Armed & Dangerous (Cut & Run #5)

“Escaped?”

“If those FBI agents deliver him to Jonas before we can intercede, Mr. Cross will be dead and Jonas will be free to access his account in the Cayman Islands and disappear. We don’t want that to happen. And we assume you don’t either.”

Blake held his breath, his mind racing as he tried to decide how much to give away. “Jonas said he was being set up.”

The CIA agent nodded. “We’ve been tracking his movements for two years, trying to gather enough evidence to bring him down. He caught wind of the investigation, destroyed everything, and ran.”

Blake narrowed his eyes, suspicious.

“We know he sent a man named Arlo Lancaster here to Chicago a year and a half ago to kill Cross and you. Ever since he learned Cross was still alive, he’s been trying to find him. And with your help, he finally did.”

Blake found it hard to breathe as the truth sank in.

“The FBI?”

“Two rogue agents, sent by an old friend of Jonas to bring him in. We assume he’s either being duped or he’s working with Jonas. Either way, this ends in Julian Cross dying when he’s delivered.”

“Oh God.”

An hour later, after seeing the threadbare evidence the CIA had compiled on Randall Jonas, Blake called Preston as his stomach tumbled. There wasn’t enough to convict the man, but it was enough to convince Blake.

“I delivered him right to the bastards,” he spat out as soon as Preston answered his call.

“An honest mistake, sir, I’m sure,” Preston murmured.

“You make damn sure those FBI agents don’t make it to their boss, you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do whatever you have to. Jonas cannot get his hands on Julian, or Jules is a dead man.”

Preston was silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous. “Understood, sir.”

BURNS stood as soon as he heard the commotion outside. For his assistant to be railing at someone like that, it had to be Ty. Relief flooded him. They hadn’t heard from him in days. Burns had begun to face the very real fear that Ty and Zane might be dead. He heard the telltale response to his assistant in a gruff voice, and then the door to his office was shoved open.

“You can’t just barge in like this whenever you want. Director Burns has a standing order not to be disturbed!”

“Go eat your granola, Nancy, don’t worry about it!” Ty shouted.

“It’s okay, Nancy!” Burns said in a stern voice as Ty shoved a man into the office and then slammed the door in her face.

Both men were disheveled and breathing hard, as if they’d just run up the steps of eleven stories and not taken the elevator. At first glance, Burns thought he was looking at Zane, but when he looked at the man directly, he realized his mistake.

“Director,” Ty said to him in a sarcastic, hoarse voice. “Door-to-door delivery. Sorry we’re late.”

“Jesus, Dick, you didn’t tell me you sent Earl’s boy out there!” Jonas blurted in outrage.

The man Burns now recognized as Julian Cross tensed and took a step back, face grim. His eyes darted to Jonas and back to Burns. “What is this?” he asked. He turned on Ty, grabbing him by his shirt collar and slamming him against the door to Burns’ office. “You lied to me!”

Ty seemed shocked, staring at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Let him go,” Jonas said, and Burns saw him draw a gun from the small of his back. It had a silencer on the end of it. Certainly not standard-issue.

Julian eased his grip on Ty’s shirt and shoved him one last time against the door before turning to face Jonas.

“What the hell is going on?” Ty asked as he looked at Burns.

Burns met his eyes with a growing sense of apprehension. He wasn’t sure he knew what was going on anymore. “Randall. Put the gun away,” he said.

Jonas shook his head. “You didn’t tell me you sent Earl’s boy after him,” he said again through gritted teeth.

Burns glanced back at Ty, who was standing with his hands out like he was balancing on a thin piece of rope.

“You want your mastermind?” Julian asked in a disgusted voice. “There he is.”

“What?” Burns blurted out as he looked between them.

Jonas glanced at him, his eyes hard. “I’m sorry, Richard. You were my last chance to get to him.”

“You used me?” Burns growled, taking one step forward in his anger. Jonas turned the gun on him, then back to Julian and Ty as he stepped further toward the corner of the room.

“Disarm yourself, Richard, or I shoot him right here.”

Burns clamped his teeth together and carefully removed his weapon to set it on the floor.

“Now you two,” Jonas said to Julian and Ty. “All your weapons.”

Ty still looked stunned. He had known Jonas since he was a little boy. He’d spent family vacations with the man.

He took his standard-issue sidearm out of its holster and tossed it to the ground, eyes never leaving Jonas. Julian slid a gun from the belt of his trousers and tossed it away as well.

“No backups?” Jonas asked with narrowed eyes.

Ty shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, sounding as if he hated himself for using the same term of respect he probably always had with Randall Jonas. Ty’s habits were hard to break, though.

Jonas glanced at Burns again. Burns knew he was trying to decide whether to kill them all or try to convince Ty and Burns to go along with him in his scheming.

Ty took one step forward and slid over, putting himself between Julian and Jonas’ gun.

“Stop moving, Tyler,” Jonas said as he took a step back to match.

Ty shook his head. “I can’t let you shoot him, sir.”

“Boy, I told you to move.”

“Ty,” Burns whispered. He knew now how deep Jonas’ betrayal went. He didn’t know if Jonas had it in him to shoot the son of one of his oldest friends, a man he’d literally rocked as a baby, but Burns didn’t want to find out.

Ty lowered his head like a bull preparing to charge. “I can’t let you shoot him.”

Julian moved behind Ty, shifting from one foot to another.

“Stop moving!” Jonas shouted.

“You’re going to have to go through me,” Ty said. His words wavered, like he knew how high the possibility was that Jonas would do just that.

Jonas’ eyes narrowed, and the muzzle of his gun trembled. Burns held his breath, afraid to move for fear of setting Jonas off. He could not stand here and watch Ty be shot in front of him. He would not.

“He’s the only one who can take me down.”

“Not anymore,” Burns said. “We all can. Are you going to kill us all, right here in my office?”

“If I have to,” Jonas said. His eyes hadn’t left Ty and Julian.

“I’ve known you since we were eighteen!” Burns shouted.

The crack of the bullet hitting the glass window behind them made them all jump. Burns dove to the ground as he tried to decide where the sniper’s round had come from. The bulletproof glass had spiderwebbed in concentric patterns around the high-velocity round that was still lodged in it, just feet behind Jonas’ head.

Jonas ducked and then brought his gun up to take his shot at Julian. Burns called out. Ty covered his head with both hands and spun out of the way, and Burns realized that Julian had grabbed him and shoved him, drawing a hidden gun from the small of Ty’s back. He dove to the side as he fired. The boom of the Glock overpowered the dull thuds of the silencer.

Burns could do nothing but cover his head. Everyone scrambled for cover.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Ty cried as soon as the shooting hit a lull. “You prick! You shot me!”

“I couldn’t possibly have shot you from this angle,” Julian murmured from where he hunched behind an arm of the same sofa Jonas was using as cover.

“Ty?” Burns called out.

Another sniper round hit the window, close enough to the first bullet to crack the glass more. Eventually the sniper would get through.

Jonas lunged to his feet and sprayed a volley of bullets at the corner where Julian had taken cover. Burns scrambled for the weapon he had discarded, diving to the floor and rolling as he brought the gun up. Jonas had the gun trained on Julian, who had run out of bullets and was on his knees, hands held high. Burns raised his gun to fire, but his finger had barely brushed the trigger when Ty rammed Jonas from behind.

Jonas’ gun went off, spraying ceiling plaster everywhere. They landed hard, Ty’s bulk knocking the air from Jonas as he skidded face-first across the plush carpeting. Ty rammed an elbow into Jonas’ back to keep him down.

Burns pushed to his feet and aimed his gun at Jonas. “Ty! Get him out of here!”

Ty hesitated, looking from Burns to Jonas.

“He’s not safe until he’s at Langley!” Burns growled, jerking his head toward Cross. “Go!”

Ty rolled and struggled to his feet, holding a bloody hand to his side. Julian took his elbow, both of them staggering toward the door.

“Richard,” Jonas groaned as he pushed off the floor. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Richard. Don’t let them get away!”

“Shut up,” Burns gritted out as Ty and Julian fled from the office.

Jonas met his eyes, his body tensing. Burns looked into the depths, reliving every moment he’d known Randall Jonas, from boot camp to the morning he’d pulled Burns out of a fire in the jungle to the day he’d been a groomsman at his wedding.

“I trusted you.”

Jonas twisted to look up at him. Burns tightened his hold on his gun, hand trembling as the betrayal sank in.

Jonas gave a derogatory snort and met Burns’ eyes. “That just made you easy to use.”

JULIAN heard the last gunshot, the sound deafening as they ran for the stairwell. Ty skidded to a halt, turning back. “Dick!”

“He had the upper hand,” Julian said, grabbing Ty’s elbow to pull him along. Ty hesitated, but when they saw agents flooding the hallways, he turned and ran with Julian to the emergency stairwell.

They stormed down the steps, every bang and clang of the stairwell putting Julian’s teeth on edge.

“It’s brilliant, really,” he gasped out. “Send unsuspecting errand boys to do the dirty work. It’s his signature.”

“I don’t fucking believe this,” Ty muttered. “Does this mean me and Zane were the bad guys?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Son of a bitch!”

They hit the ground floor level, and Ty pushed through the door into the lobby. Sirens were going off; the entire federal building was mobilizing. Ty flashed his badge at a security guard who tried to stop them. When the guard stepped in front of them, unwilling to let them leave, Ty grabbed him by the hand, twisted it, and turned into his body, dropping the beefy guard with a move as graceful as a ballerina.

They darted past as other guards came after them.

“Zane is gonna kill me,” Ty said as they burst through the doors and sprinted down the street into the sparse crowds of tourists.

“He’s not the only one!” Julian shouted as they darted between people and across the street. “We have a sniper to worry about now as well.”

ZANE sat with Cameron at the café they’d designated as the rendezvous. He despised being left behind, but Ty had given a convincing argument that he and Julian would be able to slip through better just the two of them. They were also hoping, on some level, that Zane would serve as a decoy for anyone watching the building waiting for Cross to show up. He had walked up and down the sidewalk several times, hoping to draw attention, as Ty and Julian had slipped inside in a flower delivery van.

It was a lot easier to sneak into FBI headquarters if you were an actual FBI agent.

When he caught sight of two men running down the street, Zane sat forward and tensed, barely keeping himself from reaching for his gun.

When they got closer, he saw that it was Ty and Julian. “Uh-oh.”

“What?” Cameron asked as he peered into the crowd.

“Looks like something went wrong.”

“We have to move,” Ty gasped as soon as they reached Zane and Cameron. From the looks of them, they had both sprinted there.

“What happened?”

“It was Jonas.”

“Who?

“Jonas, he was the guy.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“He’s CIA, he had Burns pull us in, but he only wanted Cross to kill him,” Ty stuttered.

“Ty, breathe.”

Ty shook his head, gulping air and holding to his side. Blood seeped through the material of his T-shirt.

“There’s a sniper on a roof somewhere. We don’t know whose side he’s on, and we need to get out of sight,” Julian said, rapid-fire and barely discernible with his thick accent.

Zane and Cameron moved, grabbing their last remaining bag of gear, Zane leading the way. There was nowhere to go that they would be able to hide. But they could duck into a restaurant or museum and be out of the sniper’s sights. They headed for the massive complex of the Verizon Center, and Zane darted into The Greene Turtle as the others followed. Cameron was gasping for breath after the sprint, and Ty was leaning against the railing of the curving staircase that led down to the restaurant’s basement, panting and holding his side.

“Can I… help you?” the hostess asked them.

“Table for four, please,” Cameron said, breathless, holding up four fingers. “Away from the windows, if that’s possible.”