Cut and Run 7 - Touch and Geaux

the rescue party.”

It was the middle of the night, but the French Quarter didn’t seem to realize it. Zane and the others had escaped the police station in a whirl of purple smoke and chaos, and each man had darted off in a different direction. The crowded streets helped to hide them. They were supposed to scramble for fifteen minutes, then make their way to a rendezvous point once they were sure they were clear.
    Any man who couldn’t shake the police was going to have to take one for the team.
    Zane had easily evaded any pursuit, using the crowds as cover. After darting down a few side roads, he wandered along Bourbon Street for ten minutes, the dancing crowd full of Easter revelers guiding him like a ship on a river.
    He tried not to contemplate his predicament, but it was hard to keep it out of mind. They were now wanted by the police. He and Nick had both given their identification to the detective when they’d given their accounts of the murder scene, so eventually they’d be connected to the breakout. His real name would come out of this and the Bureau would get involved. They would have a lot of explaining to do, but he felt certain he and Ty could talk their way out of it.
    And then there was Ty. It seemed like Zane kept forgetting what Ty had admitted to, like his mind was actively trying to block it out. Ty had essentially spent the last two years spying on him. How was Zane supposed to know what was real and what had been another of Ty’s clever tricks to glean information from him?
    How much of Ty had he really seen? How well did he know Ty at all?
    When he reached Jackson Square, Kelly was the only one there. He was loitering near the iron fence that surrounded the raised, grassy park area. During the day, people used the fence to hang artwork and sell their wares, but at night it was all cleared away. People sat on the concrete ledge or leaned against the fence, smoking, drinking, laughing. Several of them played music with tip jars in front of them.
    Kelly was lingering near a man with a guitar. When he spotted Zane, he pushed away from the wall and grinned lopsidedly. “Not exactly a discreet meeting place.”
    Zane shrugged. “It was the only place we all knew how to get to. And it’s crowded.”
    “Fair enough. What the hell is going on?”
    Zane winced and glanced around the throng. He didn’t want to go through this more than once, and he knew the others would have the same question. “It’s complicated.”
    “I’m fairly intelligent,” Kelly said with a laugh. “I can usually follow.”
    Zane snorted.
    “Garrett, the others will be here soon, and then we’re dealing with the whole group dynamic and accusations and serious ADD, so . . . you want to let me know what’s going on now so I can help you?”
    Zane stared at the man for a long moment, then nodded. “You were the group’s corpsman, right? So you can deal with . . . any injuries that come from this?”
    “Yeah,” Kelly said warily. “Why?”
    “I ran into Liam Bell,” Zane said, and hurried to explain faster as Kelly’s eyes widened. “He claims he was hired by a Miami cartel to come here and kill Ty.”
    “What? Why?”
    “It’s a really long story.”
    “How’d you get away from him?”
    “I didn’t.”
    Kelly narrowed his eyes, looking off into the distance over Zane’s shoulder. “I don’t understand,” he finally said.
    Zane couldn’t help but laugh. A hand touched his back and he jerked, reaching for the knife in his pocket.
    “Easy, tiger,” Nick said as he stepped around Zane and patted him on the back. “Someone want to tell me why I just made myself a fugitive?”
    “It’s complicated,” Kelly answered.
    “I’m not doing this again,” Zane grumbled.
    Nick stood on his tip toes and looked around the crowd. Several uniformed policemen were walking along the edges of the crowd. Others rode horses. The way they were scanning faces made it obvious they were looking for someone. “We should start moving,” Nick whispered. “We’re too conspicuous standing like this.”
    Kelly grabbed Nick’s arm and stopped him.
    Nick and Zane both turned to see what had caught Kelly’s attention. Zane spotted Ty immediately. He was still moving slowly, obviously still in some pain and fighting off the remainder of the sedative the hospital had given him. He was keeping his head down and his face in shadow, but Zane knew the roll of his shoulders. Trailing behind Ty, looking far less