“Well, what do you want?” Ty asked in something close to annoyance. His voice had moved. He was standing right in front of Zane.
Zane twitched in surprise and his eyes flew open. “Christ, Ty,” he complained.
“What?” Ty asked defensively. “I"m hungry!”
“It"s a good thing I"ve calmed down recently,” Zane told him. “If I"d had my gun, I"d have pulled it.”
“What are you talking about?”
Zane shook his head and wiped one hand over his face. “Order deep dish from Isabella"s. They should still be open.”
Ty pressed a phone into Zane"s hand. “Here. I need ibuprofen,”
he said as his voice trailed away.
“Kitchen cabinet next to the sink,” Zane said distractedly as he ran his fingers over the buttons, trying to figure out how to do this. It was easier to do with his eyes closed, even though he couldn"t see anyway. After two aborted attempts, he got the number he had memorized into the phone and made the order for delivery.
He could hear Ty banging around and rattling the bottle of ibuprofen. He heard him open and close the refrigerator. Then he stopped making noise again. A few seconds later, Zane heard the pop and hiss of a carbonated drink being opened just a few feet away.
Zane turned his face that way. “You know, I knew you could be scary. I just didn"t realize how fucking scary. I didn"t hear you move.
At all.”
120 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
“What?” Ty asked in the same distracted, slightly confused tone of voice he"d used earlier. “You want a drink?” he offered belatedly.
“I"ll wait for pizza. I said, you"re so quiet when you move I didn"t hear you at all. Even footfalls in the carpet, and I know how to listen for those things.”
“Oh,” Ty said abashedly. “Sorry.”
“It"s okay. Just confirms that you don"t even have to think about it.” Zane tipped his head, turning an ear toward him. “You going to stand there "til the pizza gets here?”
“Thought about it. Kinda hurts to sit,” Ty admitted.
“Still hurting a lot from the baseball game?” Zane frowned. “You didn"t go into the building and get hurt, did you?”
“Nope,” Ty answered as he sat down. The couch beside Zane shifted as he got comfortable.
Zane still frowned, listening to Ty"s voice carefully, but there was nothing there to clue him in. “I"d like to know what happened. One moment I was walking through this store to check the storeroom, the next I"m waking up to total black.”
“There was an explosion,” Ty told him. He grunted heavily, and the next thing Zane knew, Ty"s head was resting on his thigh. “About a dozen agents and cops were injured. Six of ours in the hospital. No fatalities, as far as I know.”
Zane"s frown faded, and he moved his hand to gently settle atop Ty"s head, stroking lightly. “You saw it from the truck?”
“Yeah,” Ty answered softly. He stretched, set his drink on the table, then settled back against Zane. “You were carried out by a very large fireman named Tank,” he informed Zane in amusement.
“Tank?”
“That"s the guy who ran me over.”
“Oh yeah, met him at the field briefly.” Zane slid his fingers down over Ty"s cheek. “Got about half an hour on the pizza. Why don"t you catch a quick nap?”
“You gonna be okay?” Ty asked him, not even trying to argue.
Divide & Conquer | 121
“I"m staying right here,” Zane said, his hand settling on Ty"s shoulder so his fingers flickered along Ty"s temple through his hair. He felt Ty"s arm move, and he imagined Ty was probably putting his forearm over his eyes like he did when he was worn out.
“Wake me if you need anything,” Ty mumbled.
“Okay,” Zane murmured as he rested his neck a little more comfortably along the back of the couch and closed his eyes. He tuned into Ty"s breathing as Ty relaxed, smiling as he
felt
Ty go to sleep, and after a quiet minute, Zane carefully shifted, pulled out the cell phone a helpful nurse had saved from his suit, and activated the voice command function.
“Call Deuce Grady.”
Did you say “Call Deuce Grady”?
“Yes.”
Dialing.
Zane took a deep breath and tried to let it out slowly as the phone rang on the other end, somewhere in Philadelphia. Ty didn"t even twitch in his lap.
“Hello,” Deuce answered after the second ring. There was nothing terse or clipped in the way he answered the phone, just another trait of Deacon Grady"s that was wildly unlike his brother.
“Hey, Deuce,” Zane managed, pretty happy that his voice came out sounding mostly normal.
“Hey, Zane, how"s it going?” Deuce responded easily.
Zane swallowed. “Not so great,” he admitted.
“What"s wrong?” Deuce demanded, his voice losing the laid-back quality and becoming more urgent. “Is Ty hurt? Are you hurt? Why didn"t Ty call me to tell me? Is he even conscious? What happened?”
Zane resisted the urge to laugh as he gently petted Ty"s hair. “Ty is fine. He"s asleep. He wasn"t the one hurt this time.”
“Oh,” Deuce muttered, not sounding at all embarrassed over his outburst. “But you"re hurt? Are you okay? What happened?”
122 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
“An explosion happened. A surprise one,” Zane answered. “I"m okay. Mostly. No limbs missing or anything,” he tried to joke.
“A surprise explosion,” Deuce repeated slowly. He sounded like he might be writing that down. “Interesting,” he drew out under his breath. “As opposed to a not-surprise explosion. And it did what, exactly?”
“Apparently some of the parts in my head got a little scrambled,”
Zane said awkwardly. “I can"t see.”
“You can"t see what?”
“Anything. I can"t
see
. I"m blind.” Zane was pretty proud that his voice didn"t shake or break upon saying it out loud like that.
“You"ve lost your vision,” Deuce summarized in a clinical tone, not an ounce of pity or apology. “Is this a permanent thing?” he asked more carefully. He seemed to be wavering between psychiatrist and friend as they spoke.
Several seconds passed before Zane realized he hadn"t answered.
“They don"t know,” he murmured, recalling bits and pieces of what the doctors had said.
“I see.” Deuce was silent for a long moment. “Let me ask you this, Zane: are you calling because you need a friend or because you need a shrink?”
“I want to talk to you, Deuce, not Dr. Grady,” Zane said, knowing he sounded a little plaintive. “I know we"ve sort of blurred the lines along the way.”
“Then let me just say: dude, that sucks,” Deuce drew out with feeling.
Zane cracked a grin and laid his hand on Ty"s chest so he could feel it rise and fall evenly. “No shit, man.”
“Are you with Ty or are you staying alone?”
“We"re at my apartment. I know my way around here,” Zane said.
“I just got out of the hospital. I don"t even know what time it is.”
Deuce hummed thoughtfully. “Did Ty tell you our great-grandmother Elsie was blind? She had this watch that you could flip up Divide & Conquer | 123
and feel to tell time. Ty might have it. But then, that was twenty years ago. There"s also a button on your phone that will do that, I think.”
“We"ve not had much chance to talk. I was really out of it for a while. It"s still… sinking in,” Zane said slowly. “The panic is starting to creep up on me, and I"m trying to let him sleep a little.”
“I can imagine,” Deuce said sympathetically. “Doesn"t do any good to tell you not to panic, either.”
Zane"s laugh had a little edge to it. “Right.” He blinked several times, resisting the urge to rub at his dry eyes. The doctors had said over and over that it wouldn"t help and would probably hurt. But he wasn"t sure where the bag from the hospital was, and even if he did know, he wasn"t going to wake up Ty to get to it. “This… isn"t good,”
he said, and his voice definitely shook.
“What can I do to help you, Zane?” Deuce asked in a gentle voice.
“I just… not much scares me anymore, you know?” Zane tried to explain. “But this….”
“You don"t deal well with uncertainty,” Deuce observed almost clinically. “Not many people do.
Why
does it scare you?”
“I can"t work if I"m blind. What am I going to do with myself? I couldn"t stand the idea of someone having to—” Zane cut himself off before his voice rose any further. He wouldn"t be a charity case. He just couldn"t stomach it.
“Take care of you?” Deuce finished for him. “Are those the only reasons? Your job and your pride?”
“No,” Zane murmured as he spread his fingers over Ty"s chest.
“Those aren"t the only reasons.”
“Spill, Zane,” Deuce ordered. “Get it out now.”
The words balled up in Zane"s throat. He was talking to Ty"s brother, for heaven"s sake. “I"m afraid,” he whispered. “I"m afraid it"ll change things.”
“What things?” Deuce asked. “Relationship things?”
“Oh yeah,” Zane answered in a rush.
124 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
“You think my brother will dump you because you"re blind,”
Deuce surmised in a troubled voice.
Zane hesitated. “I don"t want to think that. It"s….” He grasped for a word. “Disloyal.”
“Disloyal,” Deuce repeated curiously. “To whom? To Ty?”
“Yes, to Ty.” Zane frowned. “Who else is there?”
Deuce hummed thoughtfully. “There"s you, Zane,” he continued after a pause.
“Me?” Zane shook his head as he inhaled deeply and sighed. “I don"t follow.”
Deuce sighed, long and loud. “If there"s one thing my big brother taught me, it"s that sometimes you have to look out for number one.
Don"t worry so much about what he"ll do or what he"ll think.”
Zane sighed. “Well, until just recently I was the only one looking out for me, so I"m kind of used to that part of it.”
“Tell me something, Zane,” Deuce said in a sly voice. “Is that really the biggest thing you"re worried about right now? That Ty might leave you?”
Zane pressed his lips together hard. The tone of Deuce"s voice made him a little suspicious. But Deuce was never cruel, even if he did like to tease sometimes. Zane was worried about so many things he couldn"t even start to rank them, but Ty—and whether Ty would still want him after such a radical change—really stood out. Zane figured it was a reflection of how much their relationship had developed. The next words were out before he thought them through. “He said he loves me.”
“I know he does,” Deuce assured him with a laugh. “I"m surprised he told you, but I"m glad he did. So, keeping that in mind, I"ll ask you again: is that really the biggest thing you"re concerned about?”
Zane closed his eyes, even though it made no difference in the darkness, and really considered the question. What did he really have?
His job, and Ty. If it came down to it and he lost his job, he was relatively sure he could flounder his way into something else to do, somehow. But if he lost Ty, Zane just wasn"t sure he"d care about Divide & Conquer | 125
anything else. The slight pangs of pain he felt whenever he caught Ty looking at him in a particular way came more often now, and it was starting to make him want things he wasn"t sure he could handle.
“Damn it,” he swore under his breath, hoping Ty really was asleep.
“Yes.”
“Well, I"d say that"s pretty good, then,” Deuce said happily. “I mean, as far as problems go. Ty"s too stubborn to leave you if he loves you.”
Zane let out a groan that reflected both frustration and relief. It helped so much just to hear that. “So I"m stressing over what"s probably nothing. Paranoia.”
“I wouldn"t call it paranoia. More… spinning your mental wheels. I mean, has he given any indication that he might leave now?
What"s he been doing?”
“He"s been great, not that there was anything he could do in the hospital. But he didn"t leave me alone,” Zane said. “Was there when I woke up, sat with me there, got the doctors to let me leave, and got me home. All that aside, I really don"t know what to do with myself. In theory? It"s temporary. I could wake up tomorrow just fine. Or it could be permanent. Not one doctor of five could tell me anything more than
„We just have to wait and see,"” he muttered, “which was kind of cruel in itself.”
“Wait and see. Makes you wonder what they tell deaf people,”
Deuce muttered. “Oh God, that was horrible. Forget I said that.”
“You know how many idioms there are that have something about „seeing" or „sight" in them?” Zane asked, letting a little waspishness into his voice. He groaned aloud to punctuate the annoyance. He could hear Deuce trying not to laugh. “I"ll go nuts if I have to sit around here doing nothing,” Zane added. “It"s not even day one, and I"m already antsy. And that"s with being worried about running into a wall.”
“So do something,” Deuce suggested. “Who blew you up? Can"t you plot revenge or something? Any open cases you can mull over?”
“We were investigating a report of a suspicious package,” Zane said as he started thinking over their caseload. “Although I wouldn"t be 126 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
averse to a little plotting. As for cases, it"s not like I"m assigned to Financial Crimes, tracing forgers or art thieves through paperwork.
Criminal involves more than a little legwork.”
“So… why was there a bomb there?” Deuce asked.
Zane shook his head, belatedly remembering he had to speak.