“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.