Ty sighed. “Yes sir.”
He hung up just as Zane returned.
“No,” Zane said when he saw the look on Ty’s face and the phone in his hand. “No! How urgent is it?”
Ty shook his head. “It was Burns.”
“Dammit, Grady!”
Traffic was minimal as they made their way toward the Bureau office. Ty either wouldn’t or couldn’t fill Zane in on why they were needed, and he wouldn’t speculate as they walked together toward the elevators. Zane wasn’t surprised. Burns was pretty closed mouthed with everything he did. It was odd that they’d come here when Burns had called them. Burns worked in DC, not Baltimore. But nothing Richard Burns did was normal.
Ty punched the button for their floor and then leaned against the elevator wall, watching Zane with sidelong glances. Zane gave him a small smile. Hopefully they’d be able to get back to that hotel suite before the night was over.
The elevator lurched to a stop and the doors shivered open. Ty didn’t move. Zane stepped out of the elevator first. He looked over his shoulder at Ty, frowning.
As soon as he turned, roughly three dozen coworkers and friends jumped out of their various hiding places amidst the desks and file cabinets and cubicle dividers, all of them yelling some version of “Surprise!”
Zane’s hand went to his gun, but Ty grabbed his wrist before he could pull it. Everyone was laughing and blowing on noisemakers, and for a long moment Zane just didn’t understand what was going on. “What the hell? This is what the damn calendar thing was for?”
Ty laughed and wrapped his arm around Zane’s shoulder. “Just an unfortunate necessity we managed to take advantage of. Happy twenty years with the Bureau, partner.”
Zane groaned and rolled his eyes as people all around them started whistling and applauding. “The first eighteen were easy,” he said, deadpan, drawing laughter as he jabbed Ty in the ribs with an elbow.
“But the last two were fun.”
“Our definitions of ‘fun’ clearly vary.”
“Whatever, Zane. There’s cake.”
Zane grinned. “You realize last month was actually twenty-one years, right?”
Ty shrugged, smiling crookedly. “Wouldn’t have been a surprise if we’d done it at the right time.”
Zane rolled his eyes, fighting the huge grin on his face.
“Congratulations, Garrett,” Clancy said as she approached them.
Others began surrounding him, offering him words of admiration, some bringing him cake, a drink, or a present. Probably thirty minutes had passed before Zane looked up and realized Ty was nowhere to be found.
“Where’s Grady?” he asked, looking over at Perrimore.
Perrimore shrugged. “Skipped out about fifteen minutes after you got here.”
Zane frowned and scanned the room. Why would Ty leave in the middle of a party he’d obviously helped plan? Zane shrugged it off. Lassiter gained his attention by approaching to shake his hand and ask for advice on how to be old. He was distracted by more laughter and light ribbing, and he lost track of time again, surrounded by the men and women he’d come to call his friends.
It was Good Friday, though, so the party cleared out quickly. Some left to spend the holiday with their families. Others wandered with every intention of heading to one of the local bars to continue what they’d started here. Zane sat at his desk looking at his twenty-year certificate, which had been stolen and framed while he was gone and then presented as a gift from the rest of his team. The back of the frame was signed by everyone he worked with. In the very middle, Ty’s signature stood out. Under it was written a simple note: “You’re the best partner I could have asked for.”
Zane smiled as he read it. It was so like Ty. Short, sweet, and with a meaning that was innocuous and yet so meaningful. He turned it over and ran his thumb across the glass. Twenty years.
He was so intent on the certificate and what it meant that he didn’t realize he had company until Ty sat on the edge of his desk.
Zane smiled and gazed up at his partner. “Where’d you run off to?”
“I was here,” Ty told him. “Wanted you to enjoy your day in the sun so I made myself scarce.”
“Would’ve been just fine with you next to me,” Zane said, but he smiled and shrugged. It was a sweet thought on Ty’s part, and they’d been making a point not to hover over each other at work functions. “Maybe you could have kept them from ragging on me about my age. Apparently I’m the old man of the department, which I find hard to believe.”
“No, I’m pretty sure you are.” Ty’s voice was teasing, but there wasn’t much heart behind the effort. He reached behind himself and picked something up he’d been hiding with his body, setting it in front of Zane with a wistful smile.
Zane stared at the row of delicate white flowers stemming from a sleek black pot, nonplussed until he realized what it was.
“An orchid.” He laughed, remembering the day Ty had suggested they cut and run to start a flower shop together and sell black-market orchids out of the back. He glanced up at Ty as warmth spread through him. Anyone who knew Ty may have said differently, but Zane knew he had a knack for sentimental gestures. Of the two of them, Ty was the real romantic.
Ty was smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He was fidgeting, messing with the USMC signet ring on his finger.
“Hey, what’s that about?” Zane asked, keeping his voice low as he nudged Ty’s knee.
Ty looked up at the ceiling and inhaled deeply. “I think you could call it melancholy,” he admitted. He didn’t even try to deflect it with a joke or a denial.
“About . . . me being older than you?” Zane asked.
Ty shook his head and looked back down at the ring. “It’s just . . . what am I going to do when you retire?”
Zane blinked. “Retire? I . . . can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.” The words grew more painful as they came out, as it sunk in what Ty was thinking about. Them, apart. Or not together, anyway. No longer partners.
“Well, I think about it all the time.” Ty reached out and ran his hand down Zane’s face. “You ready to go home?”
The intimacy of both Ty’s comment and touch stopped Zane’s immediate reply, and he considered his lover for a long moment before nodding. “Yeah.”
Ty slid off the desk. He reached across it to gather his keys and coat. Zane’s mind flashed back to the photograph of them in bed together and suddenly it was important for him to say something. He stood up and stepped around the desk to stand close, catching Ty’s elbow with one hand. “Hey.”