Touch & Geaux (Cut & Run 7)

Zane gave him a shrug. “I’ll have to do for your sidekick this time. Ty’s gone.”

“What? Where’d he go?”

“I have no idea. He was right beside me one second, then he was gone. He had to have slipped out before you said to block the exits. Fire hazard, by the way.”

“The cops can arrest me when they get here,” Nick muttered.

Zane snorted. “Is this a murder?”

“I would say so, but I’m sure as hell not touching anything to find out. I’ll fake getting pegged for a murder all day, but I don’t want to do it in real life. You got a pen or something?”

Zane dug around in his pockets and pulled out a Bic. Nick took it and nudged the door open wider. It was mostly out of habit and curiosity that he was looking at the scene, because the FBI didn’t have jurisdiction here, and the Boston Police Department sure as hell didn’t either.

“Ligature marks,” he whispered to Zane. “Definitely a crime scene.”

“What is that in her hand?” Zane asked. He glanced over his shoulder at the people around them trying to peer in.

Nick waved for Kelly, and the man came over to usher people away. Nick smiled. Sidewinder had never been used to investigate crimes, but Nick had to give the boys credit for being able to handle crowd control. Except for Ty, who had bailed on them.

With a bit more privacy to work with, Nick gently lifted the girl’s fingers with the tip of the pen. She was holding a small white bag in her palm. Its contents had spilled open: dried herbs of some sort. Probably drugs, but not the kind Nick usually saw at murder scenes. The fact that they were still there meant they weren’t anything to write home about. In her other hand was a small strip of paper. Nick was careful not to touch it as he pushed her fingers aside.

Zane crowded closer to him, and Nick shifted to let him see. Zane reached his phone over the girl’s hand and snapped a picture. They could hear the sirens drawing near, so they both stood and backed away from the door. They helped Kelly keep people away from it until the police took over.

“What’s the FBI and Boston PD doing here?” one of the officers asked Zane, his shoulders squaring like he was preparing for a fight.

“Just on vacation,” Zane said with a sigh.

“We didn’t touch a thing, just tried to lock it down until you got here,” Nick assured the man. “All we want to do is give our statements and move along.”

The cop eyed him suspiciously, but he finally gave a nod and took down their accounts. Nick didn’t have to tell the others not to mention Ty being there. They all knew he’d spent a few years undercover in the city. Whatever his reasons for disappearing, they were probably good ones.

It was nearly an hour after the discovery of the body before they were allowed to leave.

“Least they could have done was thank us for helping,” Owen muttered as they trudged across the street into a crowd of curious onlookers.

“We’re lucky they didn’t arrest Nick for poking the dead girl,” Digger said.

“I didn’t poke her. Jesus.”

“Looked like you poked her.”

“Shut up.”

Zane laughed ahead of them, and slowed to let Nick catch up. He glanced at Nick, smiling wryly. “I forget how much you and Ty have in common sometimes.”

“Yeah, until O starts taking it up the ass, they’re not as alike as you think,” Owen mumbled from behind them.

Nick turned and held up his hand, stopping the group in the middle of the road. “Enough with that bullshit, hear me?” He tried to catch his breath to add more, to tell Owen that he did in fact enjoy such things, to finally put up the united front Ty deserved, but a hand on his arm stopped him. He turned to find Ty there, looking sheepish.

“Where the hell did you go, man?” Kelly demanded. “Left us there to do the dirty work.”

Ty glanced around guiltily. “I didn’t want the locals catching sight of me. And all those people with cameras in their phones, I had to get out.”

“Why?” Owen asked. He was still scowling, transferring his irritation from Nick to Ty.

“I wasn’t exactly friendly with the locals when I was undercover, okay? I don’t want to spend my weekend in lockup.”

“Again,” Digger added.

“Yes, thank you,” Ty snapped. He nodded at Nick. “Was it a murder?”

“Definitely. Looked like it might be drug related.”

Zane shook his head. “I don’t think so. She was strangled. Pretty efficient. The scene wasn’t messy and the drugs were still there. If that’s even what they were. Drug deal gone wrong would have been more spontaneous. And the bag in her hand didn’t look like any drug I’ve ever seen.”

“Wait, she had a bag in her hand? What kind?” Digger asked.

Zane and Nick shared a glance, then both shrugged. “It was just a little white bag,” Nick said.

Ty held up his hand, making a circle out of his thumb and forefinger. “About this big? Full of herbs?”

“Yeah,” Zane said.

“I saw you take a picture. What was that of?”

“You saw me? How? Where were you?”

Ty shrugged. “Around. Did you get a picture of the bag?”

“No. She had a slip of paper in her other hand,” Zane said, glancing at the others as he dug out his phone. “I took a picture of it to see if we could read what was on it, but I couldn’t get a good angle.”

“Can I see?” Ty held his hand out for the phone. Zane handed it to him. Ty’s frown deepened as he looked it over, then he glanced up to meet Digger’s eyes. “It looks like a strip of parchment.”

“It would have had her name on it then. It was a gris-gris bag,” Digger said. Ty nodded.

“What the hell is a gris-gris bag?” Nick asked.

“Voodoo,” Zane said. “Right?”

Ty nodded again and gave him his phone back. “They’re usually used for good things. Luck, love, safe travel, protection. All kinds of stuff. But sometimes they can be used to bind or hex. It’s rare; most voodoo practitioners don’t mess with the negative outcomes.”

“Too dangerous,” Digger explained.

“Dangerous? What does that mean?” Owen asked.

Ty looked around the crowd that had formed. He took a deep breath, beginning to edge toward the nearest side street as he spoke. “It’s like a boomerang. The evil comes back at you.”