by Abigail Roux
Poirier leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Tell me, Tyler Beaumont. Who was your next victim going to be?”
It was under an uneasy peace that Zane and Liam rode the elevator of the Bourbon Orleans to the fifth floor. Zane stood far enough away to be able to maneuver, keeping an eye on Liam even though the man had proved true to his word thus far.
Liam shook his head, smiling as he stared at the doors. “Are you always this paranoid?”
“When I’m still bleeding from our introduction, yeah.”
“Fair enough.” Liam glanced at him and winked.
Zane rolled his eyes. The man was insufferable. No wonder he and Ty had been an item. He forced Liam to move ahead of him as they made their way down the hall, and he hung back out of reach. He’d seen the fear in Ty’s eyes when he’d said Liam was here for trouble. And men like Ty didn’t scare easily.
Liam held up the room key Zane had given him and slid it in, stepping back as the little light flicked green. Zane pushed the door open and called out, “Coming in with company!”
No one responded, and Zane nodded for Liam to go in. Liam put both hands behind his head and strolled into the room, Zane moving behind with one of the borrowed knives in his hand.
As soon as Liam cleared the entryway, a gun appeared from behind the corner, pressing to Liam’s temple. “Oh dear,” Liam drawled.
Owen Johns stepped away from his hiding spot and out of Liam’s reach with practiced speed, keeping the gun trained on him.
Zane groaned. The one man here who wouldn’t listen to a word either of them said.
“It’s okay,” he tried anyway. He held up his knife. “I’m fifty percent sure he’s on our side.”
Owen’s lip curled and he grunted. “Last time I saw him, he was dead, so forgive me for being a little wary.” He narrowed his eyes at Liam. “Get on your knees.”
“This isn’t that sort of game.” Liam sighed. “Go fetch me your master and we’ll discuss it together.”
Owen bristled at the condescension, but he began to relax his stance. “The others have been arrested.”
“What?” Zane blurted.
“I watched from across the street. Took all of them.”
“Would it be possible to dispense with some weaponry here?” Liam drawled. “My fingers are going numb.”
“Not a unicorn’s chance in Hell,” Owen grunted.
“Now, what would a unicorn be doing in Hell?” Liam asked.
“You can ask him when you get there.”
Zane slid his knife back into the sheath Liam had given him for it. “What else do we know? Why were they all taken?”
“I can only assume someone figured out who Ty was,” Owen answered grudgingly. “Someone fingered him for the murder.”
“What murder?” Liam asked. For the first time, he sounded genuinely confused.
“The one you committed,” Owen snarled. “Killed a girl, left a hoodoo curse bag behind. The same one you stuffed in Ty’s bed.”
“I’ve not stuffed anything in Ty’s bed in some years. And I didn’t kill anyone last night, certainly not some girl with a voodoo curse. Are you all still this insane? I thought that faded with time.”
Zane pointedly cleared his throat. “You think someone saw him and recognized him from when he was undercover?”
Owen nodded.
“Or someone’s setting him up,” Liam offered, turning to meet Zane’s eyes for emphasis. “Someone who knew he’d be here.”
Zane gritted his teeth. If that were the case, the cartel merely had to get to Ty in jail and he was done. They had him cornered already and Ty didn’t even know they were after him. “What do you know?”
Liam shrugged. “He went by the name Tyler Beaumont while here. Not exactly original, but one shouldn’t stray too far, am I right?” Liam winked at Owen.
“Oh God, I forgot how annoying you are,” Owen grumbled. He still had his gun up. Where had the man gotten it? Zane remembered someone saying Owen was a head of security at some big corporation, so he might carry all the time. But knowing what he did now, Zane could only assume Sidewinder carried all the time no matter what, in case they were called to action. The thought made Zane both sad and exceptionally angry.
Liam shrugged and finally lowered his hands. He edged toward the interior of the room and sat in one of the chairs, smirking at Owen as the man followed him with his gun.
“Garrett, what the fuck is going on?” Owen growled.
“Let’s just say, Mr. Bell was persuasive in getting an audience with me. There’s some stuff in play that’s going to get ugly.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Bloody stuff,” Liam answered.
“We need to get to Ty and the others,” Zane said. “I’ll go down there, identify myself. We’ll clear this up and get to work.”
Liam tutted and shook his head.
“What?” Zane demanded, already exasperated by the man.
“Identifying yourself will leave you wide open. The New Orleans Police Department is a sieve, it always has been. If the cartel lads don’t already know Ty’s there, when word gets out that a Fed was in there throwing weight around? You’ll be dead before Ty’s out of his cell and Ty will soon follow.”
“Why? What cartel guys? What the fuck are you talking about?” Owen asked. He was growing more agitated, and he was still holding the gun.
Zane took him by the shoulders so the gun was no longer trained on Liam, and he forced Owen to meet his eyes. “Listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once. Liam is with the NIA, but he’s undercover taking jobs as a paid assassin. He was hired by a cartel in Miami to come here and kill me and/or Ty, but he’s trying to help us.”
“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.”
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?”