The bike sped out of the city and into the flats, giving its rider time to think.
TY sat at the end of the bar, watching the Orioles get the shit kicked out of them again and drinking a Sam Adams fresh out of the tap. He knew the bartender by name. He knew the waitress by name. He knew the drunk dude throwing darts at the public health poster in the corner by name. He had spent a great deal of time in this bar.
“Want another basket, sweetie?” Cindy asked him as she leaned against the bar next to him, a tray of dirty glasses and empty beer bottles resting on her hip.
Ty glanced at her and shook his head, offering a weak smile. He slid the empty basket of chips toward her, and she smiled at him as she took it and went on her way. Ty looked back at the television, watching but not seeing.
The Orioles were just painful this season. Finally, he drained his beer, setting the empty glass down with a clunk and slapping down a fifty with it.
He waved goodbye to all the people who thought they knew him and stepped out into the warm night air. He sighed and turned away from the corner where the cabs frequented, walking instead toward his row house near Fell’s Point. It was a long walk, but Ty didn’t mind it. The walk helped quell the part of him that prayed one of the cars racing along the narrow roads would just hit him as he shuffled across the street. Life was no fun anymore.
The job was no fun anymore. The bad guys kept getting away, and shooting them wasn’t worth the paperwork. He couldn’t even watch baseball without feeling the need to slit his wrists.
Fucking stupid O’s.
He had tracked Zane right back to Miami, to an undercover job where Ty couldn’t possibly contact him. They couldn’t have sent him back down there unless he had accepted the assignment, and Ty was left with nothing but to wonder why Zane would do that.
The cell phone in his back pocket began to vibrate as he walked slowly behind a couple out enjoying the night. Ty growled under his breath and then reached back for it, flipping it open and answering with a negligent,
“What?”
“Stop walking,” the voice said on the other end of the call, “and wait for your ride to pick you up.”
Ty stopped dead in his tracks and swallowed heavily, resisting the urge to look around. “You’re having me followed?” he asked incredulously.
“Only when you’re thinking about going AWOL,” Assistant Director Burns answered with a smile in his voice.
Ty was simmering as a black Yukon Denali pulled up beside the line of parked cars next to the sidewalk and waited for him patiently. “And when is that?” he demanded in a growl.
“Midnight to four a.m.,” Burns returned knowingly. “How’re the broken fingers?”
“Broken,” Ty grunted in answer. “Why am I being tailed?”
“You have a new assignment.”
“But—”
“Señor de la Vega had a nasty plane accident down in the Caribbean,”
Burns informed him quietly. “Seems the mechanic working on his plane had some broken fingers no one knew about, didn’t get all the nuts and bolts tight enough. Get in the damn car and let it take you home. I want you in DC by noon.”
“You and your new assignments can go f**k yourselves, Dick,” Ty grumbled. “My fingers hurt. And the important one won’t stand up by itself.”
“So hold them all up and call it a flock,” Burns advised in mild amusement.
Ty snorted. “Flock of birds. That’s funny,” he muttered disconsolately to himself as he stared at the government vehicle stubbornly.
“Ty,” Burns sighed, his voice taking on the tone of the mentor he had once been. “Don’t toss everything you love out the window, hmm? You’ve tied up your loose ends, and you get to torture your new partner tomorrow.
Noon. I’ll see you then,” he said before ending the call.
Ty looked down at the phone as if it had offended him somehow, then up at the agent patiently waiting for him by the open back door of the Yukon.
Ty’s jaw tightened as he looked up and down the sidewalk. Finally, he sighed and trudged over to the waiting vehicle, sliding into the back wordlessly.
ZANE ignored Burns’ offer of transport, instead spending a couple more days with his parents before getting on the bike and heading east. He really didn’t care what time he got to DC on the fifth day. Burns hadn’t specified, after all.
He stopped both nights along the way and tried a lot not to think about what was waiting for him. A new partner.
It was a few minutes after noon when he pulled into the Bureau lot and showed his identification. Once he parked, he got a hit of déjà vu. He’d arrived like this last time. Same bike, same leather—different jacket. His mother had insisted he cut his hair, though, so it was trimmed and neat once more. He had a few more scars. He’d not told anyone about those. No one to tell, really, and they’d mostly healed up.
Wrinkling his nose, Zane dropped the helmet on the seat and clomped his way into the building, grumbling to himself.
With all his contacts, he’d managed to find out only that Ty had been released from Walter Reed on the day Zane had last seen him, but then he hit a dead end. How it was possible for Ty to just walk out of the hospital and disappear, he didn’t know; agents not on assignment were usually pretty easy to find through the Bureau. He hadn’t gone on the lecture circuit like he’d said he was, that was for certain. The only thing Zane could come up with was that Ty was working something off the books—not even undercover, but serious black-ops stuff—and that meant he wouldn’t be found at all. It had been frustrating as all hell as Zane searched for him. And now here he was, faced with a partner he didn’t want in a job that was swiftly becoming more like work and less like something he enjoyed.
“GOOD to see you doing well, Special Agent Grady,” the secretary offered insincerely as Ty entered the outer office.
“Good to see the stick still firmly lodged, Princess,” Ty responded as he walked right by her and waved for her to tell Burns that he was there. She puffed up angrily and jabbed at the intercom to announce him.
Ty entered the Assistant Director’s office and stopped short. Over the past five or six hours, he had allowed himself to hope that his new partner would really be his old one. That Burns had finally pulled Zane out of that hell in Miami and brought him back to the Special Crimes unit. But now, he saw with a sinking sensation that his new partner was already here, sitting in one of the chairs opposite Burns with a leather portfolio in his lap, taking notes.