Ball & Chain (Cut & Run 8)

Zane smirked. “I can imagine what that looked like.”

“I remember the look he gave me when I sat, like, ‘Oh my God, who is this idiot and why is he smiling?’ I introduced myself, shook his hand. And I realized, the way he reached for my hand, that the reason he’d been sitting like he had was because his ribs were hurt.”

“Jesus Christ.” Zane sounded as angry as Ty had been back then. “His dad?”

Ty nodded. “A parting gift for abandoning the family to go play hero when he should have been going to work and earning money.”

“I hope Nick lets him rot,” Zane said under his breath.

Ty nodded his agreement. He knew it probably wouldn’t happen, though, because Nick wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t do what he could to save someone, even someone as evil as his own father.

“Anyway. One of the guys sitting in front of us turned around to say something and I told him to shut the f**k up and turn back around before he got a handful of something he wasn’t ready for. Nick told me later it was the first time someone had stood up for him just because they could. Ever. First time in his life.”

“And that’s why he says you earned his loyalty when you sat down.”

“That’s right. When I asked him who’d broken his rib, he said his father. When I pointed at his knuckles and asked why he hadn’t hit back, he told me he had. But he’d used a baseball bat.” Ty smiled when he remembered the silence that had come over the kids sitting around them, eavesdropping. There had been no mistaking Nick’s tone for a joke, but Ty had laughed his ass off at the time. “I just told him I liked his style, and we were inseparable after that. When I got news that Deuce had been in his wreck, I was . . . Nick was the one who kept me from going AWOL. We looked out for each other, had each other’s six.”

“You two going to be okay now?”

“Yeah,” Ty said without giving it even a second of thought. “I need to do better by him.”

When they reached the patio of the mansion, they found a lot of activity going on, much more than could be justified by the tail end of dinner or the fact that someone had partially repaired the generators. As they stepped into the circle of light cast by the landscape lighting, Nick came jogging out to them, Kelly on his heels.

“What’s going on?” Zane asked.

Nick grimaced, trying to catch his breath. “Richard Burns is dead.”

Chapter 13

They tried to keep Ty out of the room, but he bulled his way past all three of them, so they just followed him in, hanging back. Earl was there, refusing to leave. Richard Burns was sprawled on the floor. There was no blood, no obvious injuries or signs of violence on his body. The room, however, hadn’t come through unscathed. Tables were overturned, pictures and lamps had been knocked to the floor, even a small chaise lounge had been tumbled over and crashed into a wall.

The stone walls were so thick throughout the mansion that no one had heard what seemed to have been a pretty epic battle.

The electricity was working again in parts of the mansion, including this room. Ty didn’t know how, and he didn’t ask.

“His neck’s been broke,” Earl told Ty. His voice was gruff. He knelt beside Burns’s body, holding the man’s hand.

“Dad . . .” Ty took a few halting steps and stopped again. His knees went weak, and he would have sunk to the floor if a strong arm hadn’t wrapped around him.

He gripped Zane’s shirt, clinging to him.

“I’m sorry,” Zane whispered.

Earl’s eyes traveled over all four men. “Look around this room,” he said, his voice full of gravel and anger. “Tell me what happened. And then find out who did this.”

Ty nodded, his breath coming harder, his focus narrowing down to nothing but the body on the ground.

Kelly knelt by the body. “May I, sir?” he said to Earl.

Earl refused to let go of Burns’s hand, but he nodded. Kelly began to check the body over. Zane left Ty where he stood, moving to search the room along with Nick. Ty finally tore his attention away from the body of his adopted uncle and began to scour the room too.

Burns had obviously fought against his attacker. He’d fought with all the skill and knowledge he’d acquired in his years. Someone had still managed to take him out, and for that they’d either been very good, caught Burns when his guard was down, or both.

Anger and grief boiled deep in Ty’s gut. He could barely concentrate on the crime scene. Zane and Nick had made a round of the room and returned to the body, hovering over Kelly as they waited for his report. Ty could find nothing but the obvious signs of a struggle in the room. If they had actual crime scene equipment, they might be able to do something with this, but no visual evidence had been left behind. In a fight like this, something should have been left behind.

Ty swallowed hard. “It was a pro.”

Kelly sat back on his heels, sighing and glancing up at Nick and Zane. “He’s been dead for hours. Probably right after he left your interview with him.”

Ty was still moving around the periphery of the room, unable to look back at them. He couldn’t see Richard Burns on the ground like that.

“Could it have been Kline?” Nick asked.

Kelly shrugged. “She certainly had the capability.”

“We know there’s at least one more out there, a guy. The man we saw on the beach,” Zane reminded them.

“Could that have been Fraser?” Kelly asked.

“He said it wasn’t and . . . I believe him,” Nick said.

“Did you ever tell the truth when it was us?” Ty asked him.

Nick gave him a negligent shrug. “A man like Fraser hasn’t exactly been trained for what I put him through.”

“I’m not a medical examiner,” Kelly announced, trying to cut the tension, “but I’m pretty sure his neck was snapped.”

He pointed to Burns’s chin, refraining from lifting it off the floor. They had to get down on the ground to see what he was talking about. Ty moved closer, looking almost sideways in an attempt to see but not see. There were bruises where Kelly was indicating, like someone had taken his chin and jerked it.

“The positioning’s all wrong,” Nick murmured. He was on his hands and knees beside Kelly, tilting his head to see.

Kelly nodded. “Either it wasn’t someone with training, or Burns fought like hell and f**ked up their hold.”