Nick’s voice wavered when he continued. “I was ready to tell them everything. I would have. Anything they asked, I would have given it to them. Everything Ty and I had stood for and fought for, I was ready to hand it over just like that.” His eyes welled and he closed them, possibly ashamed at the memory, but that just forced the tears out, and a pair tracked down his handsome face without him seeming to notice. “But Ty….”
Zane knew without a doubt what Ty would have said, and he closed his eyes against the pain of it.
“He told me to do it.” Nick nodded as he said it, as if affirming what Zane had already guessed. “He ordered me. Fucking pulled rank, like I cared at that point. He was still a Marine, and that’s all he cared about. I couldn’t process what they were going to make me do, what Ty was ordering me to do. I was standing next to this table, my best friend strapped down on it, a gun at my head, trying to decide whether I was a Marine with brass balls like Ty or a coward. And Ty told me to kiss him.” He laughed suddenly, the sound oddly incongruous with the story he told. “He had to tell me twice. And when I did he slipped a key into my mouth.”
Zane’s heart seemed to lurch back into beating.
Nick hummed deep in his throat, the sound both content and somehow ominous. “We didn’t leave anyone in our path alive.”
Zane could barely get in a breath to speak. “So you didn’t have to—” His voice broke off, and he didn’t try to continue. He didn’t want to know, and yet he had to.
Nick’s green eyes focused in on Zane again, as if he was just remembering that he’d been telling Zane the story instead of reliving it by himself. His eyes flickered away, and he shook his head. “No. I don’t think either of us would have come back from that.”
The relief almost knocked Zane over. He gripped the edge of the table with one hand to stay balanced. After what seemed like a silent forever, he spoke in a hoarse voice. “That explains a lot about you two.”
Nick nodded and swallowed hard. “I was in love with him. I’d already made up my mind to tell him after our tour was over. Consequences be damned, I just needed him to know. But after that….” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “There are some friends you don’t risk for your own peace of mind. Some things… at the time it wasn’t worth the risk of losing him.”
“Last month when you….”
“I knew I’d already lost him.”
Zane nodded. “And now?”
“Now what?” Nick asked. He leaned against the counter, body relaxed again as if he’d taken a weight off his shoulders and handed it to Zane to carry. It struck Zane as singularly unfair. “Am I still in love with him?”
“I know you still love him,” Zane said. “I know he loves you. Maybe not the kind of love you want, but…. What I want to know is what you plan to do about it.”
Nick sighed sharply, as if the question annoyed him. “I’ve known Ty for twenty years, Garrett. I was enthralled with him after the first week.” He shrugged. “But time blunts these things. If you want us to stop caring about each other, you’re shit out of luck. We did three tours in Hell, and that kind of thing bonds you to a person for life. But if you’re asking if I intend to make another move on him, the answer’s no. I’ve regretted what I did every day since.” He was still meeting Zane’s eyes, unwavering, and somewhere deep down, Zane could feel the warrior in him, feel the dangerous, capable, upstanding person he could be if he wanted. He was like Ty in so many ways.
He didn’t know Nick, but he knew Ty. He trusted Ty, and he knew Ty wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. But hearing the words from Nick, receiving the promise that he wouldn’t make another advance, that he regretted doing it in the first place, it did ease some of the worry in Zane’s mind.
“Garrett. He’s never looked at me like he looks at you,” Nick said in a soft voice. “He’s never looked at anything the way he looks at you. Besides. He hates the Sox. We’d never work.”
Zane huffed and shook his head. “You’re kind of a dick, you know that?”
Nick shrugged.
“Thank you.”
“Least I could do,” Nick whispered.
Zane stared at him for another minute, trying to wrap his mind around all the things Nick had told him, and telling himself that this man was and would always be a huge part of Ty’s life.
“I think I’m going to try to sleep.”
“Probably a good idea,” Nick said. “I’ve got your back tonight.”
Zane stood and carefully didn’t examine the feeling those words gave him as he pushed his glass toward Nick. “Thanks,” he murmured as he turned away. He made his way back down the steps to the cabin where Ty lay asleep, but Zane knew he wouldn’t be sleeping easily tonight, not after learning what he had.
He crawled into bed, seeing his lover with new eyes as he pulled the covers up around their shoulders.
Ty muttered something in the foreign language Zane was becoming used to, and rolled away from him, pushing back at him so Zane would hold him. Zane scooted up behind him, wrapping him up and pressing against his warm body.
“Are you awake?” Zane asked, barely letting the words come out.
Ty hummed and pushed closer to Zane. “No.”
Zane smiled, letting his fingers drag against Ty’s skin. As conducive to romance as the setting may have been, all Zane wanted to do was hold Ty close and sleep with him in his arms.
Ty turned his head. “Did you hear what you needed to hear?”
Zane pulled him closer. “I think so. Yeah.”
THE next morning, Nick was guiding the yacht toward Washington, DC, and the rest of them were huddled in the booth where Zane had sat last night, trying to come up with a plan.
“Look, I don’t care if you’re the big bad assassin, and I’m not intimidated when you glower at me. You’re not coming with me,” Ty was saying to Julian as the two men went in verbal circles.
“I refuse to be dragged along any longer. We will have a say in our next move, or I will leave you bound and gagged during the night for the Coast Guard to find,” Julian growled.
Ty slammed his hand against the table and pointed a finger in Julian’s face. “Why can’t you talk like a normal person?” he shouted in frustration.
Julian snorted in disdain and crossed his arms.
“Fine! When we make port, you come with me to headquarters, Cam stays somewhere safe with Garrett, and you start using contractions when you talk to me or I swear to God—”
“Agreed,” Julian said in annoyance.
Ty grumbled as he grabbed up his coat and stalked toward the steps that led to the flybridge, where there were more places to sit in the open air. “I need air,” he snarled to the rest of them.
“What exactly is wrong with the way I talk?” Julian asked as he got up and followed him up the steps.
“I hate you and shut up. Why are you following me?”
“Because air is free,” Julian shot back before they slammed the hatch door closed and muffled the rest of their argument.
Quiet reigned for a full minute before Zane started to chuckle, a wry smile on his face. He tipped his head sideways to look at Cameron. “I really do think they enjoy it.”Cameron shrugged. “I know Julian does.”
“Reminds me of Thanksgiving with my parents,” Nick muttered as he sat at the wheel, still examining the nautical chart he’d been reading when Ty and Julian had started in on each other.
“As long as they both come back intact,” Cameron said, pushing away his coffee cup and standing. “I’m going to take a shower.” He disappeared down the steps
It left Zane acutely aware that he was sitting alone with Nick.
There was silence for a long moment. Even the rustle of the paper had stopped. Finally, Nick turned and looked at Zane over his shoulder. “Ty does love a good nemesis.”
“Ty could start an argument with Gandhi if he put his mind to it.”
“You should have heard him and Sanchez go at it. Four different languages, neither of them ever understood the other. A Latino guy screaming in German and a mountain hick shooting off French back at him.”
Zane snorted.
“Hey, listen…. You said last night that you wanted to understand him better.”
Zane looked up at Nick and nodded.
Nick reached into his jacket and pulled out a CD case. “I dug this up. It’s uh… it’s a bunch of videos we took while we were in service.” He handed it to Zane. “Thought maybe you and Ty could watch it together.”
Zane blinked at him, momentarily stunned by the simple gesture. He recognized it as the peace offering it was. He reached out to take the CD case and looked from it to Nick. “Thank you.”
Nick nodded and then turned his attention back to the charts and navigating the waters toward DC.
“Sidewinder, right? Where’d the name come from?”
“That’s just what they called us. I think it was because no matter what they sent us into, we always managed to slither out of it.”
Zane laughed. Yeah, that sounded like a team Ty would have led. “Did Ty have a call sign?”
“Nah, that’s just pilots,” Nick said after a minute or two. “We had nicknames. They changed every couple months depending on who moved in and out. But Ty was team leader, meant we just called him Six.”
“He didn’t have a nickname?” Zane asked.
“None he’d want me to repeat,” Nick muttered, a smile in his voice. “Just Six.”
“YOU better damn well call me when you’re safe,” Nick told Ty as they stood around Julian, shielding him as he jimmied the lock on a car parked in the parking lot of the public marina where Nick had rented a slip.
“Someone will. Check on Deacon for me, okay?”
“Done.”
“And go home. Don’t stick around and get caught in any blowback.”
“Ty.”
“Promise me, O. You’ll go home.”
Nick huffed but he nodded.
Ty met his eyes for a few seconds. He didn’t look scared. But he didn’t look confident, either, and that made Nick nervous. Ty’s biggest asset was his ability to make those around him think he was bulletproof.
“Are you sure you don’t need another gun?”
Ty shook his head. “This isn’t your fight, O. And if things go bad, we need someone who can tell what went down.”
Nick felt a ball of cold steel settle in his chest. He hated being left on the sidelines, but Ty was right. He nodded, and Ty turned away from him to slide into the car Julian had unlocked. He sat in the driver’s seat and reached between his legs to mess with the wires underneath the steering column, and in a matter of about thirty seconds, Ty had hotwired the car.
Nick waved as they drove off, the old blue Chevy Suburban lumbering through the parking lot and turning out of sight. Nick took a deep breath and tried to settle the nerves that prickled through his chest. Ty could handle himself, and Nick had seen enough of Zane Garrett to have formed a confident opinion of his skills as well. The man was formidable, a good match for Ty. And Julian Cross was a piece of toast that would always drop butter-side up, but Nick wasn’t sure if being lucky would do them much good. Even the luckiest dog in the litter had its bad day.
He was turning to head back to the dock and his boat when he caught sight of a black SUV turning the corner on the other end of the parking lot. The windows were tinted, and there was nothing remarkable about it except for the thick antenna on the roof.
It stopped in the middle of the lane, and Nick stood there and looked at it for a few seconds. The SUV revved its engine, and Nick broke into a sprint for the gate to the dock as the SUV roared down the lane toward him. It hopped the curb and barreled down the sidewalk as Nick reached the gate and shouldered through it. He could hear the doors slamming behind him as he sprinted down the dock, and when he heard the gate give way, he leapt onto his boat and rolled to the deck so he could crawl inside without being open to gunfire.
There was nowhere to run; he would never get the 580 moving in time to escape. All he could do was buy enough time for Ty and the others to make it away cleanly. He scrabbled through storage compartments, tossing life preservers over his shoulder and finally hitting gold. He grabbed it and kissed it, murmuring to it as he scrambled to the galley, where he’d have the most cover.
When two men in dark suits kicked down the heavy oak door in the salon, Nick stood behind the galley partition, aiming a double-barreled shotgun at them.
“Oh, son. You broke down the wrong door today,” he said with sadistic glee before he opened fire.
Chapter 16
BLAKE NICHOLS walked onto the floor of his four-star restaurant and took a deep breath as he headed for the bar, where two men in expensive suits waited.
“Mr. Nichols?” one of them said as he approached them. He reached into his suit and extracted a badge, flipping it open to show Blake his CIA credentials.
“Can I help you?” Blake asked, not reacting to the badge.
“We know you’ve been in touch with a Mr. Randall Jonas. We need you to tell us what you know.”
“Oh really?” Blake laughed, shaking his head at the audacity of the man. “And why should I do that?”
“Because you’re Julian Cross’ friend. And we’re trying to save his life.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mr. Cross is the last man alive who can identify Randall Jonas as the architect of over fifty known murders. We have no other proof. Jonas destroyed it all before he escaped.”