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his troubles. As usual, it was working. “I don’t know. A Stetson’s a real personal thing to a man. You don’t just go around handing them out.” He shook his head and spoke more quietly. “I’m not sure there’s helping to be done. Just wish you were here.”
    Ty was silent for a long while—another of those silences where he tried to decide which path to take—the sound of his breathing steady and comforting. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Well, you want me to tell you about my night? Any story that starts out with ‘There was this dude with a ferret in his beard’ is bound to make you feel better, right?”
    “Tell me,” Zane said, smiling and relaxing back as Ty started talking. He was glad to listen to his lover ramble on in a voice as smooth as honey instead of dwelling over the trouble he was sure to find tomorrow when he started digging.
     

     
    “Suspect is on foot, agents in pursuit,” the dispatcher said through Ty’s earpiece. “Suspect is armed and dangerous.”
    Ty cut across three lanes of traffic, climbing over a Mini Cooper and then leaping over the head of a cyclist as he dove to grab for the suspect. He made contact but slid right off the man and landed hard, rolling across the sidewalk and slamming into the base of a hotdog cart. The contents tumbled and splattered all over him before he could scramble back to his feet.
    He cursed and wiped relish off his arm as he sat up. He supposed he was fortunate the boiling water hadn’t fallen on him, but that stroke of luck didn’t make up for the fact that this was ruining what had been a nice Sunday afternoon with friends.
    He could sprint and he could cover long distances, and he could fucking parkour up the side of a wall, but he wasn’t built for dashing across entire cities after suspects who were part gazelle and greased up like that slimy green thing from Ghostbusters.
    “I lost him,” Alston panted over the earpiece. “He’s like a cyborg or something.”
    Ty looked around as he tried to catch his breath. He and his teammates had been enjoying lunch at a sidewalk café after closing a difficult week, debating if they should order a bottle of wine or just walk a few blocks over to the nearest bar and start Sunday off early like good little heathens. And then a man had paraded up to them in a trench coat and whipped it open to reveal nothing underneath but a huge, unfortunate tiger tattoo on his chest. His nipples formed the tiger’s eyes, his navel acted as the nose, and Ty hadn’t allowed himself to examine it any further before he’d turned his head and spit his water all over Alston. Lassiter had jumped to his feet and knocked Perrimore’s bowl of hot pasta into his lap. And Clancy had almost fallen out of her chair laughing. She’d thought it funny until the man had grabbed her, kissed her, and then run off with her sidearm.
    “Maybe not having any clothes on makes him aerodynamic,” Lassiter muttered, sounding just as out of breath as Alston was.
    “Wouldn’t the trench slow him down?” Perrimore wheezed. The man was built like a brick shithouse: good for barreling through locked doors, but not made for long-distance.
    “I’ve got his coat,” Ty said with a laugh. He was barely winded, but then, he ran every day and had for years. The hotdog cart had fared better than he had, though.
    “Eyes on the suspect!” Clancy shouted, her piercing voice nearly busting Ty’s eardrum. He reached up to his Bluetooth piece and turned the volume down.
    “Clancy!” Alston shouted. It was a safe bet that he’d just been outdistanced by his spitfire of a partner and was now huffing and puffing to catch up to her.
    Ty jogged to the end of the street, looking both ways.
    “Where the fuck are you?” Ty asked.
    “I got to get a treadmill,” Perrimore said.
    “I think . . . I think I’m outside Ty’s house,” Lassiter added.
    “You’re not, Lassie,” Ty assured him. “You can’t run that far.”
    “All