Cut & Run (10 page)

“You seem to have carefully created yourself,” Ty told him candidly.

“This whole overly reformed bright and shiny image you want to project. It’s all very bad cop movie. And I don’t buy it.”

“What of it?” Why should he care what Ty thought about how he dealt with life now? There was nothing wrong with what he was doing to stay in the Bureau.

“I’m talking about the fact that you
want
to project it,” Ty answered with a soft laugh. He shook his head again in amusement. “If you were truly reformed from any state of less than perfect, you’d keep your mouth shut about your past. You’re doing a lot of telling and not enough showing.”

“So help me God, I am going to thrash you to within an inch of your life someday,” Zane gritted out, simmering. Possibly because Ty was right, in a way; Zane had reformed, but he wasn’t proud of it. On some level maybe he did want people to know this wasn’t the real him. “You drive me absolutely insane. And I’m almost sure you do it on purpose.”

“I like you better when you’re angry," Ty responded absently as he looked out the window at the passing scenery. “It’s more natural to you.”

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Zane shook his head. “You like me better when you’re making fun of me,” he muttered.

“I’ve never made fun of you,” Ty responded instantly. “Making fun of you would imply that something about you is fun.”

Zane’s hand shot out to smack Ty’s chest with the backs of his knuckles. “Asshole,” he muttered. “You’re no fun yourself.”

“Ow!” Ty cried out in surprise, rubbing his chest and scowling.

“Dammit,” he muttered in protest. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to wait at least a week before you physically assault your new partners?” Ty asked plaintively as he rubbed his chest where Zane’s class ring had thumped against his sternum.

“I must be out of practice. You’re the first partner I’ve had in a long time,” Zane said, trying not to think about the last one. A real partner. Not an assigned one.

“Pft,” Ty responded with a roll of his eyes and another yawn he tried and failed to repress.

Zane halted the car at a stoplight and turned his chin, eyes glancing over Ty. His eyes were sunken and dull, and he still looked exhausted. “You need some more rest?” he asked. “Won’t be able to concentrate for shit if you’re tired.”

“You worry about your own self,” Ty griped.

He thought some of the sharpness hadn’t returned to Ty’s voice, so Zane didn’t push. Seeing a sign for a diner, he turned the corner and parked in a Police Only space on the side of the street. “Food,” he said happily.

“What the hell?” Ty muttered as he stared out at the diner. “Can’t you eat stale bagels and shit like normal people?”

“We all have our vices. You want to eat a stale bagel and brighten your oh-so-lovely disposition with constipation, be my guest,” Zane invited as he got out of the car.

“Kiss my ass,” Ty shot back as he sat in the seat and huffed.

“Maybe after breakfast,” Zane answered with saccharine sweetness as he shut the door and walked toward the diner, lighting up and pausing just around the corner to smoke.

After a couple minutes, Ty got his holster redone correctly and his jacket collar straightened, and he trudged after Zane into the greasy spoon. “I 56 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

think I just got heartburn by osmosis,” he grumbled as he sat down opposite Zane. He didn’t trust New York eateries as far as he could fling one.

Zane ignored him, looking over the menu with a content expression.

“Mmmmm. Waffles,” he murmured, giving them proper consideration.

Ty just rolled his eyes and waved his hand at the waitress. “Eggs, bacon,” he ordered. “And my idiot friend here would like a stale bagel,” he said with a wave of his hand at Zane.

The waitress raised her eyebrow and looked over at Zane questioningly, who just rolled his eyes. “Waffles and sausage links. And orange juice.” The waitress nodded, chewing her gum, and took off after making note of their orders.

“I appear to be moving up in the world,” Zane pointed out, deliberately prodding at Ty all he could while the man was tired and not as snappy with the comeback as yesterday.

“By being an idiot?” Ty asked with a tilt of his head. “Yeah, I suppose that is a step up from your usual state.”

“Better than a prickly ass,” Zane commented, turning his head to look out the window.

“Other than the little bit of buckshot still left in it, my ass is perfectly smooth, I’ll have you know,” Ty replied easily.

“I hope so, since I’m supposed to kiss it after breakfast,” Zane said facetiously as the waitress arrived with his drink.

“I don’t do that before lunch,” Ty cautioned. “Can I have an orange juice, please?” he asked the waitress with a brilliant smile that fell back into a tired frown immediately after she turned away.

Seeing the wide-spectrum mood shift on Ty’s face, Zane let the odd moment of teasing die and instead watched MSNBC on the television over Ty’s shoulder.

“See? I can be nice,” Ty pointed out as they sat there.

Zane’s eyes shifted to Ty, and he nodded. “Yeah. I’m only a little suspicious of what you’re going to want, but nice is good. For a change.

Occasionally.”

Ty sat there looking at him for a long moment, face expressionless.

“Shut up,” he finally muttered.

Cut & Run | 57

Lips twitching, Zane did, until the waitress came over with their food.

He thanked her politely.

“So, aside from being annoying and shaving every four hours, what is it you do, exactly?” Ty asked Zane as he picked up a piece of bacon and crunched into it.

“I just finished six months in a stock market brokerage’s computers,”

Zane answered evenly.

“Is that a euphemism for Hell?” Ty asked seriously.

“Very nearly,” Zane said, voice dark. “I have new respect for the nice, plain insanity of terrorists after those cyber freak bastards.”

Ty hummed noncommittally and crunched another piece of bacon, finally waking up some more and shaking off the last of the exhaustion.

“What’d you come up with last night, anyway?” he asked finally. “Did I ask you that?”

Zane smiled a little. “Yeah. And the answer was noth —” The smile fell off his face as his eyes focused totally over Ty’s shoulder, and without warning he was up, tossing a twenty on the table. “Time to go,” he said sharply, pulling out his cell phone as he stalked past the television and out the door.

Ty cursed quietly and gathered his bacon in a napkin haphazardly as he got up to follow, glancing up at the lurid red letters scrolling across the television screen: “NYPD reports Tri-State killer strikes again.”

58 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

ird flu,” Ty repeated in disbelief as the medical examiner gave them the autopsy report. He held a white mask to his face,

“B refusing to put the little elastic bands over his ears. "What the hell?”

The woman nodded and shrugged as she handed Special Agent Ross the file. “ ‘What the hell’ is not my job,” she answered with a small smile that showed in her eyes. The white mask she wore over her nose and face covered the rest of the expression.

“Isn’t bird flu pretty rare?” Ty asked her in a mystified voice. “How would he get it?”

”Well, more than two hundred confirmed cases of human infection with avian influenza A viruses have been reported since 2004,” the ME

answered, sounding to Ty as if she were reciting facts she’d just recently looked up.

She flipped her hair over her shoulder and frowned. “The virus isn’t easily sustained from human-to-human transmission, but it can mutate to be highly contagious. Still,” she went on with a shake of her head, “the most likely source would have been from handling dead birds that were infected.

And, to my knowledge, there haven’t been any reported cases in the Tri-State area in at least three years.”

“So …,” Ty prodded as he leaned closer expectantly.

“Unless he was traveling in east Asia or the Middle East, Special Agent Grady, I don’t believe he would have been able to contract it by natural means.”

“He was intentionally infected,” Ross concluded with a frown.

“How?” Zane demanded before the ME could even answer.

“I’d rather wait to get the preliminary reports before speculating too much,” she answered hesitantly. “But the easiest way to do it—and safest for the person who did it—would have been an injection.”

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“How long would it take for an injection like that to infect someone?”

Special Agent Sears asked, looking up from her notes. Sears and Ross hovered near the exam table. Ross merely held his mask to his face like Ty did and looked down at the body in distaste. He handed the file to Zane absently without looking up.

“Incubation period would be about the same as if he were infected in more typical ways,” the ME answered. “I can tell you that bird flu does not have to be lethal. Most cases, in fact, if treated promptly, there’s a full recovery. That’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge.”

“So what you’re saying is, either he didn’t know he was sick, didn’t care that he was sick, or wasn’t able to get to a doctor?” Ty asked with a deeper frown.

“Pretty much,” the woman nodded.

“For two weeks?” Zane asked. “Were there any signs of restraint or struggle?”

“None,” she answered with a shake of her head. “Is there anything else?” she asked as Zane flipped open the folder and started reading. “I've got more in the morgue.”

Zane closed the file and looked back up at her. “Thank you, Karen. I hope we won’t be seeing you again while we’re still breathing,” he said. She gave him a little laugh.

Ty rolled his eyes and looked away. She shook their hands and went back to work, and Zane turned to look at Ty. “We need to talk to the cops.

Number one, why didn’t they call us first—before the damn press got hold of it? And number two, see if they’re having any luck connecting the victims.”

“That’s
their
job,” Ty responded pointedly as he nodded his head at Sears and Ross. They both gave him disgusted looks as Zane glanced over at them and raised an expectant eyebrow.

“We’ll get right on that,” Sears said to them in annoyance as she jerked her head at her partner and they both stalked out of the room.

Ty looked down at the body, still on the table and covered mostly by a sheet. “Bird flu,” he murmured in a slightly mystified voice.

Sighing, Zane tapped the file against his hand. “And another token.”

“What is it this time?” Ty asked dejectedly.

“A black feather,” Zane answered with a frown. “It’s the first one that’s made any sense when you consider the method of killing.”

60 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

“Hmm,” Ty responded distractedly, still frowning as they made their way out of the morgue. “I need ... I need to go somewhere and just
look
,” he finally said in frustration as he took his mask and tossed it into a nearby waste container.

Zane stopped and looked at his partner as he removed his own mask, tilting his head. “Where do you want to go? Crime scene?”

Ty shook his head. “Somewhere empty,” he answered with a wince.

“Maybe they have a meeting room at the field office with a whiteboard we can use,” he suggested.

“There are classrooms at Federal Plaza. Most times they’re empty, if there’s not a team in training,” Zane offered. “Henninger told me about them last night.”

“Oh, yeah? What else did the kid tell you?” Ty asked sarcastically.

“He suggested putting you out of your misery,” Zane answered pleasantly.

“Your gun ain’t big enough, son,” Ty drawled with a smirk.

“At the risk of sounding clichéd, I've never had that complaint before,” Zane answered, turning to lead the way toward the car.

Ty remained where he was and tilted his head to watch Zane as he walked down the hall. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he scoffed finally, smirking as he followed.

“Somehow I just don’t believe you’re remotely serious about that,”

Zane replied without looking back or breaking stride.

“Your loss, Brutus,” Ty laughed as they came up to the elevators and he punched the button.