Ball & Chain(108)

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 fucked up their hold.”

“Or the person was injured,” Zane pointed out.

“Burns was a large man,” Nick added. “Avery Kline would’ve had a time of this too, no matter how skilled she was. Trying to snap someone’s neck when they’re a foot taller than you isn’t exactly easy.”

“That would explain why she panicked and made that move on Stanton,” Zane whispered.

Earl was glaring at both men. “I ain’t hearing any answers from you two, just a bunch of maybes.”

Nick and Zane both glanced at him guiltily before going back to their examination. Earl got to his feet and paced a few steps, his eyes meeting Ty’s. He stopped in front of him, then put his arm around Ty’s shoulders, releasing him quickly when Ty winced away, holding his dislocated shoulder. Earl took his good arm again, and Ty was forced to look at the body of Richard Burns.

Earl pointed at him. “Look at that man, son.”

Ty stared at his father for a few moments, then turned his eyes to the floor.

“I met him on a helicopter going into the jungle, Ty. You know what that is?” Earl grabbed Ty’s shirt front, pulling him closer to whisper in his ear. “That’s Nick on the ground, Beaumont. You go fucking find who did this, and you kill him.”

Ty stared at the men kneeling. At the body on the floor. His stomach turned at the thought of any of these men in Burns’s place, lying dead on the floor, murdered. He remembered the anguish of standing at Elias Sanchez’s funeral, of carrying that casket. He remembered the desperate need for revenge.

“Yes, sir.”

Earl stormed out of the room. He had to go somewhere and grieve, somewhere to be away from the body of his oldest and dearest friend. And to deal with guilt, because he’d spent the past several hours enraged over the things he’d learned about Burns.

The Grady family would never be the same after this loss.

Zane clambered to his feet and came to Ty, taking him by his good arm. “Come on,” he said into Ty’s ear.