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.