Zane sat up, confused by the appearance of another player. But then a familiar figure stepped out of the helicopter and began jogging toward them.
“Dick?” Ty croaked.
Richard Burns reached down to help Ty to his feet. He patted him on the shoulder, but then gave up on propriety and hugged him. “I got here as fast as I could.”
“What are you doing here?” Zane demanded.
“When Ty called and said there was a mole relaying your movements, I ran a test and found a trace on your phone. I couldn’t tell you I was coming in or the mole would have known.”
“I . . . I thought you left us in the wind,” Ty said, still breathless and holding his bleeding neck.
Burns patted his cheek. “I would never do that, Beaumont. You know that.” He took a step back and surreptitiously wiped the disgusting blood concoction off his hand with a handkerchief as soon as Ty’s attention was elsewhere.
Zane was still glowering at Burns when he realized Ty had stumbled away from them. He shed the remains of the vest and dropped to his knees at Ava’s side. Blood had pooled under her and began to trail toward the center of the causeway. Her eyes stared into the sky.
Ty reached a shaking hand and set it over her forehead, closing her eyes. Zane could hear him murmuring a prayer in French through the ear bud in his ear.
Zane ran a hand through his hair, then yanked the ear bud out as he turned away from them. He met Burns’s eyes. “Ty told me everything.”
Burns stiffened, then nodded.
“You thought I was a traitor?” Zane asked through gritted teeth.
“Better safe than sorry, Zane. I knew as long as Ty trusted you, I could too.”
Zane rushed forward and swung at him, knocking him to the ground with a shout. “You can’t f**k with people’s lives like that!” he barked as two men ran up to them, each grabbed an arm, and began pulling him back. “Can’t you see what he would do for you? You can’t use him like that, Dick! You can’t!”
Burns sat up, jaw lax and nose bleeding. He clambered to his feet and waved the men off. Zane took short, quick breaths as Burns came closer and gripped both of his arms.
“Be calm, Zane. It’s over. It’s over.”
Zane took deeper breaths, struggling to concentrate on the here and now and deal with the betrayal and anger later. Burns patted him on the cheek and then walked away. Zane watched him go, feeling the anger drain out of him, replaced with a wide swath of loss. Burns was the first person since Jack Tanner in the academy who Zane had really felt cared about him. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Nick caught Zane’s attention as he picked up the remains of Ty’s Kevlar vest. The man looked from Ava’s body to the vest, then peered into the distance, where the wooden rails of a roller coaster undulated like a felled dragon in the swamp.
Zane moved closer. “What’s wrong?”
“Bullet went right through her. Ty’s talon hollow-point would have torn her to shreds, but it wouldn’t have gone through her.” He shuffled guiltily when he realized Ty had trudged up to stand with them, but he held up the vest for them to see. Among the flattened pistol rounds was a larger one, embedded in the vest. Nick turned it over to show them the very tip, where it had penetrated almost through, right over Ty’s heart. It had no petals from the grooves Ty had cut into it. It wasn’t the same bullet.
“He mixed up the bullets. Used an armor-piercing round,” Zane said, suddenly light-headed.
“That would have killed me,” Ty said.
“She saved your life,” Nick said. “Slowed it enough for the vest to stop it.”
Ty nodded. They all turned toward the roller coaster in the distance, the only place the shot could have originated from.
“Why didn’t he go for a head shot?” Nick asked.
“He knew you boys would catch him before he could get away. But if I went down like I was supposed to, no one’s the wiser until he’s long gone.”
“You can’t know it was on purpose,” Zane tried. “The bullets looked alike.”
Ty nodded, eyes still on the skeletal behemoth in the swamp. He finally lowered his head and walked away, following Burns toward the waiting helicopters.
“What happened out there?”
“He really shouldn’t be speaking,” the nurse told them.
“Honey, you get him to shut up long enough to heal, you let us know how you did it,” Digger grumbled as he plucked a bit of saw grass from that morning off his face.
“We’ll keep him quiet,” Nick promised, giving her a charming smile. It was probably ruined by the homemade face paint he’d discovered wouldn’t wash off. She nodded and left them, and Nick returned his attention to the man in the hospital bed.
Kelly grinned widely at them. “I know you all cried over me.”
Nick laughed. “We did.”
“Mainly because we knew we’d be the ones nursing you back to health,” Owen added.
Kelly held up a fist, and Owen gently pressed their knuckles together.
“So how’d it go down?”
“Everyone died, pretty much,” Digger answered. “Liam Bell was long gone by the time me and Irish climbed that death trap. Our names are being cleared by the FBI. Ty’s been suspended until Hell freezes over.”
Nick tore his eyes away from Kelly’s face to study Ty, sitting in the reclining chair in the corner. His ribs were tightly wrapped, there was a bandage on his neck, and—perhaps the biggest tragedy of all—a bullet had sliced right through his bulldog tattoo. He had dark circles under his eyes. And he’d been holding that damn voodoo doll since he sat down.
“They’re saying it’ll be a few weeks, at least,” Ty said. His voice was hoarse.
“So that’s it?” Kelly asked. “We made it?”
They all laughed uncomfortably. For some reason, it didn’t feel like they’d made it.
“What happened here?” Zane asked suddenly. He’d been sitting in the far corner, letting the rest of them visit.
Nick snorted, but Zane was frowning.
“I’m serious? What the f**k was that?”
“Liam Bell happened here,” Ty said. His scratchy voice and hollow eyes and the way he was caressing that voodoo doll were eerie. Ty was starting to creep Nick out.
“What do you mean?” Zane demanded.
Ty turned the doll in his hand. “I didn’t catch on fast enough.”
“Ty,” Nick said quietly. “None of what happened here is your fault.”