“I’m thinking I’ll take my chances.”
“On what?” Ty asked as he looked over at Zane with a frown.
A smile slowly pulled at Zane’s lips. “Trying that shit on land.”
Ty leaned away from him and turned his head to be able to see him better. He hadn’t expected to hear an “I love you” from Zane. If he had gotten one, he probably wouldn’t have believed it. But he supposed “trying that shit on land”—and the implication behind it that Zane wanted Ty to himself—was about as close as he’d get. The realization made him smile slowly.
“You’re so easy,” he told Zane in satisfaction as he looked at the plain white wall again.
“Only for you, doll,” Zane drawled in his Corbin voice.
Ty sighed and ran a hand through his blond hair. “Don’t ever call me that again,” he warned in a tired voice. “Asshole.”
Zane chuckled, visibly releasing the tension he’d been carrying in his shoulders, and he laid his head back against the wall. He didn’t look at all worried. Ty watched him from the corner of his eye. All Ty had to do was keep that look on Zane’s face, that one right there, relaxed and content and slightly amused. Then they’d be just fine.
“Oh, by the way,” Ty murmured. “Merry Christmas, Zane.”
Zane looked at him in some surprise, then glanced to the plastic clock on the opposite wall. It was just past midnight. He snorted softly.
“Merry Christmas, Ty.”
TY HAD anticipated a barrage of questions when they reached dry land, but he had also expected a trip home, a nice shower, and some new clothing first. But there hadn’t been any detours from the waterfront to the Bureau office. They were to be debriefed ASAP.
Ty sat at one of the interrogation tables—on the wrong side. They were bringing in someone to cut the ring off his finger while he wrote up his report, but they also wanted an agent to speak to him, which was unusual. He was a little nervous that he and Zane had missed something or fucked up somewhere, especially since Zane had been conducted to another room for a separate debriefing.
He tried to tamp down the nerves as he finished up his brief synopsis of what had happened on the ship. He signed the bottom of the report and pushed it away, taking a deep breath to calm himself.
The door opened, and he exhaled slowly as three men entered. SAIC Dan McCoy smiled at him and held the door open for one of the lab techs and Special Agent Scott Alston, who trailed behind him.
“Grady. Good to have you back,” McCoy greeted as he seated himself across from Ty.
The lab tech rolled out a piece of gauze and extracted a pair of sharp utensils that looked like a cross between scissors and a prop from Hellraiser. Ty swallowed on an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. The last set of utensils he’d seen rolled out in an interrogation hadn’t been used to cut metal. He cleared his throat and looked away quickly, giving the tech his left hand so the man could cut the silver ring off his swollen finger.
He met McCoy’s eyes as the tech began trying to work one side of the wicked scissors under the ring.
“Turned into a real shitstorm, huh?” McCoy said with a sympathetic smile.
Ty snorted. “You could say that. What the hell happened, anyway? There were people trying to kill us left and right!”
“Yes,” McCoy replied slowly, nodding. “We stepped in it. Sorry.”
Ty stared at him incredulously. “Sorry?”
McCoy shrugged. “It looks like you two never really got into the eye of the storm. You were more like… the cows who got tossed around on the outskirts.”
Alston snorted and tried to cover it with a cough and a hand to his mouth.
Ty glanced between them with a frown, unamused. “I’m feeling more like a goat on this one, Mac,” he growled.
McCoy held up his hands in surrender. He had a small dossier in one. “We had no way of knowing all this was going on.” He slid the file across the desk to Ty. “There were four different groups at play. The feds, the Guardia di Finanza, Vartan Armen’s hired thugs, and a fourth group that appears to be antiquities dealers from Dubai. Where they came from, we have no clue, but they’re the ones who were trying to kill you. I mean Del.”
“Why?” Ty asked dubiously as he opened up the folder.
“There is a tenuous connection between them and Armen’s end of the business, and also between them and Del Porter, whose real name is not Del Porter,” Alston told him. “Apparently the thieves planned to take over the smuggling ring by force. Having all three members of the ring—Vartan Armen, Corbin Porter, and Lorenzo Bianchi—in one place made staging a coup pretty easy.”
“From what we’re getting in interrogations, it appears their intention was to put each of the men out of commission somehow and then take their places at the final meeting on Tortola. Targeting Del—I mean you—was intended to keep Corbin on board the cruise ship with his injured husband. They were going to let the Guardia di Finanza take care of the Bianchis. And it’s anyone’s guess what their original plan was for Armen.
“When they realized they weren’t going to maim you so easily, they went for hardcore and tried to kill all of you.”
“Awesome,” Ty said sarcastically as he looked down at the typed documents. Everything Alston and McCoy had just told him was in there, and there was more.
Those men would be locked up for a long time as authorities kept adding to their laundry list of crimes.
Vartan Armen’s body had been claimed by Turkish nationals, and they had departed on a flight to Istanbul. The Bureau was working with the Turkish government to investigate Armen’s business, but it was slow going.
The day after the final chase, a maintenance man had found the FBI backup team locked up in a grocery storage room in the hold. They were tired, supremely annoyed, and seriously wired on pastries and sodas, but otherwise unharmed. That explained where those fuckers had been the entire time. They’d been ferreted out by Dolce and Gabbana, who had thought they were after Corbin and Del when they’d spotted the members of the team sticking too close to Ty and Zane. How they’d expected to keep their jobs, stay out of jail, and avoid an international incident by abducting and illegally detaining American federal agents, Ty didn’t know.
Cruises in international waters did weird shit to people.
The Bianchis had returned to Italy with the Guardia di Finanza. Bianchi was reportedly cooperating with the Guardia to recover antiquities in exchange for leniency and immunity for Norina, who really hadn’t been involved in the business except on the periphery.
Ty did regret how that had ended. He’d liked the Italian woman and had felt almost guilty for lying to her.
For her part, Norina hadn’t forgiven Ty for destroying her shoes and her handbag, but she had requested a message be sent to Ty and Zane, one that thanked them for saving her and her husband’s lives. The note was in the dossier, written in English so Ty could actually read it.
He snorted and smiled slightly.
“So,” Alston said, interrupting his line of thought. Ty looked up at him. “Was it a king-size bed?”
“It was round,” Ty answered drolly. “And if the cat jokes are going to be replaced with gay jokes, just let it be known that I don’t find those funny,” he added seriously.
Alston’s smirk faded, and he nodded, recognizing that Ty wasn’t messing around.
The sound of metal grating on metal had accompanied his words, and Ty glanced over to see the silver band finally being pulled off his aching finger. The sight of the sliced ring and the impression it left on his skin was more painful than he’d anticipated.
“Thank you,” he muttered to the tech. The man nodded and handed him the wedding band. Ty palmed it and slid it into his pocket, glad McCoy didn’t demand he give it back.
The interview went on for another hour or so, the questions mundane and steering far clear of anything that could have been embarrassing or damaging. Ty’s attention was only half there, though. The other half was on Zane and the ring
burning a hole through Ty’s pocket.
ZANE forced himself to pay attention to the congested holiday traffic. He was behind schedule, but at this point all he could do was drive. He drummed his thumb on the steering wheel and glanced in the rearview mirror.
He looked like himself again. His trimmed brown hair lay naturally without gel, and the earring was gone, though Zane had caught himself looking for the ruby stone a few times during the past week. Not his style, though. He wore his own tailored gray suit, a crisp white dress shirt, and a red and silver silk tie. All nice, but not pricey like Corbin Porter’s extravagant wardrobe. Under the suit, the tattoo was now fading. Zane had considered having it actually inked, but then he’d thought about what Ty would say and abandoned the idea. It wasn’t really his style either.
Zane had removed the last vestige of his fake persona four days after they returned from the cruise—this afternoon, actually. He was so accustomed to wearing a wedding ring that he simply hadn’t thought about removing the silver one provided for the case until he’d been washing spaghetti sauce off his fingers after lunch and noticed the ring was the wrong color.
He had stood there at the sink looking at the ring for several minutes, the water running, memories of the cruise cascading through his mind. But it wasn’t the casework and danger Zane remembered. It was the quiet time he and Ty had spent sitting together, relaxing. The heady, sultry sexual tension thrumming between them that they both not only allowed but fed. The laughter and the dancing and the banter and just being together.
With all that on his mind, it had felt odd—wrong, somehow—to remove the ring that connected him to Ty.
After drying his hands, he took the ring to the bedroom and the wooden keepsake box on his dresser. He opened the top with a soft snap of the magnetic clasp and saw his gold wedding ring inside, with all its dings and scratches. Zane slowly set the nearly pristine silver ring next to it before sliding his fingertips over the gold ring.
When he thought about Becky, it was more difficult to call her face to mind, and when he did, it was dim and fuzzy around the edges, faded with time. It had been more than six years since his wife had died, and though he still missed her, it didn’t hurt like it used to.
Zane had closed the box, leaving both rings inside.
Then he’d looked at the small ribbon-wrapped box next to it and huffed slightly. He’d bought the compass rose pendant for Ty on a whim, and he still wanted to give it to him. He just wasn’t sure… why. Zane’s chest got tight when he thought about Ty’s declaration of love, and compared to that? The pendant seemed pedestrian. Plus they’d missed Christmas while stuck in that damn holding cell, and now just handing the necklace to Ty felt silly.
Zane had left it behind as well when he grabbed his suit jacket and walked out of the apartment.
So a little over three hours later he was here, navigating through traffic into a small parking lot. Zane squeezed the truck into a space meant for a smaller vehicle, wishing that he could have ridden the Valkyrie despite the cold but dry weather that would have nearly frozen him on the ride through town. Not only was the motorcycle more maneuverable, but it was much easier to park between cars that hogged a space and a third of stingy parking at full restaurants in Baltimore.
He hadn’t ridden it because it was hard to keep a suit and tie tidy while doing so.
The popular privately owned steakhouse that was located in two old renovated row houses near Fell’s Point was always jammed; New Year’s Eve made it even worse. He was glad he’d thought to call and get reservations as soon as they’d gotten home.
He got in the door fifteen minutes late—not the best of ideas for a dinner reservation on a regular night, much less a holiday, but he was sure Ty would have been on time. It was one of Ty’s favorite restaurants. After all the fish on the cruise ship, Zane figured a high-grade piece of beef would endear him to his carnivorous partner.
In a couple minutes one of the hostesses led him toward the back of the narrow restaurant; along the side wall ran a whole line of booths for two to four, and as he expected, Ty was facing the restaurant proper. Zane had given up the fight over who would sit with their back to a full room some time ago. Ty always proffered the argument that more people wanted to kill him, and he was right.
Ty sat diligently tearing a piece of paper into thin shreds, his knee bouncing under the table as he tried to keep himself occupied while he waited. He glanced up when he saw the hostess leading Zane toward him, and he straightened slightly, gathering the pieces of paper and crumpling them into a ball in his fist.
“Hey,” Zane greeted, handing the hostess his heavy, waist-length wool coat, unbuttoning his suit jacket, and sliding into the booth across from him.
Sitting in the booth straight and tall, well-fitted suit actually pressed and his stylishly narrow tie straight, the bleached-blond hair shaved almost completely off in what was practically a scalp trim, Ty looked more like a Jarhead than Zane had ever seen him. Damn the man, he even made a shaved head look good. And he looked much more like himself. Zane was pretty sure Ty had gone somewhere and rolled around in the mud for several hours once they had gotten home from the cruise ship. That would have made him feel better.
Now Ty seemed nervous, which wasn’t like him. While apart the past few days, back to their normal routine of sometimes together, sometimes apart—as wrong as it felt—Zane had worried Ty’s confession of love and his conspicuous lack of response would make things awkward between them the first time they got back together. So Zane drew a settling breath as he sat on the bench and offered Ty a smile.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Zane started.
Ty nodded and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “You all right?” he asked with a frown.
“Yeah,” Zane said, trying not to wince. “I didn’t think I’d be this late or I would have called.”
“It’s okay,” Ty told him easily as his eyes traveled carefully over Zane, as if checking him for injuries or any undue wear and tear. Ty didn’t trust Zane’s motorcycle any further than he could throw it, and he knew Zane usually rode it. With that look, Zane felt a lot warmer, inside and out, than from just walking into a heated building from the cold weather outside. He tried to catch Ty’s eyes. It was a little weird, this new dynamic to their partnership. Maybe he should call it an actual relationship now. Yeah. Weird. But Zane really liked it, and he smiled slowly.
“What?” Ty asked him suspiciously as he met Zane’s eyes and saw the smile forming. He groaned. “What have you done now?”
Zane shook his head, just looking at his lover across the table. “I didn’t do anything,” he protested, amused by Ty’s reaction. Now Ty knew how he felt every day when he woke up or came to work to see Ty smirking.
Ty narrowed his eyes and pointed a warning finger at Zane, obviously not believing that he wasn’t up to something. Zane instantly noticed what was missing from Ty’s hand, and he found himself oddly disconcerted to see the ring gone. The finger was still noticeably swollen, and Zane could guess what had happened. “They had to cut it off, huh?”
“Cut what off?” Ty asked, shoulders squaring as he sat back, almost offended.
Zane had to laugh. “Your ring.”
Ty looked down at his hand. “Oh.” He nodded. “Yeah, no way was it coming off without taking my finger with it.”
“You sound disappointed.”
Ty shrugged, and Zane could tell he was uncomfortable. “I miss it,” he admitted, making Zane’s stomach flip-flop. “It gave me something to do with my hands,” Ty continued, holding his hand up and moving his thumb as if he were playing with a ring on his finger.
Zane snorted. Yeah, that sounded more like Ty than being emotionally attached to a piece of jewelry. Now he was kind of glad he’d left the necklace at home.
They glanced up as a server arrived with bread and the drinks Ty had already ordered.
Once the server was gone with their appetizer and entrée orders, Ty picked up his
glass, which was full of soda instead of beer or champagne, and raised it to Zane with a smirk. “Here’s to being us again.”
Zane chuckled and lifted his goblet of iced tea to clink it against Ty’s. “Hear, hear,” he said. “Bon voyage, Corbin and Del Porter.”
“I can’t say it was fun,” Ty muttered wryly as he set his glass down. He glanced up at Zane almost carefully. “Did you hear what ended up coming out of the interrogations?”
Zane knew that Corbin and Del Porter were now in New York under long-term investigation by the FBI for Corbin’s extended criminal activities. He hadn’t heard anything more about them, though. “No. Anything interesting?”
Ty shrugged uncomfortably, as if he wasn’t sure the news was interesting or not. “Well, Del admitted he’d been hired by Armen to weasel his way into Corbin’s life, seduce him and spy on him, and send out information. But in the end, he actually fell for him. He said he was told about Armen’s plan to take over during the cruise, and he claims he deliberately orchestrated having himself and Corbin caught before the ship sailed to save Corbin’s life.” He looked up at Zane as he said the last, watching his reaction.
Zane blinked in surprise, raising both brows. “That’s pretty impressive. Del didn’t seem to have much of a backbone, and that would certainly take one.”
“I think he fooled a lot of people. Us included,” Ty said softly. “He had to have known he risked losing Corbin either way. He sacrificed himself.” Ty paused, letting that sink in. What he left unspoken was clear. Del had sacrificed his freedom and his heart just to keep the man he loved safe.
Zane couldn’t escape the meaning in Ty’s words. “Takes a special person to do that,” he said quietly.
Ty nodded and looked away. The knowledge put Del and Corbin in a different light than Zane had originally perceived. It reminded him that he shouldn’t make assumptions, especially when it came to matters of the heart.