Sticks & Stones

by Abigail Roux

  “You keep your feet, Staff Sergeant,” Earl told Ty, pointing to the ground.

  “Yes, Gunny,” Ty managed to say in response, his voice a rough and tortured whisper.

  Earl nodded curtly before turning and heading back down the narrow path. Deuce glanced from Ty to Zane, who looked just as unhappy as before, but that anger he’d held in his rigid shoulders was gone. He must have figured out what Earl was doing too and realized it was working better than anything they could have done. Deuce placed a calming hand on Zane’s arm. Earl’s words had gotten Ty to his feet. That was what mattered for now.

  TY’S entire body was on fire. It felt like a sunburn that emanated from his fingers and burned out of control wherever clothing touched him. He burned, but he was so cold he had to clutch his heavy coat around him to keep his teeth from chattering, and even then he was shaking and shivering uncontrollably. The rational portion of his mind, the one that was trying to figure out how to survive, told him that the shivering was a waste of his energy. But then, so was walking. And breathing.

  He distantly recognized that it wasn’t the cool wind that made him shiver. He was going into septic shock. It had happened much faster than he’d realized it would, but a part of his addled mind told him that the exertion of trying to get off the mountain was sending the poisoned blood racing through his body faster than it would have if he’d been lying in a bed being given sponge baths by a pretty little nurse in white Crocs.

  He concentrated on the footfalls of the man in front of him. He thought it might be his father, but if he was wrong he risked calling the Gunny “Dad,” so he just kept his mouth shut and tried not to fall.

  Keep your feet. Keep his feet, they’d told him. It was shameful, not being able to keep his feet in front of the others because he’d been bitten by a kitty cat.

  Keep your feet, Meow Mix.

  If he fell, no one could carry him. Sanchez and O’Flaherty would drag him out, but… no. No, they weren’t here. Elias Sanchez was dead, shot over a year ago in New York City by a serial killer Zane Garrett had later killed. And Nick O’Flaherty was a cop in Boston, discharged just like Ty had been, thrown into the real world to make his own way. This wasn’t a Recon mission. He had to keep his wits about him. He had to grasp at a thread of reality and hold onto it.

  Zane Garrett. Zane was reality. Zane was here, and he was clear enough for Ty to hold onto. Zane appeared at his side from time to time as they walked, taking his arm as they went over particularly rough terrain, but then he would move away again. Still, Ty could grasp at that thread and hold it.

  Ty’s steps finally slowed, faltered. He stopped walking and closed his eyes, his head pounding. He wavered as a rush of noise assaulted his ears, and heat swept through him in sickening pulses. When he opened his eyes again, the edges of his vision were dark and sparkling.

  His father turned around and looked at him, the man’s steel gray eyes hard and disapproving when he realized Ty had stopped moving. “You keep walking, Marine,” Earl said to him.

  Ty’s entire body trembled, and the waves of heat kept coming, but he swallowed hard and nodded obediently. He took another agonizing step, and his knee gave out. He sank to the ground against his will, his knees and his one good hand hitting the rocky ground hard as he tried to catch himself.

  He tried to push himself up and failed.

  “Ty!” Earl cried in alarm as he darted toward him. He no longer looked stern or angry, just as worried and scared as any father about to lose his son.

  “Yes, sir,” Ty managed as he tried to push himself back to his feet yet again. He lost his balance on the slight rise of the embankment, toppling over as his father caught him. He rolled to his back, knowing with a certainty that came with encroaching death that he would not be getting back up under his own power.

  “They’re coming for us,” Earl assured him as he pulled Ty into his arms and sank slowly to the ground along with him. “I can hear ’em now, boy, just stay with us.”

  In the floating distance, he could hear shouts, but Ty found that he couldn’t move. He fought to stay conscious. Shame washed through him, just as painful as the fever that ravished him. He had failed spectacularly in front of the only person he’d ever wanted to make proud of him. But even that shame wasn’t powerful enough now to get him to his feet.

  “Stay with us, son,” Earl murmured into his ear pleadingly. “Hold on.”

  “Grady, don’t you fucking dare give up after I dug you out of that basement,” Zane growled from somewhere close. “You didn’t give up then, and you won’t give up now.”

  Ty’s eyes fluttered open, searching for Zane’s eyes. Above him, the sky was a startling blue. The scrub pine was a bright, almost neon green, and the few trees in view boasted brilliant leaves of orange and yellow and red. Ty had never seen such colors in his life. It was beautiful. The faces looking down on him looked like airbrushed photos, taken and perfected and stylized until the colors were stark contrasts of highlights and lowlights, making them look ethereal.

  He met Zane’s dark eyes, the eyes he’d been searching for. “Zane,” he managed to gasp. He tried to think of something to say, an apology for dragging the man up here and thanks for all he’d done. I love you. But nothing came to his lips. He just closed his eyes, seeing Zane’s face imprinted in the darkness. He held to the material of Earl’s coat, trying to keep himself from spinning and swaying on the ground. “Mountain’s moving,” he told them all in alarm, the words slurred horribly.

  “Ty,” Zane barked, his voice a mixture of anger and desperation. “Open your eyes,” he ordered. “Get up!”

  Ty did open his eyes, but when he tried to sit up, his limbs wouldn’t cooperate. He put every ounce of his energy and will into getting off the ground, but he realized with a sinking sensation that he hadn’t even managed to lift his head.

  “Get up, Beaumont, it ain’t your time yet!” Earl called to him, sounding far away and gauzy.

  He was dying. After all the things he’d been through that could and probably should have killed him, he had to go and get attacked by a goddamn mountain lion. Someone somewhere was going to find that funny.

  Ty’s eyes focused on the impossibly blue sky overhead as he felt himself slipping away, and the pain faded too. He idly thought that angel wings sounded a whole lot like the rotors of a chopper, and he’d really have liked the chance to tell Zane that.

  Chapter 16

  ZANE reflected on the past painful twelve hours as he walked tiredly down the long, door-lined hall. Mara Grady, with an assist from Chester, had lit a fire under the local search-and-rescue people as soon as they hadn’t shown up on the day they’d planned—she’d actually mentioned a bad feeling; Zane was pitifully glad that she hadn’t ignored it—and several rangers with dogs had found them on the mountain just as Ty collapsed. A rescue helicopter had been in their wake, and Ty had been airlifted off the mountain to this hospital in Charleston.

  He’d barely made it.

  The doctors assured Earl and Mara that Ty was now out of danger. He’d woken once so far to be told what had happened, only to immediately fall back into unconsciousness.

  Zane turned the corner at the end of the hall and slowed as he saw Earl outside the door to Ty’s hospital room. To Zane’s eyes and satisfaction, Earl Grady seemed to be agonizing over the state of his son. The elder Grady stood with his arms crossed and his head down as he rubbed at his newly shaved chin and frowned, looking into the room where his son slept. He hadn’t gone too far from the room, but he hadn’t gone inside much, either. It was like he couldn’t make up his mind. As far as Zane was concerned, he could stay outside. He wasn’t feeling too charitable toward Earl Grady. If the man hadn’t gone overboard insulting Ty—and fuck, Earl couldn’t have thought of a worse thing to call Ty than a coward—then his son, Zane’s partner, wouldn’t be lying practically dead in this goddamn hospital.

  Even though it had been Earl’s unusual methods that kept Ty walking much longer than h
e should have been able, Ty’s father had still been seriously out of line. Zane would never wish him real harm, but he seriously hoped the man understood and regretted what he’d done.

  “Everything okay?” Zane asked as he stopped next to the older man, meaning it in general terms.

  Earl turned his head slightly and gave him a weak smile and a nod. He turned back to look into the room, covering his mouth with his hand and sighing. Ty was asleep in the bed, hooked up to several IVs and his color looking better than he had even an hour before. Deuce sprawled in a chair beside the bed, snoring softly. Zane had just walked Mara downstairs to the truck; she was heading home with Chester to pack them all some clean clothes and would return in a couple hours.

  “Do you know why Ty joined the FBI?” Earl asked Zane abruptly.

  Zane shrugged as he leaned against the doorframe. He had lots of little pieces to Ty’s puzzle: the “official” story of why he’d left the Marines, which was complete bullshit according to Ty; that his last partner had been killed in the line of duty, even though Ty had tried to take the bullet for him; that he’d known Dick Burns since he was in diapers.

  “Not exactly,” Zane answered.

  Earl glanced at him and smiled sadly. “He joined the FBI ’cause his daddy’s best friend asked him to,” he told Zane softly, looking back into the room to make certain Ty and Deuce were both still asleep.

  Burns. Zane didn’t comment; if Earl needed to spill his guts, he could do it. But Zane was the wrong person to be looking to for any sort of absolution. He didn’t forgive and forget easily, not when he could still see the pain in Ty’s eyes.

  Earl nodded in response to his silence, his eyes still on his sons. “Richard was paying me a visit one weekend a while back, and he was talking about work,” he told Zane. “He didn’t like what he was doing. Said he didn’t trust any of the agents he was working with to get the job done. I remember sitting there and him looking at me with defeat on his face. He was talking about early retirement. He said to me, ‘Earl, if I had just one good man I could count on, I could get a lot of good done’.”

  Earl swallowed heavily, cocked his head, and then turned and met Zane’s eyes. “I told him where to find Ty.”

  “You say that like you think it was a mistake,” Zane observed, shaking his head.

  “It didn’t give Ty much choice, me sending Richard to him,” Earl answered flatly.

  “No. It didn’t.”

  Earl nodded again, as if knowing he deserved the harsh words. “Richard and I never gave a thought to what he wanted or to how dangerous it was,” he said, the words quiet and solemn. “We just… we just thought Ty could handle it and carried on from there. And Ty… he’d do anything to meet what he felt like were our expectations,” he told Zane as he lowered his head in apparent shame and turned away from the door, beginning to walk slowly down the hall. “Even when he was a young’un, he never made an excuse not to follow me into those mines. He was scared to death of ’em,” he told Zane with a tremble in his voice. Zane realized the older man was on the verge of tearing up. “I almost lost him today,” he said, almost to himself. He gave a soft snort and shook his head. “A damn wildcat,” he murmured.

  “I guess he figured he’d done everything spectacular already,” Zane said, looking over his shoulder to glance inside the room. He didn’t have to study Earl to know the man was worried. He was worried, himself. Zane frowned. As angry as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to be cold and cruel to a father so obviously torn up over mistakes he’d made with his son.

  How many harsh words had Zane himself said to Ty to light a fire under the man? Anyone who knew him knew that the best way to make Ty dangerous was to make him angry. It made him a useful weapon.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Zane finally settled on. He didn’t want to think about the alternative. He wondered if this was how Ty had felt when it had been him three-quarters dead in a hospital bed. Right now he felt helpless. He was hurting. He was scared that he might have lost something he wasn’t even sure he’d had, and there hadn’t been a damn thing he could’ve done about it. “He’s strong,” he said to Earl confidently.

  Earl stopped with his back to Zane, and he looked up at the ceiling of the hallway. “I know he is,” he responded with a hint of pride in his voice. “But he thinks that’s enough,” he said as he turned and met Zane’s eyes again. “I’m relieved to see he has a good man with him,” he told Zane solemnly. “Someone to watch his back.”

  Zane flinched in surprise. That wasn’t something he’d have expected to hear from Earl Grady.

  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.”