Sticks and Stones (36 page)

Earl nodded as he observed Zane’s reaction. “I don’t just say pretty words to hear myself talk, son,” he informed him. “I mean it. Thank you for….” He was forced to look away and swallow hard as his voice faltered. He pressed his lips together tightly as he fought to regain control.

It was clear, seeing Earl’s emotions bubble to the surface, that Earl was being truthful. It gave Zane an odd, bittersweet feeling of vindication. He’d proved himself to Earl Grady—but Ty had been seriously wounded in the process. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly, watching the older man, wondering if Earl planned to apologize to Ty as well. “You might keep that in mind the next time you talk with Ty.”

Earl looked back at him and lifted his chin, obviously still fighting back his emotions. “Keep what in mind, son?” he asked, managing to make his voice even once more.

“You owe him a hell of a lot more than just pretty words.” Zane paused, his banked anger melting into a quiet, pained sadness. “I don’t know what you thought you were doing, but you couldn’t have said anything that would have hurt him more.”

Earl was silent as he took a few steps toward the doorway and stared into Ty’s room. The guilt and worry were clear on his face, written in the lines around his eyes and mouth. “I know,” he whispered. “I’ll never be able to apologize enough. I’ll never be able to make that up to him. But never for one second have I thought my son was anything but what he is.”

Zane was silent. There was a big difference between thought and deed, and what Earl had said up on that mountain was unforgivable. Earl sighed heavily and nodded in agreement as if he’d heard Zane’s last thought loud and clear.

Deuce came shuffling out of the room, rubbing his eyes and yawning, and Zane wondered if he’d heard any of his conversation with Earl.

“How is he?” Earl asked in a whisper.

“Talking in his sleep,” Deuce answered in a low voice.

“What’s he saying?” Earl asked with a frown.

“I don’t know,” Deuce answered with a shrug as he looked at Zane and gave him a small smile. “I don’t think it’s even English.”

“Might be Farsi,” Zane murmured.

“Could be,” Deuce responded with a closer look at Zane, as if he hadn’t expected Zane to know Ty spoke Farsi. “But I think it’s just slurred cursing.”

Zane snorted. “You going to sit with him?” he asked Earl as he stepped back to give Deuce room to get through the door.

Earl’s expression became more guarded, and he looked back into the room where his son lay muttering to himself. He shook his head in answer. “Not just yet. I’m gonna go hunt down some coffee,” he said gruffly, and then he turned away and headed down the hallway, walking with his shoulders squared and tense.

Zane turned his eyes to Deuce. “He needs someone to talk to,” he said with a sigh before rubbing his eyes.

“Dude,” Deuce responded wryly. “I’m a fucking psychiatrist, and he won’t talk to me,” he pointed out.

A short laugh got out before Zane could stop it. “Deuce, you know we love you. But we
hate
you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Deuce muttered as he turned around and looked back into Ty’s room. “The whole family likes to screw with other people’s heads. I’m just the only one who took it pro. But,” he added with a slightly darker undertone as he looked at his brother, “Dad can sit and stew over this one for all I care.” He turned his head and peered at Zane. “What’d he say to you?” he asked.

Zane took the opportunity to move into Ty’s sterile-looking, sparsely decorated room as he considered how to answer. He didn’t want to get into a mini-showdown with Deuce, even though it sounded as if Deuce was just as angry at Earl as Zane was. The only person who didn’t seem to be seething over what had been said was Ty. Still, Zane didn’t want to insult their father and make Deuce feel the need to defend him.

“He’s worried about Ty,” he answered as neutrally as possible. “About this and maybe his mental state in general. He was talking about why Ty joined the Bureau.”

Deuce looked at him closely, then sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” he muttered dejectedly. “Dick’s little side jobs,” he said bitterly. “Ty’s told me he’s afraid one day we’ll get word he was killed in a car wreck or something equally innocuous because he was on some secret mission they can’t make public.”

Zane glanced at Deuce, frowning hard. He had no idea what the man was talking about. He’d never heard about any secret missions or side jobs, although he supposed that might have been what Ty was doing when they were separated after the Tri-State case and Zane had been unable to track him down. He himself had been thrown back undercover, after all. With Ty being so close to the Assistant Director, there was no telling what sort of work he was trusted to undertake.

“The thing that always made Ty so good at everything he did was that he had no fear. Makes Ma and Dad sick with worry,” Deuce continued with a sigh.

“He’s afraid of things just like we are,” Zane said as he turned his eyes on his restless partner. “He just hides it well.”

“Yeah?” Deuce asked in what sounded like honest surprise. Whether it was surprise that Zane knew that or surprise that his brother was afraid of things, Zane didn’t know. “Like what?” Deuce asked.

Zane didn’t look away from Ty as he resisted the urge to touch him, just his arm, his shoulder, something to reassure himself that Ty really was there and breathing. “The mines, for one,” he answered. “Seems reasonable to me. Small, dark spaces to get trapped in.”

Deuce watched Zane as he sat down beside the bed again. “He tell you that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Zane glanced up as he slid his hands in his pockets. It was easier to keep them to himself that way. “I made the mistake of waking him up once, when he was doing this.” He nodded down to Ty’s active sleeping. “Figured it was a bad dream.”

“Made the mistake,” Deuce echoed. “What happened?”

Zane finally looked over at Deuce. “Oh, he didn’t hit me or anything before he woke up,” he said as the corner of his mouth turned up. “But he sure was cranky once I got his attention.” His eyes slid back to Ty. It had to be the IV keeping him under now, he thought clinically. Ty usually woke up in a snap if he sensed someone close. That, or he wasn’t getting better, and that didn’t bear thinking about at all.

“You’re lucky you just got cranky instead of hit,” Deuce told him fondly.

“Yeah,” Zane agreed. “After he woke up, we had a talk about things we were afraid of. How we might die. Heights. Small places with bugs,” he listed off.

Deuce smiled and nodded. He looked back down at Ty, but the smile fell as he watched his brother toss and turn. “Ty has a lot of bad dreams,” he said to Zane, his voice sad.

Zane wondered what Deuce expected him to say about that. Of course, the man had no idea that Zane was living with the same problem. “That’s why he keeps quiet, you know.”

Deuce looked up at him, still frowning. “Why?” he asked.

“So you don’t have bad dreams. So your mom and dad don’t have bad dreams.”

Deuce looked at him for a long time before the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. He nodded and returned his attention to Ty. “You know him better than you think you do,” he said thoughtfully. “You want something to drink?” he asked as he pushed himself out of his chair.

“Yeah, sure,” Zane answered as he rolled his shoulders back and realized he still had his jacket on from his last cigarette break. He shrugged out of it and tossed it over the small rolling tray table that had been pushed to the side.

“Back in a minute,” Deuce said to him as he left, patting Ty’s bare foot as he passed the end of the bed.

Ty groaned as the door to the room clicked when Deuce opened it, and his foot twitched where he’d been touched. Zane shook his head. The last time they’d been together in a hospital room, it had been him in the bed. He remembered it hazily because he’d been so drugged. But he could still see the upset expression on Ty’s face when he’d announced that he had to leave while Zane had to stay. He remembered a short, gentle kiss. And he remembered the guilt on Ty’s face when he’d told Ty to go while he was too drugged to stop him.

Sighing, Zane paced around the bed and sat in the chair crammed between the bed and the window. As he sat down, the chair jarred the bed a little. Ty flailed under the thin hospital sheet, both arms and both feet coming off the bed like a baby who’d been startled. His IV rattled, and the plastic side rails of the bed banged noisily as Ty gasped and tried to sit up.

Zane leaned forward. “Be careful,” he cautioned. He reached to try to catch Ty’s flailing arm and save the IV. “It’s okay; you’re okay.”

Ty hissed as the IV tugged, and he put his hand over the line and looked up at Zane accusingly. Rolling his eyes, Zane sat back. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

Ty responded with a grunt as he looked down at the cast on his hand and the IV in his arm. He looked around at the room and then over at Zane with narrowed eyes. “Hungry,” he muttered, his voice rough and hoarse. “You ate my lunch, huh?” he asked.

“And it was yummy too,” Zane drawled. He was relieved to find that Ty must have remembered the last time he woke when they’d told him what had happened. Ty had not taken it well when he’d been told the cast would have to stay on his hand for a minimum of three weeks, and Zane had been dreading the possibility of having to tell him again. There was a chipped bone in there somewhere, and the doctors wanted the entire hand immobilized just to keep any infections from spreading further as the antibiotics did their job.

Ty glared briefly before allowing a slow smile. His eyes drifted closed, and his shoulders slowly began to relax. “How long have I been asleep?” he asked as he forced his eyes open again.

“Twelve hours, give or take,” Zane said as he leaned back in the chair. “How much better than roadkill do you feel?”

“Depends,” Ty muttered. “Never felt roadkill.”

Zane’s lips quirked as he leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. “Deuce is real torn up,” he said seriously. He wasn’t even going to mention Earl.

Ty’s chin jerked to the side, and he looked at Zane with wide eyes. “Why, what happened?” he asked worriedly.

“Over you, jackass.” Zane bit back the rest of what he was about to say before shaking his head. “It was close. We almost didn’t get you here in time.”

A hurt look flashed through Ty’s eyes before he looked away, concentrating on the hand that was resting in his lap instead. “Oh,” he responded, abashed.

“Yeah, oh.” Zane rubbed at his eyes again. He would have to sleep soon. He hadn’t managed more than a few minutes stolen here and there since reaching the hospital, and he’d never slept more than a couple hours at a time on the mountain. He was still too jumpy, even being so exhausted. All he wanted was Ty in a bed next to him and a week to do nothing. “He wasn’t the only one worried,” he muttered, although he figured Ty wouldn’t appreciate it.

Ty glanced at him and winced. “Wasn’t exactly the relaxing vacation it was supposed to be,” he agreed slowly as he began to poke at the plaster of his cast and pluck at the tufts of gauze sticking out of it.

Zane just had to chuckle. “No, it hasn’t been. Christ.” He shut his eyes and leaned back against the chair.

“Well, it would’ve been,” Ty insisted under his breath. He sniffed and looked around before asking, “They go home?” He sounded forlorn.

“No. Deuce is getting us drinks. Mara’s back home with Chester, but she’s coming back soon. And Earl’s taking a walk.”

Ty sighed and closed his eyes, resting back into the bed. “Taking a walk, huh?” he asked, resigned.

“Would you please look at me?” Zane asked. Ty needed to understand how Earl was reacting to this mess. If he chose to keep lying to him after, that was his business. Ty forced his eyes open and turned his head to look over at Zane blearily. “He’s not angry,” Zane said. “He’s upset about what happened up on that mountain and about what he said to you. All this hospital shit just put some lovely little icing swirls on that apple pie of your mom’s. Understand?”

Ty stared at him blankly for several beats before frowning. “Someone brought pie?” he finally asked in confusion.

Zane stared at him passively for a long moment before standing up and walking around the bed. “All right, lay back down,” he murmured, pulling the pillows back into a pile for Ty to lean against. “I should’ve remembered you’re still drugged to the gills. And I forgot what you’ve said about meds making you funny sometimes.”

Ty made a noise of agreement and carefully turned onto his side, taking advantage of Zane’s help to find a more comfortable position. “They don’t make me funny,” Ty argued. “I’m always funny,” he told Zane as he fingered the IV line. Then he turned his face up to look at Zane. “Do I get any of the pie?” he asked earnestly as he reached up to pull out the oxygen line that rested under his nose.

The rest of the irritation drained out of Zane as he calmly retrieved the line and replaced it. “Yeah, sure,” he answered, straightening out the sheet so it wasn’t bunched up around Ty’s legs. When he was done, he reached out to rest the backs of his fingers against Ty’s forehead.

Ty’s eyes fluttered closed at the contact, and he gave a heavy sigh. He didn’t even try to pull out the oxygen line again. “Tell Dad I’m sorry,” he requested sleepily.

“Don’t worry about that right now,” Zane chided gently as he rubbed along the beard Ty had grown. In his opinion, it was Earl that owed the apology. Only a real fool would call Ty a coward in
any
situation. Ty nodded, but it was obvious that he was already drifting off again. “It’s all right,” Zane murmured, still petting. “It’ll keep.”

Behind him, someone cleared his throat softly to announce his presence, and when Zane turned, Deuce smiled slightly at him. “Got you a Coke,” he said as he held out a bottle. “Was he awake?”

Zane shuffled a little as he straightened, surprised that he’d been caught off guard. But Ty had a way of holding all his attention. He accepted the bottle with a nod. “Thanks,” he said, wondering what, if anything, Deuce might have seen.

Deuce twisted off the cap to his own bottle as he walked around the end of the bed, his head down and a small, worried smile on his face. “It’s more than convenience, isn’t it?” he asked Zane as he sat down.