Ball & Chain

“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 night. 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.



“Irish, you have to look at this as just another case, okay? Just another murder. That’s all it is,” Ty was saying, keeping his voice low as he leaned closer to Nick. “You have to take the island and the boats and the phones out of the equation.”



“Why?” Nick asked pointedly.



Ty opened his mouth to respond, but then snapped it shut again.



“Why would you discount all that? Why, when it makes for the perfect backdrop to wipe out a company with defense contracts? To take out a team of mercenaries? Target a family whose wealth fuels Philadelphia? Why would you think that storm destroyed those boats when it could just as easily have been a person?”



Ty was left with a frown of consternation, and Zane was left even more unsettled than he’d been.



Nick was still shaking his head when Kelly returned, a canvas bag with a red cross sewn onto it slung over his shoulder. Nick stood and waved him off. “We don’t need that,” he mumbled. “I’ve got stronger shit in my suitcase.”



He walked off toward the house, shoulders hunched and head down. Kelly gave Ty and Zane a mystified glance before turning on his heel to follow.



“He’s insane,” Zane finally said to Ty once they were alone, horrified by the realization. He’d always been under the impression that Nick was the sane one, the only sane one, the one who kept the others all in line, the one who kept Ty from going for rides on the loco coaster. Now it looked like Nick was driving the damn thing.



Ty nodded. “He always has been. He controls it well. It’s part of his charm. The hell of it is, he’s right, too.”



“Right about what? Rogue waves and dying in Scotland? I mean, I’m no goddamn psychiatrist, but even I can see he’s under way too much stress. He’s rambling, Ty. He’s cracking.”



“So what if he is?” Ty said heatedly, standing to face Zane. “He deserves to after what happened! How many times have you seen me crack and you still listened to what I was saying, even if it sounded like I was losing my mind?”



Zane sighed and squeezed Ty’s arm to calm him. “You’re right.”