Cut and Run 5 - Armed and Dangerous

with! Maybe that’s why he sent you.”
    Ty stared at him mutinously for a long moment, long enough that Zane began to suspect his gentle persuasion might not work.
    But then Ty rolled his eyes and sighed, sliding his gun back home. “Yeah, okay,” he mumbled. Zane felt his heart start back up, and he sagged against the wall as Ty glanced around the room and spoke. “I need to put a call into Burns. This just went over our pay grade.”
    “Okay,” Zane said, regretting the need for Ty to go anywhere right then. “Say hi to him for me.”
    Ty turned away from him with a nod, going to grab his coat off the bed. He was almost to the door when he stopped and turned. “Zane. Nothing else has been a lie.”
    Zane nodded. He wasn’t sure he’d say Ty had lied to him at all—Zane didn’t consider lies of omission lies—but he didn’t want to get into a long, circular logic puzzle with Ty, of all people. His head would explode.
    “Be careful.”
    Ty stood there for a heartbeat longer; then he advanced on Zane just like Julian had on him earlier. He took Zane’s face between his hands and he kissed him, pushing him back against the wall and holding him there, his lips demanding against Zane’s. Then it was over as suddenly as it had begun, Hurricane Ty passing by. When he stepped back again, he jerked his head in a nod. Then he turned and headed for the door.

    “ W HAT do you mean you know he knows me?” Ty asked Burns in outrage.
    “Of course I know he knows you! Why do you think I sent you after him? He’s listed as a possible contact on one of your old jobs.”
    Burns could hear Ty making a sputtering noise on the other end of the line that may or may not have been a minor hissy fit.
    “You dealt with him in France!”
    “No.”
    “Yes. I have the reports. His name was different, but this is the same guy. Julian Cross is a CIA codename. You worked together!”
    “No! Dick! I have never seen this man in my life! I would remember that!”
    Burns frowned, confused. Ty sounded genuinely upset and offended. “I don’t understand,” he muttered.
    “Well join the fucking club!” Ty hollered on the other end of the line. “The guy from Paris that I worked with, the guy in that report, was a French guy, six one, white-blond hair. He was not a six-foot-five asshole Irishman!”
    “That complicates things.”
    Burns could hear another series of sounds, culminating in a string of curses.
    “Are you sure the man you have is Julian Cross?”
    “I don’t know, Dick, he doesn’t have a fucking bar code I can scan!”
    “This doesn’t change your objective,” Burns tried in a loud, authoritative voice, trying to pull Ty back on point. “You still need to get him to DC, understand?”
    “Why?” Ty demanded in frustration. “What’s this really about?”
    Burns hesitated. “Need-to-know.”
    “Oh my God.”
    “Do whatever you have to do to get Cross here alive.”
    Ty was mutinously silent. Finally, Burns heard him exhale, a bid for calm. “Yes, sir,” he said in a soft, composed voice.

    Z ANE sat watching Julian, waiting for him to wake and thinking about Ty and what had just happened. Zane had never seen his partner, his lover, react to violence in such a cold and calculating way. It was a new side to Ty. Was that how he’d been able to handle himself all these years, by simply turning off his emotion and essentially finding a happy place when he worked? Zane shook his head. He tried not to dwell on what it would take to do that.
    When Ty came back from making his call, he found Zane in the bedroom and stood at his side, looking down at the two men on the bed. They had used the twisted bungee cords to tie Julian down and handcuffed Cameron to him to give them just enough contact to keep them from trying to escape when Julian awoke. Not that they’d go far in a blizzard.
    Cameron had his nose buried against the back of Julian’s shoulder and was looking up at them with one eye and hiding the other.
    “Every time you two try something, it’s one more bullet I put in his head in my dreams,” Ty told Cameron. This time, Zane knew he wasn’t acting.
    Julian groaned. Cameron nodded, eyes wide. He scooted closer to Julian, looking genuinely upset.
    “He’ll be okay,” Zane felt compelled to say. “He’ll wake up in a few minutes.”
    Ty was already moving away from the bed and into the outer room. Zane stopped to turn the television to a different channel for Cameron before he