“So what are they hiding? Something’s off.”
“You’re saying you think they’re dirty?” Henninger asked dubiously.
“I haven’t said anything,” Morrison objected sharply. He looked around them again. “But it looks bad, you know? Oversight is coming in to interview us. We’ll have to tell them what we saw.”
Henninger pursed his lips and glanced at the dividing curtain with a sigh. “I f**king hate Oversight,” he muttered.
“Shit, Henny. You about got your face taken off. Don’t you want to know who did it?” Morrison asked, crossing his arms.
Henninger looked up and narrowed his eyes. “Oversight is highly unlikely to make that discovery, wouldn’t you say?” he asked softly.
“Besides, that’s supposed to be what Grady and Garrett are looking into.”
“You saying we should keep our mouths shut?” Morrison asked quietly.
Henninger stared up at him for a long, silent moment, mulling over the decision. “Yeah,” he finally said with a slow nod. “If they find out Garrett was there, it won’t have come from us, got it?”
“Yeah,” Morrison agreed softly. He stared at him for a long moment before turning his eyes away and shifting uncomfortably. “I hate Oversight, too,” he muttered. “Always picking around in your personal business.”
“Yeah, you should,” Henninger spat. “I swear to God, Mark, if I have to cover for you when you go missing one more time, I’m going to shoot you.
In a fun place. One that bleeds a lot.”
“Christ, Henny, fine. I’ll be more careful with my f**king lunch dates. That work for you?” Morrison asked, looking a little put out.
Henninger rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You could wait ’til you’re off the clock like normal people,” he grumbled in annoyance. “It’s so unprofessional, it’s—”
“Enough! Jesus! You’re on your damn soapbox again. How come you have to be such a goody two-shoes?” Morrison muttered.
“It’s called doing your job, man,” Henninger snapped. “Where the hell did that doctor go?” he asked with a near growl as he resisted the urge to poke at the stitches. “I want to get the f**k out of here.”
Ty wasn’t sure when he’d fallen asleep, but he woke with a little gasp and a flail of his arms, still sitting in the chair he’d dragged in front of T Zane’s map of the crime scenes that was pinned to the wall. When he glanced around the room, he saw that Zane was still asleep, having shifted only slightly, perhaps stopped from moving by any pain when his back flexed.
Ty looked around the room with a frown. He’d been dreaming, but he couldn’t remember anything save for the waking. Had he heard a sound? He grunted and pushed himself out of the chair, walking over silently to kneel next to Zane again.
The agent’s face was softened as he slept, a little flushed, despite being totally uncovered in the room’s cool air. He slept silently, one arm curled around the pillow against his chest, the other under the pillow that was under his head—most likely wrapped around his gun, Ty figured. His short brown hair was mussed, and he was scruffy, a day’s and night’s worth of whiskers growing out. He looked like a different man.
Ty reached up to feel the side of his face with the backs of his fingers.
He didn’t feel fevered, at least.
He had just pulled his hand back when the vibration at his hip caused him to jump guiltily, and he stood quickly and paced away from the bed as he answered his phone.
“What?” he snapped in a low voice.
“Special Agent Grady? What is your status?”
“My status?” Ty asked, feigning confusion.
“There was an explosion at Federal Plaza today. Several witnesses claim you and Special Agent Garrett were present and possibly injured in the—”
“No, we’re both fine,” Ty answered, cutting the voice off. He resisted the urge to ask how Henninger was doing. “Special Agent Garrett and I were in the reading room when the explosion occurred,” he said firmly instead.
“We left to follow a lead and get out of the way of the EMTs.”
“That’s not the information we were given, sir. We were told by several bystanders that Special Agent Garrett was present with an Agent Tim Henninger at the time of the incident, and that he sustained serious injuries.”
“Your information is wrong,” Ty answered matter-of-factly.
There was a short silence and a rustling in the background. Ty assumed this desk jockey wasn’t accustomed to bald-faced lies, and she didn’t quite know what to do with it. “Very well, Special Agent Grady,” she finally said curtly. “We request that you submit observation reports as soon as possible, as we are, of course, investigating the incident. May we speak with Special Agent Garrett, please?”
Ty turned to look down at Zane and raised an eyebrow. “I’ll have him call you as soon as he’s out of the bathroom,” he answered before hanging up.
Zane woke while Ty was talking, and he’d figured out what it was about pretty quickly. When Ty ended the call, he opened his eyes to see the other man watching him. “Bathroom?” he asked, amusement in his sleep-laden rasp.
“I could have said a number of other things that came to mind,” Ty pointed out. “If they know you were hurt, they’ll yank you.”
Zane scrunched up his nose as he slowly pushed himself up, only wincing a little. “Yeah, probably.”
“I figured you didn’t want that,” Ty added pointedly.
“You figured right,” Zane answered, sliding to sit on the end of the bed, carefully shifting his shoulder and back, checking his range of motion.
He was stiff at first, but soon was moving fairly fluidly, the pain a mere annoyance.
“You’re moving better, anyway,” Ty observed. “Guess that stick up your ass helps posture, huh?”
Reaching his arms up behind him to stretch, Zane yawned, still mostly asleep. “You’d be surprised what that stick up my ass helps with.” He stood up, twisted a little and flinched, then started toward the bathroom, rubbing at his eyes.
“Do I even want to know?” Ty called after him.
Zane laughed as he shut the door behind him, but it died off quickly, and he leaned on the sink looking at himself. “Probably not,” he murmured before turning on the water. He stretched again carefully, grimacing, and looked over his shoulder at his back. While most of it looked okay, a couple of the deeper chunks were red and swollen-looking. He pulled open the door and stepped halfway out. “Hey, would you put some more of that stuff on my back? There’s a few....” Zane let the words trail off as he realized Ty was looking at the wall intently like he had heard something. “What?” he asked.