Cut and Run 08 Ball & Chain (25 page)

Kelly set his stick down and glared at him.

Nick raised both eyebrows in a silent challenge. “You’re not getting
my
gun.”

“Quit being a dick,” Kelly grunted. He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to go get some Advil for the dick.”

Nick grumbled to himself as Kelly walked away.

“You two had a fun night,” Ty said.

“Shut up, Tyler.”

Zane was flipping through the pictures Nick had taken as the rest of them spoke. Ty leaned forward to look over his shoulder. When they reached the photo of the broken wristwatch Nick had fixated on, Zane zoomed in on it, cocking his head. There wasn’t anything special about it, but it did look familiar somehow.

Ty patted his shoulder. “I had one like that.”

Zane raised his head. “You did,” he said as the realization hit him. “The one we smashed in Gettysburg. It had a tracker in it.”

“You wore a tracker in your watch?” Emma asked, sounding bemused.

“Dick gave it to me.”

“Burns?” Nick asked, his voice going hard. “Asshole.”

Zane nodded. Why would someone first smash the watch, then come back and take it? Was it possible that Ernest Milton had been one of Burns’s misfit ops men? “We need to talk to Burns,” he said.

“What? Why?” Ty asked.

Nick leaned forward. “You think Milton was his?”

Zane nodded.

“It’s a common watch,” Ty argued.

Zane clambered to his feet. “Common or not, I’m going to ask Burns about it.”

Ty frowned at him.

Zane sighed heavily. “You don’t have to come. But I’m going.”

“I’ll come,” Nick said eagerly, and stood. He handed Amelia off to Emma, looking relieved to have her out of his arms. He didn’t even try to take his sunglasses off her, and he placed her lamb gently on her belly.

“What, you two are going to track him down and beat the truth out of him?” Ty asked.

“Sounds fun,” Nick said as he looked away.

Zane raised an eyebrow at him, then met Ty’s eyes. “Why don’t you find Doc and you two go search Milton’s and Nikki’s rooms. O’Flaherty and I will
politely
question Burns.”

Nick lifted his glass. “Always at the center of it, isn’t he?”

“Burns has nothing to do with this,” Ty snapped.

Nick just raised his eyebrows.

Ty looked between them, then stood reluctantly. “Promise you’ll be civil.”

Zane nodded, but Nick didn’t answer. He narrowed his eyes at Ty instead, then shook his head and turned away to go off in search of Burns.

Ty pointed at him. “Keep him under control,” he hissed. “Don’t let him get his hands around Dick’s neck.”

“Are we talking figuratively or literally?”

“Both,” Ty spat. He glanced over Zane’s shoulder again. “Nick blames Burns for Sanchez’s death.”

“Oh God,” Zane groaned, and he turned to jog after Nick.

Ty caught Kelly coming back down the steps with his canvas medical bag over his shoulder. Ty held up his hand. “He bolted, no drugs for him.”

“What? That bastard.” Kelly stopped on the staircase. “Where’d he go?”

“He and Zane went to question Burns about the dead guy’s watch. It was the same as the one I used to wear, so they think Milton was one of Burns’s operators.”

Kelly just blinked rapidly.

Ty didn’t bother trying to explain further. He climbed the steps toward him. “Anyway, we’re supposed to go search over Milton’s and Nikki’s rooms, see what we can find.”

“This is the worst vacation ever,” Kelly said as he turned and followed Ty up the steps.

“Yeah, we don’t use that word.”

They hit the landing and made the turn down their hall. Milton’s room was in the same wing as theirs were, but closer to the stairs. Kelly leaned against the wall as Ty fished the key he’d gotten from Stanton out of his pocket. “What are we looking for when we get in there?”

Ty shrugged. “Motive. Anything worth killing over.”

“You realize I’m not a cop, right?”

Ty glanced at him and smiled. “No, but you’re fucking one.”

Kelly’s cheeks reddened and he bit his lip to hide a massive grin. He failed miserably. “Thanks for being cool with it, bud. Nick stressed a lot about telling you and the guys.”

“Seems Nick’s stressed about a lot of things,” Ty said with another sideways glance at Kelly. “Is he okay?”

“You’ll have to ask him about that.”

The nonanswer hit Ty harder than he’d expected. He lowered his head and jammed the ancient key into the door, wriggling it to get it to catch.

Kelly cleared his throat. “He’s still terrified to tell the others. He’s watching your reaction closer than you might think he is. I think he was afraid everyone would assume he’d taken advantage of me being hurt and drugged.”

“Did he?” Ty asked neutrally.

“No. In fact I pretty much had to beg him to—”

“Stop. The deal is I don’t freak out, and you don’t share sex stories.”

Kelly snickered. “Okay.”

They stepped into the room and Ty flicked on the lights. He’d been half-expecting to find the room turned upside down, trashed and searched. But everything seemed to be in its place.

“Huh,” Kelly offered as he took a few steps inside and surveyed the room. “They cut his guts open but didn’t try his room?”

“That, or they searched it neat.”

This room was a little more Spartan than theirs, with a double bed and a small vanity. It had no balcony. It didn’t even have windows. The bed hadn’t been slept it. Nothing seemed out of place.

Kelly pointed toward the small desk against the far wall. “Laptop.”

“See if you can get it up and running,” Ty said. He headed for the bedside table and went through the small drawers, checked under the pillows and the mattress, got down and peered under the bed. He checked under all the tables and tried the bottoms of each drawer for anything taped there. He kicked aside the rugs and lifted them up to search under them. Then he went to the wardrobe that held Milton’s luggage. He dragged everything out and put it on the bed.

“Jesus, he’s got some heavy shit in here,” Ty said as he hefted the third suitcase out of the wardrobe.

“This thing is password protected,” Kelly finally said. “I can’t get into it.”

Ty nodded. “We’ll take it to Zane, see if he can get past it.”

Kelly came over to help Ty go through the suitcases. “He brought an awful lot of stuff for a week.”

Ty nodded, frowning at the three large suitcases full of clothing, shoes, toiletries, and electronics. “It’s almost like he wasn’t planning on going back home,” he said. He and Kelly shared a glance.

Kelly pulled out a Dopp kit and unzipped it. It was brimming with toiletries and medicine bottles. “Why would this all be packed up? He had six more days, why not take it into the bathroom, lay everything out?”

Ty’s frown deepened. He turned to the large wardrobe. It was empty. No suits hanging, nothing folded into the drawers. All of Milton’s things were neatly packed. “He either never unpacked, or he was planning on leaving last night.”

Kelly was scowling when Ty met his eyes. “This guy’s starting to feel shady, man.”

Ty grunted in agreement. “We need to get into that laptop. Gather it up, we’ll take it with us.”

“What about his phone? Did he have it on him?”

“Yeah, but it got wet. It’s useless.”

Kelly shrugged. “Let’s go put it in some rice.”

“Rice?”

“Yeah, it soaks up the water.” Kelly bundled up the laptop and stuck it under his arm. “I dropped mine in the toilet once. A little rice, a little Clorox. Good as new!”

Ty swiped a hand over his face as they left the room. “That is so gross.”

Zane approached the table where Burns and Earl were sitting, drinking coffee and playing some sort of card game. He could feel Nick behind him. He was a very physical presence, and Zane now completely understood why Ty had always trusted the man to have his back.

“Earl. Director Burns,” Zane said with a nod at each man.

“Hey, Zane, Nick. Take a load off,” Earl invited with a jerk of his head to the empty chairs at the table. “We heard there was another murder.”

“Yes, sir,” Nick said softly. “I’m afraid we didn’t come to play cards. Director Burns, we’d like to speak with you about a few things.”

Zane glanced at him, surprised he’d gone the direct route. His jaw was tight and his green eyes were hard and sparkling. Zane groaned internally. Ty had been right. Zane was going to have to pry Nick’s fingers from Burns’s neck, he knew he was.

Burns and Earl exchanged frowns, then Burns placed his cards on the table and nodded. “What do you need to discuss?”

Nick’s hard stare remained on Burns, but Zane looked between the two older men pointedly. “It has to do with work. It’s probably best we speak in private.”

Burns pursed his lips and stood. “I’ll be back,” he said to Earl. He came around the table, watching Nick with an almost curious expression.

Zane turned to lead them both into one of the unoccupied rooms that lined the great hall. They settled in the parlor. Burns sat in one of the chairs near the large stone fireplace, and Zane and Nick sat opposite him on a small sofa.

“What’s going on, boys?”

“Was Milton one of your men?” Nick asked, his voice hard.

Burns’s only reaction was a rapid series of blinks.

“The watch he wore,” Zane said. “It was just like Ty’s, the one you gave him with the GPS in it.”

“He’s also dead, just like most of your recruits,” Nick practically snarled.

Burns cleared his throat. “This is going to be unproductive with him present. Unless he intends to use his alternative interrogation skills,” he said with a point at Nick. He stood to go.

Nick was on his feet so fast Zane didn’t even have a chance to grab for him. He blocked Burns’s path, and the two men stood eyeing each other, trapped in the space between the chair and the coffee table.

“Son, you don’t want to make a mistake here,” Burns said almost kindly. “You need to get out of the way.”

“I don’t take orders from you.
Sir
. Sit down.”

Burns narrowed his eyes and jutted his chin out, but he must have seen just as plainly as Zane could that Nick wasn’t going to let him leave this room. He gave a curt nod and returned to the chair by the fireplace.

Nick remained standing, his arms crossed over his chest like a bouncer at a club.

Zane gave him a wary once-over before turning his attention back to Burns. “Was he one of your men?”

Burns cleared his throat and nodded. “He was.”

“Was he planted with the Stanton company?”

“He was already part of the Stanton company,” Burns said. “They’re developing highly classified equipment for the military, we needed a watchdog. We recruited him.”

“Why the hell didn’t you come out and say that when we found his body?” Nick demanded.

“Because Stanton can’t know. I don’t have to tell you what a mess it would be if it got out that a government agent had infiltrated a private company like that. You can imagine how that would make Stanton and his board of directors react if they found out.”

“Did you put him up to introducing Deuce and Livi?” Nick asked.

“What? No, why would I do that?”

Zane rubbed his fingers over one temple. “So, his sole job was to guard this technology being developed?”

“For me, yes.”

“That means whoever killed him probably did it for the information he was protecting,” Nick said to Zane.

“You should have told us this,” Zane said to Burns.

Burns shook his head. “It’s need-to-know, Garrett.”

“That woman’s life, the cook? Her blood is on your hands,” Nick growled. “All your cloak-and-dagger bullshit, all it does is get people killed.”

Burns didn’t answer. He sat staring at Nick, his expression unreadable.

“O’Flaherty,” Zane said gently. “Why don’t you go find Grady and Abbott, see what they found?”

Nick continued to glare at Burns, his nostrils flaring and his jaw jumping as he clenched his teeth. He finally nodded and turned to leave. The door slammed shut behind him.

When Zane returned his attention to Burns, the man was still watching the door. His face had softened, and he seemed almost melancholy. He sighed heavily when he met Zane’s eyes. “I admire his loyalty. And his fire. That was why I tried to recruit him.”