Ball & Chain (Cut & Run 8)

Kelly set his stick down and glared at him.

Nick raised both eyebrows in a silent challenge. “You’re not getting my gun.”

“Quit being a dick,” Kelly grunted. He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to go get some Advil for the dick.”

Nick grumbled to himself as Kelly walked away.

“You two had a fun night,” Ty said.

“Shut up, Tyler.”

Zane was flipping through the pictures Nick had taken as the rest of them spoke. Ty leaned forward to look over his shoulder. When they reached the photo of the broken wristwatch Nick had fixated on, Zane zoomed in on it, cocking his head. There wasn’t anything special about it, but it did look familiar somehow.

Ty patted his shoulder. “I had one like that.”

Zane raised his head. “You did,” he said as the realization hit him. “The one we smashed in Gettysburg. It had a tracker in it.”

“You wore a tracker in your watch?” Emma asked, sounding bemused.

“Dick gave it to me.”

“Burns?” Nick asked, his voice going hard. “Asshole.”

Zane nodded. Why would someone first smash the watch, then come back and take it? Was it possible that Ernest Milton had been one of Burns’s misfit ops men? “We need to talk to Burns,” he said.

“What? Why?” Ty asked.

Nick leaned forward. “You think Milton was his?”

Zane nodded.

“It’s a common watch,” Ty argued.

Zane clambered to his feet. “Common or not, I’m going to ask Burns about it.”

Ty frowned at him.

Zane sighed heavily. “You don’t have to come. But I’m going.”

“I’ll come,” Nick said eagerly, and stood. He handed Amelia off to Emma, looking relieved to have her out of his arms. He didn’t even try to take his sunglasses off her, and he placed her lamb gently on her belly.

“What, you two are going to track him down and beat the truth out of him?” Ty asked.

“Sounds fun,” Nick said as he looked away.

Zane raised an eyebrow at him, then met Ty’s eyes. “Why don’t you find Doc and you two go search Milton’s and Nikki’s rooms. O’Flaherty and I will politely question Burns.”

Nick lifted his glass. “Always at the center of it, isn’t he?”

“Burns has nothing to do with this,” Ty snapped.

Nick just raised his eyebrows.

Ty looked between them, then stood reluctantly. “Promise you’ll be civil.”

Zane nodded, but Nick didn’t answer. He narrowed his eyes at Ty instead, then shook his head and turned away to go off in search of Burns.

Ty pointed at him. “Keep him under control,” he hissed. “Don’t let him get his hands around Dick’s neck.”

“Are we talking figuratively or literally?”

“Both,” Ty spat. He glanced over Zane’s shoulder again. “Nick blames Burns for Sanchez’s death.”

“Oh God,” Zane groaned, and he turned to jog after Nick.

Ty caught Kelly coming back down the steps with his canvas medical bag over his shoulder. Ty held up his hand. “He bolted, no drugs for him.”

“What? That bastard.” Kelly stopped on the staircase. “Where’d he go?”

“He and Zane went to question Burns about the dead guy’s watch. It was the same as the one I used to wear, so they think Milton was one of Burns’s operators.”

Kelly just blinked rapidly.

Ty didn’t bother trying to explain further. He climbed the steps toward him. “Anyway, we’re supposed to go search over Milton’s and Nikki’s rooms, see what we can find.”

“This is the worst vacation ever,” Kelly said as he turned and followed Ty up the steps.

“Yeah, we don’t use that word.”

They hit the landing and made the turn down their hall. Milton’s room was in the same wing as theirs were, but closer to the stairs. Kelly leaned against the wall as Ty fished the key he’d gotten from Stanton out of his pocket. “What are we looking for when we get in there?”

Ty shrugged. “Motive. Anything worth killing over.”

“You realize I’m not a cop, right?”

Ty glanced at him and smiled. “No, but you’re f**king one.”

Kelly’s cheeks reddened and he bit his lip to hide a massive grin. He failed miserably. “Thanks for being cool with it, bud. Nick stressed a lot about telling you and the guys.”

“Seems Nick’s stressed about a lot of things,” Ty said with another sideways glance at Kelly. “Is he okay?”

“You’ll have to ask him about that.”

The nonanswer hit Ty harder than he’d expected. He lowered his head and jammed the ancient key into the door, wriggling it to get it to catch.

Kelly cleared his throat. “He’s still terrified to tell the others. He’s watching your reaction closer than you might think he is. I think he was afraid everyone would assume he’d taken advantage of me being hurt and drugged.”

“Did he?” Ty asked neutrally.

“No. In fact I pretty much had to beg him to—”

“Stop. The deal is I don’t freak out, and you don’t share sex stories.”

Kelly snickered. “Okay.”

They stepped into the room and Ty flicked on the lights. He’d been half-expecting to find the room turned upside down, trashed and searched. But everything seemed to be in its place.

“Huh,” Kelly offered as he took a few steps inside and surveyed the room. “They cut his guts open but didn’t try his room?”

“That, or they searched it neat.”

This room was a little more Spartan than theirs, with a double bed and a small vanity. It had no balcony. It didn’t even have windows. The bed hadn’t been slept it. Nothing seemed out of place.

Kelly pointed toward the small desk against the far wall. “Laptop.”

“See if you can get it up and running,” Ty said. He headed for the bedside table and went through the small drawers, checked under the pillows and the mattress, got down and peered under the bed. He checked under all the tables and tried the bottoms of each drawer for anything taped there. He kicked aside the rugs and lifted them up to search under them. Then he went to the wardrobe that held Milton’s luggage. He dragged everything out and put it on the bed.

“Jesus, he’s got some heavy shit in here,” Ty said as he hefted the third suitcase out of the wardrobe.