Zane huffed out a pained laugh. “You could say that.” He glanced at Ty, disbelief clear on this face. “I still can"t believe you said that to me.”
Ty tapped his finger against the thick wire, the wedding band making a small clinking sound next to his ear. He smiled weakly. He had to agree, but probably not for the same reasons Zane couldn"t believe it. He didn"t say anything in response, hoping the smile would suffice. Zane just shook his head and looked away.
Ty released the wire partition and sat back, lounging back on the hard bed with his arm propped on his knee again. His shoulder hurt where he"d rammed the door and then hit the bottom of the pool a little harder than expected. But it was nothing compared to the tightness in his chest. His finger hurt too, but he was loath to ask someone to cut the ring off. He would miss it when it was gone. And he"d probably never wear another one that meant anything to him.
He watched the light play off the scuffed silver band.
There was nowhere to go, and they had all the time in the world to get there. It was an oddly freeing thought, one that made that tightness in his chest ease a little. He licked his lips as his thumb grazed the ring. “I love you” was not something he had ever really planned on telling Zane, especially not in a situation when neither of them could hide from the other. But it had come out so naturally up there on that railing he hadn"t been able to stop himself. Now, he could either lie right to Zane"s face and let Zane believe it had been a mere ploy to get him to jump, or he could tell him the truth. Again.
Ty was tired of hiding it.
“I have a problem, Zane,” he admitted, sounding slightly surprised that he was saying it out loud, especially now, when everything seemed to be going well for their odd relationship.
Zane raised one brow. “Besides sitting soaking wet in a jail cell in the middle of the Caribbean?”
“I have to say, it"s not a first for me,” Ty muttered. He smiled and looked up at the ceiling, almost talking himself out of saying it. He waited a moment to make sure he truly wanted to say it, and when he spoke he had finally dropped the fake accent. “No, this is a different kind of problem.”
Despite the expressed surprise from a moment ago, this time Zane"s voice was more serious, with a shade of audible concern. “What is it?”
Ty bit the inside of his lip as he looked down at his hands and turned them over. They had begun to shake slightly. He could feel the nerves coursing through his body. If he told Zane, nothing would be the same. Their entire partnership would change, for better or for worse.
And he knew he would get nothing out of it except the relief of coming clean.
He took a deep breath and looked up at Zane, meeting his eyes through the painted wire. Zane frowned slightly and moved closer to the fence, flattening one palm against it as though trying to get to Ty to help him.
Ty didn"t reach out to touch him, knowing it would make it too hard for him to get the words out. He knew what Zane"s response would be. He hadn"t really thought this through—the repercussions, the ripple effects—but he rarely thought anything through before doing it.
It was sort of like the first jump out of a plane. Close your eyes and take a step and hope the ground doesn"t hit you too fast. Either way, you knew wind was going up your nose at two hundred miles per hour.
Falling in love or just plain falling: they were both terrifying at any speed.
He sighed heavily and lifted his chin stubbornly, meeting Zane"s eyes without flinching. “I didn"t say it just to get you to jump. I"m in love with you, Zane,” he admitted in a calm, clear voice. “I have been for a while.”
Zane"s eyes widened, and the shock was clear in them. He didn"t try to hide it. That, at least, was telling of the trust they"d built between them. He didn"t hide his emotions from Ty much anymore. No more than Ty did from him. Zane"s lips parted like he was about to say something, but nothing came out as he tipped his head slightly to one side.
“You don"t have to say anything,” Ty said quickly. He"d known how Zane would respond, and he"d come to terms with it. He still didn"t want to hear the words, though. He couldn"t meet Zane"s eyes any longer, and he could feel his face warming. He looked down at his hand and turned it over. “I know you don"t….” He shook his head and glanced up at the stark white wall across the way from his cell, starting over. “I know you care about me. That"s all I need. I just figured… we have enough secrets between us,” he continued as he looked back up at Zane and smiled nervously. “Now it"s just one less.”
The cascade of emotions across Zane"s face surprised him; Ty didn"t think he"d ever seen Zane look so startled. Zane"s fingers curled into the fencing, and he nodded just slightly. “One less,” he echoed softly, though his lips moved like he was starting to say something else and stopped. Then he restarted. “Why tell me that way?”
Ty shrugged one sore shoulder. “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” he answered, embarrassed.
“I was pretty much blind, deaf, and scared out of my mind.” Zane admitted. “But I… heard you.”
Ty nodded uncomfortably. It was harder than he thought, knowing an admission of love in return wouldn"t be coming. He was glad to have told Zane, but he sort of wanted to change the subject now.
“I guess that explains why you"ve not minded me being so possessive,” Zane added abruptly a minute later.
Ty raised one eyebrow and shook his head. He was almost relieved that Zane hadn"t tried to deny any of it and seemed to be going for a lighter, less meaningful response. He smiled gratefully. “Try that shit on land, and we"ll see how I react.”
Zane rolled his eyes. “I wondered how much of it was Del and how much of it was you. After a while I wasn"t sure I could tell anymore.”
Ty wasn"t certain what to say to that, and anything else coming to mind just took them back into that territory that might end up being painful if they weren"t careful. He found he was disappointed that Zane"s most natural response to learning Ty loved him was to talk about their case. He watched Zane for a moment longer before turning to rest his shoulders against the wall behind him and looking down at his fingers again. In his peripheral vision, he saw Zane do the same.
They sat in a somewhat tense silence until Zane spoke.
“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.