Cross & Crown (3 page)

“Stay on him. Babysit him. Play the good cop. He’s the biggest break we have in this case right now. If he’s comfortable, he’s more likely to remember. And if he’s faking, you’re more likely to figure it out.”

Nick cleared his throat and nodded. “Does that mean you want me to stick with him at the safe house?” he asked, unable to conceal the dread in his voice.

Branson smirked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t your boyfriend coming to town tonight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even I’m not that cruel. Take the weekend. Let Hagan bad cop him for a few days. After that, it’s O’Flaherty to the rescue, understand?”

“Of course, sir.”

Branson slapped him on the back. Nick watched him walk away, breathing out a sigh of relief, then glanced at the officer on the door.

“Do you even know how to play good cop, Detective?” the man drawled.

“I don’t know, no one’s ever let me do it.” Nick put his shoulder against the door and pushed into the room. JD’s head shot up. He’d been dozing. Nick smiled gently for him. “Doing okay?”

“I guess so.” He pushed the notepad across the table. “I wrote down everything I could think of.”

Nick took the notepad and flipped it over. JD had written bullet points in a neat block print. Nick snorted. It was the type of handwriting that was hard as hell to analyze. The kind that people who worked black ops often had a habit of using. Nick wrote in the same neat block print. “You always write like that?” he asked JD.

“I guess. Why?”

Nick shrugged one shoulder and stuck the notepad back in his pocket. “Muscle memory. It can be interesting. I’ll look over this in a bit. Right now I’m going to take you to get something to eat, then to a hotel so you can get some rest.”

JD stood hesitantly. “
You’re
taking me?”

“Yeah, my partner has some things to tie up before he can meet us there. Is that a problem?”

“No. No, I just assumed it’d be someone… lower on the rung.”

“I’m going to take you out there and get you settled, but Detective Hagan and a uniform are going to stay with you tonight,” Nick answered as he led JD out of the room.

“Is this going to be your case, Detective? I mean… you’re the one who’ll be working it?”

“That’s right, me and my partner.” Nick stopped and turned to face JD. They were almost the same height, but JD was thinner and more compact. He took a tiny step back
when Nick faced him, like he was intimidated. Nick tried to give him a reassuring smile, but he knew himself well enough to know that when he smiled, it rarely reassured anyone. “I’ll figure this out, man. I promise.”

JD sat with his hands on the table, folded over each other. He played with his fingers as he took in his surroundings. Nick got the feeling that he was used to having something on or in his hands to mess with. A ring, maybe. There was no mark, though, no calluses to give evidence of anything being worn there recently.

JD’s eyes strayed to the memorabilia along the brick walls of the pub as he continued to fidget. Nick tried not to watch him too closely. He knew the scrutiny would make him nervous, and JD already had enough nervous energy to power a small appliance.

Nick supposed he couldn’t blame the guy, though. He looked away, trying to find something else to focus on for a while.

His eyes followed a waitress as she walked by, and his gaze landed right back on JD once she was gone. He had stopped moving, and his narrowed eyes were raking over the wall next to him. The lines around his mouth had relaxed.

Nick straightened. JD had the look of a man who might have recognized something. Nick glanced up at the reproduction plaque on the wall. He had sat under it many times, gazing at it idly as he waited for his food, reading the words when his dinner mate went to the bathroom, staring at it listlessly as he ordered for that last drink that would send him into taxi territory.

It was a common fake wood plaque, roughly two feet tall and one wide, featuring a frieze of a nameless baseball player in pinstripes—something many people had defaced over the years because those pinstripes looked far too much like Yankee pinstripes and this was Boston, baby. It was also covered in Red Sox stickers and graffiti.

Nick looked up at it dubiously, then back at JD. “Are you remembering something?”

JD was still scowling. He shook his head minutely, still examining the plaque. “I just… looking at that gives me a feeling I think is familiar.”

“Have you seen it before?”

“I don’t know. I think… I think maybe I hate the Yankees,” JD answered with a shrug.

Nick snorted and couldn’t help but smile as he took a drink.

“I guess that’s nothing spectacular, huh?”

“Well. It’s not going to help narrow you down from the crowd any.”

The amusement faded from JD’s eyes and he returned his attention to his hands, twisting his fingers together and shifting uneasily in the chair. Nick watched him in sympathy. He couldn’t begin to imagine what was going through his mind.

“Are you okay?”

JD was already shaking his head. He turned his head toward the bar as he leaned back in his seat. “I remember that Greg Maddux is the greatest pitcher ever to play the game and that Stan Musial had 3,630 hits in his career. I remember that Darth Vader is a bad guy and that vampires are suddenly good guys who sparkle. I remember that I like spinach and artichoke dip, but not when it comes with tortillas. I know
that tequila will make me sick and just the thought of a worm at the bottom of a bottle will make me want to hurl. I know that the tattoo on your forearm means you were a Recon Marine and that makes you a Grade A badass, even if you kind of try to hide it. Probably because you like to go under the radar so you can have the advantage in a fight. But I don’t know my own name. I don’t know where I come from, how old I am.”

He lowered his head. His eyes were misting over, whether from frustration, sorrow, or merely exhaustion was anyone’s guess. Nick was shocked by how observant the man was even in the midst of this ordeal, though, and the realization made him uneasy. Only one person had ever called him out for trying to appear less dangerous than he was, and Ty Grady was the most observant man Nick knew.

Then there was the tattoo. Nick had a lot of tattoos, including the Celtic cross that traced his spine from the nape of his neck to the small of his back; and the eagle, globe, and anchor that dominated his left shoulder. He also had one on each forearm, and while he usually hid them with dress shirts and suits, he’d rolled his sleeves up when he’d sat down at the pub.

On the right was an ornate Celtic knotwork gauntlet that covered his entire forearm from just below his wrist to an inch or so from his elbow. On the inside of his other forearm was the Force Recon Jack, one that usually got lost amidst the flashier work he had. It was a skull with breathing gear, with a spade and knife crossed behind it, and wings fluttering out from either side. The skull had thirteen bullet holes in it.

The knotwork gauntlet was far more impressive, but JD had zeroed in on the Jack in particular—the one with special meaning. Nick hadn’t met many people who actually knew
what a Recon Jack even was, so the fact that JD did meant he might be associated with the military somehow. Closely associated.

“I can’t even tell you if I’m a good person or not,” JD said. His eyes betrayed the frustration and stark fear he’d been hiding so well up to this point. “I mean, what was I doing there in the middle of the night, stone-cold sober at a bookstore? I could be some sort of criminal and not even know it! I could be a cold-blooded killer, and you’re sitting here eating floppy chips with me!”

“Listen to me,” Nick said harshly. He leaned forward on the table, seeing the turmoil of his own past reflected in JD’s eyes. “We will find out who you are.”

“You can’t promise that, Detective.”

“The hell I can’t. And I’ll tell you one more thing. I’ve dealt with a lot of bad people before. None of them are ever torn up wondering if they’re a good person.”

JD swallowed, but the words seemed to mollify him. He calmed, his shoulders losing their tension. He sighed and gave Nick a weak smile. “When you put it that way…”

“Damn straight,” Nick said.

JD smiled softly. “You’re awfully optimistic for a cop.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, I thought all you police-type guys were these brooding, stoic, ‘drink yourself blind to drown out the ugliness of the world’ types.”

Nick barked a laugh. “You’re thinking of Vice.”

JD just shook his head. “This happy exterior is hiding some deep, dark secret in your past, isn’t it?”

Nick shook his head in amusement as he reached for his drink.

“You’re an alcoholic. You’re closeted. You obliterated an innocent town while you were in the Marines. You’re a macho cop who likes to shoot a pearl-handle.22.”

“I drink in moderation unless I’m pregaming, I’ve quite openly liked dick for the past couple of years, I obliterated a lot of things in the Marines, and the pearl-handle is a.38 Special with a pink tint to it,” Nick answered with a sly grin before taking a sip of his water.

JD laughed, his eyes sparkling. “You’re not mysterious at all. You should try amnesia.”

“I’ll leave that to you,” Nick offered with a mockingly humble shrug.

JD rolled his eyes. Nick took the opportunity to study him for a moment. He seemed better than he had, but that wasn’t saying a lot. He still had dark rings under his eyes, and prominent worry lines around his mouth and on his forehead. He probably wasn’t as old as he looked right now, maybe younger than Nick. He’d spent a lot of time in the sun, judging by the difference in his blond hair versus the scruff of darker beard growing in. He had no visible scars or tattoos, nothing to identify him with. And his strange blue eyes were truly haunting.

“So,” JD said on a sigh. “A hotel with an armed police guard?”

Nick stared at him thoughtfully. “Until we get all this straightened out, yeah.”

JD smiled weakly. “Sounds lovely. I don’t guess I can count on you being there at all, huh?”

“Not until the first of the week, but hopefully we’ll have this all figured out by then. You’ll be safe. And I’ll find out who you are. I promise.”

JD nodded, chewing on his lip. “You always keep your promises, Detective?”

Nick was silent for several tense seconds before smiling. “Yes, I do.”

“Then I believe you.”

“Good.” Nick grabbed his coat and slid from the booth, gesturing for JD to stand with him. “And right now I have to get you to your room, because I promised someone else I’d pick them up at the airport tonight.”

Kelly Abbott’s flight from Colorado had taken nearly four hours longer than it should have, including a lengthy layover in Charlotte where he’d played with every gadget in the Brookstone store and then made good use of the bar. He was tired, a little wobbly, and had a cramp in his neck because he’d fallen asleep with his head against the window instead of drooling on the guy next to him on the plane.

When he hit the escalators that would take him down to the baggage claim at Logan, he bent to scan the crowd below for Nick. It was June in Massachusetts, so it wasn’t like people were all bundled up, but it was busy as hell, so it was hard to tell if Nick was down there.

Before Kelly had left his house for the Denver airport this morning, Nick had warned him that he might have to send a car to pick him up if his new case warranted it. Kelly didn’t mind; in fact, he was the reason Nick had gone back to work at all.

Nick had been ready to quit. He’d been a cop for almost as many years as he’d been a Marine, but when the Corps had called him back for a last tour of duty, something inside Nick
had snapped. He’d come home and declared he was done with carrying a gun. Kelly had given it a few weeks to let the boredom set in before convincing Nick he was acting rashly.

Nick never acted rashly; that was Kelly’s job. Besides, he’d been bored as hell without his badge, so he’d gone back to the department for a test run. The first few months had gone off without a hitch.

Kelly was halfway down the escalator when he caught sight of Nick, and his heart skipped a beat. Nick was dressed in a suit and tie, with a tan trench coat that made him look like a private eye from the ’50s. He was wearing his badge on his belt, and Kelly’s trained eyes could see the telltale outline of a gun at his hip. He had his phone out, frowning at the screen.