Cut and Run 09 Crash & Burn (45 page)

“They’re coming, Ty.”

Ty gripped Nick’s hair and hugged him to his chest, tears falling against his forehead. “I’m not leaving him here.”

“He’s dead if you move him and so are we!” Zane tugged urgently at Ty’s uninjured shoulder as he struggled to get him up.

“I can’t leave him here,” Ty said, almost panicked as Zane pried him away.

“Look at that knife, Ty! You’ll kill him!”

Nick lay in a slowly spreading pool of blood, his green eyes closed to the brilliant blue sky, his skin unnaturally pale and cool. Ty struggled as Zane wrapped him up and pulled him to his feet.

“Don’t make me leave him here!” Ty sobbed.

It broke Zane’s heart, but he wasn’t going to lose Ty on this street. “We have to go. He died for us, Ty, we have to go now!”

“He’s not dead! I can’t leave him like this. I can’t leave him like this! Please!”

“We’ll come back for him.” Ty didn’t take his eyes off Nick or stop struggling as Zane dragged him toward a little, blue Prius that had been abandoned by its owner in the chaos. “I promise,” Zane tried again breathlessly. “I promise! But we have to go!”

Ty sat on the couch and rocked, unblinking. Zane watched him, worrying, mourning for him and the others, who were all sitting quietly with much the same distant expressions on their faces.

Zane met Julian’s eyes across the room. It was hard to judge the man, but he seemed sad as well. Even Liam, who’d done his best to drag Nick and the rest of Sidewinder into his own brand of Hell, was sitting with his head lowered and his eyes closed.

Zane had managed to get out of the chaos and find his way to the safe house by his memory of the city’s streets alone. Ty had held his head in his hands the entire way. When they’d gotten out of the car without Nick, Owen and Digger had been forced to drag Kelly away to prevent him from tearing off into the city alone.

An hour after leaving Nick’s body in the street, Preston was the only one still up and moving, reloading all their weapons and laying them out on the cracked laminate countertop. Zane had contacted Clancy and her crew to update them. They were on their way here, but Zane wasn’t sure if it mattered. Sidewinder was broken.

“He could have made it,” Kelly said suddenly from where he was crouched against the wall, curled into a ball under the window. “Someone on the scene could have gotten him help, right? He could still make it. Right?”

No one answered him. No one even looked at him. Zane ran a hand through his hair, watching Kelly with heaviness in his heart he wasn’t sure he could shake. “Yeah, Doc,” he whispered. “Yeah, he could have made it.”

Kelly bowed his head, tears falling onto his folded arms.

“I am truly sorry for your loss,” Julian said. He let out a slow breath, squaring his shoulders. “But I need to know if this mission is still viable. My favors only extend so far past their expiration date.”

Ty’s eyes snapped to Julian with the sudden light of murderous intent. Zane lunged to his feet, getting between them before Ty could launch himself at the man.

“Expiration date?” Ty shoved at Zane, heedless of his dislocated shoulder or any of the bumps, scrapes, and bruises they shared. “Son of a bitch!”

Julian put both hands up. “I had the greatest respect for Detective O’Flaherty. I am simply asking if the rest of you intend to sacrifice yourselves on this altar as well.”

Ty trembled in Zane’s arms, his breaths shaky. “Yeah, I do.”

Zane nodded in a silent show of support. He and Ty had no choice. This was their altar to bleed on. Nick had thrown himself in their path, maybe slowed down the knife. But it was still coming. His death meant nothing. Not yet.

“Very well, then,” Julian said quietly.

Preston accentuated Julian’s statement by slamming a magazine home.

“What’s our play, Six?” Owen asked. He’d been crying, and he hadn’t made any effort to hide it. His eyes glistened and his voice shook, but he looked angry and determined.

Ty was still shaking, anger and grief warring in his eyes. “We can’t take on the NIA, not the eight of us.”

“Fortunately,” Preston drawled as he screwed a large suppressor onto the end of a sniper rifle. “They overplayed their hand out there, showed willingness to assassinate not only US citizens like dogs in the street, but also officers of the law. Let’s just say the Central Intelligence Agency is now highly perturbed.”

“Will they help us?” Zane asked.

Preston shook his head, jaw tight. “They still expect you to uphold your end.”

“Which we can’t do for another two weeks,” Zane said. “We’ll all be dead by then.”

Ty nodded. “That leaves the Vega cartel.”

“Is this revenge now, Tyler?” Julian asked.

Ty gritted his teeth, breathing hard. “With the cartel still out there, Zane and I are dead men even if we do get cleared. Anyone who wants out is free to walk, but we’re going. With or without help.”

“And what, pray tell, do you intend to do with them?” Liam asked. For the first time, Zane thought the man sounded defeated.

Ty met Zane’s eyes, and he nodded minutely. They couldn’t blame everything that’d happened on the cartel. They couldn’t even say that Nick—their friend, their brother—had died because of the cartel. No, that blame rested solely on Richard Burns’s shoulders. Ty would have the rest of his life to mourn that loss, and no one left to seek revenge on. Zane could feel the pain flickering on the edges of his own consciousness like a forest fire bearing down on him. He could imagine what the other men were feeling. He could see in their eyes, too; they wanted revenge.

The cartel had come after them. Burned down their bookstore, tried to take them all out with it. But they’d risen from the ashes with vengeance and mourning in their hearts. And someone had to pay. For them. For Nick. Someone had to pay.

Zane smiled slowly, nodding at his husband. “We burn them. We burn everything.”

Ty crouched at the perimeter of the Tuscan-style villa nestled on Star Island. The sand on this fucking island was probably worth more than gold.

They’d performed a solid day of recon, complete with having Zane and Owen track down digital blueprints from the architect and Kelly finding the hours of the moon and the tides. They’d set charges in all the possible places on the island they could reach without tipping their hand, and Preston’s sole job during the attack would be to litter more of them throughout the compound.

One press of a button at the end of this, and the Vega cartel was going to become intimately acquainted with the meaning of crash and burn.

Zane had dubbed their plan Wile E. Coyote Phase 4. They were doing everything but painting a getaway tunnel on the side of the house.

Ty shielded his wristwatch with his hand and lifted the cover to check the glowing dial. It was time.

“Go,” he whispered, the word sharp in the humid night. His men broke the perimeter. Within two seconds, a siren began to wail. Searchlights clanked on, probing the shadows of the vast estate. Dogs bayed and barked from somewhere uncomfortably close.

To Ty’s left, an explosion rocked the compound. The shock wave blasted over them. Buffs and scarves protected their faces against the heat. At least Digger’s discount C4 worked.

Their primary goal was to take Juan Carlos de la Vega alive. He could either be leveraged for the cartel’s bounty on Ty and Zane’s heads, or he could be turned over to the government in exchange for pardons. Hell, Ty didn’t even mind pitting the cartel and the Feds against each other, as long as he and Zane weren’t part of it anymore.

Their secondary goal, of course, was to cripple the cartel to the point that they’d be forced to retreat from Miami altogether. You can’t kill what you can’t catch, and since Ty and Zane didn’t plan on vacationing in Colombia anytime soon, Ty would be just fine if the cartel stayed the fuck down there.

Tertiary goal? Well. Like Zane had said: flame and ash. Fire and brimstone.

But even if they didn’t manage to accomplish anything they were setting out to do tonight, they had just used a homemade rocket launcher to blow the shit out of the building their intel indicated was the main distribution point for all the cocaine flowing from this operation. All in the name of distraction.

So, there was that.

Ty dove to his elbows and knees, firing at the sentries stationed on the roof of the mansion. The sound of gunfire was deafening. Men shouting, screaming in pain and panic, dogs barking, minor explosions following the major one. It was chaos. Pure hell raining down on upscale Miami.

Julian had been given a sniper rifle and the detonators, much to Digger’s dismay, and he seemed to be enjoying himself from his perch atop the western wall.

Zane was sticking to Ty’s side. He knew the compound intimately, and their job was to find de la Vega.

Clancy, Perrimore, and Lassiter had gone left, Owen, Digger, and Kelly right. Their jobs were to kill everything they found. Everything. Liam claimed he still needed proof the cartel had killed his handler in order to clear his name, and he’d gone off alone.

“Burn it to the ground, boys,” Kelly growled through their earpieces. “Burn it so high Nick can see.”

Tears tracked down Ty’s face.
One last time into the fray. See you on the other side, brother.

There was a familiar whistle off to the left, and Ty watched the graceful arc of a rocket-propelled projectile fired from a shoulder launcher. It hit an outer building of the compound with impressive results. He could hear Julian snickering in his earpiece.

Ty and Zane moved toward the main building, clumps of well-manicured grass kicking up around them as they scrambled through heavy fire. They’d advance several steps at a time, then kneel and return fire at intervals as they crept closer and closer.

Finally they crouched at the corner of the main building. So far, so good.

“Where’s the entry point?” he asked Zane, who was kneeling beside him, breathing hard. His eyes were hard black, reflecting the flames as if they were coming from within him instead of without. Ty’s phoenix, come to life.

“Keep up,” Zane rumbled, and he took off at a lope into the smoking shadows.

“Keep up,” Ty muttered. He found himself smirking as he jogged after him.

Zane led them through a maze of corridors deep into the house, moving quickly and quietly, dispatching anyone they encountered with frightening indiscrimination.

He took a turn and Ty nearly ran over him when he stopped short. He was blinking at a painting hung in an alcove.

“Garrett,” Ty hissed. “This ain’t a museum, come on.”

“This . . . used to be a hallway. They must have remodeled.”

Ty stared at him.

Zane shrugged and moved off again. After a few more twists and turns, he finally stopped at a corner and held up his hand to halt Ty. He pulled an aerosol can from his flak jacket and stretched his long body, reaching up and around the corner to disable what Ty assumed was a motion sensor. They crept around the corner and crouched outside an ornate set of double doors, where Zane cocked his head to listen.

Some of the gunfire outside let up, and Zane inhaled deeply. “This is the command center. Security system, files, maybe even el Jefe himself if he’s trying to hole up.”

“Can we take it just the two of us?”

“Only one way to find out,” Zane said with a grin, his eyes shining with mischief.

Ty shook his head. “So this is what it’s like being partnered with
me
, huh? Is that what this is? Is that what you’re doing?”

Zane chuckled. When he spoke again, he lowered his voice even further. “This may seem hypocritical, but there are a few things I just didn’t want you to know about me.” He pulled his scuffed Glock out of his waistband, checked the clip, and held it at the ready.

“Is this really the right time for this conversation?” Ty asked with a raised eyebrow.

Zane winced. “I just need you to know . . . I . . . I hate baseball.”

“You shut your whore mouth!”

Zane snickered as he pulled a knife from its sheath.

Ty cradled his assault rifle with practiced ease, but he had a feeling he might not need it if Zane was about to go get his freak on in this room. “But you
do
actually like baseball, right?”