Ty lowered his head like a bull preparing to charge. “I can’t let you shoot him.”
Julian moved behind Ty, shifting from one foot to another.
“Stop moving!” Jonas shouted.
“You’re going to have to go through me,” Ty said. His words wavered, like he knew how high the possibility was that Jonas would do just that.
Jonas’ eyes narrowed, and the muzzle of his gun trembled. Burns held his breath, afraid to move for fear of setting Jonas off. He could not stand here and watch Ty be shot in front of him. He would not.
“He’s the only one who can take me down.”
“Not anymore,” Burns said. “We all can. Are you going to kill us all, right here in my office?”
“If I have to,” Jonas said. His eyes hadn’t left Ty and Julian.
“I’ve known you since we were eighteen!” Burns shouted.
The crack of the bullet hitting the glass window behind them made them all jump. Burns dove to the ground as he tried to decide where the sniper’s round had come from. The bulletproof glass had spiderwebbed in concentric patterns around the high-velocity round that was still lodged in it, just feet behind Jonas’ head.
Jonas ducked and then brought his gun up to take his shot at Julian. Burns called out. Ty covered his head with both hands and spun out of the way, and Burns realized that Julian had grabbed him and shoved him, drawing a hidden gun from the small of Ty’s back. He dove to the side as he fired. The boom of the Glock overpowered the dull thuds of the silencer.
Burns could do nothing but cover his head. Everyone scrambled for cover.
“Jesus f**king Christ!” Ty cried as soon as the shooting hit a lull. “You prick! You shot me!”
“I couldn’t possibly have shot you from this angle,” Julian murmured from where he hunched behind an arm of the same sofa Jonas was using as cover.
“Ty?” Burns called out.
Another sniper round hit the window, close enough to the first bullet to crack the glass more. Eventually the sniper would get through.
Jonas lunged to his feet and sprayed a volley of bullets at the corner where Julian had taken cover. Burns scrambled for the weapon he had discarded, diving to the floor and rolling as he brought the gun up. Jonas had the gun trained on Julian, who had run out of bullets and was on his knees, hands held high. Burns raised his gun to fire, but his finger had barely brushed the trigger when Ty rammed Jonas from behind.
Jonas’ gun went off, spraying ceiling plaster everywhere. They landed hard, Ty’s bulk knocking the air from Jonas as he skidded face-first across the plush carpeting. Ty rammed an elbow into Jonas’ back to keep him down.
Burns pushed to his feet and aimed his gun at Jonas. “Ty! Get him out of here!”
Ty hesitated, looking from Burns to Jonas.
“He’s not safe until he’s at Langley!” Burns growled, jerking his head toward Cross. “Go!”
Ty rolled and struggled to his feet, holding a bloody hand to his side. Julian took his elbow, both of them staggering toward the door.
“Richard,” Jonas groaned as he pushed off the floor. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Richard. Don’t let them get away!”
“Shut up,” Burns gritted out as Ty and Julian fled from the office.
Jonas met his eyes, his body tensing. Burns looked into the depths, reliving every moment he’d known Randall Jonas, from boot camp to the morning he’d pulled Burns out of a fire in the jungle to the day he’d been a groomsman at his wedding.
“I trusted you.”
Jonas twisted to look up at him. Burns tightened his hold on his gun, hand trembling as the betrayal sank in.
Jonas gave a derogatory snort and met Burns’ eyes. “That just made you easy to use.”
JULIAN heard the last gunshot, the sound deafening as they ran for the stairwell. Ty skidded to a halt, turning back. “Dick!”
“He had the upper hand,” Julian said, grabbing Ty’s elbow to pull him along. Ty hesitated, but when they saw agents flooding the hallways, he turned and ran with Julian to the emergency stairwell.
They stormed down the steps, every bang and clang of the stairwell putting Julian’s teeth on edge.
“It’s brilliant, really,” he gasped out. “Send unsuspecting errand boys to do the dirty work. It’s his signature.”
“I don’t f**king believe this,” Ty muttered. “Does this mean me and Zane were the bad guys?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Son of a bitch!”
They hit the ground floor level, and Ty pushed through the door into the lobby. Sirens were going off; the entire federal building was mobilizing. Ty flashed his badge at a security guard who tried to stop them. When the guard stepped in front of them, unwilling to let them leave, Ty grabbed him by the hand, twisted it, and turned into his body, dropping the beefy guard with a move as graceful as a ballerina.
They darted past as other guards came after them.
“Zane is gonna kill me,” Ty said as they burst through the doors and sprinted down the street into the sparse crowds of tourists.
“He’s not the only one!” Julian shouted as they darted between people and across the street. “We have a sniper to worry about now as well.”
ZANE sat with Cameron at the café they’d designated as the rendezvous. He despised being left behind, but Ty had given a convincing argument that he and Julian would be able to slip through better just the two of them. They were also hoping, on some level, that Zane would serve as a decoy for anyone watching the building waiting for Cross to show up. He had walked up and down the sidewalk several times, hoping to draw attention, as Ty and Julian had slipped inside in a flower delivery van.
It was a lot easier to sneak into FBI headquarters if you were an actual FBI agent.
When he caught sight of two men running down the street, Zane sat forward and tensed, barely keeping himself from reaching for his gun.
When they got closer, he saw that it was Ty and Julian. “Uh-oh.”
“What?” Cameron asked as he peered into the crowd.
“Looks like something went wrong.”
“We have to move,” Ty gasped as soon as they reached Zane and Cameron. From the looks of them, they had both sprinted there.
“What happened?”
“It was Jonas.”
“Who?
“Jonas, he was the guy.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“He’s CIA, he had Burns pull us in, but he only wanted Cross to kill him,” Ty stuttered.