Cut & Run (5 page)

Ty sat twirling his pen idly, unmoving as he looked at the two younger men in amusement. “How’d you get stuck with this shit?” he asked them finally.

“We’re just errand boys, sir,” Henninger answered in a low voice, a hint of amusement in his dark eyes as he looked at Ty.

Ty grinned crookedly and nodded. “So are we,” he responded wryly.

Henninger fought hard not to smile.

Zane glanced at the two agents and back to Ty. “Any miraculous sparks of insight, Grady?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ty answered as he stood and removed his suit jacket. He yanked off his tie and threw it onto the table. “I need to find me a Batgirl,” he drawled thoughtfully.

“I’m sure the bat signal’s upstairs,” Zane answered absently as he paged through the folder, checking to see if there were materials he wanted to request. Morrison and Henninger exchanged dubious looks.

“You have way too many of these comments stored up,” Ty told Zane disapprovingly. He turned to Morrison and Henninger and gave them a sweeping gesture of his hand. “Take us to the Bat Cave!” he ordered with a straight face.

Morrison’s jaw dropped as he stared at Ty, obviously thinking he was insane. His partner looked at him and rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Mark,” he muttered. “He’s still yanking your chain.” The two younger agents led the way out, muttering to each other.

“You know it’s more likely they’re taking us to Wayne Manor,” Zane said as they followed along, both to make his point and to get a jab in at Ty while he could. “Hide in plain sight and spare no expense account.” Sad, but true. It was a good thing they weren’t supposed to be completely undercover, or they’d already be spoiled.

“That doesn’t even make any sense. Shut it, Sidekick,” Ty muttered to him.

24 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

Zane allowed himself a small smile before he remembered how much he actively disliked this man.

“You two want breakfast before the hotel?” Morrison asked. He seemed to be the talker of the matched set.

“The Bat Cave isn’t the hotel,” Ty protested in annoyance with a few snaps of his fingers. “Get on board the metaphor, kiddies.”

“Where the hell is the Bat Cave, then?” Henninger asked with a long-suffering sigh.

“The lab, man. Take us down to the lab,” Ty ordered in exasperation.

Zane glanced over the Hardy Boys, struck again by how young they seemed. Surely, they’d seen some version of Batman. This was making him feel old.

“Well, how the hell are we supposed to know that? You old guys saw all that original crap. The new stuff’s a lot better, and the Bat Cave is not a lab,” Morrison blustered.

Zane blinked. Old guys? He glanced to Ty, wondering what sort of fireworks that little comment would set off.

“Do I look like I saw the original anything, SpongeBob?” Ty asked with a smirk and a point to his own chest. “What are you doing reading comics anyway? When I was your age I was in the Gulf, man,” he continued.

“The Gulf of what?” Morrison responded, a blank look in his eyes.

“The Persian Gulf,” Zane answered sharply, not at all amused. He noticed Henninger closing his eyes in exasperation and shaking his head.

Ty didn’t know whether to be more shocked at Morrison’s idiocy or at Zane’s sudden apparent support. He just stared at Morrison for a minute, all joking aside, then glanced at Zane, who met his eyes for a moment, and sighed. “Kids these days,” he muttered as he stepped between the two younger agents and punched the button on the elevator.

The elevator ride was a short one, and when the car jerked to a stop Henninger led the way out. “The team has been a little scattered since the deaths of Special Agents Reilly and Sanchez,” he said quietly as they walked down the hall. “We all knew them. I’m afraid we’re not really organized right now.”

“Has the team had any off time?” Ty asked.

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Henninger glanced at him defensively as if expecting a jeer. “No,” he answered curtly as he opened the door to the main laboratory.

“Give it to them while we get ourselves acquainted with the case,” Ty ordered.

Zane frowned. He had no problem with giving the overworked team a day or two off, but how were they supposed to do any of the things Burns ordered if none of the team was around to observe? “We should have access to all the subsidiary case material,” he said slowly, not arguing openly. “I’d like to spend some time with the photos.”

“I’ll have them pulled,” Morrison responded diligently, obviously knowing he’d insulted the two older agents and hoping to make up for it.

“Are any of the crime scenes still intact?” Ty asked.

“Uh … I believe the most recent one is,” Morrison answered uncertainly. “May I ask why?”

“I’d like to visit it,” Ty answered.

“Me, too,” Zane added. He wondered if Serena Scott would mind going along and seeing the site in person. He’d have to ask her—unless Ty got it into his head to go right this minute.

That thought made him realize that he really had no idea what Ty was trained to do or how he would behave on an actual case. The other man at least knew what department Zane came from, although that certainly didn’t expose his training. Some research to learn a little more about his asshole of a partner might not be a bad idea. It was obvious from the fact that he had been stationed in the Gulf that he had been military of some sort, and when Zane pondered that it didn’t really come as much of a surprise. It wouldn’t take long to request a file on Grady.

“When would you like to go?” Morrison asked.

“As soon as we’re done down here,” Ty answered with a nod to the lab doors as they approached.

“That may be a bit of a problem,” Morrison answered nervously as Henninger slid his key card through the security slot.

“Then fix the problem,” Ty said to him coldly.

“The NYPD detectives assigned to the case haven’t returned our calls for two days. They don’t know you’re here,” Morrison told him.

“So, what’s the problem?” Zane asked, stopping at the security desk.

26 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

“Technically it’s still a joint case. The site was left in NYPD

custody,” Morrison answered with a grateful look at Zane as Ty sighed in exasperation. “We’ll have to notify them of the changes to the case and give them—”

“Then get on it,” Ty interrupted before stalking through the security door Henninger held open for him.

“Go on,” Zane said quietly. “Let us know when it’s set up.”

Morrison fled, followed by his quieter partner, and Zane turned and followed Ty, wondering if this would be the pattern for the job: Hurricane Grady sweeps in, tosses everything askew, and sweeps right back out, leaving Zane to clean up the mess.

He hadn’t worked his ass off the past two years to be a goddamn janitor.

FOUR hours after entering the lab, Ty sat amid a flurry of papers and untidy stacks of reports. He leaned his elbows on the table, scowling heavily and staring at the shiny stainless-steel top.

On the other side of the table, Zane was busily working on his charts.

He just happened to glance up, the look on Ty’s face giving him pause.

“What’s wrong?”

Ty didn’t look up. His eyes were slightly glazed and his brow furrowed. “There’s no pattern,” he muttered. “The only things connecting these cases are the little tokens the dude leaves with the bodies and the fact they all end up dead. Other than that, there’s no common victim type, there’s no common MO. Weapon, cause of death, even the way he stages them. All different.”

He finally focused his eyes and glared at the files accusingly as if it was their fault.

“Victim Number One; Kyle Walters,” he recited suddenly. “Wealthy Wall Street type, found in his bedroom, still alive, half-insane, suffering from severe hypersensitivity to light, sound, smell, you name it. Dies in the hospital without ever saying a coherent word. Cause of death is ruled a meth overdose.

Hell, the only reason we even know this guy was a victim was the maid finding the token from the killer a week later. Serial killers tend to get their Cut & Run | 27

kicks from watching their victims die or from the power to kill. Why would he leave him alive and risk being identified?”

“Maybe they get their kicks just as much from watching the suffering,” Zane suggested quietly, not looking up from his paper. His fingers moved over the charts, still making notes from the case files. “The best developing pattern is the fact that the victims are so different. Like he’s choosing specifically based on some reasoning. A majority of serial killers fixate on a particular style of victim—young blonde women or rich gay men, for instance.”

“Yes, dear, I’m aware of that. That’s my point. We have a thirty-seven-year-old male stockbroker; overdosed with shitty-quality meth,” Ty said as he closed his eyes and rested his head back against his chair. He shook his head, reciting everything from memory. “Next, Susan Harris, a twenty-something hooker found in nothing but a six hundred-count white sheet in the most exclusive cemetery in the state, all her teeth gone and no apparent cause of death. Then a double murder. Two young women: Allison McFadden and Theresa Escobar. Roommates, both suffocated, positioned in their beds as if they were sleeping. The only notable thing about them is that their hair had been dyed postmortem. Then we have the infamous set of twins who got the Bureau involved, Ryan and Russell Stevens. Killed at the Tri-State marker, one man in each of the bordering states, shot dead. Late fifties, an apparent double-suicide, if not for the token left by the killer.”

He rolled his neck and shook his head, trying to make sense of it.

“The first guy was a brunet, the hooker was a bottle blonde but a natural brunette, the second and third were blonde and black-haired, then dyed the opposite, and the twins were both redheads. Both sexes, no common body type. Brown eyes, green eyes, blue eyes … hell, he doesn’t even leave the same tokens! Fuck it!” he spat. “All serials have patterns. It’s got to be there,”

he muttered to himself.

“Not having a pattern can be a pattern.” The patient distraction was clear in Zane’s voice.

“If he’s intelligent and not quite insane, he may be deliberately toying with us. It’s a game to him.” While Ty was getting frustrated, Zane kept himself removed, focusing on the numbers and the data. “I want to plot the locations of the bodies to get an idea of the territory we’re looking at.” He looked up to see Ty frowning, and Zane’s curiosity got the best of him. “Tell me, Grady, why the hell are you here? Why did Burns put you on this case?”

“I understand that there is a pattern,” Ty responded slowly, ignoring the question momentarily. “I want to know what the fuck it is,” he ground out 28 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

patiently. He leaned back and rolled his neck. “And he put me on it because he knows me. I’m good at sneaking around and I’m good at mind games,” he said curtly, not choosing to elaborate.

Zane nodded slowly. He was starting to see why they’d been paired up for this freak show. Ty was good at mind games, Zane was good at details and patterns. And they so obviously didn’t work well together that they didn’t even need to make a show of it for the New York team.

“I’ve got enough here,” he announced, closing his file and notebook.

“Tomorrow we’ll talk with the NYPD detectives, and Serena Scott should return my call. Henninger and Morrison will either get us access to the scene, or we’ll get access on our own.” He pushed back from the table. “You have anything else?” His voice was neutral.

“No,” Ty muttered without moving. He was still staring at the files and frowning.

Zane watched him silently for a long moment before saying, “Ready to head over to the hotel? I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for dinner and a drink.”

“You drink on duty?” Ty asked incredulously as he finally tore his eyes away from the files.

“Doesn’t everyone?” Zane headed for the hall. “I have a new smartass partner to deal with, so certainly I can’t be blamed,” he muttered under his breath while he walked to the door and out of the lab. A few beers with dinner wouldn’t even register on a Breathalyzer with his body mass and would go a long way to new brainstorms, but he didn’t dare. That didn’t mean he didn’t dream otherwise, though.

“You’ve never been a field agent before, have you?” Ty asked with disdain, calling out the question as he remained at the table, staring at the files and crime-scene photos.

Zane stopped at the door, taking a moment to order his thoughts and push away the ghosts of his constant nightmares. “A drink now and then is not going to end the world. I’m guessing that you came from deep cover, which means you were always looking over your shoulder, living the part every minute, knowing one mistake would send you to the morgue.” Zane knew the situation very well. “While it’s admirable, and arguably the most difficult job the Bureau does, you’re going to have to figure out how to downshift, or the people we work with are going to strangle you. You can’t work around the clock and stay sharp enough to crunch this much data and get inside a madman’s head.”

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Ty tore his eyes away from the papers again and looked up at Zane seriously. “You think those boys down in the morgue downshifted before he killed ’em?” he asked flatly.

“I think they were locked down as securely as they could get, with no reason to think they’d be found, much less attacked. Which means one of two things,” Zane responded, brown eyes hard and unflinching. “They’d either already screwed up and exposed themselves or someone who knew where they were gave them up, either by mistake or not. Either way, letting down their guard made no difference. They were already dead.”

Ty just shook his head and snorted derisively. He knew he was damned if he was going to let himself be shot in the chest as he slept. You never thought you were safe. Feeling safe got you killed.

Zane could almost see the tension pouring off Ty in waves. “Are you going to the hotel or are you planning on staying here all day?” he asked.

“I’m going to
a
hotel,” Ty answered as he stood and gathered his coat and satchel. “A different hotel. And you’re coming with me.”