Ball & Chain

Nick loosened his grip, setting her back down. He yanked the gun from her hands and tossed it away, still glaring at her with murderous intent. He waved a hand at the children. “Fireplace,” he snarled.



They hustled to obey. Nick told them how to open the secret door. Then he raised his gun.



Maisie took a halting step back and stumbled over a toy on the floor. “You’re not a killer. Not like them. I can see that!”



“Is that right?” Nick asked with a slow smile. He began backing toward the fireplace. The footsteps grew slower and quieter as they approached. He couldn’t risk a gunfight with an unknown number of assailants and five children in the room. He’d have to retreat.



“Maisie?” a man whispered from behind the half-open door. The accent was Scottish.



Nick waited a breath, until he could feel the wall behind him, until one of the kids reached up and took his hand. Then he raised his gun and fired at the man in the doorway.



Ty had to fight the urge to dive to the ground when the anguished screams and booming gunfire echoed through the house. Everyone froze, struck momentarily dumb by the unexpected sound of battle. Ty’s eyes met Zane’s for a brief moment before they both lunged out of their chairs and sprinted out of the dining room for the stairway. They met Kelly on his way down, out of breath and panicked.



One look at him and Ty knew something was horribly wrong. “What is it, is it Nick?”



Kelly shook his head jerkily, his eyes straying to the people in the foyer. “Not Nick.”



“The kids?” Deuce blurted.



A tray of coffee crashed in the foyer. Concerned cries echoed off the marble of the great hall. There were gasps and murmurs as the panic and confusion became contagious.



“What do you mean, what happened?” Deuce demanded. His limp was almost absent as he rushed up the steps.



“They’re gone,” Kelly whispered. “Nick and I split up. When I came back he was gone, and when I heard the shots I went up to the third floor, but the room’s empty. There’s no one there but two dead bodies.”



“Where’s Nick?” Ty asked again.



Kelly opened his mouth, but no words came out. He managed to shake his head and spread his hands wide. “He’s not up there, he’s not down here. He’s gone too. Maybe he went after whoever took the kids.”



Zane cursed under his breath, the sound sending shivers down Ty’s spine. “Do you think Nick got lost in a flashback?” Zane asked.



Deuce grabbed Ty by his shirtfront. “You said we could trust him!” he shouted.



Ty gripped his arms and shook him violently. “Stop! We’ll find them. Come with me and keep your mouth shut.”



Ty and the others followed Kelly to the third floor playroom where the kids had been stashed for safekeeping. The nanny who’d been assigned to watch them was laid out on the floor, bleeding from several gunshot wounds. Her face was bloody. A windowpane was shattered, and the wind whipped into the room, tugging at their clothing and hair. Bullet holes littered the rock walls behind her, and more had lodged into the door of the nursery, like she had fired back at an assailant shooting from the doorway.



The room itself was a shambles, with toys tossed about and furniture turned over.



“Is this . . . normal for a kid’s room?” Zane asked carefully as they stood and surveyed the scene.



“Aside from the dead nanny and the bullet holes . . . sometimes,” Deuce answered helplessly. He caught sight of something and pounced on it, picking up Amelia’s ratty gray lamb and holding it up for Livi to see.



Livi covered her mouth with her fingers as tears began to stream down her face.



“We’ll find them,” Ty assured her. “Someone get in those fucking walls and start looking.”



“Could Nick have done this?” Deuce shouted. “Someone took out that guard, and he was a Green Beret!”



Ty met Kelly’s eyes, at a loss. They both knew Nick would never, ever hurt a child, no matter how lost in his memories he became. But would he hurt the Snake Eater who’d been guarding the door? Or the nanny? If they stood between him and someone he thought he needed to rescue? Yeah. Definitely.



Zane cleared his throat and stepped closer to Kelly, speaking so low Ty could hardly hear. “Would the, um . . . the medication he’s on, would it cause behavior like this?”



Kelly shook his head vehemently.



“What medication?” Ty asked.



Kelly rubbed at his eyes and shook his head again. “He takes propranolol for a tremor in his hand.”



“Tremor,” Ty echoed. “What the fuck, since when?”



“Propranolol?” Deuce said as he came closer. “That’s sometimes prescribed for PTSD.”



“That’s not Nick’s issue,” Kelly said.



“The hell it’s not,” Zane grumbled. “Every member of your team has PTSD.”



“What are you, a shrink now?” Ty snapped. Zane shrugged.



“It can be hidden well, especially by people like you,” Deuce insisted with a wave of his hand at Ty. “Could he have snapped and done this? Or run off?”



“What do you mean, people like me?” Ty took a step that put him face-to-face with his fuming brother.



Zane stepped between them and put a hand on both their chests.



“Something would’ve had to have triggered him,” Kelly said.



“And Nick sure as hell wouldn’t hurt those kids,” Ty added with a pointed look at Deuce.



“Then find them, Ty!” Deuce shouted.



Zane took Deuce’s shoulder and held him even when he tried to shove away. “You need to calm down,” he said quietly.



Livi was still crying, but she gripped Deuce’s elbow. “They’re right. We’re not helping by panicking.”



Deuce took a deep breath and stepped away, running his hands through his hair. Ty gave Livi a nod of thanks, then noticed several more people in the doorway, watching and waiting. He hesitated, momentarily indecisive.



“You’re sure no one came by you, Doc?” Zane asked Kelly.



“Positive. I was right there at the stairs when the shooting started. By the time I got up here, it looked like this. No one got by me.”



“Means they went through the walls,” Ty murmured.



“Okay, we need to find the kids,” Zane announced, taking control when Ty still hesitated. “Split up into groups of four or five, no one goes anywhere alone. Check every room top to bottom and then lock it behind you as you leave. Start at the wings and work inward to the center of the house.”



Zane divided them into groups and then assigned each group a wing and level of the house. The groups split off and headed for their assigned areas. Ty was already fidgeting, trying to map out the directions Nick could have gone as Zane gestured to Emma, who was still standing at the doorway. “You come with us. We’ll circle the house, see if we can pick up anything outside. If Nick’s in the walls, he would have headed for that escape door at the corner of the patio. Deacon, Livi, you two stay here in this room in case the kids ran for it and try to come back. Got it?”



Deuce’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. “Find my baby.”



“We will.”



They collected flashlights, then Ty led Zane, Kelly, and Emma down to the front door and outside. There had been a break in the storm, but Ty didn’t know if they’d be able to find anything out there, or how long the rain would hold off. They spread out and began scouring the grounds, Ty and Zane moving one way, Kelly and Emma the other, searching in a circle around the mansion for tracks or signs of a struggle. It took them too many minutes to reach the gardens in the back of the house where the inner passages would have led someone to exit.



Ty was too worried to talk, too worried to question Zane about how he’d known Nick was taking medication, or why Nick hadn’t told Ty about any of these things that were going on in his life. What the hell kind of friend had Ty been to him that he felt he couldn’t share? And now Nick was missing, God knew if he was okay, and the last real words Ty had exchanged with him were in contempt and anger.



It made Ty physically ill. His hand holding the flashlight began to tremble.



“He’s okay, Ty,” Zane said.



“We can’t know that.”



“Got something!” Kelly called out in the darkness. He and Emma were waving their flashlights, and Ty and Zane hurried through the inky night to find them. When they reached the spot, they could see deep prints in the muddy grass. The strides were long and the footprints were obscured by motion and mud.



“Someone was running,” Ty said. He played his light over the path, peering back at the house. The tracks didn’t come from the patio, but rather the corner of the wall. The same corner where Zane had seen the carved angel with its ball and chain. That proved their theory correct, but it didn’t make Ty feel any better.



They followed the tracks for several yards, realizing there had been no attempt at covering them.



“If this was Nick, it’s sloppy as hell,” Kelly finally said. “It can’t be him.”



Ty didn’t comment. Normally he would have agreed with Kelly; he’d never seen Nick leave a trail this obvious. But if Nick really had suffered a full-blown flashback or panic attack, who knew what state of mind he was in? The children all knew and trusted him. They would have followed him if they believed he was protecting them.



“Got blood here,” Ty called. They were losing evidence to the rain quickly, and almost as soon as he’d spotted it, the blood had been washed away. The ball in Ty’s stomach grew heavier when he realized the tracks were leading them directly to the cliff’s edge. He picked up the pace, no longer trying to read the story the tracks were telling them. Kelly stopped and picked up something that glinted in the light of his flashlight.



“Oh God,” he whispered. He held up a gold claddagh ring that Nick rarely took off. “This is his.”



Ty broke into a jog, following the obvious path in the grass until they took a sharp left. Ty momentarily lost the trail, then picked it up again. The cliff’s edge opened up at his side like the gaping maw of some primeval monster, angry waves crashing far below. Nick had run along the edge of the cliff.



“Was he going for the cliff?” Zane asked, sounding just as confused as Ty was.



“It’s possible, I don’t know.”



“Could he have survived that fall?” Emma asked, sounding stunned and horrified.



“The fall, yes, if he cleared the rocks,” Kelly answered. “The water, no. Not for long.”



“Could he have cleared the rocks?” Zane asked.



Ty gave a helpless shrug. “I . . . I don’t know. I know I couldn’t.”



“Why . . . why would he do this?” Emma asked.



Ty had no answer. He backtracked, trying to find some clue in the trail. He finally saw one in a patch of mud, and he bent to look closer. “There was someone else out here.”



Zane came to look over his shoulder, offering the light of his flashlight as well. Ty showed them Nick’s track, light and barely there in the grass. There was another, heavier print in the mud. It overlapped Nick’s footprint, meaning whoever had made it had come after.



“Someone was chasing him,” Emma surmised. “There was someone else up there with them.”



“It’s just one pair, though,” Ty told them. “Nick was running from one guy? That doesn’t seem right.”



“I don’t care if it’s the fucking hounds of the Baskervilles!” Kelly shouted. “Nick would have stood and fought! Nothing scares Nick enough to make him run, to try to jump off a fucking cliff! Nothing!”



Ty reached out to take Kelly’s arm, but the man shoved him away and pointed a finger in his face. “He came here for you, Ty! He came here because you’re his brother, and he’d do anything for you!”



“I know, Doc,” Ty managed to say, his voice breaking.



“You know damn well he wouldn’t have left those kids unprotected, I don’t care what kind of flashback he was having! And he wouldn’t have run! He wouldn’t have run away! He would have stood and he would have fought! You know he would have fought!”



Ty held up both hands, wanting to comfort Kelly but too confused and heartbroken to try. He didn’t understand what the tracks were telling him. Everything he knew about Nick screamed the evidence was lying, because damn right Nick would have fought. Ty had seen him stand his ground in situations where even Ty wanted to duck and cover. Nick would have fought to his very last breath no matter what he was facing.



“Maybe he would run,” Zane said after a few moments of silence.



Kelly turned on him, eyes blazing in the light of the flashlights. Thunder crashed right over them, and the skies opened up again. Zane held up a hand to avoid Kelly’s angry words.



“He would run from someone,” Zane said again. “If he was leading them away from something else. Something he was protecting.”



Kelly stared at him for a beat, then he and Ty locked eyes as they both realized what Zane was saying.



“Nick’s the one who moved the kids,” Ty said quickly. “He’s not pursuing someone. He took the kids. He must have been there before the shooting started.”



Kelly swiped a hand over his mouth, looking down at the tracks and then to the cliff. “He must have gotten wind of something coming and didn’t have time to call for help. He hid the kids, then took off running, left a trail an idiot could follow.”



“Hey, I found that trail,” Emma grunted.



Somewhere in the darkness ahead of them came three gunshots in rapid succession, then a garbled shout through the pouring rain.