Ball & Chain(89)

It made Ty physically ill. His hand holding the flashlight began to tremble.

“He’s okay, Ty,” Zane said.

“We can’t know that.”

“Got something!” Kelly called out in the darkness. He and Emma were waving their flashlights, and Ty and Zane hurried through the inky night to find them. When they reached the spot, they could see deep prints in the muddy grass. The strides were long and the footprints were obscured by motion and mud.

“Someone was running,” Ty said. He played his light over the path, peering back at the house. The tracks didn’t come from the patio, but rather the corner of the wall. The same corner where Zane had seen the carved angel with its ball and chain. That proved their theory correct, but it didn’t make Ty feel any better.

They followed the tracks for several yards, realizing there had been no attempt at covering them.

“If this was Nick, it’s sloppy as hell,” Kelly finally said. “It can’t be him.”

Ty didn’t comment. Normally he would have agreed with Kelly; he’d never seen Nick leave a trail this obvious. But if Nick really had suffered a full-blown flashback or panic attack, who knew what state of mind he was in? The children all knew and trusted him. They would have followed him if they believed he was protecting them.

“Got blood here,” Ty called. They were losing evidence to the rain quickly, and almost as soon as he’d spotted it, the blood had been washed away. The ball in Ty’s stomach grew heavier when he realized the tracks were leading them directly to the cliff’s edge. He picked up the pace, no longer trying to read the story the tracks were telling them. Kelly stopped and picked up something that glinted in the light of his flashlight.

“Oh God,” he whispered. He held up a gold claddagh ring that Nick rarely took off. “This is his.”

Ty broke into a jog, following the obvious path in the grass until they took a sharp left. Ty momentarily lost the trail, then picked it up again. The cliff’s edge opened up at his side like the gaping maw of some primeval monster, angry waves crashing far below. Nick had run along the edge of the cliff.

“Was he going for the cliff?” Zane asked, sounding just as confused as Ty was.

“It’s possible, I don’t know.”

“Could he have survived that fall?” Emma asked, sounding stunned and horrified.

“The fall, yes, if he cleared the rocks,” Kelly answered. “The water, no. Not for long.”

“Could he have cleared the rocks?” Zane asked.

Ty gave a helpless shrug. “I . . . I don’t know. I know I couldn’t.”

“Why . . . why would he do this?” Emma asked.

Ty had no answer. He backtracked, trying to find some clue in the trail. He finally saw one in a patch of mud, and he bent to look closer. “There was someone else out here.”

Zane came to look over his shoulder, offering the light of his flashlight as well. Ty showed them Nick’s track, light and barely there in the grass. There was another, heavier print in the mud. It overlapped Nick’s footprint, meaning whoever had made it had come after.

“Someone was chasing him,” Emma surmised. “There was someone else up there with them.”

“It’s just one pair, though,” Ty told them. “Nick was running from one guy? That doesn’t seem right.”

“I don’t care if it’s the fucking hounds of the Baskervilles!” Kelly shouted. “Nick would have stood and fought! Nothing scares Nick enough to make him run, to try to jump off a fucking cliff! Nothing!”

Ty reached out to take Kelly’s arm, but the man shoved him away and pointed a finger in his face. “He came here for you, Ty! He came here because you’re his brother, and he’d do anything for you!”

“I know, Doc,” Ty managed to say, his voice breaking.

“You know damn well he wouldn’t have left those kids unprotected, I don’t care what kind of flashback he was having! And he wouldn’t have run! He wouldn’t have run away! He would have stood and he would have fought! You know he would have fought!”

Ty held up both hands, wanting to comfort Kelly but too confused and heartbroken to try. He didn’t understand what the tracks were telling him. Everything he knew about Nick screamed the evidence was lying, because damn right Nick would have fought. Ty had seen him stand his ground in situations where even Ty wanted to duck and cover. Nick would have fought to his very last breath no matter what he was facing.

“Maybe he would run,” Zane said after a few moments of silence.

Kelly turned on him, eyes blazing in the light of the flashlights. Thunder crashed right over them, and the skies opened up again. Zane held up a hand to avoid Kelly’s angry words.