Cut & Run (51 page)

They didn’t hurt anyone but him … and Ty. Zane turned his chin toward the door. Because Ty didn’t want him doing the drugs. Caught in that thought, he turned the tin over and watched the pills fall into the toilet and sink to the bottom to land on white porcelain. Stone-cold sober, he flushed them down and tossed the tin into the garbage can with a clink.

When Zane turned around, he saw Ty standing there. He took two steps and captured Ty’s mouth with his own, his hands closing gently about his face.

Ty returned the kiss with feeling, sliding his hands around Zane’s hips and pulling him closer. “Good boy,” he murmured between kisses.

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enninger called promptly at nine that morning, just a few hours after Zane flushed his pills. The young agent told Ty he’d arranged to have Hone of the earlier crime scenes opened for them, because he knew how much Ty liked to go and stare, and they had to meet him as soon as possible before anyone got wind of it. He also had the personnel files for them, and there were some interesting things in there.

“Like what?” Ty asked curiously.

“Like the number of people involved with this case that were in Baltimore in 2001,” Henninger answered wryly. “You and me included, Special Agent Grady,” he added.

“Ah, fuck,” Ty muttered into the phone. “Bring them anyway, kiddo,”

he requested as he gestured for Zane to hurry and get his shit together. “We’ll see you in thirty.”

“Yes, sir,” Henninger answered before ending the call.

As soon as the call was over, Zane and Ty scrambled, got down to their rental car in record time, and set off to drive across town to meet the other man.

Ty found himself pondering the way Tim Henninger had come through for them as he drove in the seventy-mile-an-hour traffic. He had seriously underestimated the kid. He would have to buy him dinner or something in apology.

In the passenger seat, Zane paged through a notepad of his own scribbling that he’d grabbed on the way out the door. “I’m still unhappy about the evidence missing,” he said.

“What?” Ty asked flatly.

“Different things from each case,” Zane said. “No pattern I can see.

ME supplementary notes from one. Skin scrapings from another. Time notations from a third.”

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Ty looked over at him and frowned. “And?”

“Large assumption: If he’s making a different mistake each time and managing to clean up after himself, we might be able to create additional profile information,” Zane said. “Areas he’s weak in. That’s assuming it’s all not just human error.”

“Could be,” Ty drawled. “It’ll be like trying to see a puzzle that’s all been painted over.”

“You can still match the edges,” Zane said distractedly as he started making notations on a yellow legal pad in his lap.

“Is there anything missing from the murders that occurred after the computer exploded?” Ty asked.

Zane flipped through his notes, frowning. “No. Why?”

“I still think he removed that shit as bait,” Ty claimed.

“I’m not convinced,” Zane muttered.

The loose papers scattered across his lap as their car was thumped hard from behind.

Ty was thrown forward with the impact, but he kept the car straight as his head jerked. He glanced into the rearview mirror and frowned at the yellow cab behind them. The windshield had been illegally tinted until you could barely see through it, and the call numbers had been removed. “Uh oh,”

he muttered.

Turning around in the seat, Zane tried to look as the cab hit them again, harder this time. “What the hell?” he hissed. Before they could react, the cab swerved slightly to ram the back passenger quarter panel of their car, pushing them toward the concrete median wall.

Ty tensed, his mind going blank and relying on training and instinct rather than common sense as he handled the nearly out-of-control vehicle. He watched the cab out of the corner of his eye in order to anticipate the next attack, and he kept his attention on the concrete barrier and his hands on the wheel.

Zane pulled his gun out, looking back at the looming vehicle as it hit them again, this time actually revving the engine and pushing them. The collision was hard enough to jostle them both, and Zane had to grab the door handle. Other cars in the two lanes to their left honked and swerved wildly, skidding to keep from hitting them or the wall.

“Fucker,” Ty growled. This was the fuck who’d been killing. This Cut & Run | 313

was the fuck who’d tried to kill
them
. He was sure of it. “Hold on,” he said to Zane with a dangerous glint in his eyes, and he slammed on the brakes, sending the rear end of their vehicle crashing into the front of the cab in retaliation.

Biting off a curse, Zane braced himself against the dashboard just in time with his free hand as they jerked back and forth. Ty hit the gas once more and sped up, leaving the cab lagging behind.

“Goddammit, I can’t see him,” Zane ground out, trying to get a look through the tinted windshield as the cab advanced again, pulling partway up the passenger side to knock them closer to the barrier. “The sides are blacked out, too.”

“He wouldn’t risk being seen,” Ty said through gritted teeth as he veered the rental car into the cab with a crunch of metal and the burning stench of rubber. Whoever the man was, though, he was good with a speeding car. Instead of veering out of control, he turned the cab to meet the push, crashing the two cars together so hard that sparks flew and smoke began to churn out of the cab’s ruined grill.

“I can’t take a shot, even to take out the tires. He’ll kill somebody besides us,” Zane said sharply as the driver gunned the cab’s engine to pull up beside them on the passenger side. The driver swerved over to smash the cars together again, hitting the passenger side, pushing them within a few feet of the wall as Ty tried desperately to keep them from going out of control. Zane could see the cab gaining on his side of the car for another attempt. “He’s coming….”

“Shut up,” Ty ground out as the side of their car squealed against the concrete. The cab smashed into their side again and the metal of the passenger door screeched and crumpled alarmingly. Ty glanced over at it, taking his eyes off the road for a second to see Zane leaning and struggling to pull his arm away from the door. If the cab smashed them again, one of them was getting hurt, and Ty could easily see who it was going to be. He glanced in the rearview mirror again, seeing that the traffic they had passed was slowing and giving the two dueling cars a wide berth. “Hold on,” he breathed as his peripheral vision caught the cab swerving for another impact.

He slammed on the brakes to avoid the coming collision. The back wheels smoked as they locked, and the vehicle fishtailed dangerously as the Ford struggled to go from eighty to stop in no time flat. Despite the seat belt, Zane was thrown forward and his free hand landed on the dashboard to catch himself, his gun thumping to the console between the seats. The cab veered into their lane, finding nothing to slam into since they were no longer beside 314 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

him, then it accelerated in a burst of black smoke as the Ford finally fishtailed out of control and hit the wall with its back left panel. The front tire blew, then the back, and the rental car left the ground, spinning gracefully into the air and then crashing back down onto its side.

Zane gasped aloud as the seat belt caught him painfully across the chest and snapped him against the door when the car upended. The Ford smashed against the blacktop on the passenger side and slid, only to slow and slam against a hapless motorist before crashing back onto all four wheels.

The crumpled car finally drifted to a weaving, smoking stop just inches from the concrete as the cab disappeared out of sight ahead of them. Ty sat with his hands clutching the wheel, knuckles white and breathing hard as sirens began to sound somewhere in the distance.

Beside him, Zane leaned against the crunched passenger door, his entire right side a mass of swamping pain. Glancing over to the driver’s side, Zane didn’t see any blood on Ty as the man sat staring out the windshield.

Zane glanced up around them to see if help was close, only to see the cab about fifty yards away—facing them—and he could see the tires spinning as the driver held down the brake and revved the engine. All traffic on their side of the highway had come to a stop; the lanes littered with wrecked cars and stunned motorists.

Zane’s voice was strained and stunned as he spoke. “Ty. Ty, we gotta get out. Get out of your seat belt.” He tried to pull away from the passenger-side door and excruciating pain tore through his entire body in burning waves, taking his breath away.

Ty sat staring at the menacingly crushed front grill of the cab in the distance, unmoving as Zane gave the ruined door several weak sideways kicks, trying to free himself. Calmly, as if in a daze, Ty reached up and began plucking away what shards remained of the moonroof’s glass.

Zane swallowed hard as his vision began to fade and blur. He was going into shock. “I can’t get out that way,” he told Ty, gritting his teeth.

Ty looked at him, still in a calm, detached sort of haze. “You’re stuck,” he murmured as he reached across Zane’s chest and prodded the metal where the other man’s arm was captured. He glanced up at the cab, then reached across Zane’s lap to the seat handle that would lay the seat back. It didn’t budge, and Ty turned his head slightly, his nose brushing against Zane’s cheek. He glanced again to see the cab begin its run, heading toward them on a sure collision course. It would gain speed quickly, and then the impact would come. The heavy steel construction of the old car would tear the Cut & Run | 315

battered Ford to pieces.

Ty clambered to stand on the middle console, rising up out of the moonroof as he drew his gun. He waited a half-second and then opened fire.

The yellow paint on the hood of the cab began to dent and explode as the bullets hit, and the safety glass shattered, but didn’t break. The illegal tinting inside the windshield kept it from falling apart as it was riddled with bullet holes. Ty couldn’t see the driver or tell if he was hitting him. He lowered his aim and began trying for the tires, but his gun clicked empty and he shouted a frustrated curse.

He reached for his backup as the cab barreled toward them, but he couldn’t reach it in the small confines. He contorted with difficulty and snagged Zane’s gun from where it had landed on the dash during the roll and straightened back up, aiming for the lower part of the car.

“Damn it, Ty, get out of the car!” Zane yelled, his voice breaking as the pain began to overwhelm his emotional control. His eyes flickered between the oncoming car and his lover, and he pushed against Ty’s legs with his free hand.

One of the front tires blew out as Ty emptied the clip again, ignoring Zane’s demands, but the cab continued to limp toward them at alarming speed. It was almost on them. If the crash didn’t kill them, the man inside the cab would.

Ty fired the last round, then reared back and chucked the empty gun at the cab in utter frustration before he ducked back into the car. He just shook his head wordlessly, awkwardly kneeling on the console as he tried to free Zane’s arm from between the torn metal of the door and the crumpled frame.

He knew that even if he got Zane free now, it was too late. But it wasn’t in him to give up.

“Shit, Ty, you can’t take my damn arm off! Please … baby,” Zane’s voice cracked with agony as he pleaded between uneven gasping breaths.

“Get out of the car,” he ordered weakly.

Ty responded with a small, chaste kiss. As he heard the roaring of the battered cab’s engine coming closer he curled protectively around Zane, hoping to shield him from the brunt of the crash. He tried not to tense, but his physical discipline was no match for simple human instinct. As the cab barreled toward them, he hunched his shoulders and prepared for the impact.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed as he closed his eyes tight and waited.

“Ty…,” Zane choked out as he curled his free arm around Ty’s back, 316 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

holding him tight and turning his face into his neck. Christ. Forget about not being there. This. This was Zane’s worst nightmare.