by Abigail Roux
Ty shook his head, rubbing at a spot of tension between his eyes.
“Oh, I picked up the mail when I went by the house.” Zane rummaged in his box for a small package that he handed to Ty. “Did you order something? What is it?”
“I don’t know.” Ty used his pocketknife to get into it, gazing at Zane fondly as he did so. The silver feathering at the sides of his hair was getting more pronounced, and every time Ty took notice of it, he wanted to tackle Zane to the ground.
He pulled a small jewelry box out of the package and turned it over, then narrowed his eyes at Zane. “Was this you?”
Zane shook his head and reached to pluck a card off the inside of the packaging, flipping it open to read. “Says it’s from Owen.” He handed the card to Ty.
“Weird.” Ty muttered, and popped the jewelry box open.
Inside was a nickel.
Zane chuckled. “Your friends are so strange.”
“Hold on,” Ty said, a grin spreading across his face. He picked the nickel up out of the box and examined it, finding a slit near the edge just big enough for a thumbnail. When he pulled on it, a tiny curved blade popped out of the nickel. Ty laughed delightedly. “It’s a knife!”
“Oh my God,” Zane groaned.
“Looks like he found a new supplier. Secret Santa next year is going to be awesome.” Ty put the nickel in his pocket, still grinning.
“You realize most of the things you get from your friends should be illegal, right?”
“Hey, that go bag you appropriated is full of illegal things I got from my friends, so either stop judging or give it back.”
“No, I like it. And you’re not getting those boots back, either.”
Ty grunted.
Zane’s smile turned into a leer. “You coming to the hotel tonight?”
Ty laughed and nodded. The night Zane had left the row house, Ty had waited a few hours, then tracked Zane’s ass down and crawled into bed with him in the luxury suite he’d booked.
“You going to tell me how you found me?” Zane asked for perhaps the twentieth time.
Ty stole a languid kiss, then whispered, “I’ll always find you, Zane.”
Zane rewarded him with a fond smile. He kissed Ty again, humming happily. “Give me a hint.”
“Please. The Admiral Fell Inn? It’s the only hotel nearby that’s a pun; of course you headed there.”
Zane chuckled, closing his eyes as Ty nuzzled at him. He finally ducked his head, reaching over to tug the box closer. “I stopped by that deli you like so much near the office.”
Ty’s smile turned melancholy at best. He was glad he’d made his decision to quit the Bureau, but it had been a trade between having Zane at home and having him at work. And he kind of missed work. “Are you going to be happy here when you retire? Selling old books and keeping me occupied?”
Zane met Ty’s eyes. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Although I suppose if it becomes worrisome, we can take a trip out to Austin for a couple of weeks now and then. You know. Vacation.”
Ty frowned. “No need to be mean.” He ran his hand up Zane’s back, letting his fingers trail up the soft material of his dress shirt. He was about to zone out when he remembered what he’d wanted to show Zane. “Oh! Want to see what I found in the back room?”
Zane laughed and held out a cold bottle of water. “Sure.”
Ty took the bottle as he pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed Zane’s forearm and tugged him up. “You’re going to love this.”
Zane smoothed one hand over Ty’s ass. “Uh huh. Go on.” He was humoring Ty, but Ty didn’t care.
He led the way into the back room, which had been a kitchen in the original building but had since been turned into a storeroom with a sink and a refrigerator hookup. Ty had removed everything but a hammer, leaving the room just as bare and pitiful as the rest of the structure.
He was grinning from ear to ear when he waved his hand at one of the walls. It was covered with cheap paneling and painted a garish green, and there were several holes where Ty had taken the hammer to it.
Zane looked from Ty, to the wall, back to Ty, and back to the wall before shaking his head. “What am I missing?”
“What, you don’t see it?” Ty’s smile grew bigger. “Your finely tuned spider sense hasn’t realized that this room isn’t as wide as the front room?”
Zane frowned and twisted halfway around to check the room’s dimensions. “Someone closed in a bolt-hole?”
“Better.” Ty picked up the hammer and stepped over to the panel that had first caught his attention. He used the claw to pull the panel back, then took the flashlight from his back pocket and clicked it on. He gestured for Zane to lean closer, and he let the light shine on the wooden treads of a stairwell, hidden for at least half a century.
“Oh hell,” Zane said under his breath. “No wonder you’re giddy. The survey didn’t show a basement on this lot.”
“I know!” He’d been excited when he found it, almost excited enough to grab the flashlight and investigate. But he would never do such a thing without Zane, and he was sort of scared shitless of dark basements. “Want to check it out?”
“How long did you have to wait for me to get here so you could have me go down there?” Zane asked, a wry smile twisting his lips as he crossed his arms. “You could have called.”
“Wasn’t long before I poked the hole through the ceiling,” Ty admitted. “As soon as I found this, I left this room. Please take this and go down there so I can see what it is!” He shoved the flashlight at Zane.
Zane chuckled and took the Maglite. “Open it up,” he said, gesturing to the rest of the paneling blocking the stairway.
Ty slid the hammer back into the paneling and tugged it off the wall with ease. He set the first strip carefully aside, then tugged at the next one to open it up. The cobwebs in the old stairwell alone would have kept him on ground level if he’d done this earlier.
Zane was pulling on the pair of work gloves Ty had worn most of the day. Ty wanted to go with him and see what was down there, but he knew his limits, especially after his ordeal in Scotland. His limit was right here at the first step.
Zane moved to the landing, and Ty peered over his shoulder. “If it’s big enough down there, I might be able to handle it.”
Zane settled a hand at the base of Ty’s neck, squeezing as he pressed a kiss to the corner of Ty’s lips. “My brave bulldog.”
Ty huffed. “Just go see what’s down there!”
Zane took the first couple of stairs cautiously, testing each before settling his full weight on it, and then moving on. The stone wall along the stairway was bare, no railing, no evidence of one ever being there. Ty watched until the flashlight’s beam found the ground floor of the cellar.
Ty shivered. There were obviously no windows or doors, since no one knew the damn room was down there.
Finally, Zane called up the stairs, “I’m at the bottom.”
“Uh huh. And?”
“Stairs are pretty sturdy. The floor is paved with stone; looks like there was a wood floor over it at one point. It’s so dusty it’s hard to tell. There’s shelving along the walls, not in very good shape.” Zane raised his voice to carry up the stairs as he moved further away from them. “Broken glass. It looks like it was cleared out in a hurry.”
“What else?” Ty asked as he fought the urge to go down there and investigate.
“Wait a sec.” Zane went quiet for a long moment, and then Ty heard a crack, a whump, and a crunch that sounded like wood falling. “I’m okay!”
“Don’t make me come down there, dude.”
“So brave,” Zane called from the dark. “There’s a grate here.”
“What kind?”
“Big-ass grate in the floor,” Zane answered, his voice a little more distant and muffled.
Ty grunted, frowning. “Might have been Prohibition era,” he called back. “Made it easy to dispose of evidence during a raid. You know, that makes sense
with some of the other architecture in this place. It might have been a speakeasy at some point.”
“Would explain the shelves and boxes, anyway,” Zane said as he started back up the stairs.
“Is it usable space? Worth renovating? Or should we board it back up and pretend it’s not scary?”
“It’s usable. Pretty solid, really, stone floor and walls, doesn’t look like it’s leaked, even being this close to the harbor.” Zane emerged from the dark and joined Ty back on the main level. “Definitely good for long-term or secure storage.”
“You could make it your art studio when you go through your dungeon period.”
Zane snorted and shook his head.
“Although . . . I might be wrong, but if it was used as a storage cellar for illegal alcohol, they would have had a chute to get in there in secret. Load it from the street, right into the cellar. Maybe we can get some more lights down there and check it out better later.”
“It’s totally open down there,” Zane said, patting Ty’s arm reassuringly. “Not closed in at all. Just one big room with foundation pillars.”
“One big, dark, underground room,” Ty said with a nod. “With three stories towering over it.”
Zane set his hands on Ty’s hips. “You don’t ever have to go down there if you don’t want to. We could just board it up and forget about it.”
“That would take all the fun out of it,” Ty said, and placed his hands on Zane’s waist. “We’ll paint it white, it’ll be fine.”
“Sure it will.”
Ty kissed him quickly. “Let’s go back to the hotel, huh? I’ll tell you some ideas I’ve got for your bookshelves.”
Zane’s hands were slow to let him go. “You need a shower,” he said, brushing some dust and dirt out of Ty’s hair.
Ty’s smile grew more predatory. “That something you’d like to help me with?”
Zane’s hum of approval was nearly a purr.
Ty kissed him again, this one much more heated than the last, and then stepped away. “Let’s go. I’ve got dust caked in places it was never meant to get.”
Zane sprawled on the king-sized bed in the suite at the Admiral Fell Inn where he’d been living for the last week. And yes, he’d come here because the Inn’s name was a pun.
Every night, he would wait impatiently for Ty to come prowling in. And according to Ty, every night at the row house Ty would make a fuss about going to bed, make a commotion and grumble to himself as he got into bed, then turn out the lights and sneak out like the trained professional he was so he could spend the night with his fiancé. It made Zane laugh to think about a man like Ty, with all his training and experience, using those highly developed skills for the adult version of breaking curfew. How had it come to this?
Zane was trying to decide how they could use the bugs to their advantage. Julian Cross had once told them that if they were facing an opponent larger than themselves, the best way to beat them was to use their own strengths against them. He hadn’t phrased it that way; he’d used an inane chess analogy instead. Zane had since become pretty adept at the game, so he finally understood what the man had been trying to tell them.
The only problem was that Zane couldn’t decide how best to use bugs against their mole. They could feed them wrong information, try to get them to overplay their hand. But they didn’t even know enough about the mole’s game to do that. They were playing blind. Until one of them came up with a solution, the only way they could converse freely was at the bookstore, which they’d ultimately chosen to list in public records under the name of the Carter Garrett Ranch for the express purpose of keeping it out of the spotlight, or here in this hotel suite.
At least it was a nice suite.
The water cut off in the bathroom, and a few seconds later Ty stepped out in nothing but a towel, steam roiling behind him. Zane propped his head in his hands and stared.
The first marks of age were finally starting to hit Ty. A little gray in his scruff when he grew it out, which he did more often than not these days. Arthritis in the hand he’d broken so many times. But he was still cut and lithe, he still reminded Zane of a large jungle cat when he moved, and his mind and tongue were still as sharp as ever. Zane had never imagined himself loving a person like Ty, but now? Now he couldn’t imagine his life without him.
Ty gave him a cheeky grin when he caught Zane staring. “Want a show?” he teased, his voice a low purr.
“What, like late-night cable?” Zane asked, trying to sound innocent. “Skinemax presents?”
Ty tossed his wet towel at him, then crawled into bed and laid himself out over Zane as Zane fought to disentangle himself from the towel. Ty’s body was still hot and damp from the shower, but Zane didn’t care. He ran his fingers through Ty’s hair, grinning as he waited for some further form of punishment. But Ty remained silent, merely peering down at Zane with a slight frown marring his features.
“What?” Zane asked when he realized Ty didn’t plan on sharing what was on his mind.
“Let’s elope.”
Zane laughed, but he realized almost immediately that Ty wasn’t laughing with him. His grin fell into a frown. “Wait, what?”
“I’m tired of not being married, Zane. And God knows neither of us can make a decision to save our lives. Where do we have it? Do we do the whole nine yards or shorten the ceremony? Do we try to make it religious or keep it nondenominational? Do you have a best man or do you ask Annie to stand with you? Do we involve our families, make one of them travel? Does Chester get to put a corsage on his shovel? If we have to go to Texas, can I put Barnum in a bow tie and have him be the bouncer for the reception?”
Zane had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. He wished Ty were exaggerating, but those were all conversations they’d had in the last year, including Ty insisting that if he was ever made to go to Texas again he’d string Barnum the Bengal tiger along behind him on a leash until Zane let him go home.
“Screw the big ceremony,” Ty said with a snarl of his lip. “Screw what our families and friends want or think. For once let’s just . . . do it for us. They just legalized it in Maryland, we could go down in the morning and apply for a license. It’s only a forty-eight-hour wait; that’d give us time to wrangle up two witnesses to get here, and by Monday morning we’d be hitched. And it’s not like we don’t have some federal connections we can abuse. There’s a way you can get the wait waived by a judge, and I talked to Hank Freeman, you remember him?”
“The judge who always rushed your warrants for you?”
“Yeah.”
Zane laughed and he wrapped his arms around Ty to kiss him.
“He said he’d do the ceremony if . . . when you agreed.”
This wasn’t just some whim Ty had come up with in the shower. He’d researched it, made inquiries, probably even greased the wheels with Judge Freeman so he’d rush the application and perform the ceremony on short notice. Zane nodded, a little in awe as he met Ty’s shining eyes. “Let’s do it.”
“Yeah?”
“Right now. If we take the Valkyrie we can make it to the courthouse before they close and get the license. We could be married by Monday,” Zane said. If Ty wanted spontaneous, Zane could give it to him this time.
Ty kissed him messily, then rolled out of bed and scrambled for his clothes.
“Are you . . . you heard me say Valkyrie, right?” Zane asked. Ty always complained about the motorcycle.
Ty straightened, pulling his jeans on and buttoning them. He was beaming. “You’ve always wanted me on the back of that death trap, right? Here’s your chance.”
“This might be the best day of my life,” Zane said disbelievingly.
Ty crawled over him again, pressing him to the mattress and kissing him until they were both breathless. “I’ll make sure of it tonight. Now get your ass in gear, let’s go get legalized.”
Come Monday morning they were in Zane’s hotel room yet again, except this time Zane was tying his shoelaces over and over,
trying to get them right as Ty paced in front of him, his phone held to his ear. They’d called Deuce as soon as they’d received their marriage license and told him to come to Baltimore and bring Livi, Amelia, and a suit. They needed two witnesses, after all, and Amelia would jump at any chance she could get to dress up and peg people with something pretty like flower petals or rice.
They’d decided not to call anyone else. Their families could wait, and this way each family could be given their own time, their own celebration, something that suited them. Understated and elegant in Texas for Zane’s mother, moonshine and shovels in the mountains for the Gradys. And they’d be able to hold off the meeting of the families for a little longer, something Zane wasn’t keen on seeing happen anytime soon.
Zane didn’t really have any friends or family he desperately needed to be with him today, but Ty . . .
Zane glanced up at him with a sympathetic frown. His brother was coming, and Zane knew that was paramount to Ty today. But Ty had more than one man he considered a brother, and blood had little to do with it.
Ty cleared his throat and stopped his pacing, squaring his shoulders as if fighting nerves when his call went through. “Hey, babe, it’s Ty again.”
His voice sounded shaky, but everything sounded shaky right now. They were just a few hours away from getting to say “I do.” He didn’t remember much from his first wedding, but these moments of nerves building up to it were familiar.
Ty coughed, closing his eyes. “Nick, I don’t know where the fuck you are, man, but I kind of need you here. Please call me back.”
Zane stood slowly, watching Ty with a frown. “Still not answering?”
Ty shook his head, not looking away from his phone.
“You worried?”
Ty raised his head. “Little bit.”
“I thought Nick disappeared like this without telling anyone pretty often. Isn’t that why he lives on a boat, so he can go off the reservation?”
“He does, it’s just . . . he usually still checks in with someone even if he’s AWOL. He still checks his phone, calls back for emergencies. I . . . I thought he’d call me back by now, even if he’s too far away to get here. You know? I told him we were getting married. I mean . . .”