Fish & Chips (2 page)

Zane rolled into a crouch and twisted as he stood, his heel connecting with the back of Ty"s knee, forcing it to collapse as he punched Ty in the kidney.

Clancy winced. “I"m thinking Garrett can kick ass just fine,” she murmured.

They watched as Ty fell to his knees with a grunt of anger and pain, and then he just as quickly rolled and struck out, taking Zane"s legs out from under him, catching Zane"s knees between his two calves like a pair of scissors. The crowd groaned when Zane hit the mat a second time, and Ty pounced on him, getting an arm around his neck and rolling him up between his knees, trying to immobilize him.

“Should we stop this before Ty snaps his neck?” Clancy asked in morbid amusement. She and Alston shared a look, Alston privately thinking that he wouldn"t put it past Ty to do it. They shrugged at each other negligently, but then both winced when Zane somehow rocked forward and pulled Ty half over his shoulder before shoving him off to one side. Ty rolled away nimbly and sprang to his feet almost instantly.

“We need walls, partner,” Zane sniped as he got to his feet.

“Something for you to splat against.”

Ty shook his head and reached up to the strap of the protective headgear required in the ring. He yanked at it and ripped the padded helmet off, tossing it over the ropes to land at the feet of several of the agents watching. He didn"t say anything to Zane, just held out one taped hand and gestured for him to bring it.

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“Oh fuck, we"re going to have to fill out paperwork about this too,” Alston muttered to himself.

Zane"s eyes narrowed, and he cocked his head to one side before doing the same, pulling off his own helmet and sending it skidding off the mat to thunk to the floor. “What"s wrong, Grady?” he asked ruefully, raising his fists. “Cat got your tongue?”

Everyone watching groaned at the verbal jab. They"d all heard the story of what had happened to Ty and Zane in the mountains of West Virginia. Ty merely smirked without attacking. One of the fists he held up and ready was badly scarred from the cougar bite he"d received several weeks ago and the two subsequent surgeries he"d undergone to fix the damage. Zane"s taunt was a low blow.

Without warning, Zane lunged, leading with his left shoulder to shove all his weight into Ty, propelling him toward the ropes. It seemed to be what Ty had been waiting for, though, because he planted a foot and used Zane"s momentum to lift him completely off his feet and slam him down into the mat. The entire ring shook again, and a loud groan rippled through the audience.

This time when Zane was down, Ty didn"t try to merely immobilize him. He got in four or five rapid punches to the midsection before one wicked left to Zane"s unprotected face.

Shouts of protest came from the crowd, but no one moved to stop it. Zane balled up and took the clearly painful hits, and when Ty reared back for a last shot, Zane got one knee pulled back and shoved a foot into Ty"s gut, hard, before he started scrambling away from him. Ty stumbled backward, but then he attacked again, too quickly for Zane to get away.

“I think he"s getting pissed,” Alston observed drily.

“If Ty was pissed, Garrett"d be dead already,” Perrimore pointed out in a flat voice.

Another round of pained groans went up from the small crowd of watching agents as Ty tackled Zane and straddled him, pinning him with his knees.

“That hurt, dammit!” Ty growled at his partner as he held him to the mat by his neck.

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“Fuck you, Meow Mix,” Zane hissed back as he got one hand on Ty"s shoulder—the arm holding him down—having just enough arm length to keep Ty from totally throttling him. He balled up his other fist and punched Ty in the gut. Everyone heard the thump of fist hitting solid muscle, but it didn"t dislodge him.

Ty turned his shoulder, slamming his elbow against the side of Zane"s head before grabbing him by the neck again with one hand and using the other hand to fend off Zane"s attempts at retaliation.

Anyone who knew Ty knew that he wasn"t trying to kill his partner, though. Cause brain damage, maybe. But not kill him.

“Guys, this is too much,” Clancy finally objected as she raised both her hands.

“You gonna get in there to separate them?” Alston asked incredulously as he watched Zane continue to fight off Ty"s other hand while bucking under him, trying to throw him off.

Clancy shook her head, and they watched in morbid amusement as Zane finally, somehow, got some leverage. The two men rolled across the mat in a badly orchestrated tumble, each man too stubborn to release the other as they grappled.

“What the hell is going on here?” an irritated voice bellowed from the doorway of the main gym.

The crowd of agents scattered. Ty and Zane stopped mid-throttle, looking up at their superior like two kids caught roughhousing in the living room.

Alston edged away toward the weight room, stopping just behind the doorway to peer around the corner with Clancy and two other curious agents.

In the middle of the ring, Ty turned his head to look at Special Agent in Charge Dan McCoy, who was glowering at them from several yards away. “Hey, Mac,” Ty greeted innocently as he straddled his bleeding partner. “Come down to work the glutes?” he asked with a sincere cock of his head.

Zane gasped for air and rapped his knuckles hard against Ty"s chest as he finally pried Ty"s fingers from his throat.

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“You two, my office, now,” McCoy ordered as he pointed his finger at them. “If you can kick the shit out of each other, then you"re ready for your next assignment,” he muttered as he turned and stalked away.

As soon as McCoy was gone, someone from somewhere in the cavernous workout room wolf-whistled at Ty and Zane and proceeded to applaud the performance they"d given.

Ty stood and took a bow as Zane stalked off toward the locker rooms. Alston snorted and looked down at Perrimore with a shrug.

“Better them than us.”

“I hear that,” Perrimore muttered as he returned to the weights.

ZANE let his head loll back and lifted one hand to gently prod his split lip. “Ow.”

“Whine about it. It"ll make it better,” Ty offered as he stood in front of his locker, his back to Zane, and unwrapped the tape from his hands with jerky, irritated movements.

“Bite me,” Zane muttered as he dug into his locker for a towel before starting in on the tape on his own hands. He spared an evil glance for Ty. “Teaching me to advance in a fight is a bad idea.”

“Teaching you to fight at all is an exercise in futility,” Ty responded in a matter-of-fact tone. “Luckily for you, I enjoy things like banging my head against a wall.”

“I enjoy banging your head against a wall too,” Zane replied as he tossed the balled-up tape at a nearby trash can. He let a small smile quirk his lips as he sat on the bench to unlace his shoes.

“Shut up,” Ty grunted at him. But even though his back was still turned to him, Zane could hear the smile in his voice. “And cut it out with the damn cat jokes, huh? They"re starting to catch on.”

“Fine, fine. No reason to get catty about it,” Zane told his partner with a barely concealed grin.

“A for effort,” Ty conceded charitably.

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Zane kicked his shoes into his locker before pulling his T-shirt over his head and inspecting his abs and ribs. “You had to go for the ribs, didn"t you?” he said, his voice pained. He"d had his ribs cracked so many times he figured they might as well be superglued at this point.

“Bastard,” he tacked on before shucking his socks and standing with his towel in hand.

“You leave them open,” Ty informed him. “Because you cover your head and cry like a little girl.”

Zane huffed. This was one of the problems with being Ty"s partner. While they were trying to learn to live with each other without significant personal injury, that didn"t necessarily carry over to their sparring sessions. “I didn"t cover once today,” he asserted. “Backed off, hell yes. Covered, no.”

Ty glanced over his bare shoulder and smirked. “Granted,” he allowed. “Think I should shower before McCoy hands us our asses, or should I go in smelling like victory?” he posed grandly as he opened up his locker and tossed his sweaty T-shirt into his gym bag.

Zane bit the inside of his lip against the first answer that came to mind as he deliberately looked his lover up and down, and he spent a few seconds revising what he could say without risking another smack upside the head. “I don"t believe McCoy would appreciate your…

expression of „victory".” McCoy wouldn"t appreciate Ty"s finely tuned musculature or his ass either, but Zane was more than happy to pick up the slack in that area.

“Quit ogling me, sidekick,” Ty warned without having to turn around. He grabbed for his shower caddy and a towel, and with one last smirk and wink at Zane, he headed for the showers.

Zane spared a moment to wish the locker room weren"t so busy this afternoon. He"d reached a point where Ty"s attitude and cockiness were more turn-ons than annoyances. They were harbingers of Ty"s playful good mood, which more often than not led to copious amounts of rough, passionate sex.

Zane decided he"d wait to shower until Ty was done. He could only deal with so much bodily temptation in one day.

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THEY sat at McCoy"s conference table, behaving themselves and attempting to appear abashed.

Ty figured Dan McCoy knew him better than that, though. He was probably still getting a read on Zane, though, just like everyone else in the Baltimore office. They"d only been actively assigned to Baltimore for a few weeks now. Ty was at home. Zane was still an unknown to most everyone, despite the stories that had filtered through about their past escapades.

McCoy knew enough to know they were up to no good, anyway.

“I hope you got it out of your systems,” McCoy finally said to them in annoyance.

“We were just putting on a demonstration,” Ty explained easily.

“Zane calls it „How to Get Your Ass Kicked". It goes over real well with the rookies,” he drawled, overly pleased with himself.

Zane just sat there looking cool and comfortable in his well-fitted suit. He had a small smile on his face as he shook his head slightly at his partner.

“Shut up, Grady,” McCoy requested flatly.

“Right,” Ty muttered. He shifted in his seat and leaned forward.

“You said you had an assignment for us?” he asked eagerly. He would take anything over the “getting up to speed” deskwork they"d been doing the last three weeks. Despite one blip up in the mountains of West Virginia, the last eight weeks of Ty"s life had been god-awful boring. Even Zane couldn"t keep Ty"s wavering attention for very long unless he had something shiny to wave around. Ty needed to be
doing
something or he began to go stir crazy.

McCoy"s lips curved into a slow, slightly malicious smile. “I do,”

he answered. “Corbin and Del Porter,” he said as he retrieved a file.

“Who?” Ty asked, unimpressed.

McCoy smiled and reached to the middle of the table for a little white remote. He turned slightly and pushed a button, causing a small flat screen to flick on. A picture of a large cruise ship appeared on the screen bolted to the wall.

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“Oh shit,” Ty found himself blurting before he could stop himself.

“This,” McCoy continued as if he hadn"t heard Ty, “is the
Queen
of the Mediterranean
,” he told them with a wave of his fingers at the ship. “It is currently docked in Baltimore, preparing for a fifteen-day cruise to the Caribbean.”

“You"re not making us take a vacation, are you?” Ty asked in something close to panic.

Zane"s chin snapped up in alarm. “Jesus, Grady, we agreed not to even
think
that word, much less say it.”

“Corbin and Del Porter,” McCoy said loudly to curtail any more conversation, “were supposed to be on that ship tomorrow. But we finally got enough on these two to detain them.” He slid a file toward Ty and leaned back in his seat with a grin. “There"s a laundry list of no-nos we can pin on them with a little more evidence, and we"ll get it soon enough. What we want from you is something concrete on a few of their contacts.”

Ty scratched his head absently as he looked over the file. The two men were implicated in numerous high-dollar thefts: art, antiquities, rare gems. All stuff that was hard to steal and harder to fence. It was difficult to tell whether they were collectors or middlemen, but either way, if the FBI leaned on them, it could produce a lot of information on a lot of different high-end thieves and dealers.

But Ty and Zane weren"t leaners. They didn"t interrogate suspects who weren"t part of their own investigations. They didn"t know anything about this case and would be lost if they were asked to do the interrogation. Information wasn"t why they were here. He glanced to his side, where Zane shrugged one shoulder, having obviously come to the same conclusion.

“I"m not sure I understand why we"re here,” Ty said in confusion as he gestured between himself and Zane, still looking down at the file.

“You are here because you two roughly match the physical description of the two men we now have in custody,” McCoy answered with a wide grin.

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Ty looked up at him suspiciously. McCoy seemed to be enjoying himself too much for this to be good news for Ty or Zane. Zane leaned forward in his seat, frowning, though he didn"t speak up.