“Hey,” he murmured. “Is it legal and shit to take your witness with us? Maybe new surroundings will get him remembering faster.”
Nick chewed on his bottom lip, frowning, his eyes lingering on the break room door. He took a deep breath and then sighed before heading over there.
Hagan was fighting with his coat when he joined Kelly.
“He bringing the stray to lunch?”
“Did you expect anything less from him?” Kelly asked fondly.
Hagan grunted. “You should see the last stray he convinced me to keep around. Teeny tiny little puppy he found in a storm drain, half-dead and starving in the middle of the night. All the local shelters were closed up so we had to take it in for the night. Bastard told me he couldn’t have it on his boat ’cause it’d fall off and drown. Fucking thing was too weak to walk and he convinced me it’d take a header off the side of a boat!”
Kelly couldn’t stop his grin.
Hagan appeared almost sheepish. “I still got that damn mutt. Weighs a hundred pounds. Best friend I ever had.”
Kelly laughed. “Well he can’t keep this stray either. You have room for an amnesiac with great bone structure?”
“Not if he pisses on the carpet like the last one,” Hagan grumbled as he headed for the elevators.
They sat at a booth in a local pub near the precinct house that obviously catered to cops. In fact, after staring around at the pictures on the walls long enough, Kelly found Nick up there. He gazed up at the photo, smirking. Most of the photos were official, full uniform and regalia, with stone-faced men and women staring at the camera like they could cause it to burst into flame. It reminded Kelly of the military photos they’d taken.
Nick didn’t exactly smile in photos, but he didn’t keep a straight face either. The look he usually gave was more of a challenge, with a half smirk that basically said “come at me, bro” and a glint that said Nick would enjoy the fight.
He’d made the same expression in his police portrait that sat high on one of the walls, and Kelly couldn’t take his eyes off that face.
“So,” JD finally said, clearing his throat and glancing around uncomfortably. “Is this like a last meal or something?”
“You’re awful fatalistic for a dude who lived through being shot in the head,” Hagan observed.
“Maybe if I remembered it, I’d be more likely to look on the bright side,” JD grumbled.
“Innocent until proven guilty, babe.” Nick’s voice was low and sent a shiver up Kelly’s spine. “Look, we haven’t had any hits, but we have eliminated some things, and frankly, that’s as good as we could hope for.”
“Right.” Hagan pointed his fork at Nick. “We put you through all the systems and got nothing.”
“That . . . sounds awesome,” JD said, voice flat and sarcastic.
“What that means is you don’t have a record,” Nick offered.
“Meaning I’m a smart felon and I’ve never been caught.
You’re right, that is good news.”
Kelly coughed to cover a laugh.
Nick pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes. “It also means you’re not military, and you’ve never worked government or municipal. You’re not part of any education systems, and so on. Rules out everything you would have been printed for.”
JD nodded and looked down at his hands, turning them over to run a finger across his tips. His nails were still stained from the ink they’d printed him with.
Nick was watching him too, frowning harder the longer he looked at him. He reached to the cuff of his shirt, unbuttoning and rol ing it up. He showed JD the inside of his arm and tapped the tattoo with his finger. “You know what this is?”
JD nodded. “I told you yesterday, I recognized it. It’s the Recon Jack.”
Nick glanced at Kelly, one eyebrow raised. Kelly couldn’t school his features fast enough to hide the surprise. Nick looked around the pub. It was early for lunch, so there weren’t many people there. He began to unbutton his shirt.
“Dude,” Hagan said through a mouthful of food. “That’s your other job. Got to stop confusing them. Tired of suspects stuffing your pants with dol ar bills during interrogation.”
Nick shoved his sleeve aside, then pulled up the sleeve of his undershirt to reveal a well-defined biceps and shoulder.
Kelly leaned away from him to get a better view. Nick glanced sideways at him, giving him a dirty look.
“Yeah, I’m perving on you. What then?” Kelly asked.
They all laughed at him, and Hagan whistled and pointed his fork at the bite mark Nick had exposed on his neck.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Do you even call it sex, or is it more like sparring with you two?”
Nick rolled his eyes. He tapped the oversized tattoo on his shoulder. It covered his entire shoulder, running from the center of his col arbone to his biceps and covering both the front and back sides of his arm. It was a work of art, pure and simple, following the defined lines of Nick’s muscles. “You know what this is?”
“Eagle, globe, and anchor,” JD answered immediately.
“Marines.”
Hagan’s eyebrows had shot higher, but he remained silent.
Nick began to button up his shirt again, and he jerked his chin toward Kelly. “Show him yours.”
Kelly nodded. The one on his arm was partially visible under the sleeve of his T-shirt, so he just pulled the sleeve up and turned so JD could get a good look. It was a simple anchor, but with snakes encircling it and wings at the top to form a caduceus. The word NAVY was written on a scroll at the bottom.
JD studied it for a moment, then glanced between Nick and Kelly. “Well, it’s a Navy tattoo, that much is obvious. I don’t recognize it, but I know it means you were a corpsman.
Probably a SARC, since you two served together and he’s a Marine.”
“Goddamn, he knows more about this shit than I do,” Hagan said.
Kelly glanced between them. He wasn’t sure what this meant since he didn’t have the whole picture, but Nick looked troubled. Kelly didn’t blame him. This guy hadn’t printed as military, but he knew what Nick’s Recon Jack was, and that was a pretty specialized symbol. People might recognize it as being military, but they didn’t know what it meant, not really.
JD did. People who knew military but weren’t military were usually mercs.
“What?” JD asked, beginning to fidget again. “Is this bad? I see the look on your faces; this is bad.”