Cut and Run 5 - Armed and Dangerous

wound around his leg first so he had to lean forward. Cameron was restrained in similar fashion. They had to be uncomfortable as hell, but Ty wasn’t taking any chances.
    He and Zane had discussed trying to head back to Chicago and find a flight, but a call in to Burns had informed them that a blizzard was heading their way and flights were being grounded left and right. They’d have better luck driving, and if they left right now they’d get ahead of the snowstorm and miss it entirely, even if they were having difficulties with their prisoners.
    A few moments later, Zane joined them and Ty pulled out of the parking space.
    “In point one miles, turn left on Willowcreek Road.”
    Zane was still shivering from the cold as the GPS began giving instructions, even though the car was finally beginning to warm. They weren’t even out of the parking lot of the hotel yet and the GPS lady was bossing them around. The little arrow on the screen of the unit was pointing the wrong way, and they weren’t facing anything resembling Willowcreek Road.
    “You’re going to have to do better than this, honey,” Ty told the little unit stuck to the dash.
    “I should get my phone out,” Zane said as he settled in the passenger seat, newspaper on his lap, covered cup of coffee in hand. “Record you talking to it.”
    “Talking to what, your phone?” Ty asked as he turned the car toward the exit to the parking lot.
    “In point one miles, turn left on Willowcreek Road.”
    “The GPS,” Zane said, gesturing toward it with his coffee cup.
    “She’s more fun to listen to than you are. At least she knows what she’s talking about.”
    “Ha ha.”
    “I kind of dig her,” Ty said with a smirk.
    “Yeah, well, the shine will wear off when all she does is bitch at you for seven hundred miles,” Zane said.
    “And that’s different from you, how?”
    When Zane turned to meet his eyes, Ty winked at him. Zane looked away, a smile forming.
    “In point two miles, turn left on entrance ramp to Interstate 80/90, Indiana East-West Toll Road. In point one mile, stay left on Interstate 80/90 East, Indiana East-West Toll Road.”
    “Loosen up, honey,” Ty said to it.
    “Please stop talking to the inanimate object,” Julian said from the back seat.
    “You can give that up,” Zane said as he opened the newspaper. He didn’t look at Ty, but he was still smirking. “He talks to his guns too.”
    “That fits,” Julian said under his breath.
    Ty snorted at them both but remained silent as he followed the directions the GPS gave him. He took the toll ticket as they went through the entrance, handing it to Zane as they got on the toll road. As the miles began to roll by, Ty couldn’t have been more relieved that he and Zane had managed to steal those few hours in Chicago. He wanted to reach out and touch his partner, rest his hand on Zane’s knee, brush his fingers against his shoulder, anything. He refrained, though, the professional side of him winning out.
    Zane seemed content as he read his paper and sipped at his coffee. Of course, Zane always seemed content. That was one of the things Ty loved about him. He was rock steady most of the time, dry and unflappable. A solid wall against which Ty’s changing moods battered. Traits that made the moments Zane lost his composure even more entertaining.
    They stopped at a travel plaza roughly an hour after leaving the hotel in order to get breakfast. As Zane took care of whatever the hell it was Zane did in travel plazas, Ty sat in the driver’s seat, fidgeting. He wasn’t going to be driving the next leg, but it was easier to see the two men sitting in the back in the rearview mirror from that side of the car, and to react with his dominant right hand if they put up a fight.
    He couldn’t get over the tension that had settled in his shoulders or the remnants of the Red Bull, and it was manifesting in a great deal of twitching, shifting, and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
    “Intelligence operatives often pick food or travel areas as their cover, Cameron,” Julian said from the backseat, where he sat examining his neatly manicured nails as his hand hung above his head. “Restaurants, gas stations. Lots of people in and out to mask suspicious behavior. A place like this, it must make Agent Grady very nervous.”
    “Try talking without making noise for a while,” Ty said, his eyes still on Zane, who had not turned back toward the window at all.
    “Are you okay?”