Divide & Conquer (41 page)

the kid said, practically hyperventilating, “and he"s coming with a bomb.”

Zane stared at him hard for a few heartbeats, then turned to see if Ty had heard. Ty met his eyes, hand dropping as if in slow motion, body already tensing and gears already turning—he was trying to decide the best way to sound the alarm without causing a mass panic, and Zane wasn"t sure it would be possible.

“Do you know where he is?” Zane asked the boy. If this kid knew Zane and had a connection to Pierce, the chance of this being legit was way too high.

“No, I got out just before him. I couldn"t let him do it.” The kid looked about to break into tears. “But I couldn"t stop him. I was afraid.” Zane grasped his shoulder for a moment before turning to Ty.

“The families?” Zane bit off, noting that the agents gathered around them had focused on the disturbance.

Ty turned and whispered to the man beside him, then moved to speak to another, trying to get word around quickly. Then a commotion broke out on the other side of the crowd.

“It"s him,” the kid said, pointing, voice high with terror.

With his height, Zane saw over crowds better than most, and he zeroed in on a person pushing through the civilians gathered by the family under the awning. Zane didn"t wait.

“Bomb! Down!” he yelled harshly, trying to shove through the crowd while pulling his Glock and focusing on the young man he recognized as Pierce Sutton.

His words were met with complete stasis. For crucial seconds, no one moved. No one seemed to comprehend. Then time kicked into fast forward, and the panic and comprehension crashed through the crowd on a wave as agents pulled their weapons and people hit the ground.

Zane stopped and raised his gun. Pierce bulled his way toward the casket, clambered up on the side rail to snatch the tightly folded Divide & Conquer | 271

American flag in one hand, and he waved it around, his face twisted into a snarl, before throwing it to the ground and jumping off the casket to land on it with two booted feet.

“Son of a bitch!” Ty growled from beside Zane.

Zane saw his chance as Pierce deliberately reached into his trenchcoat: the civilians had cleared out, the minister ducked behind a nearby oak tree, and he had a few seconds for a clear shot.

He wasn"t the only one who took it.

A volley of bullets tore into Pierce Sutton before he could utter a word, sending his body jerking like a puppet on slashed strings to the ground.

Time slowed. Silence reigned again. Several heartbeats, and then the frozen tableau broke. Civilians milled about in confusion, and Bureau agents fanned out and around the gravesite, checking for further threats as the family gathered together, most of them sobbing angrily.

As another agent needlessly checked for a pulse, Zane stopped to stand next to the body of the young man who had masterminded bank robberies amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, deliberately promoted ill will and hatred in the city, and caused tens of millions of dollars in damages and destroyed property in four separate bombings that had also resulted in scores of injuries and three deaths.

When Lydia Reeves had died, Pierce Sutton had become a dead man walking.

Zane holstered his gun as people started drifting closer. The cacophony that utterly destroyed the quiet peace of the cemetery was giving him a headache. He"d noticed that being blind had by necessity sharpened his hearing, and now he was paying for it. Children sobbing, raised and nervous voices chattering, law enforcement vehicles arriving with sirens on, Bureau agents yelling out perimeter checks, and to top it off, an unexpected boom of thunder echoing from the roiling clouds overhead.

Ty stopped beside him, then bent down to pluck the flag from under the dead kid"s foot.

“Crime scene, Grady,” someone reminded breathlessly.

272 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

“Don"t care,” Ty shot back as he saved the flag.

Zane was pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off the pain, when he heard a nagging sound that didn"t fit. Frowning, he looked around for a cart or machine nearby. He wasn"t wearing a watch. But he could just barely hear a measured clicking.

Zane"s chest seized, and he looked down at the body as Ty rescued the flag. A flash of metal mostly covered by the trenchcoat caught his eye, and a streak of pure fear burned through him as he saw a wireless timing mechanism with a tiny red blinking light in Pierce"s lifeless hand.

Ticking. Zane could hear ticking.

He dropped to one knee, yanked at the coat to uncover the hand holding the timer, then hurriedly patted down the trench until his fingers hit something hard, a bulge at the waistband. He jerked the thick sweatshirt up. For once, Zane didn"t stop to consider his options or think through scenarios or figure the percentages.

He grabbed the ticking bomb, yanking it from its duct tape, and ran.

People and tombstones alike created an obstacle course as Zane tried to get away from the gravesite, weaving through the gathered, shoving some aside, almost ramming into a monument taller and wider than he was as he dodged a small child. There, maybe thirty yards away, stood an ancient mausoleum, its stone walls heavy and thick, hopefully enough to contain the blast from the welded and duct tape-wrapped box he clutched against his chest. Finally he broke free of the crowd and, distantly aware of people calling after him, charged the mausoleum doors, ramming into one with his shoulder. He practically slid inside on the pavers smoothed by almost two centuries of foot traffic.

Zane didn"t know how much time he had. But as he ran through the deeply shadowed building, past marble crypts and statues, he spared a prayer of thanks that he had at least gotten away from the families and children.

He skidded to a stop and turned into a small room at the back of the mausoleum. Without any traction, he thudded painfully into a wall, Divide & Conquer | 273

but he shoved the box behind the last stone coffin and turned on his heel, his heart thundering in his ears as he slung himself through the doorway and ran.

The dim gray light seeping in from the front doors beckoned to him, and he was a few rooms away—a bare thirty yards—when a shadow rammed into him from the side, sending him sprawling painfully hard into a marble sarcophagus and down to the floor.

Ty grunted his name and held up the flashing red device, then began dragging Zane by his collar across the smooth stone floor until they huddled behind a substantial stone vault. Ty shook against him, adrenaline obviously fueling him, and he held the flashing thing up again.

0:01.

0:00.

Zane covered his head and Ty"s as the explosion echoed through the mausoleum. It wasn"t a loud, crashing cacophony. It was more a thud deep in their chests and a rush of fetid air from the depths of the mausoleum. The air reverberated with the blast; then all was silent.

Ty raised his head and looked around. “That wasn"t so bad,” he gasped out.

A deep rumbling answered his words. From the back of the mausoleum came another rush of air, and all around them, the structure trembled and groaned. A stone lintel crashed to the floor, followed by another. Then another.

Zane grabbed Ty"s arm and pulled him down again, covering their heads as the collapse sent broken stone flying and blew out the archways, showering them with a hard rain of driving sand and jagged chunks of marble. The light was snuffed out as the ancient building foundered and collapsed around them.

274 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

TY KEPT his eyes closed for a long time after the deafening roar of collapsing stone had ended. It was stiflingly silent, the only sounds being Zane"s harsh breaths and the occasional shift and trickle of rocks.

Ty opened his eyes and lifted his head. He"d expected pitch black, or at least a pretty angel with a harp telling him he was in the wrong place. But there was light coming from somewhere, and the stone vault they"d hidden behind had provided some reprieve from the fallen stone walls that hemmed them in. He looked down at his partner.

“You okay?”

Zane groaned and pushed himself up, but there wasn"t much room for him to move. Part of a stone wall had fallen right next to him, shifted to the side by the vault that sheltered them. Otherwise Zane might have been
under
that wall. “Yeah, I think so.”

Ty jabbed him hard in the stomach, unable to put any more force behind it due to the confined space. “Stupid jackass!”

Zane yelped, hissed in pain, and swatted at his hand. “What the hell?”

“Exactly, what the hell! You see a ticking bomb, so your first instinct is grab it and fucking run?” A miniature avalanche of pebbles and rocky debris slid down the shelf of stone above them.

“It was me run or try to get a hundred people to run,” Zane bit off as he held up a hand to protect his face. There was already a thin dark line of blood wending down his cheek from a cut below his eye.

Ty continued to mutter and curse under his breath, trying to move his body off Zane"s in the tight space. “You"re a dick, you know that?

Scared the shit out of me. Made me run. Got me dirty. I lost my cover!

Now I"m trapped in a crypt with a dumbass.”

“I"m sorry,” Zane muttered. He even sounded sincere.

Ty could only manage to slide off him and sit in the rubble next to him, legs drawn up against his chest. He had to hunch his shoulders and duck his head. He could still hear the rock shifting and groaning ominously as it settled. One thing was obvious: Zane never would have made it out alive if he"d still been running for the door. The entire structure had collapsed in on itself, save for the areas where stone slabs Divide & Conquer | 275

from the ceilings and walls had fallen against the stone sarcophagi in the corners.

“Fuck, Garrett.”

“Maybe later.”

Ty looked around at the heavy stone bearing down on them both.

He swallowed hard as he recognized a cold panic beginning to form in his gut. The stone was too close, too thick. “Might be our last chance,”

he replied, trying to sound wry but falling flat.

Zane shifted, turning enough to put his back to the fallen wall so he faced Ty. “We"ll get out of here. Too many people saw me—us—

run in for them not to dig us out.”

Ty shook his head as he peered at Zane in the dim light. He could just make out Zane"s outline, and he was only three feet away. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking… get the bomb away from the kids.”

Ty sighed heavily. He couldn"t bitch at Zane for that. He could feel the stone brushing the top of his head as he sat, and he could only just stretch his legs out in front of him. If he turned the other way, he could lie flat, which didn"t go a long way toward calming him. He could feel the stone looming overhead, feel the press of the darkness and the swell of burgeoning panic. His chest tightened, making it hard to breathe, and his fingers still trembled from the adrenaline of his headlong flight across the cemetery after his partner.

He"d watched Zane take off, understanding taking a few seconds to settle in, and he"d grabbed the device from the dead kid"s hand, recognizing it for what it was. It was counting down the seconds until that bomb went off. Then he"d run after his stupid fucking partner so he could save his sorry ass before he got blown up. Again.

“Well. What now?”

Zane dug into his jacket pocket, pulled out his cell phone, then cursed under his breath. “Screen"s busted. Maybe if we—”

Without warning, the stone groaned again, and Ty pushed himself back against the shelter of the vault as another wall fell toward them 276 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

and shattered, sending stone fragments cascading across them. Ty heard a last, loud crunch, and when he carefully opened his eyes, it was to complete darkness.

“Oh God,” Ty groaned. The panic began to billow. He couldn"t take enclosed spaces. He just couldn"t do it. The air in their little pocket of space was growing warmer.

“Ty.” Zane"s low voice was followed by the touch of his hand and a firm tug that shifted Ty closer to his partner, and after another tug, Zane pulled Ty practically onto his lap and against his chest, then wrapped his arms around him securely. “I"ve got you, baby. I"m here.”

Ty struggled against the cuddling. “Quit touching me, Zane,” he hissed stubbornly.

“Stop it,” Zane said firmly, though his arms loosened enough to led Ty slide down. “Stop it and close your eyes. Listen to my voice.”

Ty put both hands over his face and rested his head in Zane"s lap.

His breaths were shallow and erratic against his hands. “I should have just let you get squished.”

“You"d never do that, baby, and we both know it.” Zane"s hand settled on Ty"s head, stroking gently. “Who else would pun you to death?”

“At least I"d finally be taller than you.”

“I thought you liked me being taller than you.”

Ty tried to answer, but the thought of being tall enough to brush his head on the ceiling while sitting made his stomach turn, and he managed only a ragged breath. The panic was sharp and overwhelming, filling his limbs with a tingling sensation as his gut churned.

“Ty.” Zane"s voice sharpened. “Stay with me. Come on. Talk.”

“Shut up. If I could go anywhere, I"d leave you here in a heartbeat,” Ty managed to strangle out. He reached up, horrified when his fingertips brushed cold stone. He"d been trapped in small dark places before, which was why he had such a negative reaction to them now. But the very real knowledge that the walls were closing in, literally and not just in his mind, made him want to cry.