Ball & Chain (Cut & Run 8)

“Why not just call to them if they’re down here?” Frost asked.

“If someone’s down here looking for them and they answer our calls, there’s no guarantee we get to them first,” English answered before Ty could respond. “We should look first.”

Ty nodded and glanced at Deuce again. “That’s your call, bud.”

“That’s my baby girl out there. I’m not letting anyone get to her before I do. We’ll look for them.”

Ty gave him a curt nod. He hadn’t expected any other answer. He turned to English and the others. “What did you see the way you came from?”

“There are storage rooms,” Frost answered. “Some of them look like they were once jail cells.”

Ty and Deuce shared a look. “Definitely part of the castle complex,” Deuce grumbled.

“Castle?” English asked. “It’s on the other side of the island.”

Ty nodded. “You see our problem.”

“Son of a bitch,” English snarled.

“What information do we need right now?” Kelly asked Zane. When Fraser had regained consciousness, they’d tied him to a dining chair, and Earl was now standing with a shotgun aimed at his face.

“We need to know how many, and who. The whys and hows can come later,” Zane whispered. He was watching Kelly work, fascinated. Kelly was patching Nick’s side up, with Nick laid out on a table, his face turned away from them. The bullet had grazed him, skipping off a rib. It had been just enough to knock him over the edge of the cliff and draw blood, but it hadn’t done any permanent damage. Kelly had cleaned it and was using some sort of skin glue from his medical kit to close it up.

“As soon as we get what we need from him, I’m going into the walls to find Ty,” Zane told them. “He’s been gone too long, something’s wrong.”

“The passages open up when you go down a level,” Nick said, his voice having returned to his usual soothing, sedate tone. “It’s a maze down there, natural caves and lava tubes mixed with man-made tunnels and rooms. They probably go all the way over to the castle ruins.”

Zane felt the blood draining from his face. That was a lot of territory to cover. “Can you find those kids, O’Flaherty?” Zane asked, his voice coming out rougher and more accusatory than he’d intended.

Nick turned his head and met Zane’s eyes. “Yes.”

He sat up when Kelly was done. Kelly had cut his tattered shirt off him, so there was nothing for him to put back on. His green eyes were hard when they landed on Jockie Fraser, and his jaw was set. “Give me five minutes with him first.”

Zane looked from Nick to their prisoner, who was staring at them with wide eyes. Earl glanced over his shoulder when he heard Nick’s words. He met Zane’s eyes, then nodded. They’d already tried asking him questions. It hadn’t been very effective, with Fraser repeatedly refusing to answer and demanding legal counsel. It was time for a new tack.

Earl and Zane picked Fraser’s chair up, carrying him between them into the game room next door, where the billiards table took up most of the space. Nick followed them, still shirtless. He grabbed a towel from behind the bar and threw it over his shoulder, then he sat to unlace his shoes and pull them off.

“What’s he doing?” Fraser asked when they set his chair down, eyes still wide. Earl checked his bonds, refusing to answer.

Nick took one of his socks off, then stood and strolled over to the billiard table. He glanced over at Fraser as he reached into one of the pockets, then pulled one of the billiard balls out and dropped it into his sock. His expression stayed completely blank the entire time.

Fraser began to shake his head. “You’re insane. You can’t do this!”

“This can be avoided if you tell us what we need to know,” Zane said. “Who paid you?”

Fraser glared at Zane. His hawklike nose was badly broken and his eyes were swelling shut from the beating Kelly had given him.

“Start talking, Fraser, or I let him at you,” Zane said with a jerk of his head at Nick.

“You’re bluffing,” Fraser spat.

Zane shrugged. “I may be.” He glanced over his shoulder at Nick, who was standing and staring at Fraser with the same dead-eyed expression he’d awoken with. “But he’s not.”

Earl patted Zane on the shoulder and headed for the door. Zane lingered, giving Fraser a last chance to talk and watching Nick with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Nick met his eyes, letting the heavy billiard ball swing in its sock, demonstrating just how effective it would be as a weapon.

Fraser jutted his abused chin out, refusing to speak again.

Zane didn’t say anything more before retreating through the door. When he turned to pull it shut, he got a glimpse of Nick standing in front of Jockie Fraser, his feet shoulder-width apart, his bare back covered with a Celtic cross tattoo that followed his spine from the base of his neck to the small of his back. Three whiplike scars crisscrossed his muscular back and shoulders. The makeshift ball and chain hung from his hand, swaying as Nick wrapped the end around his fingers.

Zane lowered his head and pulled the door shut before the first scream could tear through the great hall.

Ty turned the corner and almost smacked into a brick wall before Deuce could follow with the flashlight. He held his arm, trying to keep it from throbbing as they stood in the dead end of the corridor, fuming and desperate.

“Backtrack,” Ty murmured, and they made their way back to the last intersecting corridor. Ty made a large X on the wall, and they continued to retrace their steps.

“Will you let me at least tie your arm down?” Deuce asked.

“I need it. It’s fine,” Ty insisted, and he slid his hand into his waistband as a makeshift sling.

They met up with the other three at what Ty had deemed the crossroads, a large section of tunnel that appeared to have been cut from a natural cavern.

“Anything?” Deuce asked the others. They all answered with negatives, and they all looked sympathetic to Deuce’s increasing desperation.

“We’ll find her,” Frost assured him. He even put a hand on Deuce’s arm to offer him a little comfort.

Ty ran his hand through his hair, sucking in a ragged breath as the walls edged closer and closer to him. The weight of the earth pressed down from above. Even though he knew they were no longer under the mansion, they were still under tons and tons of dirt. What if they were under the hill? What if the lighthouse ruins were up there, weighing down, crumbling, threatening the integrity of the stonework?