Ball & Chain (Cut & Run 8)

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 f**king 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 f**k, 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.