Cut and Run 1 - Cut and Run

bowed as if it was somehow his fault. Zane looked back down at the binder with dread, then opened it and turned it to look over the first page. The articles weren't in any sort of order. They were merely put in as Ty had found them.
    The first page, however, was about the woman. It detailed her discovery with all the gory relish of the popular press, and Ty knew it word for word. He looked away from the photograph included of Isabelle St. Claire in her airline uniform. “The way she was found,” he said in a hoarse voice, “made me start thinking the way the bodies were found was even more important than we thought it was."
    Zane glanced up at him before going back to the article. “Go on,” he invited.
    "It's not really the victims he's after,” Ty conjectured. “It's the situations,” he went on with a point at the next page. “His vics have to fit the situation he's after, but other than that he doesn't care who they are. He went after the ME and her assistant next."
    Zane glanced up at him with a wince.
    Ty nodded grimly. “But it wasn't in the same manner as the agents he killed, or like us or the other people he was trying to merely get rid of. It wasn't like they stumbled across him as he was doing something. It was methodical. I think they were planned victims, killed in the morgue for some reason,” he said with emphasis.
    Flipping through the pages, Zane stopped on that article, seeing the picture of the dark-haired woman they'd worked with. He shook his head. Ty must have done this just in the last few days, right before he got the call from Burns. He was still keeping up, somehow. Zane's chest hurt with the thought. “Goddamn,” he murmured. “They were locked in the autopsy lab. But why? You're right; there's something off about it. Always before, there's some sort of odd positioning. They were just there."
    "Right. In the morgue . I started looking back at the other ones. The first with the meth guy found in his bed. The second with the hooker found in the graveyard, which happens to be one of the most elite burial grounds in the city,” he added with a point of his finger at the binder. “Then the two girls with the dyed hair who were switched in each other's beds. I don't think it mattered how they were killed or who they were. Just how they were found."
    "What about the guy with the bird flu? Or the twins that looked like a mutual execution? What was off about them?” Zane asked.
    Ty sighed heavily and shook his head, looking out the window as the plane began to taxi down the runway. “That's the problem with my theory,” he admitted. “The twins were the ones that were killed across state lines. They were the reason the FBI was brought in at all. That is the importance of their location. But aside from that? There wasn't anything special about where or how they were found, just what they were killed with."
    "The one man with a rare disease and the others with their own twin?"
    "Uh huh. Nothing else stands out."
    "Other than they were different from all the others,” Zane said.
    Ty muttered as he looked out the window diligently. “There's an answer there, but I'm just not seeing the big picture,” he added in frustration.
    Zane kept paging through the binder quietly, reviewing the older cases and then reading up on what had happened since.
    A shiver ran through Ty and he closed his eyes and bowed his head again. “I hate knowing this fucker is smarter than I am,” he muttered.
    Zane's head snapped up. “He's not smarter than you,” he said firmly. “He just has inside information."
    Ty sneered at that bit of logic and snorted. “You saying he's the kid in class with the teacher's copy of the textbook?” he asked wryly as his knee began to bounce restlessly.
    "That's exactly what I'm saying. It's easy to beat the other kids’ test scores when you have the answer key,” Zane pointed out.
    Ty closed his eyes and rubbed them. “Still doesn't mean the other kids have to like it,” he muttered as the engines roared and the plane lifted off.
    * * * *
    Once they arrived in New York, a brief discussion established that they would contact Tim Henninger at the Bureau. It was fairly safe and probably the most expedient way of going about things. He'd risked his neck to help them before, and despite Ty's inherent lack of respect for the kid, they both trusted him in their own ways.
    When they called him, he sounded almost happy to hear from them. Ty could practically hear him