Cut and Run 08 Ball & Chain (16 page)

Ty and the Snake Eaters all grunted in unison, but none of them could come up with a counterargument to that.

Someone knocked on the door to the study, and a moment later they opened the door to see Kelly standing there. The bodyguards let him in and locked the door behind him.

“Is it true someone got stabbed in the ear with a broken seashell?” Kelly asked incredulously.

Nick held his hand out to Kelly, eyes on Ty. “See?”

Ty was massaging his temples, nodding. “Okay, you were right.”

“We make an announcement,” Zane said, smiling fondly at Ty.

Stanton didn’t look amused, though. “Agreed. I’ll make a call for all the guests and employees to assemble in the great hall. We can address the situation there. Who is with Amelia?”

“Korean dude who doesn’t talk,” Kelly answered.

“We need to set an investigation in motion in the absence of proper authorities,” one of the Snake Eaters told Stanton. It was the large leader of the private security force, a man named John English. He struck Zane as a little too cocky, but he seemed efficient and mostly sensible.

“How are you going to do that?” Zane asked him. “We have no authority to question these people, or detain them, or search for evidence.”

English shrugged his huge shoulders. “They don’t know that.”

“Which will be handy later on,” Ty added.

Zane grunted, beginning to grow annoyed with the attitude of the Snake Eater crew. It was disturbing to him on several levels how easily Ty fit in with them. He often wondered how close Ty had been to taking the mercenary road. He definitely set foot on it here and there.

Stanton started to pace, chewing on a cigar. “We’ll make it clear it’s an informal inquiry, being performed merely to keep everyone safe. There is a murderer roaming the island, after all, people deserve protection. Anyone who wishes not to participate will be . . . locked in their room for the safety of others.”

“Still not really legal,” Zane advised.

“Neither is murder,” Theo Stanton snapped. They were the first words Livi’s brother had uttered since the meeting had started.

“These are extraordinary circumstances, I’m afraid.” Stanton turned to Nick, cheeks pale and eyes drawn. “Rick, isn’t it? You’re a police detective? You’ll do the investigation.”

“Excuse me?” Nick said, not even bothering to correct his name.

“You have no blood connection to either family, nor to the business. You’re as neutral a party as we’ll find and you’re trained to do the job.”

Nick glanced around at all of them, looking like he wanted to argue, but the logic was sound. Zane nodded encouragingly when Nick met his eyes. Nick sighed and jerked his head to the side. “If I can have the doc assisting me, then I guess I don’t have any objection.”

“Whatever you need,” Stanton agreed. He shook Nick’s hand distractedly. “What
do
you need?”

Nick hesitated before shrugging one shoulder. “Well, it’s an unusual situation in that our pool of suspects is static, so gathering alibis would be the first step. But that’s something we’d need to organize everyone for. If I tried to do it quietly, word would get around and people would be able to coordinate their stories. It would make it pointless. So we tell people we’re trying to discern a timeline, to see if anyone out of place was on the island.”

Stanton nodded and absently handed his cigar to Nick, who took it and looked at it like he’d just been handed a unicorn as Stanton walked away. Nick glanced at Kelly, who was biting his lip and trying not to smile.

“We don’t have any way of telling time of death, though,” Theo argued.

“Without definitive evidence, we’ll have to go by his broken watch,” Zane provided.

Nick shook his head, turning to Kelly. “I need you to confirm it for me.”

“Confirm it . . . how?” Kelly asked.

Nick winced. “With a turkey thermometer probably.”

“Oh gross, Nick.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know, that’s why it’s gross!”

Even Zane was a little disgusted at the thought, but Nick was probably right. It was much more accurate to check the body’s temperature by measuring the liver temp than assuming the watch had been broken in the fight that ultimately killed him.

Nick handed the cigar to Kelly and began writing down the information he would need to estimate the time of death from the body’s temperature, indicating that roughly every two and a half degrees it had dropped meant he’d been dead an hour. “Give or take a little because of the cold. I don’t trust the watch as time of death.” He ripped the page off the notebook and handed it to Kelly. “You have to hurry before he hits ambient temp, okay? And I need you to do it before we put the body in cold storage. Like, right now, as soon as we’re done here.”

Kelly nodded and took the slip of paper, nose curled in distaste. Stanton was still pacing, and Kelly held the cigar out for him to take as he walked by. Stanton plucked it from Kelly’s fingers and put it in his mouth without even seeming to realize he’d ever given it up. Zane found himself fighting back a laugh.

“If the temp puts time of death in range, we’ll assume the watch is correct,” Nick told them. There wasn’t much point in arguing with what little they had to go on.

“If the body and the watch are saying different things, is it possible he was killed elsewhere?” Zane asked Nick. He was the only one who’d been close enough to the body to see.

Nick was shaking his head before Zane could finish. “No. There were no signs on the body that it’d been moved.”

“You sure?” Zane asked.

Nick gave him a brief glare, then nodded. “Been doing this a long time, Garrett, I don’t need my hand held.”

Zane held up both hands and shrugged. He didn’t want problems with Nick, not now.

“If this is the first step in an escalation against the company, then we have motive,” Ty added. “That could narrow down the first wave of interviews, at least.”

“I’d like to search his room,” Nick told Stanton. “Get a hold of his laptop, phone, any papers. If we could lock that down ASAP to keep anyone from getting in there. In fact, Grady and Garrett could handle that while I’m interviewing people.”

“I’ll get you the key, but Grady and Garrett will be watching Amelia while you’re doing that, thank you,” Stanton promised. He headed for the door, gesturing for his men to follow him. “I’ll meet you gentlemen on the patio in ten minutes for the announcement. We’ll serve brunch and allow you to do your interviews while people are eating. Will that work?”

All eyes turned back to Nick, who was watching Stanton with a frown. When he realized the man was actually waiting for a response, he nodded, obviously flustered. “Yes, sir, thank you.”

Stanton nodded and left the room. The door clicked behind Theo, leaving the four of them alone in stunned silence.

Kelly sat on the back of the couch where Nick was leaning, brushing their shoulders together. “Is this what traveling with you guys is usually like?”

“Yes,” Ty and Zane both groaned.

“No,” Nick said with a sorrowful shake of his head.

Kelly wrapped an arm around his shoulders, hugging him. “It’s okay, Rick.”

Nick snorted. Zane chuckled, even though he felt guilty for laughing. Nick looked so distraught to have been singled out for the job, Zane had to wonder why. He’d been a detective in Boston for at least seven years, and from what Ty said about him, he was good at his job.

Ty sat on Nick’s other side and patted his knee. “You okay to do this?”

“Does it matter?” Nick asked.

“We got your six, man,” Kelly said.

Zane nodded immediately. “Piece of cake.”

Nick rubbed his fingers over his eyes. The very tips of his fingers trembled, barely noticeable. But Zane noticed it. He’d noticed it outside, too, when Nick had made to reach for something in the sand but then stopped. He’d noticed it last night at dinner when Nick had switched his fork from his right hand to his left and then clutched his right hand into a fist before hiding it in his lap. Nick was a lefty, so using his left instead of his right wasn’t unusual, but it had caught Zane’s attention nonetheless. The tremor in his right hand was the same type Zane had developed when he was coming off everything in rehab.

Combined with the other things Zane had noticed—his uncharacteristically sedate behavior, his shorter temper, refusing to go back to a job everyone said he’d loved, the haunted look in his eyes—Zane was almost positive Nick was either using or trying to stop.

“I guess we should get out there,” Ty finally said. As they all stood to file out of the room, Ty grumbled under his breath, “We have a fucking murderer to find at my brother’s wedding.”

“I hope it’s one of those asshole security guys,” Kelly said from behind Zane.

“Maybe the butler did it,” Nick offered. Kelly answered with a groan.

When they reached the great hall where people were already gathering, Ty went straight over to his parents, whispering to them about the situation. Mara had a hand over her mouth and her eyes were wide, but Earl merely nodded grimly. Burns was sitting with them, and he didn’t show much surprise either. It seemed they’d already gotten wind of the news. From the low murmurs throughout the room, a lot of other guests had as well.

Zane stood watching people assemble for a few seconds before he decided that now might be the best time to pull Nick aside. When this was over, they’d be in the center of an investigation, no matter how unofficial. He approached Nick with a hint of trepidation and caught him trailing after Kelly through the crowd to head back out into the hall. He took his elbow to stop him.

Nick turned to him with a confused smile. “Garrett? They moved the body to the kitchen to store it, we’re heading down there. Might want to order vegetarian tonight.”

Zane snorted and glanced around them. “Can I talk to you first?”

Nick’s smile fell. Kelly had stopped to wait for him, and now he stood frowning a few feet away. Nick looked around just like Zane had done to see if anyone else was paying attention to them, then nodded. “Sure. What’s up?”

“Somewhere private. I’d prefer if Ty didn’t see us talking.”

Nick’s confusion and sudden apprehension were painfully clear, but he turned to Kelly anyway. “I’ll catch up with you, Kels.”

“Okay,” Kelly said, frowning at them but turning to head off to the kitchen on his own.

Nick left the great hall with Zane, but he didn’t ask questions, and Zane was grateful for it. He led Nick into the hallway and found a quiet nook to duck into. He turned to Nick and glanced at the doorway behind them.

“What’s going on, Garrett?” Nick seemed to be losing his patience with the cloak-and-dagger stuff.

“Look, I want to help you, okay?” Zane said in a rush.

Nick raised both eyebrows and leaned a little closer. “Aren’t you pretty much already signed up for that?”

“Not with that. I saw your hand shaking out there. And I saw you popping pills yesterday in the car when you thought I was asleep.” Zane reached for Nick’s right hand and brought it up, then released it. There was a tremor to his fingers as Nick tried to hold it steady. Zane nodded grimly. “I’ve been there.”

Nick looked at his hand, then gave an exhausted, almost relieved laugh as he dropped it to his side. He glanced away for a moment, then met Zane’s eyes again. “Propranolol.”

Zane’s brow creased. “What?”

“That’s what I was taking in the car. I take it every morning.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s not a narcotic,” Nick said wryly. “It’s prescribed. One a day.”

Zane took a moment to let that settle in, but it didn’t alleviate his concern. In fact, it only served to double it. His stomach tumbled. “Are you sick, O’Flaherty?”

Nick lowered his head, sighing and turning away. He ran a hand through his hair.

Zane glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were still alone, then took a step after Nick. “What’s it for?”

Nick flopped his hands against his thighs. “I have a tremor. That’s what it’s for.”

Zane’s gaze drifted down to Nick’s right hand, which was clutched at his side. “From what?”

Nick shrugged. “Doctors did tests. No one knows. But the medicine keeps my hand from trembling, so I take it. If I forget, I shake like fucking San Francisco in an earthquake.”

Zane laughed before he could stop himself. He put his hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

Nick smiled. He ran his fingers over his forehead. “It gets worse if I’m tired. Like the muscles can’t work hard enough to keep me steady.”

“What do they think is causing it?” Zane asked.

“The original diagnosis was something called essential tremor. Basically, just bad luck genetics. Then the prevailing theory with the military docs was PTSD. That’s pretty much what they call everything they can’t pinpoint, though. All I know for sure is it’s not MS or Parkinson’s Disease. They checked for those. Twice.”

Zane’s body flushed with ice for the briefest of moments. “Jesus.”

“If it’s PTSD, who knows what’ll happen. It might get better, I don’t know. But if it’s the essential tremor thing, it won’t go away. And even though the medicine controls it, it’ll probably get worse as I get older.”

“That’s why you didn’t go back to Boston PD, isn’t it?” Zane asked softly.

Nick winced and shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? If I miss those pills a few days in a row, I can barely hit a target. When it started the first time, my hand completely locked up, my captain thought I was having a seizure and they called an ambulance.”

“When was that?”

Nick licked his lips, stalling. Then he sighed and looked away. “Right before New Orleans. That’s why I had the time to go. They would have taken me back when I got home, they wanted to. And with the meds, I would have been okay. Maybe. But hell, if it
is
a side effect of PTSD, I’m just a huge fucking trembling liability. I couldn’t ask a partner to depend on me knowing that.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“I’m a sniper with a tremor, Garrett. It’s like a bad joke.”

He laughed, and it made Zane chuckle along with him even though there wasn’t a damn thing funny about it. Nick held up his hand, frowning at it like it had betrayed him.