Ty opened his eyes again, a frown marring his brow as he stared at the tabletop.
“You hadn’t considered that?” Agent Y asked. They were the first words he’d spoken. Ty met his eyes. “Why do you think we pulled you? Why do you think we’ve been listening in on you?”
“You were the ones who bugged our house?”
“No. We just piggybacked the signal already coming from it.”
“Whose?”
“NIA.”
“Wow. I haven’t been this popular since high school.”
“You’ll be even more popular if you go back to that house,” Agent Y told him.
Ty frowned, not quite catching his meaning. “Why?”
The man opened a folder and turned it around so Ty could see what looked like crime scene photos. Two men inside a vehicle, one with his throat slit clean through to his spine, the other with a bullet hole in his forehead. His fingers had all been broken. Someone had questioned him before the kill.
Ty stared, trying to pull anything from the photos that would connect these two men to him. The head shot was reminiscent of his work, quick and to the point, but the rest was messy and brutal. He hadn’t done this. He finally shook his head.
“This car was found in front of your house,” Agent Y said.
Ty eyed both agents suspiciously. “This wasn’t me. I didn’t go back home after . . .” He trailed off, staring at the photos as the realization hit him. This had to have been Nick and Liam. This was how they’d known to come after them and get them out of the building. Ty schooled his features. He certainly didn’t want the CIA knowing that.
“Well. Considering the implements found in the trunk of that car, whoever is responsible for this did you quite a favor,” Agent X continued. “Unfortunately, they didn’t clean up after themselves, so your house is now attracting some attention. I hope you don’t need to return anytime soon. For clues to Richard Burns’s money, perhaps?”
Ty blinked at the photos, still reeling from the last twenty-four hours. Now his home was compromised too. His last vestiges of a normal life, of his life with Zane, were in that house.
Both agents sat quietly, watching him. Ty knew that tactic: just sit there and wait until he got restless and started rambling. He didn’t have the patience for this, though. What was the point anymore?
“I don’t know where the money is. I didn’t know what Burns was doing. And I couldn’t begin to figure it out now. Any evidence we had was destroyed in that fire. I can’t help you even if I wanted to.”
The two agents shared a glance, then looked to Ty again, studying him like he was the centerfold on a locker-room pin board. Ty returned their stares, unable to get himself to play the games he was normally so good at.
After a few seconds, both men stood as if by some silent cue. Ty clutched his hands together, trying to hide the nerves building in him. The CIA wasn’t exactly a shining beacon of morality. If they thought he had something they wanted, he’d be on his way to Gitmo by nightfall. Ty wasn’t sure he’d live through that again. Not again.
“There’s someone who would like to speak with you,” Agent X said, his tone almost gentle. “I have a feeling you’ll be more comfortable with him.”
They exited the room without further fanfare, and a moment later another suit stepped in and closed the door with a quiet snick. Ty recognized him by his shock of white-blond hair before he even turned around.
“Preston?” Ty blurted.
Preston unbuttoned his suit coat as he sat opposite Ty. He held up a shiny silver key and let Ty get a look at it before he took the chain between Ty’s hands and freed him from the cuffs. “You look like hell, Tyler.”
“You look like government.”
“We do what we have to,” Preston said with a hint of sadness.
Ty immediately regretted his words. He knew what Preston had done to end up with the CIA, and he certainly hadn’t made the choice because he wanted to wear a suit.
“I’m sorry about Zane,” Preston added, his tone unchanged.
The words hit Ty like a physical blow, stealing his breath. He ducked his head, trying to concentrate on getting air.
“We’re keeping ears to the ground in case he turns up,” Preston continued. “He’s a smart man; he may have realized that the only way to escape the cartel at this juncture was to play dead.”
“Zane wouldn’t do that to me,” Ty snarled.
“Even still. He’s MIA, which means he may have made it out of that building. It’s a shred of hope I’m trying to give you. Why don’t you be a good boy and take it.” Preston’s smile was gentle as he spoke, the compassion in his eyes blunting the sharpness of his words. For some reason, the kindness from a trained killer was even worse than angry words would have been. “Along with that shred, we’d also like to offer you something else.”
“What’s that?” Ty croaked.
“Revenge.”
When Ty closed his eyes this time, tears trailed down his cheeks. He wiped them away in surprise. “How?”
“Come work for us. We’ll give you two weeks to . . . get your affairs in order. And the Company is willing to loan you my time to do it.”
Ty’s heart was racing, and he realized that despite his intense desire to just give up, it wasn’t in him. The thought of revenge was a carrot dangling in front of him, and damn if he wasn’t a fucking horse right now.
“You’d help me go after the cartel?” Ty asked, keeping his voice low like they might be overheard. Of course they were being overheard, there were probably a dozen people watching this interview.
Preston nodded grimly. “Off the books, of course. You fuck it up, it’s all on you.”
Ty nodded. He was used to working like that. “What do you get from me in return? The CIA doesn’t just dispense favors out of the goodness of their hearts.”
“They get a highly trained agent with nothing to lose. I don’t have to tell you how valuable that is.”
“Quit bullshitting me,” Ty growled.
Preston smiled fondly. “The deal is dependent on you delivering Richard Burns’s money to the Company’s door.”
“I don’t know how—”
“Tyler. Understand me. The CIA is the only government agency in the world wanting to hold your hand on the playground. The rest of them, including your FBI, are waiting in line to push you off the monkey bars.”
Ty was nodding almost unconsciously. When he realized it, he shook out his shoulders and straightened.
“You’re nothing more than a hit man who got burned. No one cares that you didn’t know what Richard Burns was doing. They want someone to fall, and Burns isn’t around anymore to do it. But the CIA is willing to take that off your shoulders as soon as you walk that money through the door.”
“But not before.”
“All you get before is me. We’ll do this right, and when it’s done, you’ll have a home here. A purpose.”
Ty swallowed hard. “If you can’t kill it, hire it, right?”
Preston huffed a small laugh. “Indeed. You don’t belong in civilian life, Ty. I know you can feel that void. I hope Zane is still alive, I do. But if he’s not—”
“Don’t,” Ty whispered.
“You’ll need something to get you through to the other side.”
Ty wrung his hands together, rubbing his thumb over the tattoo on his finger. Zane couldn’t be gone. He wasn’t. The hole in Ty’s chest would feel bigger, would be a gaping maw of despair swallowing him. Ty didn’t feel swallowed, did he? Not yet. Zane was still out there.
But if Zane was gone . . . if that building had taken everything Ty loved with it, then he’d need something solid to grasp onto, something to wake him each morning. Something to keep him going. He’d need revenge. He ran his thumb over the anchor tattoo on his finger. Something solid to hold on to.
He finally met Preston’s eyes. “You’ll give me a badge? A gun?”
Preston nodded.
“And all I have to do i
s bring you the cartel’s money?”
Preston nodded again.
They stared at each other across the table, their dull reflections distorted in the stainless steel. Ty knew what sort of life Preston was offering him. He’d turned it down once, when the NIA had come calling. He’d had choices, then. Or he’d thought he did. Now? Well, yeah, he had a choice now, too.
“I’m in,” Ty said before he could second-guess himself.
“What do you need?” Preston asked with a smile.
“I’ll make a list. But there’s one thing I’ll need that you can’t get me.”
“I doubt that.”
Ty smiled grimly. “It’s in my house.”
Preston rolled his eyes. “Never easy with you, is it?”
“If it was easy, everyone would do it.”
Zane would have been pacing if he hadn’t been so damn tired. After the adrenaline had worn off, he’d sunk down to the bed and hung his head, clutching the phone and the shotgun to his chest and praying Ty would answer his calls, trying over and over until he was mindlessly listening to the ringing of the phone on speaker. When Ty’s voice mail message began, Zane would close his eyes and listen to Ty’s voice, then end the call and start over.
An hour after he’d made his great escape and barricaded himself in Nick’s cabin, Kelly worked up the nerve to knock and stick his head into the room.
“Ty’s not answering his phone,” Zane said.
Kelly slipped into the cabin and closed the door behind him. “You mind company?”
Zane shook his head forlornly, eyes fixed to the phone.
Kelly sat on the edge of the bed beside him, and eventually Zane realized that Kelly’s hand was resting on his shoulder. Zane forced himself to meet Kelly’s eyes.
“We’ll find him,” Kelly promised. “We’re with you, Zane.”
Zane tried to smile, but he failed miserably.
“Come up top with us? Help us plan?” Kelly asked. Zane could tell he was slipping into his corpsman mode. There was something soothing about it. “Let me look you over, make sure you’re not hurt anywhere.”
Zane nodded, pushing to his feet. He held the phone to his chest like it was a lifeline to his missing husband, and followed Kelly out of the cabin. He suspected Kelly wasn’t actually concerned about his physical state; he was just trying to lure him out of the cabin. Zane was willing to play along for the Doc.
Nick and Liam were sitting at the banquette, watching him warily when he got to the top of the steps.
Zane gritted his teeth, feeling inordinately hostile toward Nick, and justifiably hostile toward Liam. He jutted his chin out and set the shotgun on the table in front of them. “I’m sorry about the holes in your boat,” he told Nick.
Nick sighed. “At least it still floats.”
Zane perched on the edge of the pilot’s chair, and Kelly shone a light in his eyes. Then he checked all his reflexes by knocking his knuckles against Zane’s joints, and then had Zane follow his finger as he moved it in front of him. Finally, he asked Zane a few questions and declared him fit. There were aches and pains in places Zane assumed had come from debris in the exploding building, but hell, at least he could still see this time.
Kelly went to the galley for glasses of water, and then slid into the banquette beside Nick.
“I need to find Ty,” Zane said when it looked like no one else was planning to speak.
Nick and Kelly exchanged a look, and Liam cocked his head at Zane like he was studying an animal in a zoo.
“How?” Liam asked.
“I don’t know! But I have to find him! Do you fucking understand? I’m going to find him, and if you stand in my fucking way you’ll be the first to die!”
Liam waved a hand like a matador at an enraged bull. “You really want to start with me, mate?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Nick grunted. He had his hand over his eyes, both elbows on the table. “One day you’re going run your mouth at someone and they’ll shoot you in the face just to shut you up.”
“Like today,” Zane growled.
Liam winked at him.
“We need to gather our resources,” Nick continued, pointedly ignoring Liam and Zane’s sniping. “When the boys get here, we’ll set sail. If we intend to face down the cartel, we’ll need weapons, and we’ll need warm bodies. I’ll call Julian Cross and see if he can help us.”
“Cross?” Zane asked. “Why the hell would he help us?”
“Because he owes me,” Nick said. “And he owes you and Ty even more. He’ll help us with artillery if nothing else.”
Zane sat back and took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. “So your plan is to just . . . sit and wait until more help arrives? Maiden in distress on a balcony?”
Nick glared at him for a few seconds. “Yeah, Zane,” he said, and tapped Kelly on the arm. Kelly moved out of the bench seat, and Nick scooted out behind him to stand. He walked past Kelly and then Zane, yanking the phone out of Zane’s hand as he went. “That’s my fucking plan.”
Zane almost followed him, but he took a deep breath instead and stayed put. Fighting with the few men still here to help him would not do him any good. The door slammed behind Nick as he left the salon.
“Fucker,” Zane said under his breath.
Kelly threw himself back into the banquette. “None of this is his fault, Zane.”
“Isn’t it?” Liam asked with a laugh.
“Shut up,” Zane snarled. “I’m so fucking sick of you and your stupid accent and . . .” Zane trailed off with an honest to God growl and made a throttling motion with both hands in Liam’s direction.
Liam chuckled quietly.
“Why did you try to kill him?” Zane asked.
“Pardon?”
“Ty! You’re here claiming you’re helping us again, but the last we saw of you, you were trying to put an armor-piercing round in his heart.”
“It weren’t me, mate.”
“Bullshit!”
Liam slammed his hand against the table, startling both Zane and Kelly with his sudden vehemence. “I didn’t switch those bullets!”
“Why should we believe you?” Kelly asked.
“You weren’t there,” Liam snapped at him. “I had no reason to kill Tyler then, and I have no reason to lie now.”
“Prove it,” Zane grunted.
Liam barked a laugh, shrugging with both hands outstretched. “How?”
Zane raised an eyebrow. “Be creative.”
“Look, I’m not discounting that I may have made a mistake. I don’t make them often, and I don’t think I mixed those bullets up. But I didn’t mix them on purpose, and if someone did, I’m betting it was on your end.”
“Our end?” Kelly asked, bristling at the implication.
“Only a few people had access to those bullets before I loaded my gun.”
“Yeah,” Zane huffed. “You. Me. Ty. Sidewinder. That’s about it.”
“You’re right.” Liam crossed his arms and sat back like he’d just proved his point.
Zane and Kelly exchanged a quick glance. Zane couldn’t help but wonder if Liam was actually telling the truth. Not necessarily about a Sidewinder switching that bullet, but about him being innocent of it. He seemed to be genuine, but then, he could have declared the sky was green and done so with complete sincerity.
The door to the salon burst open before anyone could say more. Zane lurched to his feet, hand immediately going to his hip even though he wasn’t armed.
Nick was holding the phone up, his green eyes wide and sparking. “Ty’s alive.”
Zane took an impulsive step toward him, his breath catching in his chest. “Who is that?”
“It’s Cross,” Nick said, and put the phone on the table.
“Gentlemen,” Julian Cross said over the speaker.
Zane gripped the edge of the table and leaned in. “You know where Ty is?”
“I heard from Preston just an hour ago. Grady was taken to Langley.”
Zane
met Nick’s eyes, confusion and relief and terror all sweeping through him. “The CIA has Ty?”
“He has accepted a position with the Company in exchange for their help.”
Zane ran both hands through his hair and bent over the table, feeling ill. “Oh God, Ty. You idiot.”
“Are you saying the CIA is declaring war on the Vega cartel?” Nick asked in disbelief.
“Not just the cartel, mate,” Liam told them. “If they snatched Tyler up, they’ve declared themselves against the NIA as well. This just became a government pissing match.”
“Why are they invested?” Zane asked Julian.
“I don’t know. Preston said the Agency was on the lookout for signs of life from you. He knew if there was the slightest chance of you reaching out for help, I might hear from you, so he rang me up.”
“Ty’s okay?” Zane asked shakily.
“I’m not sure making a deal with the CIA could be classified as such.”
“How do we find him?” Kelly asked. “Can you get a message to him?”
“That I don’t know. Preston’s gone dark so there’s no reaching him again. I’ll be flying into DC; don’t be late picking me up, hmm?”
He ended the call before they could grill him further. Zane sank to the bench nearby, staring at the phone. “How long will it take us to get to DC?” he asked Nick.
“On the Fiddler? Three to five hours, depending on the Patapsco tides. We’ll set off as soon as Johns and Digger get here.”
“Good.” Zane picked up the phone. “I got a few other people might want a piece of this too.”
Ty went to the marina first, only to find an empty slip where the Fiddler had been. The harbormaster had no record of her leaving, and no idea when or where she’d gone.
That meant Nick had gotten out alive, if no one else. Ty had no way of reaching him, though, so he called Detective Alan Hagan of the Boston PD. He discovered that Nick’s partner had put out a missing person’s report on Nick and was tearing Boston apart trying to find him. Ty asked to be kept in the loop, then hung up, feeling guilty for not letting Hagan know Nick was alive out there somewhere.