Ty sobered and looked at him apologetically. He patted his hand. “Last time it only took a few hours from start to finish. I just didn’t have any drugs, so I was begging O and Eli to kill me the whole time. This time is much more fun so far.”
Zane moved his other hand so both of them closed around Ty’s. “Maybe some of it will be lingering when I get to take you out of here. You can be a lot of fun when you’re so open to suggestion,” he drawled, making a visible effort to relax.
That got another round of laughter out of Ty, and he had to be careful not to move his legs or roll as he cackled at his lover. “Because nothing says sexy like a catheter.”
Zane finally laughed with him. “Not my kink, but okay.”
Ty was still laughing when a nurse poked her head into the room to check on them. “I see he’s feeling better.”
“Don’t let it fool you,” Zane said, turning his head to look at her. He didn’t let go of Ty’s hand. “He’s got the good drugs.”
“Oh I know it, honey, I gave them to him.”
Ty was still laughing. The nurse came into the room and changed his saline bag, telling him the more he got in him, the easier the stone would pass. She checked his vitals, then moved on, leaving them alone again.
“I almost think I’d rather be gut shot than have to pass a kidney stone, from the sound of it,” Zane said once she disappeared.
“Same here,” Ty muttered. Suddenly, nothing was all that funny anymore.
Nick and the others were in the waiting room, sprawled among the sick and injured, when Zane joined them. Zane had no idea how to proceed. He didn’t want to be around Ty’s Recon team without Ty there as a buffer, and he certainly didn’t want to go to the New Orleans PD and tell them his lover had been cursed by voodoo and wanted them to investigate. He wished Ty had never answered that phone call in Baltimore right now.
“How’s he doing?” Kelly asked.
Zane winced and shrugged. “He’ll be fine. They’ve got him drugged up. Now he just has to wait it out, I guess.”
“The one thing Ty hates doing most,” Digger mused. “Waiting. So poetic.”
“You’re a sick man, D.”
“He ruins every trip,” Nick muttered. He smiled at Zane. “What do we do about the hoodoo thing?”
“What hoodoo thing?” Owen asked.
Digger poked at him. “That voodoo you do, baby!”
Owen batted Digger’s hands away. “Stop it, what is wrong with you?”
“Ty found one of those gris-gris bag things under his pillow this morning,” Nick explained.
“Like the one with the dead girl?” Owen asked.
“He thinks he’s cursed.”
“He wants us to report it to the police,” Zane said with a grimace. The bag was in his pocket, and he pulled it out to look at it.
“He wants to report being cursed to the police?” Owen’s voice had gone flat.
Nick stood and stretched. “I’m going out on a limb and guessing they get that a lot down here.”
“So what do we do? Are we really going to call the police?” Kelly asked, smirking. They were all looking to Nick to make the decision. Zane supposed that was their habit, since Nick had been the team’s second-in-command.
“He does have a point. The dead girl had a hoodoo bag, and whoever put that shit in Ty’s room was slick enough to get in and out without either him or Zane noticing.”
“Did you two stumble into the room groping each other?” Owen asked Zane.
Zane glared at him for a second before deciding it didn’t warrant a response.
“Anyway,” Nick said loudly. “I’ll call the number they left me when I gave my statement last night. Let them decide if they want to pursue it as a lead.”
“What are you going to do about Ty?” Zane asked.
“What about him?”
“You can’t let the cops come here and interview him. They might recognize him.”
Nick glanced toward the doors, chewing on his lip. “We can’t report it without him.”
“Do we have to report it at all?” Kelly asked.
“Ty is drugged up to his ass**le right now; can’t we just tell him we called it in and let it drop?” Digger said.
Nick stared at him for a long moment, then met Zane’s eyes with a shrug. “Works for me.”
Zane rolled his eyes. “We’d be withholding evidence in a homicide investigation.”
“It’s either that or run Ty right into a whole load of questions with no answers.”
“How do we know this bag thing is even connected?” Owen asked. “Are we going on Ty’s assessment? Because he didn’t even see the other one.”
“A valid point,” Kelly said. “He’s also high. I mean . . . y’all remember the last time he was high?” He began to laugh, then cut himself short and schooled his expression when no one else laughed with him.
Nick had his hands stuffed in his pockets, not reacting as each man offered up his opinion. He glanced to Zane again. Zane found himself nodding. He was tired of finding himself embroiled in problems that weren’t his.
He immediately chastised himself. Truth and justice were part of his job. What the hell was he thinking? If that bag had any possibility of being linked to the murder of that girl, they had a responsibility, not only as officers of the law, but also as human beings, to report it.
Nick seemed to read his expression, and it wasn’t the first time Nick had done so since Zane had met him. The man was perceptive as hell. “Okay. You and I will go down there and turn this thing in. If we can keep his name out of it, we will. If not . . . maybe we can use the FBI thing to slip past it. You have your badge?”
“Yeah. What about Ty?”
“We’ll stay here. Make sure he doesn’t die,” Kelly offered, smiling widely.
“That’s . . . that’s comforting, thank you,” Zane drawled.
Kelly shrugged. “I do what I can.”
Ty faded in and out of sleep after Zane left him. It was easier to let whatever was in that IV do its work than to fight it trying to stay lucid. He dozed, never quite sure when he was asleep and dreaming, or when he was awake staring at the ceiling and listening to the beeps and thrums of the busy emergency department.
At times he dreamed of visitors coming to see him. Zane holding his hand. Nick sitting on his bed to laugh at him. Kelly bending over him to check his vitals. Sanchez begging him to wake up and move before they were blown up. Deuce sitting by his bed with his brand new baby girl in his arms. Chester waving a shovel at a nurse.