Cut & Run (2 page)

Zane stopped into the bathroom to straighten his tie and check to make sure his close-cropped brown hair lay down neatly. The suit he wore was sharply tailored to his 6’5” frame, but it didn’t hide the bulky muscles that moved under the fabric. His was not a body you’d expect to see riding a desk, a fact he was reminded of daily looking at the slightly pudgy agents who worked around him. He frowned slightly, surveying the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes and the ridges of his twice-broken nose. With a displeased twitch, he ran his hands over his close-shaven cheeks and dismissed his image before buttoning his suit jacket and heading upstairs.

Cut & Run | 5

THE secretary gave Ty Grady a look over her glasses that clearly said she disapproved of the air he breathed. She lifted her chin and looked him up and down, wrinkling her nose at his appearance. “You’re early,” she announced with a touch of surprise to her voice.

Ty looked her up and down in return and cocked his head to the side.

“I used the flashy blue lights,” he told her with a helicopter motion of his finger.

She sniffed as she glanced over his unshaven face, scuffed leather jacket, jeans, and dirty cowboy boots. His T-shirt seemed to be particularly appalling to her sensibilities, even though it was clean. It was black and had the words
Cocke County FBI
in large white print on the front. Upon closer inspection, there were smaller words between the larger ones, and when she squinted she was able to read the entire shirt:
“I was probed in Cocke County
by the FBI.”
She made a small, insulted noise as she looked back up at him.

Ty ignored her, leaving her looking slightly scandalized as he headed for the Assistant Director’s door.

“You can't go in there yet!” she hissed as she stood from her desk and pointed at him.

He stopped at the door and turned around to look at her, blatantly putting his hand on the door handle and pushing it down with a smirk. Her mouth worked soundlessly, and she turned and scrambled for her intercom to announce him before he could get inside.

Assistant Director Richard Burns looked up at him in surprise and annoyance as Ty stepped into the office and closed the door behind him. “You wanted to see me, sir,” Ty greeted, the words perfectly professional, but the tone somehow just as insolent as it always was.

“Sit down,” the man ordered with a jab of his pen at one of the seats across from his desk. “We’re waiting for one more person.”

Ty moved to the seat and sat, his leather jacket sending up a tiny little cloud of dust as he flopped into the seat. He did a fairly good job of concealing his surprise. “Someone else?” he inquired evenly. “Am I being lynched?”

“If you keep your mouth shut for the next thirty minutes, you may not spend the night in jail. How about that?” Burns answered seriously without looking up from the papers he was signing.

Ty cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

6 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

ZANE Garrett entered the wide outer office to see the Assistant Director’s secretary scurrying around her desk, obviously flustered. He paused, folding his hands behind his back. “Ma’am?” he asked politely when she didn’t notice his entrance.

She looked up at him in surprise. “Special Agent Garrett, thank you for being prompt,” she said, looking him up and down and nodding in approval of the tailored blue suit and silk tie. “You may go in now.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said evenly, proceeding to the door as she announced him through the intercom.

Burns looked up from the papers he was shuffling and gestured him in. “Come in, Special Agent Garrett. We’ve got some things to thrash out,” he said to Zane, with a narrow-eyed look at the man sitting slumped in a chair in front of the desk.

“Yes, sir,” Zane answered, moving to sit as the Director gestured. His eyes followed Burns’ gaze. Only a blink betrayed Zane’s surprise. The unkempt man sitting opposite Burns was a complete mess. Zane barely restrained the urge to sneer at him. Maybe he was an informant of some sort.

He had that burnt-out, fidgety look to him.

Focusing on Burns again, Zane waited, composed and attentive, ready to start jumping through the next set of hoops.

Ty shifted in his seat, slouching further down and glancing over at the new man. God, the guy looked like he had just come off a printing press or something. “What are you doing, a how-to manual?” Ty asked the Assistant Director sarcastically. “Before and after?” he suggested wryly with a gesture at himself and then at the other man.

“Yes. You are sitting here
before
you get fired,” Burns answered studiously. “And he is taking your job
after
you leave.”

Ty pressed his lips tightly together and looked down at the shiny desktop sedately. Zane shifted his eyes between the man and Burns before narrowing them. He wondered why he had been asked to sit in on this meeting when the guy was obviously being fired. It seemed overly cruel. He clamped down hard on any further reaction and waited to see what would happen.

Ty licked his lips and looked up again to meet his superior’s eyes almost defiantly.

Cut & Run | 7

“Fortunately for you, Grady, you have more lives than a cat,” the man said to him with a small frown. “And you’re getting another chance to prove to us that you can do this job without blowing shit up. I won’t say one more, because God knows I’ll just keep giving you more until you get yourself killed. Meet your new partner, Special Agent Zane Z. Garrett.”

Zane couldn’t have been more appalled, and it showed clearly in his reaction. This
wreck
of an agent was his new partner? “Director Burns,” he started impulsively, but he caught his tongue and tightened his grip on the chair. What kind of reward was this?

“The hell he is!” Ty interrupted as he sat up straight. “I can’t do my job with a … a … poster-boy partner,” he practically stuttered angrily as he flopped his hand toward the squeaky-clean man next to him.

“And you can’t do it
without
a partner, either, Special Agent Grady,”

Burns responded with a hard glare.

“Sir, it seems obvious,” Zane said, not bothering to keep any edge of disapproval out of his voice, “that this agent needs more than I can possibly provide to help him. Frankly, it will take a miracle to make him even remotely professional. No one will take him seriously.”

“Take
me
seriously?” Ty echoed in disbelief. “Christ, have those shoes ever even seen pavement? Shit,” he exclaimed in a sudden panic as he gripped the arms of his chair and leaned forward. “Are you sending me to Cyber?” he asked Burns, who was sitting behind the desk and grinning like a small child at Christmas.

“Your tone of voice implies that investigating technological crime and terrorism might be below you,” Zane said to him coldly as he leveled an even gaze on the other agent. “Perhaps you should consider requesting a transfer to professional staff. Or submitting your resignation altogether.”

“Hey, fuck you, candy ass,” Ty snarled without looking over at him.

“Quiet, both of you!” Burns barked suddenly. “Grady, you’re staying in Criminal until you get your ass killed or do something so illegal even
I
can’t cover for you, understand? Garrett, you’re to make certain he doesn’t do either of those things. Is that clear? And you will both
like
it.”

Ty’s eyes widened as he realized he was being assigned a bookkeeping babysitter, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

His stomach turned at the thought, but he supposed it was better than being fired. Or being in jail.

8 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

The thought of being attached to this troublemaking loose cannon was nearly enough to make Zane lose his composure. After all he’d done, all he’d worked for, this was all he was going to get. Despair threatened for a moment, and he had to take a deep breath to push it aside. He wanted to rail at Burns, but it wasn’t his place to object. He’d make the best of this clusterfuck, and then leave this agent behind, just as he had the Cyber Division. That or go down in spectacular flames.

“Yes, sir,” he acknowledged through clenched teeth.

“I expect you to learn from each other,” Burns instructed, his heart going out to Zane Garrett. It was a shitty thing to do to him, sticking him with a man like Ty Grady after he’d worked his way back up from hell to be Cyber’s top performing agent. But for this particular case, these two men were unusually qualified. “And the Bureau expects you to perform efficiently on your next assignment,” he added as he tossed a file across the desk at Ty.

“Respectfully, sir, I understand you need someone riding herd on this

… agent,” Zane gritted out. “But what am I supposed to learn from him?” he asked, slanting a disbelieving look Grady’s way.

Burns gave Ty a dubious glance and then shrugged apologetically in answer to Zane’s query. He was well-acquainted with Garrett’s past, but the man was resourceful. He’d had to be. He’d find a way to make this work.

“You can learn to kiss my ass,” Ty shot back as he fumbled with the file his boss had chucked at him. “Just like you do everyone else’s,” he muttered.

Zane’s temper lightened in the face of Grady’s ridiculous assertions, leaving behind more than a trace of resentment. He would have rolled his eyes if he weren’t aware of how it might be construed. The man’s language was complete and purposeful insubordination. It looked like his new partner was a real prize, one that had somehow gained the favor of the Assistant Director of his new division—just as he himself was the focus of Burns’ ire.

“Sir, if I may ask, who
is
this
delightful
new person I'll be calling my partner?” he asked, the sarcasm thinly veiled.

“Special Agent B. Tyler Grady,” Burns answered as Ty scanned the file he had flipped open, ignoring them both as he looked through it. “Despite his appearance, he is unfortunately very good at his job.”

“You’re putting us on the Tri-State case?” Ty asked suddenly, utter disbelief coloring his words as he looked up at Burns.

Cut & Run | 9

Zane stiffened and inhaled sharply. He knew all about the Tri-State case. Hell, everyone in the Bureau knew all about the Tri-State case, even though they had only been working it for a few weeks. A really messy, really conniving, really frightening serial killer kept popping up and going to ground every few weeks—for almost two months now—in New York City. Two bodies were found just across state lines, near the Tri-State marker, and most involved seemed to think the killer deliberately left them there to involve the FBI. Most recently, just days ago, the man took out two of their own agents, so the Bureau was now more
personally
invested.

Zane’s eyes shifted back to Grady. Very good at his job, Burns had said. Zane decided it must have been undercover work. Drugs or organized crime, maybe import/export. Somewhere that rough-and-tumble image would fit in. His mind started to buzz, calculating how their skill sets might complement each other. Or not.

“That’s right,” Burns answered with a tap of his pen on his desk.

“And you will report to the New York field office—appropriately attired, Grady—at eleven-hundred Monday. Is that clear?”

Recognizing the dismissal and standing, Zane nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said curtly. Zane’s most recent tour may have been spent in a high-tech computer lab, but that wasn’t all he could do. He was a damn good agent, and he knew it. But he couldn’t help thinking of Tyler Grady as a snake that might strike at a critical moment and poison his fragile job security. He could already tell this wasn’t going to be easy. Actually, he could already tell it was going to be beyond hard as hell. But while there was the chance that one whiff of the bat could collapse his carefully reconstructed career like a house of cards, he also had a prime opportunity here. If he could make this work it would send him a long way. And he wouldn’t let any scruffy agent who fancied himself a badass get in his way.

Ty sat and stared at Burns for a long moment before standing and stepping toward the desk. He put two hands on the desk and leaned over, crumpling the file in his hand as he glared down at his boss. “You know me better than this, Dick,” he murmured. “My partners don’t last long.”

“This one had better,” Burns responded without blinking at the insubordinate tone.

“You promised me,” Ty murmured accusingly.

“Consider it recanted,” Burns replied unapologetically. “Go home and shower, Ty. You fucking stink.”

10 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

The voices were low, but Zane heard enough. Burns’ parting shot was clear, and Zane’s lips twitched as he turned to lead the way. This Ty Grady must be some kind of special superstar for the Assistant Director to put up with that behavior. That or he was blowing someone further up the chain, Zane thought uncharitably. He allowed himself a slight grimace when he stopped in the outer office. He’d heard the same rumors about himself at one time. More than a few times.

Ty followed him and glared at Zane for a long moment as the secretary sniffed disapprovingly at him. “Sooner we get this over with, sooner we can go back to how it was. Got it?” he finally said to his new partner.

Zane didn’t dignify the utterance with a reply. “May I see the case file, please?” he asked civilly.

“Get your own,” Ty answered as he turned and stalked out of the office.

Zane stood there for a moment, mouth slightly agape. Ty Grady was a rude, insufferable, egotistical, stinking son of a bitch, and Zane was going to need to figure out how to tune him out. Otherwise, he just might give in to the pressure and kill the bastard, for the good of humanity.

TY sat at the all-night diner near his apartment and read the file for the fourteenth time as he poked at his bacon and eggs. The papers had greasy fingerprints on them, and a few smudges that weren’t identifiable, but Ty didn’t notice. What he was seeing were the facts of the case. It was one of the most fascinating cases he’d ever read about, much less been involved in. The killer seemed to pick his targets at random; there was no victim type at all. He had no MO to speak of, and he left little to no evidence behind. The current belief was that the little evidence that
had
been collected was left intentionally, and the scenes where the bodies were found were certainly staged.