Cut and Run 09 Crash & Burn (25 page)

He stared at the empty indentation for a long moment before merely closing the box and replacing it. He pulled down another, smaller metal box and opened it, sifting through the random bits and pieces of things people had sent him over the years to find a set of handcuffs inside. He pulled the key from them, pocketing it. He replaced everything as quietly as he could, then made his way downstairs to the kitchen.

He weighed the key in his hand. It was heavy, but he thought the synthetic bit of skin would hold it. He only had enough for one attempt.

He went to the bathroom, closing the door carefully and stuffing a towel along the bottom to block the light when he turned it on. He laid out his haul and shook his head. “Pretty pitiful, Grady,” he muttered as he wet a washcloth and wiped down his forearm, making certain he could reach the spot if his wrists happened to be handcuffed together. Then he went about covering the key with the false skin there.

It took more time than he’d expected it to, and by the time he’d finished it and wrapped a leather wrist cuff around it to secure it, he was getting antsy. He’d been here too long.

He gathered up his duffel, moving in utter silence. He held a penlight in his mouth and carried his half-empty bag over his shoulder, unsnapping it as he went off in search of his last item. The thing he’d really come here for. He stepped up to a framed photograph, the one of him and Zane sitting together on the porch of his parents’ home in West Virginia. They both had their heads lowered, foreheads touching, in the middle of a fit of laughter that had wound up with Ty flat on his back, guffawing, and Zane watching him with a shining light in eyes.

Ty took the photo off the wall and carefully removed the back from the frame. Behind the black-and-white photo was a copy of the same picture in color. Ty took it, running his thumb over Zane’s face before he slipped it into the front pocket of his shirt and put the frame back together. He replaced it on the wall, staring at Zane’s handsome face for a few more seconds before he forced himself to move on.

He grabbed his bag and made his way back to the top floor of his row house.

If this was the last time he ever set foot in his home, well . . . he was okay with that now.

“I’m just saying, if you’re going to blow shit up, you do it right!”

Zane rubbed his eyes. He didn’t know if he could keep listening to this for the next couple hours as they sailed the last leg to DC.

Digger was ranting at Owen, who was sitting on the sofa and counting out his pain pills like he was considering taking them all at once.

“If it’d been me blowing that shit up? Ain’t none of us would have crawled out. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Well, thank God for half-assed bad guys,” Owen said, as if to appease him.

“Damn straight.”

Zane was sitting opposite them, next to Clancy, staring at them with his mouth hanging open. It didn’t matter how much time he spent with Sidewinder, he never failed to be terrified by them.

Owen narrowed his eyes at the two pills remaining in his hand after he’d counted off the rest and put them back in their bottle.

“Don’t take those,” Kelly said loudly, pointing at Owen from the banquette on the opposite end of the boat, like a mother shouting at her children in a grocery store. “Conserve.”

Owen grumbled under his breath, but he dropped the last two in the bottle and put the cap on it.

Perrimore and Lassiter were both in the kitchen, watching Digger rant with much the same expression Zane had assumed when the Cajun had started in on why the bomb hadn’t taken them out in the basement. The bottom line, Zane had deciphered, was that whoever had set the bomb simply hadn’t known the basement existed. Ty’s secret room had saved all of them.

Well. Almost all of them.

Scott Alston had made every move thinking he was just doing his job. He was no more guilty in all of this than Ty was, or Zane. He’d endangered Ty and Zane’s lives, but certainly not on purpose. Hell, he’d even tried to cover for them when he thought they’d been the ones to take Burns out. Zane couldn’t find it in him to be angry with him, and he mourned the man. Alston had died down there with them, prepared to atone for his actions, prepared to help them fight back. He’d died because he’d thrown his body over the satchel of evidence Zane had brought downstairs, to protect it from the flaming debris falling around them.

Zane had told Perrimore and Lassiter only that last part when he’d called them and explained what was happening. They would never know what else Alston had done. Zane and Clancy had both sworn to take that to their graves.

Zane had been shocked to see Clancy when she’d arrived from the hospital with Digger and Owen and the satchel full of photos and printouts Zane had thought they’d lost. She was beat all to hell, with a few broken ribs and a severe cough from all the smoke she’d inhaled. She’d looked determined when she’d stepped onto the
Fiddler
, though, so much so that Zane hadn’t mentioned she shouldn’t be there, as hurt as she was.

Alston had been her partner, she’d said. And Zane and Ty were her friends. If this was her last stand, at least she’d go down in a blaze of glory.

The thought sent a pang through Zane as he glanced around at the three FBI agents who were on the
Fiddler
simply because he’d called them to arms. They didn’t have to be here. This wasn’t their fight. They were risking far more than just their jobs by going rogue like this, and yet here they were. Zane had once told Nick that he’d never had friends like Ty had in Sidewinder, that he’d never known that sort of loyalty.

He’d been wrong.

“What’s the plan, Garrett?” Perrimore asked as he sat on the coffee table in front of Zane.

Zane glanced around, taking a second to realize that everyone was watching him. Even Liam and Kelly, who were craning their heads to see into the salon.

Zane swallowed past the lump that had developed in his throat and sat up straight, trying to fake confidence he wasn’t feeling. “My only priority right now is to find Ty,” he announced. “And I’m going to operate under the assumption that his priority right now is to find me. He wouldn’t accept that I was dead so easily; he’d keep searching until someone showed him a body.”

Liam cleared his throat and shifted in his chair, grumbling something to Nick about a finger. Nick either didn’t hear him, or pretended not to as he navigated the
Fiddler
in the dark.

“Okay, so you’re both after each other. Do you have some sort of emergency backup plan you’re supposed to follow in case you’re separated like this?” Clancy asked.

Zane shook his head, blushing a little as the others complained.

“As obsessed as you are over the whole zombie genre, you don’t have safe zone plans?” Perrimore teased. He smacked Zane’s knee, chuckling like he hoped the light ribbing would raise Zane’s spirits.

Zane’s spirit didn’t need to be raised, not right now. “I need to think like Ty,” he declared. “Where he’d go next, what his next stop would be.”

“What if you’re thinking like Ty, and Ty’s thinking like you?” Owen asked.

“Ty don’t have the pictures from the SD card,” Digger said. He lounged back into the sofa, putting his arm around Owen and patting him like he would to console a child with a scraped knee. Owen was either grudgingly allowing it or he was too drugged to notice.

“He’d need to pick up the trail,” Zane agreed. “And he wouldn’t know my satchel made it out of that building. He might be operating under the assumption that we’ll need to somehow recover that information, pick up the trail another way.”

“Where’d you get the originals?” Lassiter asked. He sounded like he was dreading the answer, like he couldn’t possibly imagine what sordid ways Zane and Sidewinder had been operating under.

“Richard Burns’s home,” Zane answered with a sigh.

Laura Burns let Ty in with a watery smile and tight hug he wasn’t sure he deserved.

“Tyler, it’s so good to see you!” She ushered him into the house and gave him another hug. Ty had to look away from the oversized photo in the foyer of Richard Burns and his wife and dogs as she held on to him.

“How have you been?” he asked, forcing the words out through tightness in his throat that caught him off guard.

“Doing well, under the circumstances. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Ty winced. “I wish this were just a social call, but I’m afraid I’m working a case.”

“In DC? I thought you’d retired.”

Ty smiled and glanced around, not willing to answer her. “Would you mind if I had a look at Uncle’s Dick’s study?”

She took a small step back, her brow furrowed. “Of course,” she said after a few tense seconds where Ty thought she might refuse. She turned and gestured for him to follow her through the home. “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you and Deacon here so you could go through his things. Your father, too. There’s probably so much Richard had hidden away that he would have wanted you boys to have.”

“Hundreds of millions of things, I bet,” Ty muttered.

They walked past the dining room, and Ty stutter-stepped as he glanced in. The safe in the floor Nick had told him about was still a gaping hole near the bay window.

“Laura,” Ty blurted, and she turned to face him. Ty felt almost guilty for playing dumb, but it was much easier than the truth would be right now. “What happened to the floor in here?”

She came closer and looked in, sighing. “Richard had a secret safe in there. Someone broke in, trying to get to it.”

“Did they?”

“No. A few cops came by, but no one could get into it. I was hoping maybe your father would know what was in it, but I haven’t gotten around to calling him.”

“Could I try?” Ty asked.

“If you’ve got the time. It’s going to cost so much money to get into it, it’s not worth messing with. I’m going to have someone fix the floor over it before I sell the house.”

Ty moved closer to peer into the hole.

“What do you need?” Laura asked.

Ty shrugged, raising an eyebrow at the safe. “Maybe a glass of water,” he said as he rolled up his sleeves and sank to his knees next to the hole.

It took him longer than he would have liked to get into the safe, but he was still pleased with himself when he heard the telltale pop of the catch inside. Laura gave him a pat on the back when he lifted the lid, as if what he’d done was something any locksmith could have accomplished for ten bucks an hour instead of years of covert training.

Ty knew what he’d find in the safe, but he was still disappointed when he reached in and only pulled out a single book.

“Edgar Allan Poe?” Laura asked.

Ty shrugged. He wasn’t sure if it was some random book Burns had chosen from his library, or if Burns had known on some level that Ty and Zane would end up here. It definitely sent a message, whether Burns had meant for it to or not.

Ty paged through it, shaking it to see if anything fell out. Then he sat back on his ass and stared at the cover. “Would you mind if I kept this?”

Her hand on his shoulder squeezed. “Sure.”

Ty stared at it for a few more seconds, then climbed to his feet. He followed her to Burns’s study, and she left him alone among Richard Burns’s things.

Ty set the book aside, trying to decide where to start.

The sun had been down for hours by the time Laura returned. “Tyler?”

“Ma’am?” Ty said, and he popped his head up from behind the large walnut desk in the center of the room.

Her voice was shaky, and she had her finger twined around her necklace. “This may be my old lady imagination getting to me, but I think there’s someone outside.”

Ty clambered to his feet, flipping off the desk lamp next to him. “What’d you hear?”

“I saw a shadow in the backyard from the sunroom window. Heard a whisper. Should I call the police?”

Ty shook his head and drew his shiny new CIA-issue Glock. “Go to your bedroom and lock the door, okay? Stay away from the window. I’ll take care of it.”

Laura was already moving before Ty had finished. She’d been married to a Marine and FBI agent long enough that she knew when to question and when to take action. She turned off lights as she went, throwing Ty and the lower level of the big house into shadow.