He’d been going over every little detail he’d managed to glean in the past two days, trying to piece them together, trying to make sense of them. It seemed like the more he tried to force his brain to work, the less he managed to come up with, and the more frustrated he got.
His cell phone began to sing, a raucous fiddle tune that belonged to only one person in his contacts. Definitely the only one who would call him this late at night. Nick glanced at the phone, Ty Grady’s picture on the display. He let it go to voice mail, though the song grated on his mind because he’d always reached to answer that call before. He still hadn’t forgiven Ty for the last two debacles they’d gotten themselves into, for the lies his friend had told him, and frankly he didn’t really feel like talking to the man much lately. He almost immediately felt guilty for not answering, though, and he picked up the phone to check the message.
It was curt and to the point, just like Ty. “Hey, Irish.
Haven’t heard from you in a while. I’m starting to get worried, so give me a cal .”
Nick shook his head and hit the button to call back. He kept in touch with his Recon boys, usually sending at least a text or something every few days. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been compelled to send Ty anything. The feeling of having lost something precious made his chest ache, but it was tempered with so much anger he tried not to touch it at al .
“You better be shacked up with something spectacular,” Ty said in greeting.
Nick huffed before he could stop himself. He put the phone on speaker and set it on the table. “I am, actually. Doc is in town.”
“Oh. I take the spectacular comment back, then. Gross,” Ty nearly whined. “What have y’all been up to? Zane said you called him today.”
“I did, needed some info.”
“I know things too, Irish. You couldn’t call me? Say a fucking hello or something?”
“I’m sorry, Ty, I’m working a case. It’s a little off. Haven’t had much time for small talk.”
Ty cleared his throat, wordlessly acknowledging the dig.
Nick had always had time for Ty before. “Fair enough. What kind of off?”
“Nothing like the crap you get up to, but weird enough for me.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“It’s late, Ty.”
“I got time.”
Nick stared at the phone, wishing with all his heart that talking to his oldest and dearest friend didn’t feel so hard. He took a deep breath and nodded. He told Ty about JD, about finding him at the scene and his memory loss. He told him about trying to decipher the bits and pieces of information he’d gathered and make sense of whether JD was friend or foe. He didn’t mention Julian at al . Julian had asked him to keep it quiet, and Nick was nothing if not good on his word.
Finally, he told him about the suspicions that the basis of the case came down to missing treasure. Ty perked up at that.
“Treasure sounds fun,” he said, tone hopeful. Since Ty had resigned from his job at the Bureau, he was going a little stir-crazy. He’d probably love it if Nick asked him to come to Boston to hunt for missing treasure.
Nick stared at the phone, trying to find the urge to invite him, trying to find the genuine desire to want Ty here to help them. “Yeah,” he finally said, voice a little choked. “You’d think, but it’s not. Not when my only witness is a fucking John Doe.”
Ty was silent, mul ing it over. “You should get a shrink in to question him,” he finally suggested, his voice losing a little of its buoyancy. “Try to trip him up if he’s faking.”
“Yeah, he’s got an appointment with one in the morning.
Guy I’ve been going to, I trust his judgment.”
“You been seeing a shrink?” Ty asked.
“My hands don’t shake as much anymore. Worth the hour a week,” Nick said, voice going colder.
Ty was silent for a long, tense moment. “That’s good,” he finally said in a rush, sounding like he was trying to catch up to the conversation. “That’s good, it’s good. So your amnesia guy, what’s your take on him?”
“I don’t think he’s faking. I mean, could you pull that off 24/7 and never once slip?”
“Never tried,” Ty said in all seriousness. “And you have nothing on him? Is he at least local? Does he have an accent?”
“Yeah, about that. I never heard this accent before.”
“Really.”
“It’s like . . . Southern with a curlicue.”
“What?” Ty was laughing, but Nick didn’t find his frustration all that amusing.
“I’m serious. It’s like yours, but not. Like he came over from England and put the two accents together. I . . .”
“Can you mimic him?”
“No! I’ve tried, and my tongue does not make that sound with an R.”
“Your tongue can’t make any kind of an R!”
“Whatever, hillbilly.”
“Well, if you want, send me a recording tomorrow or let me talk to him. Maybe I can pump my FBI contact for info.”
“Jesus, Ty, we’ve talked about Garrett and the sex jokes.”
Ty snickered. “I’m serious. If I don’t recognize it, maybe Zane can get it to the linguistics people at the Bureau. They owe me a few favors.”
“Can you listen to him now?”
“What, like right now? You have a recording of him sitting around?”
“No, but I have him.”
Ty was silent for a few breaths. When he spoke again, all teasing was put aside. “You have your suspect on your boat with you?”
“He might be a suspect, there’s a difference.”
“Might and suspect are synonymous, Irish! They mean the same thing!”
“Ty—”
“The ‘might’ is implied in the ‘suspect’!”
“He’s also a witness and could possibly be a victim himself,” Nick said calmly, trying to head off what he recognized would be a pretty impressive Grady rant. “We don’t know. Someone took a shot at him today. Right outside a cop bar, Ty. We had to move him from his safe house, and my boat is the safest place in the fucking city. He’s either a witness in need of protecting, or he’s a doer in need of—”
“Being in jail.”
“Shut up. We’re trying to get his memory back, and he needs the right environment for it. Not to be sitting in some cell, alone, thinking he’s a bad guy. He just needs to remember.”
“Okay, so when he remembers that he kills people—”
“Ty, I had this conversation with my superiors today; shut up and be helpful.”
“Fine. Go get him, I’ll talk to him.”
“Be right back.” Nick got up and turned to head for the stairs. He stopped short and his hand immediately went to the gun in the holster on his hip when he found JD standing in the stairwell, his eyes just showing over the railing. Nick had been so caught up with his conversation, he’d allowed JD to get the drop on him. Goddamn.
“I . . . I couldn’t sleep and I was feeling claustrophobic,” JD explained as quickly as he could. “Hagan told me earlier he’d be keeping watch upstairs, that it’d be okay for me to . . .
I heard you talking so I came to see who was with you, but I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to intrude.” He seemed to be trying not to look at the gun Nick was still gripping, but his eyes strayed to Nick’s hip anyway.
Nick breathed out a long, slow breath and nodded, letting his hand leave his weapon. “It’s okay. Next time give me a little more noise, huh? Come here.”
JD took the last few steps, looking worried. Nick knew the man must have heard the last part of his and Ty’s conversation, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t already been told or even said himself.
“This is my buddy Ty; Kelly and I were telling you about him earlier,” Nick said as he pointed at the phone sitting on the table. “He’s good with linguistics, he thinks maybe he can help us with your accent.”
“What accent?” JD asked with a frown.
Nick laughed and put a hand on his shoulder, knowing the contact would calm him.
“JD, is it?” Ty’s voice was small on the speaker, and they both sat and bent their heads toward it.
Ty asked JD to repeat a few sentences for him, ending with “The Boston Red Sox suck pavement, and the designated hitter was a sham.”
JD was laughing as he said it, and he looked at Nick apologetically when he finished.
“Okay,” Ty said, sounding pleased with himself. “I think I got what I needed.”
Nick picked up the phone and switched the speaker off.
He glanced at JD. “I’ve got a few more things to talk over with him.”
JD nodded, getting up to head back down without saying a word.
Nick watched until his head disappeared below, then put the phone to his ear. “So?”
“That’s Tidewater.”
“What?”
“His accent. It’s Tidewater.”
“That’s Virginia, right?”
“Yeah, near the coast. Maybe as far west as Richmond, but not by much.”
“That’s a pretty narrow field to put it down to. Thanks, babe, that’s solid.”
Ty hummed into the phone. “This getting us closer to even?”
“Don’t start with this shit, Ty, not right now,” Nick grunted.
“If not now, then when?”
“I got to go,” Nick said. He pulled the phone away, but Ty’s voice stopped him.
“Hey Nick?”
Nick took a steadying breath and closed his eyes, putting the phone to his ear again. “What?”
“I just . . . be careful, okay?”
Nick nodded, rol ing his eyes. “Got it.”
Nick hung up the phone before Ty could say more. He was tired of dealing with that heartache for tonight. He slid the phone into his pocket and glanced down the stairs with a frown. JD had obviously come up here for something, and Nick wasn’t buying the “I need air” excuse. He looked over the railing into the lower deck of his boat. He knew Julian was in one of the bunks, with Hagan keeping an eye on things from up top until it was Nick’s watch.
He headed down the steps, listening intently, expecting JD to have returned to the VIP cabin to sleep. He came up short when he reached the bottom of the stairs and almost bowled JD over.
“Sorry!” he whispered as he grabbed the man’s arm to steady him. “What are you doing? Are you okay?”
JD nodded. “Yeah, I . . . I was just looking at your pictures.”
Nick glanced at the frames that lined the wal .
“How long were you a Marine?”
“Ten years,” Nick answered. JD was staring at the pictures, his sharp eyes taking them in, studying them. Nick knew every photo on the wal , but he rarely slowed to look at them anymore. Most were of him in uniform, and almost every one had Ty Grady in it. They had been best friends for so long, it was almost impossible to find a shot of Nick without him.
Kelly was in many of them as well, and he and Nick had always gravitated toward each other. Nick often wondered if they’d just been completely blind to the attraction all those years, or if the connection they shared went beyond romance or attraction.
Nick stared at Kelly’s smiling face for a long time before turning his attention back to JD, wondering at his intent interest. “Are you . . . remembering something? You think you were in service somehow? We could run your prints again, expand the search.”
A blush crept over JD’s face. “No. Me? God no. I mean, you saw how I reacted when the gunfire started.”
“Well, ducking and covering is the smart move, so no judgment on my part.”
They both laughed, albeit uncomfortably, and Nick ran a hand over his chin as he scanned the photos again. “Your accent is Tidewater,” he told JD. “Means you spent at least most of your youth in Virginia, near the coast. That area is naval base central. These pictures might be attracting you because you were a Navy brat.”
JD shook his head. He hesitated for a moment, then glanced at Nick and gave him an embarrassed smile. “I was just looking at you.”
Nick’s eyebrows jumped, and he grinned crookedly.
“Well, we were all young and handsome at some point.”
When Nick glanced at the array of pictures, he could feel JD’s eyes still on him. Nick met his gaze with a growing sense of dread.
“I prefer you now,” JD whispered.
Nick had no idea what to say. He couldn’t turn away from the other man. He was drawn to him, to the mystery, to the distress, to those hypnotic blue eyes. Just like a puppy in a storm drain.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said evenly as he lowered his head. “But that’s a very bad idea.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I—I’m sorry, totally inappropriate,” JD said in a rush. He put his hand over his mouth and took a step toward the VIP cabin, looking away and then back at Nick.
They stood staring at each other for a long moment.
“He’s incredibly lucky, Detective,” JD finally whispered.
“So am I,” Nick said gently.
JD gave him a small smile before he retreated into his cabin. Nick stared at the doorway for a long moment before cursing under his breath and turning away.
Kelly sat in the salon, watching Nick move around the outside of the boat in the darkness. Reports of gale-force winds were coming in, and he probably didn’t want to wake up to a sinking vessel, especially since parts were still riddled with buckshot.