Cut and Run 5 - Armed and Dangerous

feet behind Jonas’ head.
    Jonas ducked and then brought his gun up to take his shot at Julian. Burns called out. Ty covered his head with both hands and spun out of the way, and Burns realized that Julian had grabbed him and shoved him, drawing a hidden gun from the small of Ty’s back. He dove to the side as he fired. The boom of the Glock overpowered the dull thuds of the silencer.
    Burns could do nothing but cover his head. Everyone scrambled for cover.
    “Jesus fucking Christ!” Ty cried as soon as the shooting hit a lull. “You prick! You shot me!”
    “I couldn’t possibly have shot you from this angle,” Julian murmured from where he hunched behind an arm of the same sofa Jonas was using as cover.
    “Ty?” Burns called out.
    Another sniper round hit the window, close enough to the first bullet to crack the glass more. Eventually the sniper would get through.
    Jonas lunged to his feet and sprayed a volley of bullets at the corner where Julian had taken cover. Burns scrambled for the weapon he had discarded, diving to the floor and rolling as he brought the gun up. Jonas had the gun trained on Julian, who had run out of bullets and was on his knees, hands held high. Burns raised his gun to fire, but his finger had barely brushed the trigger when Ty rammed Jonas from behind.
    Jonas’ gun went off, spraying ceiling plaster everywhere. They landed hard, Ty’s bulk knocking the air from Jonas as he skidded face-first across the plush carpeting. Ty rammed an elbow into Jonas’ back to keep him down.
    Burns pushed to his feet and aimed his gun at Jonas. “Ty! Get him out of here!”
    Ty hesitated, looking from Burns to Jonas.
    “He’s not safe until he’s at Langley!” Burns growled, jerking his head toward Cross. “Go!”
    Ty rolled and struggled to his feet, holding a bloody hand to his side. Julian took his elbow, both of them staggering toward the door.
    “Richard,” Jonas groaned as he pushed off the floor. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Richard. Don’t let them get away!”
    “Shut up,” Burns gritted out as Ty and Julian fled from the office.
    Jonas met his eyes, his body tensing. Burns looked into the depths, reliving every moment he’d known Randall Jonas, from boot camp to the morning he’d pulled Burns out of a fire in the jungle to the day he’d been a groomsman at his wedding.
    “I trusted you.”
    Jonas twisted to look up at him. Burns tightened his hold on his gun, hand trembling as the betrayal sank in.
    Jonas gave a derogatory snort and met Burns’ eyes. “That just made you easy to use.”

    J ULIAN heard the last gunshot, the sound deafening as they ran for the stairwell. Ty skidded to a halt, turning back. “Dick!”
    “He had the upper hand,” Julian said, grabbing Ty’s elbow to pull him along. Ty hesitated, but when they saw agents flooding the hallways, he turned and ran with Julian to the emergency stairwell.
    They stormed down the steps, every bang and clang of the stairwell putting Julian’s teeth on edge.
    “It’s brilliant, really,” he gasped out. “Send unsuspecting errand boys to do the dirty work. It’s his signature.”
    “I don’t fucking believe this,” Ty muttered. “Does this mean me and Zane were the bad guys?”
    “I believe so, yes.”
    “Son of a bitch!”
    They hit the ground floor level, and Ty pushed through the door into the lobby. Sirens were going off; the entire federal building was mobilizing. Ty flashed his badge at a security guard who tried to stop them. When the guard stepped in front of them, unwilling to let them leave, Ty grabbed him by the hand, twisted it, and turned into his body, dropping the beefy guard with a move as graceful as a ballerina.
    They darted past as other guards came after them.
    “Zane is gonna kill me,” Ty said as they burst through the doors and sprinted down the street into the sparse crowds of tourists.
    “He’s not the only one!” Julian shouted as they darted between people and across the street. “We have a sniper to worry about now as well.”

    Z ANE sat with Cameron at the café they’d designated as the rendezvous. He despised being left behind, but Ty had given a convincing argument that he and Julian would be able to slip through better just the two of them. They were also hoping, on some level, that Zane would serve as a decoy for anyone watching the building waiting for Cross to show up. He had walked up and down the sidewalk several times, hoping to draw