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“Thanks for coming,” Ty said as they were untying the kid’s motorcycle from Zane’s trailer. Nick was already in the shop, checking in with the guy who was going to be doing the paint work. “It’s not like I think I was gonna get jumped or recruited or whatever if I came here with just Nick, but I don’t know. You’re like, an upstanding citizen and shit. It feels a little safer to have you around for this.”
Even with all their recent togetherness, Zane still hadn’t ever spent much time with Ty’s best friend. This weekend, though, Ty was finally bringing his bike in for its paint job, and he had asked both Nick and Zane to come along. They’d met at one of the smaller Garrett Garages where Zane kept his small flatbed trailer, and at first, Zane thought he’d been invited solely because Ty and Nick were borrowing his gear to get the bike up to the shop. Not once on the trips from one place to the next had he ever felt like a third wheel with the two teens, though. The conversation flowed between them like it should with people who’ve known each other for years, and yet Zane always felt included, even when he didn’t have anything to add to the topic.
Now, he was beginning to understand why else he might have been invited. “Am I here just for respectability?”
“Not just. Also for plausible deniability to help me pretend I don’t know this place is a front.” He finished detaching the last of the ties and looked across the trailer at Zane before adding, completely straight-faced. “And you’re here for eye candy.”
Zane snorted. “Eye candy, huh?”
“Absolutely, gorgeous.” Ty winked, and Zane’s heart stuttered.
Thankfully—thankfully?—the kid walked away before Zane had to come up with a response. It was probably a joke, but it left him unreasonably flustered. Ridiculous. Zane shook his head at himself and followed Ty as the kid headed into the shop to find Nick.
It was always interesting, professionally speaking, for Zane to be in someone else’s autobody shop. He liked to compare layouts and tools and methods because he was always on the lookout for ways to improve things. Today, he had to force himself to focus on anything but the kid walking into the office ahead of him. At first, anyway. Soon enough, the differences between this place and…well, pretty much every body shop he’d ever been in were enough to truly get him to pay attention.
There were too many people, for one. Although there was a car or bike in almost every bay of the shop, there were about twice as many people looking everything over than Zane could justify. On top of that, a disproportionate amount of square footage seemed to be devoted to office space and Zane was sure he’d counted at least six concealed firearms on various “employees” spread out through the garage. After that, Zane made himself stop looking. This, he told himself, was one of those moments when ignorance was both bliss and lifeline.
He picked up the pace to catch up with Ty just before they reached Nick.
“You think you can do it, Chris?” Nick was asking as they approached.
The beefy bald guy standing next to him nodded and waved off the question. “Sure, sure, Nicky. Not an issue.”
“Nicky?” Ty muttered under his breath, clearly incredulous. Zane kept his mouth shut and just promised himself he’d keep a close eye on Ty for as long as they were in this place.
“You the birthday boy?” Chris asked with a wide and seemingly friendly grin.
“That’d be me.” The smile Ty gave him back wasn’t nearly as genuine, but Zane doubted Chris could tell. “The bike’s still out front, though.”
“Talk first, bike later.” Chris pulled a binder down off a shelf and also gestures toward a laptop. “I know you got some things in mind, but we need to nail down the specifics. You’d be amazed exactly how many distinct shades of blue there are.”
The two of them started talking color details and the smaller elements of the design, and even though the artist in Zane really wanted to dig into the nuances of this conversation, he stepped back to where Nick was leaning against the wall. They weren’t alone by any means, not with Chris a few feet away and the rest of the guys out in the garage. This seemed to be the only chance Zane might get to ask a question that had been circling in his mind like a vulture ever since he’d spotted the first concealed gun.
“Hey, Nick?” He waited until the redhead tilted his head in Zane’s direction. “Was the deal you got here worth bringing Ty into one of Paddy’s shops?”
Nick's gaze sharpened in a way Zane hadn't ever seen before, the intensity and suspicion in his eyes making him seem far too old for his age. It was the kind if wariness Zane had seen on some of his friends who'd gone straight into undercover work in the FBI after college, and it had infected their gaze and their mannerisms because they didn't know how to forget, even for a moment, the horrible things they'd seen.
"And just what do you know about that?"
"I...I'm sorry. Ty..." Shit. Zane had fucked up. Worry for Ty getting mixed up in all this made him forget one key detail—he wasn’t supposed to know any of this was an issue. Now he might have just thrown a wrench into their friendship. "He didn't want to say anything about it, but I could tell something was bothering him, and I made him tell me."
“Goddammit, Beaumont.” Nick’s muttered words were almost smothered by the hand he ran over his mouth. The anger only seemed to last a second, though. Almost instantly, he signed and dropped his hand, his expression turning resigned. “I should have expected he’d spill this to you. It’s just how the asshole operates.”
Everything about Nick’s reaction was a surprise. Well, everything after the anger. “To me? Not to his parents or his brother?”
Nick’s gaze flicked toward Ty, probably making sure he was still too occupied with Chris to pay either of them any attention. Then, he turned more toward Zane, leaning in and lowering his voice a little more.
“See, there’s something you have to understand about how Ty’s mind works when it comes to people. Everyone gets classified and placed into a…almost a ranking of sorts.” Nick almost smiled then, seeming amused by his own metaphor. “Think of it like clearance levels in the military. His parents and his grandpa are foreign dignitaries that deserve respect but don’t get let in on any deep state secrets. His brother is a subordinate who needs to be protected from dangerous information.”
“And you?”
“A member of the President’s cabinet. I get to know almost everything.” His smile grew lopsided. “Seems like you do, too.”
Zane had no reason to doubt Nick’s analysis, especially when he and Ty had known each other for so long, but he still found it hard to believe. If that was true and Zane had somehow made it into Ty’s inner circle where, it seemed, only Nick had been admitted before… But, no. Couldn’t be. Because he’d learned Nick’s secret months ago. There was no way Ty could have trusted him that much that long ago, could it?
But he told you he was bisexual when even his parents didn’t know, and that was even longer ago.
Not the same. That kind of secret was common to keep from parents, and Ty had only revealed it when Zane had revealed his own inclinations. It had been a way to keep the moment from becoming awkward.
“You doubt it, but I’m not surprised. Ty has been sure about you since the day you hired him.”
“Sure about me how?”
This time, Nick smirked. “I think that may be the only secret he’s keeping from you right now, and as much as he trusts you, I don’t know you like that. You want to know, you go ask Ty.”
“That’s fair.” Even though it wasn’t anything of the sort. How could Ty only have one secret from Zane? And what the hell was that smile on Nick’s face supposed to mean? He couldn’t blame Nick for holding things back from him—they weren’t anything Zane would call friends, after all—but hearing him say that while they were standing in a place like this set Zane’s teeth on edge.
Maybe this had something to do with that other thing Zane wasn’t thinking about at all or looking at too closely.
“Oh, but Zane?”
“Yeah?”
“When you do ask Ty about that and he tells you everything, you should say yes.”
“Say yes to what?”
“I can’t tell you that yet, man, just—seriously. It’ll seem crazy at first, and you’re gonna think of a million reasons why you should say no, but don’t. In my opinion, you should take the chance and say yes.”
“That’s…that’s disconcertingly vague, Nick. Almost ominous.”
“Yeah, I know.” He ran his thumb over his bottom lip and shrugged. “It’s the best I can do without giving too much away.”
Finally, after twenty more minutes of intense conversation on one side of the room and twenty minutes of silence on the other—at least outside Zane’s head—Ty stepped back to shake hands with Chris and begin to say goodbye.
“I think we’re done until it’s time to pick her up.” Ty strolled up with his hands in the pockets of his jeans and a pleased smile on his face. Clearly, whatever options Chris had given him had met with the kid’s approval. “You both ready to go?”
“You two go. I gotta catch a ride somewhere with one of the guys here.”
A little of the light in Ty’s smile dimmed, but he just shrugged. “I was planning on buying lunch. Your loss.”
“Another time.” Nick’s answering smile seemed a little sad. “Soon as you can fit me in your schedule again.”
“Sure, Nicko, sure.” He held out his hand, and when Nick took hold, Ty pulled his friend into a hug. “Thanks for the birthday present.”
“Anytime. Now get out of here.” Nick shifted until his hand was on Ty’s shoulder. “Enjoy your lunch date.”
Ty muttered something Zane didn’t hear and slapped Nick’s hand away before turning and grabbing Zane’s elbow to drag him out of the garage.