“Why?” Owen asked.
“I . . . I don’t really know.”
Owen glared at Liam. “So you’re really NIA like Ty said.” He slid his gun into the holster under his arm, but advanced on the man, pointing his finger. “You’re the one got us tossed?”
“That was not my intention,” Liam said, cool as ever as Owen seethed over him. “What the Marines did to you lot after was unconscionable and had nothing to do with me. I am sorry it happened, but I am no longer officially affiliated 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. 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 wall. 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 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.
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 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 wall. 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 wall, 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.”
“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.”
Chapter 8
It was the middle of the night, but the French Quarter 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 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 all?
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?”
“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 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 shoulder for cover. No one spoke. No one moved, save for Zane periodically checking the time.
Digger eventually materialized from the crowd, Owen on his heels. They’d apparently met up somewhere and made their way here together. They approached warily, sensing the tension in the group. Neither man said a word when they joined them.
“Okay then,” Zane finally said, relieved everyone had made it out. “We have all our stuff stashed, we’ll go get it. But where to after that?”