Cut and Run 7 - Touch and Geaux

clothing. It reduced one layer, but with the Kevlar and the slimy bags of fake blood, Ty’s mobility would still be cut down. He wasn’t meant to be mobile, though; he simply had to stand there and die.
    His stomach tumbled with nerves and he wiped a hand over his face. “Did you scout the location?” he asked Liam.
    Liam sauntered over and sat opposite him, nodding. “I have a nice little nest all set up on—”
    “Don’t tell me where,” Ty interrupted. “If I get nervous, I’m afraid I’ll look at you.”
    “Okay. There’s graffiti everywhere, so I put a big black X on the pavement where you’re meant to stand. Try to get as close as you can to it, yeah?”
    Ty nodded. He picked up the bullet he’d just finished and held it up for Liam to see. “Hollow-point round.” He held up another, one he hadn’t messed with. “Armor-piercing round.” He waved them together. “Do not get these mixed up.”
    Liam chuckled, then leaned closer, sighing heavily and meeting Ty’s eyes. “Tyler, if I wanted you dead, I would have done when it was easy to kill you.” He plucked the fragmenting round from Ty’s fingers. “We have no way of marking it.”
    “No. Any etchings on the outside will fuck with the spin. Hell, I’m even afraid to mark it with a Sharpie.”
    Liam was humming, turning the bullet over. He clutched it in his hand, then patted the back of Ty’s neck, pulling his head to press their foreheads together. Ty closed his eyes. Months of their time spent together in arid camps in Kabul and damp training installations in the south of England came back to him. He’d trusted this man.
    “You did this for me once,” Liam murmured. “It’s time I return the favor.”
    Ty nodded, swallowing hard.
    Liam’s voice dropped lower. “And if you want to stay dead, I’ll always be a call away.” He released Ty and stood.
    Ty sat back, eyes still closed as he fought for calm. He felt Liam moving away. The front door opened and snicked shut again, and just like that, Liam Bell was gone.
    Ty took a deep, unsteady breath and glanced up.
    Zane was standing in the bedroom door, watching him. “You okay?”
    Ty nodded.
    “I’m about to make the calls,” Zane said. The activity in the room died down, everyone stopping to look at Zane. “Is everyone ready?”
    Ty looked around, taking in the faces of the men he’d called his friends, the men he’d loved like brothers and spilled blood for. And then Zane. The only man Ty had ever truly given his heart to. If there was anyone to make a last stand with, it was the men in this room.
    “We’re ready.”

    Zane sat astride Liam’s Honda Shadow, a bandana with a menacing skull printed on it pulled over his face. Ty sat behind him, his hands looped over Zane like a seatbelt, tied at the wrists. They had a pillowcase over his head, a large smiley face drawn on it.
    “Trust me,” Digger told him. “This is New Orleans. Nobody’ll bat an eye.”
    “Let’s kick it, Garrett,” Ty said in Zane’s ear.
    Zane didn’t waste more time with goodbyes. He gunned the bike away from the house, winding their way through the streets toward the hulking wasteland of Six Flags New Orleans.
    The noise of the motorcycle signaled their arrival, and that was exactly how Zane had wanted it. All eyes on them. The front gate of the park had been cut and left ajar, and Zane used the bike to plow through it. He came to a halt in the park entrance, stunned by the shape of the place.
    The map had shown a happy amusement park set up in a vague circle around a center pond. On the far side was a large body of water, abutted by an area of the park called Pontchartrain Beach. It was a long, wide thoroughfare, and that was where Zane had told Valencia and Gaudet to meet him.
    But the map hadn’t prepared him for the park itself: an urban badlands, left to hold its own against the elements and urban explorers with spray paint.
    “Jesus, Ty, you know how to pick them,” Zane muttered.
    “Is it as creepy as it feels? ’Cause I can’t see shit through this thing.”
    Zane nodded.
    Main Street Square was built to mimic the architecture of the French Quarter. It boasted stunning colors and Creole townhouses with sweeping galleries, but it was all covered in graffiti and debris. Weeds encroached. Huge pots sprouted weeds and saplings, and many had “NOLA Rising” written on them. Zane couldn’t take his eyes off the crumbling façades. Left to their own devices, the buildings