Nick nodded curtly.
“Why didn’t you go in with them?”
Nick leaned back in his chair, rubbing his hands over his face. “It felt wrong. Everything he told us, it just felt . . . it’s hard to explain. It felt like maybe he wasn’t the good guy.”
Nick glanced at Zane quickly, probably to judge his reaction. Zane tried hard to keep his face neutral.
“I tried to tell Ty and Eli why I didn’t like it, why I hadn’t agreed to do it. But I couldn’t explain the feeling, and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could point to to back me up. Ty had already made up his mind, and you know how he is when he thinks he’s right.”
Zane smiled. “Yeah, I do.”
“And Jesus Christ, you add in making his dad proud and he’s a brick wall. I gave up on Ty, but I begged Eli to come to Boston with me instead of signing up for Burns.” He trailed off, eyes on the desktop. His eyes were no longer focused on anything but the past.
Zane couldn’t help but stare at him. “What happened?”
Nick shook himself and met Zane’s eyes again. “Eli stuck with Ty. He said he’d rather go out with his boots on than be a civilian. And Ty told me I was a coward for refusing the offer and going back home to Boston.”
“Really?” Zane asked, dumbfounded by that disclosure. He’d always imagined Ty and Nick so tight they had to be untied to take a piss. To discover they’d ever shared a harsh word was a revelation. And to hear that Ty had gone so far as to call Nick a coward, well . . . it gave Zane serious pause, especially after what he’d just witnessed. That Nick had been harboring the same feelings of betrayal Zane had felt . . . how the hell had he done it without letting it tear him apart?
Nick was nodding. “I didn’t hear from him for a solid year. And I didn’t try contacting him either. After ten years of going with gut feelings, it hurt like hell that neither of them would just trust me.”
“How’d you two get right again?” Zane asked.
Nick was silent, staring at the desk, and Zane realized he already knew the answer. Ty and Nick never had gotten right again. Not really. And then New Orleans had happened, with all those secrets and lies spilling over.
“I’m sorry,” Zane whispered.
“You remember on my boat, when you asked why I kissed Ty when I did?” Nick asked.
Zane nodded, not keen to relive those memories and emotions. “You said you knew you’d already lost him. I thought you meant . . . to me. That wasn’t what you meant, though, was it?”
Nick was nodding, not seeming to realize that he was doing it. The issues between the two men went deeper than even Ty or Nick knew. They’d both simply been playing the parts they were familiar with, loyal to the very painful core, without questioning why it felt different.
Something about it made Zane inexplicably sad. Ty and Nick had the most pure friendship Zane had ever witnessed; to see that it had crumbling foundations hurt his heart.
“Burns took a handful of the best Marines in the Corps and turned them into six pieces of nothing. And all the bullshit his little side jobs put them both through? Eli being shot down like a fucking dog in some hotel room.” Nick met Zane’s eyes. “So yeah, I’m having a hard time controlling the urge to punch Richard Burns in the face. Or Ty, for that matter.”
Zane snorted. “Understandable.” He waited a beat, glancing at Nick again. “I’ll hold him down for you if you decide to go for it.”
Nick barked a laugh and smiled wryly. He jutted his chin out toward the laptop, scratching idly at his arm. “Okay, so what are we looking for here?”
Zane turned his attention back to the computer. “We’re . . . we still need a place to start. We’ll go through the other emails, see if we can make a timeline, see if there are any keywords or numbers that repeat. Did you come up with anything like that in your interviews?”
“Keywords or special numbers?” Nick asked.
Zane nodded.
“Not really. Only number I got out of it was the time on the watch. Goddamn, why am I itchy again?” Nick rolled his sleeve up and frowned at his arm. He’d scratched it almost to the point of bleeding. He glanced over his shoulder at the wall where he and Kelly had emerged. “It’s got to be something in those walls, man.”
“Kelly’s not itchy. I wonder why you are.”
“Curse of the red hair, I guess,” Nick said wryly. He stopped scratching, staring at the desk and his notepad for a second before looking up at Zane with wide eyes. “I’m not the only one on the island who’s been itching.”
Ty and Kelly made their way to the dining room, where a sort of buffet lunch had been set up. With the cook dead, the head of the house still sedated, and the staff all frightened and grieving, everyone else was just doing whatever could be done to make life easier. The buffet was being cleared up already, though. Ty checked his watch.