Ball & Chain (Cut & Run 8)

Zane laughed before he could stop himself. He put his hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

Nick smiled. He ran his fingers over his forehead. “It gets worse if I’m tired. Like the muscles can’t work hard enough to keep me steady.”

“What do they think is causing it?” Zane asked.

“The original diagnosis was something called essential tremor. Basically, just bad luck genetics. Then the prevailing theory with the military docs was PTSD. That’s pretty much what they call everything they can’t pinpoint, though. All I know for sure is it’s not MS or Parkinson’s Disease. They checked for those. Twice.”

Zane’s body flushed with ice for the briefest of moments. “Jesus.”

“If it’s PTSD, who knows what’ll happen. It might get better, I don’t know. But if it’s the essential tremor thing, it won’t go away. And even though the medicine controls it, it’ll probably get worse as I get older.”

“That’s why you didn’t go back to Boston PD, isn’t it?” Zane asked softly.

Nick winced and shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? If I miss those pills a few days in a row, I can barely hit a target. When it started the first time, my hand completely locked up, my captain thought I was having a seizure and they called an ambulance.”

“When was that?”

Nick licked his lips, stalling. Then he sighed and looked away. “Right before New Orleans. That’s why I had the time to go. They would have taken me back when I got home, they wanted to. And with the meds, I would have been okay. Maybe. But hell, if it is a side effect of PTSD, I’m just a huge f**king trembling liability. I couldn’t ask a partner to depend on me knowing that.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“I’m a sniper with a tremor, Garrett. It’s like a bad joke.”

He laughed, and it made Zane chuckle along with him even though there wasn’t a damn thing funny about it. Nick held up his hand, frowning at it like it had betrayed him.

“O’Flaherty,” Zane whispered, but he was unable to follow up with any words of comfort. He cleared his throat, feeling stupid for thinking what he had. “I’m sorry I thought you—”

“Don’t worry about it. I probably would have thought the same thing.”

“Okay, so if it’s PTSD, what do you think started it?”

Nick shrugged, not meeting Zane’s eyes.

“It was the thing with Cross and the CIA, wasn’t it?” Zane asked. “We led them right to you. They came at you on your boat.”

“Sure they did, Garrett, but people have been trying to kill me every day since I was eighteen. Hell, even before that if you want to count being tossed down the stairs, so who the f**k knows. Got real bad a few months ago, though; they almost sent me home. I had to convince them to keep me deployed until the others were let go, too.”

Zane waited a few beats. “You haven’t told anyone?”

“Kelly knows. He has for a while.”

“But not Ty?”

Nick laughed bitterly. “Yeah, there’s a couple things Ty doesn’t know. I’ve been waiting for a good time to talk to him. You know how Ty is.”

Zane nodded sadly. Ty would freak the f**k out at the first hint of Nick being sick. “Yeah.”

“I mean . . . how do you tell your best friend that you’re sick and no one knows why?”

Zane shook his head, at a loss. An awkward silence began to creep in as they stood in the hallway staring at each other. Zane thought maybe Nick was holding his breath, and he suddenly realized why. “If he asks me directly if I know anything, I’ll tell him to talk to you. Otherwise, it’s none of my business to tell him, right? You’ll do it when you’re ready.”

“Thanks, Garrett.”

Zane nodded and made to step away, but Nick reached for his arm and stopped him.

“And . . . thank you for being concerned and ready to help. I know it’s not easy to come up to someone like that. That’s solid.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t have to give you my rehab speech.”

Nick barked a laugh. He put his arm around Zane’s shoulder, patting his back and steering him toward the great hall. He let him go before they reached the door, and they rejoined Ty and Kelly just before Stanton addressed the crowd.

They set Nick up in the game room. A billiard table and a long shuffleboard table sat along one wall, and a disconcerting stag head glared from over the fireplace. Nick pulled a stool behind the wet bar and laid out a notepad, several pens, and his iPad, feeling vastly unprepared for the task ahead of him.

After Stanton’s announcement, people had been edgy and nervous, but no one had outright objected to the questioning. Nick was expecting some hostility, though, and it was going to be awkward as hell when he started interviewing people he knew. He also felt naked without his badge.

Susan Stanton was nearly inconsolable during her interview. “Ernest was a good man, he didn’t deserve to die like that. Oh my God.” She put her fingers to her lips and closed her eyes. “Poor, poor man. He wasn’t even supposed to be here! He and Theodore had some last-minute things to work on so he came on the plane with us.”

Theodore Stanton was less flustered when Nick interviewed him. “We were working on a project, yes. He insisted he come along so it could be finished. He was like a bulldog when it came to the government work.”

Livi Stanton cried through her entire interview. “If it hadn’t been for Mr. Milton, Deacon and I would never have met, did you know that? He went to Deacon for his stress problems, and he noticed Deacon’s limp. He gave him my card and told him to try it.” She broke down into tears again, and Nick was forced to call Deuce to come get her. He didn’t comfort crying women unless they were gutshot.

“Yeah, you know I’d forgotten that,” Deuce admitted. “He did give me her card. Jesus, now I feel kind of bad. I mean I felt bad anyway, you know, but now I feel worse. I mean I feel bad that he died at my wedding, not because I killed him or anything. Why are you looking at me like that? Why are you writing that down? Oh my God, Deacon, stop talking.”

Mara Grady babbled through her entire interview just like her youngest son. “What was he doing out on that beach at night? That’s so dangerous, you know he wasn’t down there for anything good. Nicholas, dear, you look tired. You need some coffee.”