Cross & Crown Read Free Page B

tiny step backwhen Nick faced him, like he was intimidated. Nick tried to give him a reassuring smile, but he knew himself well enough to know that when he smiled, it rarely reassured anyone. “I’ll figure this out, man. I promise.”

    JD sat with his hands on the table, folded over each other. He played with his fingers as he took in his surroundings. Nick got the feeling that he was used to having something on or in his hands to mess with. A ring, maybe. There was no mark, though, no calluses to give evidence of anything being worn there recently.
    JD’s eyes strayed to the memorabilia along the brick walls of the pub as he continued to fidget. Nick tried not to watch him too closely. He knew the scrutiny would make him nervous, and JD already had enough nervous energy to power a small appliance.
    Nick supposed he couldn’t blame the guy, though. He looked away, trying to find something else to focus on for a while.
    His eyes followed a waitress as she walked by, and his gaze landed right back on JD once she was gone. He had stopped moving, and his narrowed eyes were raking over the wall next to him. The lines around his mouth had relaxed.
    Nick straightened. JD had the look of a man who might have recognized something. Nick glanced up at the reproduction plaque on the wall. He had sat under it many times, gazing at it idly as he waited for his food, reading the words when his dinner mate went to the bathroom, staring at it listlessly as he ordered for that last drink that would send him into taxi territory.
    It was a common fake wood plaque, roughly two feet tall and one wide, featuring a frieze of a nameless baseball player in pinstripes—something many people had defaced over the years because those pinstripes looked far too much like Yankee pinstripes and this was Boston, baby. It was also covered in Red Sox stickers and graffiti.
    Nick looked up at it dubiously, then back at JD. “Are you remembering something?”
    JD was still scowling. He shook his head minutely, still examining the plaque. “I just… looking at that gives me a feeling I think is familiar.”
    “Have you seen it before?”
    “I don’t know. I think… I think maybe I hate the Yankees,” JD answered with a shrug.
    Nick snorted and couldn’t help but smile as he took a drink.
    “I guess that’s nothing spectacular, huh?”
    “Well. It’s not going to help narrow you down from the crowd any.”
    The amusement faded from JD’s eyes and he returned his attention to his hands, twisting his fingers together and shifting uneasily in the chair. Nick watched him in sympathy. He couldn’t begin to imagine what was going through his mind.
    “Are you okay?”
    JD was already shaking his head. He turned his head toward the bar as he leaned back in his seat. “I remember that Greg Maddux is the greatest pitcher ever to play the game and that Stan Musial had 3,630 hits in his career. I remember that Darth Vader is a bad guy and that vampires are suddenly good guys who sparkle. I remember that I like spinach and artichoke dip, but not when it comes with tortillas. I knowthat tequila will make me sick and just the thought of a worm at the bottom of a bottle will make me want to hurl. I know that the tattoo on your forearm means you were a Recon Marine and that makes you a Grade A badass, even if you kind of try to hide it. Probably because you like to go under the radar so you can have the advantage in a fight. But I don’t know my own name. I don’t know where I come from, how old I am.”
    He lowered his head. His eyes were misting over, whether from frustration, sorrow, or merely exhaustion was anyone’s guess. Nick was shocked by how observant the man was even in the midst of this ordeal, though, and the realization made him uneasy. Only one person had ever called him out for trying to appear less dangerous than he was, and Ty Grady was the most observant man Nick knew.
    Then there was the tattoo. Nick had a lot of tattoos, including the