Ball & Chain (Cut & Run #8)

Ball & Chain (Cut & Run #8) Page 16

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.

“O’Flaherty,” Zane whispered, but he was unable to follow up with any words of comfort. He cleared his throat, feeling stupid for thinking what he had. “I’m sorry I thought you—”

“Don’t worry about it. I probably would have thought the same thing.”

“Okay, so if it’s PTSD, what do you think started it?”

Nick shrugged, not meeting Zane’s eyes.

“It was the thing with Cross and the CIA, wasn’t it?” Zane asked. “We led them right to you. They came at you on your boat.”

“Sure they did, Garrett, but people have been trying to kill me every day since I was eighteen. Hell, even before that if you want to count being tossed down the stairs, so who the fuck knows. Got real bad a few months ago, though; they almost sent me home. I had to convince them to keep me deployed until the others were let go, too.”

Zane waited a few beats. “You haven’t told anyone?”

“Kelly knows. He has for a while.”

“But not Ty?”

Nick laughed bitterly. “Yeah, there’s a couple things Ty doesn’t know. I’ve been waiting for a good time to talk to him. You know how Ty is.”

Zane nodded sadly. Ty would freak the fuck out at the first hint of Nick being sick. “Yeah.”

“I mean . . . how do you tell your best friend that you’re sick and no one knows why?”

Zane shook his head, at a loss. An awkward silence began to creep in as they stood in the hallway staring at each other. Zane thought maybe Nick was holding his breath, and he suddenly realized why. “If he asks me directly if I know anything, I’ll tell him to talk to you. Otherwise, it’s none of my business to tell him, right? You’ll do it when you’re ready.”

“Thanks, Garrett.”

Zane nodded and made to step away, but Nick reached for his arm and stopped him.

“And . . . thank you for being concerned and ready to help. I know it’s not easy to come up to someone like that. That’s solid.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t have to give you my rehab speech.”

Nick barked a laugh. He put his arm around Zane’s shoulder, patting his back and steering him toward the great hall. He let him go before they reached the door, and they rejoined Ty and Kelly just before Stanton addressed the crowd.

They set Nick up in the game room. A billiard table and a long shuffleboard table sat along one wall, and a disconcerting stag head glared from over the fireplace. Nick pulled a stool behind the wet bar and laid out a notepad, several pens, and his iPad, feeling vastly unprepared for the task ahead of him.

After Stanton’s announcement, people had been edgy and nervous, but no one had outright objected to the questioning. Nick was expecting some hostility, though, and it was going to be awkward as hell when he started interviewing people he knew. He also felt naked without his badge.

Susan Stanton was nearly inconsolable during her interview. “Ernest was a good man, he didn’t deserve to die like that. Oh my God.” She put her fingers to her lips and closed her eyes. “Poor, poor man. He wasn’t even supposed to be here! He and Theodore had some last-minute things to work on so he came on the plane with us.”

Theodore Stanton was less flustered when Nick interviewed him. “We were working on a project, yes. He insisted he come along so it could be finished. He was like a bulldog when it came to the government work.”

Livi Stanton cried through her entire interview. “If it hadn’t been for Mr. Milton, Deacon and I would never have met, did you know that? He went to Deacon for his stress problems, and he noticed Deacon’s limp. He gave him my card and told him to try it.” She broke down into tears again, and Nick was forced to call Deuce to come get her. He didn’t comfort crying women unless they were gutshot.

“Yeah, you know I’d forgotten that,” Deuce admitted. “He did give me her card. Jesus, now I feel kind of bad. I mean I felt bad anyway, you know, but now I feel worse. I mean I feel bad that he died at my wedding, not because I killed him or anything. Why are you looking at me like that? Why are you writing that down? Oh my God, Deacon, stop talking.”

Mara Grady babbled through her entire interview just like her youngest son. “What was he doing out on that beach at night? That’s so dangerous, you know he wasn’t down there for anything good. Nicholas, dear, you look tired. You need some coffee.”

When Earl Grady entered the room, he was carrying a plate and a steaming mug. “The wife said to bring you this,” he said as he placed them at Nick’s elbow. “I saw the dead man at dinner. He kept checking his watch like he had somewhere to be. And he was on his cell phone the whole time. Figured it was a sat phone since everyone seems to have shit for service out here.”

“There isn’t a damn bar of service on this stupid island,” the maid of honor told him. She was a pretty woman with copper-colored hair. Her eyes were drawn to Nick’s notepad. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Nikki Webb. I hate being here, okay? My entire body itches and I can’t get it to stop, and my hair is frizzy as hell because of all the rain, and I can’t even have phone sex with my boyfriend because we’re out in the middle of damn nowhere. I mean I love Livi, but so help me God this marriage better last forever.”

Nick had already met one of the bridesmaids, Catalina Cruz, at the dinner last night. She was a looker, and she had the kind of fire that Nick enjoyed. He’d spent a while talking with her, and if not for Kelly, they probably would have been each other’s alibis last night. “Let me guess, Nikki spent ten minutes complaining about the phone service? I’m rooming with her. She spent at least an hour last night wandering the halls, desperate for a bar of service. She almost fell over the balcony railing holding it up to the sky. No one should get that wrapped up in a guy, you know what I mean?”

The next bridesmaid to sit across from him spelled her name for him. “Miyoko Mason.” She was tall and possibly too thin to be healthy, with an exotic look that spoke of an Asian ancestry. “I talked to him for a while. He could quote Sun Tzu. That’s The Art of War, in case you didn’t know. He was very smooth, like a spy in some novel. He kept saying he had to meet with someone and checking his watch. He didn’t say who.”

The groomsmen weren’t as impressed with Milton. Christian Orr, Deuce’s oldest friend, was tall and lanky, and his handshake was firm. “Yeah, I saw him at the party. He was pulling some sort of spy con on two of the bridesmaids. It was kind of funny to watch. I didn’t see him after he left the party. Thought he got lucky, but . . . guess I was wrong. I switched rooms when Matt hooked up with that brunette bridesmaid. I spent the night with the Asian chick, Miyoko? Read her a fucking poem and she’s yours, man.”

“I mean, how do you pretend you’re some sort of damn secret agent at a wedding for a psychiatrist and a yogi?” Matthew Ferguson asked Nick. He was short and athletic, with dark hair and a playful smile. “I spent most of the party with Ashlee. Have you seen her yet? Ashlee Knight? I mean, Goddamn. I was with her until around four this morning. She woke me up when she left my room.”

Nick had started out making a chart of who had been sleeping where and with whom, but it had begun to look like a spider’s web. He shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but the bedroom machinations of the staff caught him more off guard.