Touch&Geaux (22 page)

with the NIA.”

“You told me you were NIA,” Zane said in exasperation.

“I lied. I tend to do that. Sorry.”

Owen shook his head.

Zane waved a hand. “If you’re not really NIA, that just

makes you a paid assassin!”

Liam shrugged.

Zane had to take a moment to calm his thoughts before

he spoke again. “Ty thinks you’re here for revenge.”

Liam laughed. It was a deep, rich sound. “I suppose he

would. Guilt does odd things to an already unstable mind.

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Now! Shall we discuss how we’re going to break him out of

jail?”“First we grab all our stuff,” Zane said, fighting back his

misgivings. “We probably won’t be able to come back for it

after this.”

Liam chuckled. “This should be fun!”

“Shut up,” Owen grumbled before turning away.

“I am a Boston Police Detective,” Nick hissed to the

officer manning the front desk. He was sitting between Kelly

and Digger, all of them handcuffed to a bench as they waited

to be processed. It was humiliating, to say the least. “My name

is Nicholas O’Flaherty, my badge is in my luggage. All you

have to do is give my captain a call and we’ll clear this up!”

The woman at the desk continued to ignore him.

“Wasting your breath, man,” Digger grumbled.

Nick thumped his head against the wal . People came

and went through the ornate lobby of the old building even

though it was now after midnight. Tourists walked in off the

street to buy T-shirts out of a vending machine. Some of them

stopped to gawk at the three of them sitting there. Digger had

taken to waving at them to show his handcuffs.

Kelly leaned against Nick, his head on Nick’s shoulder as

he drowsed. “This is not the way I saw this weekend going.”

“Really?” Digger asked. “Because I figured it was sixty/

forty we’d end up just like this. Again.”

Nick rolled his eyes.

The most frustrating part of it was knowing all three of

them could have picked the locks on the handcuffs in the

blink of an eye. But what were they supposed to do? Storm the

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police station and bust Ty out of some cell or interrogation

room? Go on the lam in NOLA? And for what?

“Which one was the sixty?” Kelly asked after a few

minutes.

Digger pointed to the floor.

Kelly nodded. “Yeah.”

The door opened again and a rush of air blew through

the lobby. Nick jerked to attention. He recognized the line of

Owen Johns’s shoulders as the man slunk into the station and

loitered near the T-shirt machine. Trailing in behind him was

another man, and Nick belatedly realized it was Zane.

“It’s the cavalry,” Digger said.

“Thank Christ,” Kelly grumbled. He raised his hands,

rubbing at one wrist and dropping his handcuffs to the floor.

“What the hell, man?” Nick whispered.

“What? They were too tight.”

Digger dropped his cuffs to the floor with a clank that

echoed through the station. “If he’s not wearing his, neither

am I.”

When Nick looked back, Zane was at the desk speaking

to the officer. Nick’s fingers began to work at the lock of his

handcuffs. Owen was sauntering toward them, a smirk on his

face. “We’re busting you out.”

Nick stood and yanked his handcuffs off his wrists, then

tossed them at Owen with a curse. “You should be sitting here

with us.”

Owen caught the cuffs, but he was laughing. “And if I

was? Who’d be saving your ass then?”

“What about Ty?”

“We’ve got it covered.”

“We can’t just leave him in here,” Kelly said.

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Nick scowled. Cold settled in the pit of his stomach.

“Garrett’s not flashing a badge over there. This isn’t official,

is it?”

“Nope.”

“How are you getting us out?”

Owen glanced casually over his shoulder and reached

under his jacket. “Plan B.”

“Plan B? What’s Plan B?”

Owen clucked his tongue, held up a small canister, and

grinned.

“That’s mine!” Digger hissed. “You went through my

stuff?”

“You travel with smoke grenades?” Nick blurted.

“Boys,” Owen said. He flicked the starter ring of the

grenade and tossed it over his shoulder. Violet smoke began

to billow from it as it spiraled through the air. “Run like hell.”

Ty had been read his rights, handcuffed to the table, and

then left alone once he’d refused to say more. He tended to

carry a key in the lining of all his shoes, so dealing with the

lock on his handcuffs was simply a matter of getting his foot

high enough to dig the key out. When he got them off, he

wrapped them around his fingers to use like brass knuckles.

He was taking down whoever stepped through that door

next. He refused to sit here while Zane was in danger, and if

that meant breaking out of jail and becoming a fugitive for

the duration, then so be it.

He also knew he was in quite a bit of trouble here himself.

Part of his work while in New Orleans had been tracking the

activities of one seriously scary bad cop. That cop was now the

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commander for the Royal Street station. And he’d be coming

for Ty.

He stood beside the door, waiting to pounce on the next

man who came through it.

He didn’t understand what the gris-gris had to do with

Liam Bell. Was Liam really just here for revenge? It didn’t

make sense, and he was beginning to suspect his own guilt

and feelings over how that had ended were clouding his

assessment. Why here? Why now? If the plan was to set Ty

up for the murders of that girl and Arthur Murdoch, then it

was a piss-poor plan. And if the intention hadn’t been to peg

Ty as the murderer, that meant the gris-gris bag in his hotel

room was a promise. He was the next victim.

And what in the hell did Liam grabbing Zane have to do

with any of it?

The doorknob rattled beside him, and then the door

cracked open. Ty tensed, preparing to launch himself. Then

the heavy metal door was shoved open as if someone had

thrown all their weight into it. It slammed into Ty, knocking

him against the cinderblock wal . He staggered as the door

swung away, regaining his bearings only to find a gun trained

on him.

“So predictable,” Liam said with a shake of his head.

“Hello, love.”

He was standing far enough away that Ty wouldn’t be

able to reach him without lunging past the barrel of that gun.

Ty leaned against the wal , breathing hard. “Where is Zane?”

“He’s fine. Out in the lobby acting as a distraction. It’s

sweet he’s the first thing you think of, though.”

Ty lunged at him, and Liam brought up the gun, shaking

his head.

“If you’ve hurt him, I swear to God I’ll make you bleed.”168

“I have no intention of hurting anyone, Tyler, I merely

needed your full attention.”

“2 AM or your partner dies? That’s how you get my

attention?”

“It worked, didn’t it? But things have changed. We’re in a

bit of a hurry here, so . . .”

“What are you doing here?”

Liam tossed him his jacket and his gun. “I’m the rescue

party.”

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t was the middle of the night, but the French Quarter

I
didn’t seem to realize it. Zane and the others had escaped

the police station in a whirl of purple smoke and chaos, and

each man had darted off in a different direction. The crowded

streets helped to hide them. They were supposed to scramble

for fifteen minutes, then make their way to a rendezvous point

once they were sure they were clear.

Any man who couldn’t shake the police was going to have

to take one for the team.

Zane had easily evaded any pursuit, using the crowds as

cover. After darting down a few side roads, he wandered along

Bourbon Street for ten minutes, the dancing crowd full of

Easter revelers guiding him like a ship on a river.

He tried not to contemplate his predicament, but it was

hard to keep it out of mind. They were now wanted by the

police. He and Nick had both given their identification to

the detective when they’d given their accounts of the murder

scene, so eventually they’d be connected to the breakout. His

real name would come out of this and the Bureau would get

involved. They would have a lot of explaining to do, but he

felt certain he and Ty could talk their way out of it.

And then there was Ty. It seemed like Zane kept forgetting

what Ty had admitted to, like his mind was actively trying

to block it out. Ty had essentially spent the last two years

spying on him. How was Zane supposed to know what was

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real and what had been another of Ty’s clever tricks to glean

information from him?

How much of Ty had he really seen? How well did he

know Ty at al ?

When he reached Jackson Square, Kelly was the only one

there. He was loitering near the iron fence that surrounded

the raised, grassy park area. During the day, people used the

fence to hang artwork and sell their wares, but at night it was

all cleared away. People sat on the concrete ledge or leaned

against the fence, smoking, drinking, laughing. Several of

them played music with tip jars in front of them.

Kelly was lingering near a man with a guitar. When he

spotted Zane, he pushed away from the wall and grinned

lopsidedly. “Not exactly a discreet meeting place.”

Zane shrugged. “It was the only place we all knew how to

get to. And it’s crowded.”

“Fair enough. What the hell is going on?”

Zane winced and glanced around the throng. He didn’t

want to go through this more than once, and he knew the

others would have the same question. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m fairly intelligent,” Kelly said with a laugh. “I can

usually follow.”

Zane snorted.

“Garrett, the others will be here soon, and then we’re

dealing with the whole group dynamic and accusations and

serious ADD, so . . . you want to let me know what’s going on

now so I can help you?”

Zane stared at the man for a long moment, then nodded.

“You were the group’s corpsman, right? So you can deal with . . .

any injuries that come from this?”

“Yeah,” Kelly said warily. “Why?”

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“I ran into Liam Bell,” Zane said, and hurried to explain

faster as Kelly’s eyes widened. “He claims he was hired by a

Miami cartel to come here and kill Ty.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s a really long story.”

“How’d you get away from him?”

“I didn’t.”

Kelly narrowed his eyes, looking off into the distance over

Zane’s shoulder. “I don’t understand,” he finally said.

Zane couldn’t help but laugh. A hand touched his back

and he jerked, reaching for the knife in his pocket.

“Easy, tiger,” Nick said as he stepped around Zane and

patted him on the back. “Someone want to tell me why I just

made myself a fugitive?”

“It’s complicated,” Kelly answered.

“I’m not doing this again,” Zane grumbled.

Nick stood on his tip toes and looked around the crowd.

Several uniformed policemen were walking along the edges

of the crowd. Others rode horses. The way they were scanning

faces made it obvious they were looking for someone. “We

should start moving,” Nick whispered. “We’re too conspicuous

standing like this.”

Kelly grabbed Nick’s arm and stopped him.

Nick and Zane both turned to see what had caught

Kelly’s attention. Zane spotted Ty immediately. He was still

moving slowly, obviously still in some pain and fighting off

the remainder of the sedative the hospital had given him. He

was keeping his head down and his face in shadow, but Zane

knew the roll of his shoulders. Trailing behind Ty, looking far

less conspicuous, was Liam Bell. Ty’s eyes locked on Zane’s,

and relief flooded through his entire body. Ty took a hasty

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step forward, but a hand appeared on his shoulder, jerking

him back. He went rigid again, putting his hands to his sides.

Zane would recognize that posture anywhere. Ty had a

gun at his back.

Ty’s eyes stayed on Zane’s, and Liam used Ty’s body to

cover himself. “Let’s all be calm now,” Liam said when they

got close. “Who’s armed?”

Zane pulled his jacket away to reveal the knife there. Nick

and Kelly both shook their heads.

Liam eased his grip on Ty’s shoulder, then gave him a pat

on the back. He slid the gun under his coat and grinned. “Just

making sure.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Nick demanded. “Why is

he here and am I allowed to hurt him?”

“Not yet,” Ty answered.

“Where are the others?” Liam asked.

Zane glanced at his watch. “They haven’t shown yet.

They’ve got two more minutes.”

They remained in an uneasy standoff as the bells of the

cathedral rang out the hour. Liam still lingered behind Ty’s