Stars & Stripes

“Ty?” Zane said carefully as the rest of the family joined him.



Ty’s gaze took them all in before landing on Zane again. “I didn’t know they had elephants in Texas.”



“What?” Zane asked. Had Ty simply lost his tenuous grip on reality in the twenty-plus hours he’d been unconscious?



“I feel like one sat on me.” Ty rubbed at his chest and swallowed with difficulty. He sniffed at the air. “Is that steak?”



Zane laughed and went to hug him. Ty rested his chin on Zane’s shoulder and hugged him back. Every muscle in him that was usually hard and tense felt relaxed when Zane touched him.



“Are you okay?”



Ty nodded. “How long was I out?”



“Almost a whole day.”



Ty closed his eyes. “Like the worst acid trip ever.”



Zane laughed and hugged him harder, just because he could.



“You told me your hovercraft was full of eels.”



“What?”



“In Dari.”



“That’s stupid,” Ty said.



“Well,” Beverly said, prim and proper as ever. “As glad as we all are that Mr. Grady is well, we don’t want dinner to go cold, now, do we?” She gave a little clap and turned on her heel to head back to the dining room.



Sadie went skipping after her grandmother, but the rest of them ignored her and gathered to greet Ty. Annie hugged him fiercely, thanking him and almost tearing up when she apologized for leaving him to be eaten by the tiger. Mark gripped his hand and met his eyes, giving him a mere nod that Ty returned. It must have been a Marine thing, because that was the only exchange they shared.



Harrison gave his shoulder a squeeze as he shook his hand, telling him he was glad to see him up and around.



Beverly called from the dining room, sounding tense.



They all shuffled off after her, grumbling mutinously. Ty watched them go. “I think your mom would do really well with a tranq to the ass,” he said flatly.



Zane couldn’t help but smile.



“A nice parting shot from me to her. What do you think?”



“I think you need food. And then a shower.”



They’d cleaned him up after making sure he’d live, taking great pains to make sure they hadn’t missed any injuries. Zane had put fresh clothes on him, borrowed from Harrison, so he’d at least be clean when they put him to bed. But he’d still been dragged across the ground by a tiger and not showered afterward.



Ty slipped his arm around Zane’s waist. “How’d you know what I said if it was in Dari?”



Zane grinned, relieved that Ty’s mind was working well enough to ask that. “Called O’Flaherty, had him translate. I was afraid you were trying to tell me something important.”



“Great.”



“I called McCoy too, told him what was going on.”



Ty winced.



“He asked if you were catatonic,” Zane said, voice trembling as he tried not to laugh.



“That’s not funny.”



“It kind of is.”



“I’ll never hear the end of this shit.”



Zane laughed and squeezed him close. Ty patted his arm and stopped walking. To Zane’s surprise, Ty was grinning.



“Stars and stripes, Zane.”



“What?”



“It’s the Fourth of July. I saw stars, and then I saw stripes.” He began to laugh like it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard, doubling over and grabbing Zane’s arm to hold himself up as he cackled. Though Zane knew it was the lingering effects of the drugs on Ty’s system, he couldn’t help but laugh too. Whether he was laughing with Ty or at him, he wasn’t sure.



“Come on, you stoner,” Zane whispered. He pulled Ty, still giggling, into the dining room. Ty calmed and cleared his throat, attempting a little decorum.



Beverly was quick to greet them with a disapproving glare. “Mr. Grady, I suppose we all owe you a debt of gratitude,” she said, sounding like she was trying to chew a light bulb.



Ty sat in the chair Zane pulled out for him, and he nodded, still too sedate to engage her.



Zane wondered if they couldn’t just pack up and go home now. They’d gotten enough of a lead to give to the local authorities, and Ty didn’t deserve the abuse he was putting up with for Zane’s sake. Not from those yahoos in the bar, not from the elements, and not from Beverly Carter-Garrett.



“I do hope we’ll leave this to the real authorities now, though?”



Zane glared down the table at her.



“What real authorities?” Annie asked, her tone acerbic. “The sheriff is overrun, and animal control are chasing their asses around a hot potato because people are reporting loose tigers from here to Austin. It’s caused a panic.”



“That is none of our concern.”



“It will be when that tiger gets hungry enough. We all know he’s still on the C and G.”



“Annie.”



Annie shrugged, but went back to her meal without provoking Beverly further.



Beverly looked around the table. “We don’t want any more incidents drawing unwanted attention to us.”



Out of the corner of his eye, Zane saw Ty reach for the wine in front of him and toss back the entire glass in one gulp. Zane winced. That wasn’t going to react with those tranquilizers well.



“Mother, we can’t let this drop now. Ty’s life is in danger. You saw that this morning when they came here fishing.”



“Who went fishing?” Ty asked.



“Forgive me for being callous, but if he’d leave, he wouldn’t be in danger anymore. As it is, he’s attracting trouble to our ranch.”



“And I smell like tiger breath,” Ty muttered.



“Now Beverly, none of this is Ty’s fault,” Harrison said, voice calm as he handed Ty his own wine glass. Ty whispered a thank you and downed that as well. Zane almost said something, but the conversation distracted him from his disapproval.



“They’ll keep coming back until there’s nothing to come back for,” Mark interjected. “Annie was out there too, and if she saw them, they may have seen her. They’ll know it was her, and she’s in danger too.”



“We need Zane and Ty here, Beverly,” Harrison said. “Circling the wagons.”



“Yes, I can see how much use that particular wagon is going to do us,” Beverly said, nodding toward Ty.



Ty stared at her, and Zane could see it coming from a mile away. He had two, maybe three seconds to stop his partner from tearing his mother’s head off.



He sat back and crossed his arms instead.



Ty’s eyes drifted from Beverly, who sat stiff and proper, waiting for his retort, and landed on Sadie instead. She smiled shyly at him and stuck a piece of chicken in her mouth. Zane watched in fascination as Ty gave her a half-smile and returned his attention to the tabletop.



Everyone else noticed it too. They all looked at Sadie, who was still grinning and chewing.



Ty cleared his throat. “If you want me to leave because you think I’m putting your family in danger, then I will.” He met Beverly’s eyes, then looked at Sadie again. “But I would like to stay and help protect your family.”



The table was silent, but for the sounds of Sadie eating. The emotionless mask on Beverly’s face was back, but Zane could see her struggling with her response. Ty had realized that trading barbs with her was not the way to handle it—that a direct, sincere approach was much more likely to throw her off her game. It was a little unnerving sometimes, watching Ty manipulate others. Zane couldn’t help but wonder how many times Ty had done that to him without him realizing it.



Beverly finally exhaled and gave a curt nod, blinking rapidly. “If you believe yourself fit enough for the job, Mr. Grady, then so be it.”



Everyone was silent, letting the tension settle over the table. Soon enough, Harrison picked up his fork and knife and began to cut into his steak.



As they ate, the tension slowly broke, and they filled Ty in on what he’d missed. He sat with a frown, listening and offering little in response. When they were done, Ty sat in silence, still nodding his head, staring at the table.



“Ty?”



Ty looked up as if Zane had splashed him with cold water. “I don’t think this is about tigers.”



“What?”



Ty glanced around and gave a small shrug. “I don’t think the tigers are the target.”



“But we caught them in the act. We saw them poaching the tigers,” Mark insisted.



“Just give it a little time,” Zane said more gently. “Let your mind catch up to the tranquilizers, okay?”



Ty eyes flickered to Mark, but he nodded. “Right.”



“Well. You all will excuse me. I have business to attend to.” Beverly stood without waiting for a reply and made her way out of the room.



Zane sat back, watching Ty, a sense of foreboding creeping over him despite everything. Ty knew something he wasn’t sharing, and Zane intended to find out what it was tonight.



Ty sat with his booted feet propped on the railing of the large porch, rocking himself in a wooden chair. He held one last glass of wine in one hand and a slim cheroot in the other, secure in the knowledge that he deserved to indulge in both vices. The sheriff had come and gone, taking his statement without even a raised eyebrow.



The voices of Zane’s family filtered through the dry evening air, but he had no urge to join them. He was feeling decidedly unsociable. He had a lingering headache he would almost have called a hangover, but it hadn’t been nearly as fun to earn.



The sunset over the rolling Texas landscape was astonishing, though. Nothing like the rising sun burning away the mists on the mountaintops of West Virginia or the moon glowing down on the beaches near Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii, but still beautiful in its own way.



He’d been to a lot of places in his life, places most men never got to see. Places most people had never even thought about. The dry tropics of Somalia. The jungles of Colombia. The hard rock mountains of Afghanistan and the desert of Kuwait. But he had rarely stopped to appreciate them until after the fact. It was hard to appreciate the beauty of a place when the scenery was being used to try to kill you.



The occasional roar of Barnum in the distance added a surreal feel to the whole thing. Ty smiled grimly. “I hear you, buddy.”



The cell phone in his pocket began to ring, startling him. He had yet to set his new phone to any of his usual rings, so he had no idea who it was or whether it was worth digging the phone out to answer.



He groaned and shifted forward as he struggled to pull his phone out of his jeans pocket. He couldn’t get his cast past the denim, though, and he couldn’t hold both the cigar and the glass in his broken hand to use the other one. Finally, he had to stand up, and by that time he was cursing and looking around for somewhere to put his drink down.



When he turned to glance behind him, he was surprised to find that he wasn’t alone. Sadie stood there watching him, a doll in one hand and a smile on her face. Ty stared at her for a second and then handed her his wine glass. “Hold this.”



She giggled and took the glass, clutching it and her doll to her chest with both hands as she watched him twist and struggle to fish his phone out of his pocket with his opposite hand.



“Don’t drink it, okay?” She nodded.



When he got the phone out, he sat down and answered it with a distracted, “Grady here.” He reached for the glass, but when Sadie returned it, she also crawled into his lap and curled into the crook of his arm. He put his cigarillo out on the denim of his jeans and let it drop to the floor beside his chair so any lingering smoke wouldn’t be near her.



“Ty,” Dan McCoy said over the phone. “I hear the fuck-up fairy has visited you two again.”



Ty stared at the horizon as he tried to work out how to answer. There really wasn’t a short version. Barnum roared somewhere in the hills. “Uh . . .”



McCoy groaned as if he were in pain. “What have you done now?”



“Nothing. I just . . . nothing is really going to plan down here.”



“You had a plan?” McCoy asked in genuine shock.



Ty pursed his lips. “Not really,” he answered after a moment. “But if I had, I’m pretty sure this is not the way it would have gone.”



McCoy sighed. Ty could imagine him rubbing his forehead.



“You talked to Zane?” Ty asked with an expectant wince.



“He called and said you’d been tranquilized by exotic animal smugglers in Texas,” McCoy said with an almost audible frown. “I prefer when you lie to me, it’s more of a challenge trying to decide if it’s true. Garrett’s not very good at it.”



Ty laughed and closed his eyes. “You’re right, he’s not. He’s telling the truth, though.”



McCoy was silent. “Why, Ty? Why do you do this to me? One day I’m told you’re being loaned out to Richard Burns, the next I hear you’re playing footsy with Tony the Tiger in Texas to help out Garrett’s family ranch!”



Ty smiled and watched as Sadie’s tiny fingers played with the broken pieces of plaster on his cast. “Mac. Do me a favor, okay?” McCoy grunted, not willing to commit. “Tony the Tiger in Texas. Say it three times.”



“Stop it, Grady. Do you two need backup down there or is this just par for the course when you go off the grid?”



“No, Zane handed it over to the locals this morning. Animal control is all over it, they’ve got it under control.”



“He said you’d been lying in a puddle of your own drool for almost a day, there was a tiger loose on his family’s ranch, and no one has any idea who’s behind it, how they’re doing it, or what’s going on.”