their fault. The Gradys, for the most part, were carrying on like it was business as usual. Two dead bodies at a family get-together hadn’t caused many of them to blink.
One thing he knew with certainty was that this would continue to spiral and more people would get hurt if they didn’t figure out how to get to the mainland somehow. He wasn’t even sure that getting to the bottom of it and finding out the whys and hows would help at this point.
Until they could get help from the mainland, though, they would have to handle this on their own. Zane asked Marley to video the scene, and the blond Snake Eater Ty had gotten friendly with, Frost, was taking photos. Every inch of the kitchen from top to bottom was being recorded as John English supervised. He had a solid alibi—he’d been watching Amelia and the other kids swim—and he was the only man on the island who could have lifted Milton’s body onto that hook alone. Zane wasn’t sure he necessarily liked the big Snake Eater, but he was an effective leader and his team all seemed to respect him. That said a lot about a person.
English was now treating Zane like his counterpart: the leader of the Grady/Sidewinder band. Zane wasn’t sure how that had happened, but he supposed with Nick and Ty both upstairs throwing up, and Kelly more interested in blood-spatter patterns than motive, Zane was the only one left.
He was fairly certain they’d lost Nick as the lead on the investigation, and he would probably have to take it over now. He’d have to sit down with Nick and find out what he’d learned, but it wasn’t his first priority right now. None of this was his first priority.
“Nick going to be okay?” he asked Kelly.
Kelly shrugged. “That was a new one for me. He’s never reacted like that to blood, not in front of me. Means whatever that was happened while they were gone this time. I don’t know. I’m beginning to understand why he refused to go back to work, though, and it wasn’t because he has a fucking tremor in his hand.”
“Ty’s been doing the same thing. Not to that extent, but . . . what happened to them over there?” Zane asked, voice hushed and edging toward desperate.
Kelly stopped walking and peered through the glass doors of the back patio, where Ty and Nick were both sitting on a bench in the garden. Nick had his head down, holding it in both hands. Ty sat with his hand on Nick’s back, rocking to and fro.
“I have no idea,” Kelly answered. He stared at them for a few moments longer. Then he squared his shoulders, and his lips moved like he was giving himself a silent pep talk. Then he nodded and marched toward the patio doors.
Zane took a deep breath to bolster himself, then followed. They made their way to the bench in the garden where Ty and Nick were sitting. Zane wasn’t sure how to handle this, because he knew Ty always seemed embarrassed after he panicked. He covered it with jokes, making fun of himself and hoping anyone who’d witnessed it would simply pretend it had never happened. Zane had a feeling Nick would handle it a bit differently.
Ty and Nick raised their heads at their approach. Ty looked grim, the lines around his mouth tight and his brow furrowed. Nick, on the other hand, struck Zane as simply being humiliated. He returned his gaze to the ground. Kelly sat on his other side, their shoulders brushing. He waited a beat before gently resting his hand on Nick’s back. Ty removed his hand, letting Kelly take over. When Nick didn’t protest, Kelly slid his arm around him and hugged him.
“You okay?” Kelly asked.
“Caught me off guard, is all,” Nick whispered.
“I want to give you something to knock you out for the rest of the night,” Kelly said to Nick. “You’ve pushed yourself too far with all this.”
“Give him something?” Zane asked. He winced, remembering the one time he’d tried that tactic with Ty. It hadn’t gone well, but then Nick and Kelly had a lot more history and trust behind them than Zane and Ty’d had at that point. And Kelly was asking first instead of just slipping it into Nick’s drink.
Kelly glanced up at him. “Yeah, I have my kit with me. And I bet Deacon has something with him if I don’t. Whatever he used on the butler, if he has enough to put Nick out. I kind of doubt he does.” He looked back to Nick, who was watching him. They sat staring at each other in silence for a few seconds before Nick nodded.
Kelly patted Nick’s knee and stood. “I’m going to go see what I can find.”
The rest of them remained where they were as Kelly jogged off into the house. Zane turned his attention back to Ty and Nick.
“What now?”
Nick sat back, taking a deep breath. “Everyone has a shaky alibi. The couple you two saw on the beach are the only anomaly, and I can’t figure out who the fuck they could be.”
“No one fits?”
“A lot of people fit. That’s the problem. Then there’s the broken watch, which is wrong every way we look at it. Whoever came back and cut him open, they took that watch, so it’s got to be important for some reason.”
“Do you have the pictures you took?” Zane asked.
Nick nodded and pulled his iPad out of a pocket inside his jacket. He handed it over.
Zane looked at the iPad with a frown, brushing his fingers along the edge of it. Nick had been carrying it with him since this morning, but the screen was spotless. Maybe Nick cleaned obsessively like Ty did when he was bothered by something. Zane glanced at the two of them again, sitting side by side like two little boys who’d been sent out of class for misbehaving. Nick’s head was down, his shoulders slumped. Ty was staring off into the horizon, watching the last rays of the sun disappear.
“I think we should call it a nig
ht. Let you two recover,” Zane said.
Ty nodded in agreement. He absently raised his hand to Nick’s back again. Zane didn’t know if Ty did it to comfort Nick or himself.
“These islands have a reputation for being hit with rogue waves,” Nick said without raising his head.
Ty and Zane locked eyes, both of them frowning in confusion. They both looked back to Nick, waiting for him to connect rogue waves to anything that had happened today. Nick raised his head, glancing at them both. Then his eyes fixed on the cliff not far off.
“Ships would dock at these remote islands where nothing but lighthouses stood and find them completely deserted. Food still on the plates. Fires nothing but embers. Clocks not wound for weeks. Everyone on the island vanished. They called them the Ghost Isles, no one would go near them because they were cursed.”
Ty began to run his hand over Nick’s back in slow circles. “Nick,” he whispered.
“The theory of anyone who didn’t believe in curses was rogue waves. Ninety, sometimes a hundred-feet high or more, just sweeping in out of the blue and taking everything on the island with it.”
“Nick,” Ty said a little more forcefully. “You’re not going to die in Scotland.”
Nick turned to meet his eyes, and they sat there simply staring at each other for several moments. Zane shifted his weight, realizing he was a little unnerved by the monotone of Nick’s voice. He was seriously beginning to wonder just how messed up Nick’s mind was, but then Nick leaned closer to Ty, narrowing his eyes.
“How many places do you think we swept through, leaving people to wonder where the rogue wave came from?”
Ty blinked rapidly, obviously taken aback by the direction Nick had gone. “What?”
Nick glanced at Zane, then stared out at the cliffs again. “Nobody’s safe on this island as long we’re out of touch with the mainland. Everyone’s going to die in Scotland if we don’t stop this.”
Ty couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from Nick, but Zane turned and glanced into the house. “Where the hell is Kelly with those fucking sedatives?” he said under his breath. Nick was starting to make even him nervous; he didn’t need Ty losing his shit, too.
Ball & Chain (Cut & Run) Page 15
