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 fuck 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 fuck 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.”
“I know.” Ty finally looked up. “It’s his.”
Nick said nothing. He wasn’t going to touch that one.
“He outplayed me.”
“This wasn’t a game, Ty,” Zane said.
“Sure it was. Liam wasn’t freelancing here. He works for the NIA.”
“How do you know?” Zane asked.
“Because I didn’t miss. I don’t miss. He was here as an NIA agent. And what is the NIA?”
“The brand new, ultra-militarized arm of the CIA,” Kelly recited.
“With broad purpose but small, precious resources,” Ty added.
“You’re saying you think Liam and the NIA engineered all of this?” Zane asked. “Why?”
“To do exactly what we did.”
“Clean out a rat’s nest?” Nick asked.
“You’re saying NIA pitted a retired Recon team against a Colombian cartel?” Owen asked. “On purpose?”
Ty shrugged. “It was a perfect storm. We cleared out a dozen of the cartel’s men, plus a high-ranking dirty cop who controls a busy port city. They lose no assets. Don’t take the heat.”
“How do you figure?” Digger asked.
Ty held up his hand. He slowly extended his thumb. “He knew Sanchez. Knew he was dead, knew his birthday, knew we’d all gather. He knew Digger was confined to the state. That leaves one place and time we’d all be. And to know all that, he had to have CIA sources.” He pointed his index finger, counting off his reasons. “The cartel came by boat, which means they left Miami before we did. He didn’t see us and then call them. They knew to be here because he told them to be here.” He flipped up another finger. “He knew my past here. You think it was coincidence I hit Gaudet’s radar as soon as I landed? He effectively boxed us in, forced us to act.”
“I don’t know, Ty,” Nick finally said. “I don’t trust the bastard either, but . . . I’m just not comfortable thinking he’s that many steps ahead.”
Ty shrugged. “Neither am I.”
“If that is what happened, why would he try to kill you?” Owen asked. “Do you really think he just mixed those bullets up?”
Ty stared at the voodoo doll, long enough the silence became uncomfortable. “He’s a scorpion and I’m a turtle,” Ty finally answered.
“Are you hallucinating again?” Zane asked.
Nick cleared his throat. “It’s a fable. The scorpion asks the turtle to take him across the river. The turtle says no because he’s afraid the scorpion will sting him. Scorpion tells Turtle he won’t sting him because they’ll both drown. But halfway across the river, the scorpion strikes. As they’re sinking, Turtle asks him why, and Scorpion replies, ‘It’s just my nature.’”
Zane’s worried eyes moved to Ty, who was studying the voodoo doll again. “That’s not good enough.”
“Maybe he knows Ty’s the only one who can catch him,” Kelly rasped.
Ty stood carefully without another word, then took a step toward Kelly. Kelly lifted a hand and Ty took it, squeezing it gently. “I’ll be back, okay?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Ty petted him on the head, then turned to shuffle out of the room.
The rest of them began to stand, giving Kelly their own goodbyes before they all filed out.
Nick stood at the doorway, watching the others walk away.
Digger put his arm over Owen’s shoulders. “Care for a few cocktails?”
“It’s barely noon, man.”
“So? This is Nawlins!”
They laughed as they headed for the elevator. Ty and Zane followed, walking side by side but not saying anything. Nick shook his head as he watched them go.
“They gonna be okay?” Kelly asked from the bed.
Nick pondered them. “Oh, you know Ty,” he finally said, injecting some cheer into his voice. “He can squirm out of anything.”
Ty was silent as Zane hailed a cab for them. Digger and Owen had cavorted off into the French Quarter as if nothing had happened that morning, but Zane was finding it a bit more difficult to brush off.
He and Ty climbed into the cab, directing it to the Bourbon Orleans, where they still had a room under Nick’s name. What remained of their belongings had been taken there earlier.
Zane glanced sideways at Ty. His neck was stained with remnants of Digger’s fake blood and his real blood, and his face was ashen, but Zane had seen him look worse. “I can’t believe we both came out of this without anything other than scratches,” Zane tried.
Ty bobbed his head distractedly.
“Do you still have the gris-gris bag?”
That caused Ty to raise his head. He licked his lips. “Yeah. Gotta figure out how to cleanse it.”
“How?”
“There used to be a priestess on Rampart. Probably still there.”
Zane studied him, wishing the distance between them hadn’t grown so full of thorns. He worked hard to swallow past the tightness in his throat.
The taxi came to a stop and Zane paid the driver as Ty trudged to the hotel entrance. Zane jogged to catch up with him. “Hey,” he called, frustration growing as he followed Ty through the lobby. “Are we going to talk about . . . anything?”
Ty punched the button on the elevator. He nodded, not meeting Zane’s eyes. The doors opened and Ty stepped in, turning to face Zane. “Do you love me, Zane?”
The simple question, asked with so little emotion in Ty’s eyes, hit Zane like a hammer in the chest, stealing his breath, making his knees go weak. He stumbled into the elevator before the doors could close on them.
“Yes. Yes I do.”
Ty nodded. “And I love you.”
Zane released the breath he’d been holding. He was relieved to hear that confirmation after all that had happened, after all they’d said and done to each other. “So . . . what do we do?”
“Well.” Ty swallowed, looking a little sick. “I can’t . . . I can’t sit on your pedestal.”
“Ty.”
“No. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, Zane. I’m not. We’ve both known from the start the only reason you got clean was because I begged you to. You hang on by your fingernails because I expect you to. It’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to me. I can’t be the reason you’re sober, Zane.”
Zane’s breath came out harsh and shaky.
“Because I’m not perfect, and the next time I let you down, it can’t be me you’re leaning on. You have to be strong enough to stay off the bottle. For you. Not me.”
Zane couldn’t meet Ty’s eyes anymore and he averted his gaze to the floor. “I’m not proud of what I’ve done, Ty.”
“Neither am I,” Ty whispered. He reached out and put two fingers under Zane’s chin, lifting his head to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry I let you down.”
Zane moved closer, his eyes rapt on Ty’s. Ty’s hand moved from his chin to cup his cheek, and Zane leaned to kiss him carefully. The kiss demanded nothing. It was merely a sentiment of love and devotion from one man to another.
Zane’s heart pounded with the acceptance. When he stepped back, they were still looking into each other’s eyes. The elevator stopped and jolted them both. Zane took a deep, bracing breath. “Where does that leave us?”