“What could you possibly gain by making us miss our plane?” Ty asked when he got tired of hearing the two of them murmur to each other. “Now your ass has to ride seven hundred miles in the backseat.”
Julian didn’t answer him. Cameron leaned as close to him as his restraints would allow and looked to be ignoring Ty as well. Ty watched them in the rearview mirror for a moment before rolling his eyes and looking back at the doors to the store. His knee was bouncing, and he didn’t try to curtail the movement. He was considering the radio when he saw Zane finally approach the car, several plastic bags hanging off each hand.
Ty reached down to pop the trunk for him as he neared the car, but he stayed put as Zane dealt with the bags. Then Zane got into the car, placing a couple of bags at his feet before shutting the door and pulling on his seat belt. “Vamos, compañero,” he said.
Ty glared at him as he started the car. “Took you long enough.”
Instead of answering, Zane leaned over, dug through a bag, then pulled out a can of Red Bull and held it out in front of Ty with an enticing waggle.
Ty raised one eyebrow and smiled crookedly. He took the can with a grateful “Thank you.”
“Oh God, really?” Julian blurted from the back seat. “He’s going to twitch himself through the moon roof.”
“Shut up,” Ty and Zane said simultaneously.
In the rearview mirror, Ty saw Julian reach sideways and touch Cameron’s knee. It was all the contact they could manage.
“This should prove to be a long night,” Julian said a moment later. “Perhaps the rest of us could be treated to coffee instead of Agent Grady’s Red Bull-fueled spurts of nervous energy?”
“Coffee sounds good,” Zane said.
“Me too,” Cameron added.
“We’ll find a McDonald’s after we get out of the city,” Ty said. He wanted to deny the request just for the hell of it, but he couldn’t think of a good reason.
After an uneventful ride on the Chicago Skyway and over an hour later, Ty pulled off at the innocuous exit to Portage, Indiana. It took a few turns and a couple of miles to find the McDonald’s, but soon the four of them had their rest stop and their coffee—Julian and Cameron having to make do with their hands still handcuffed. Ty had a cup of hot chocolate with molten properties, and they were on their way back to the highway.
It was two thirty in the morning, but Ty figured he could go another couple of hours on a can of Red Bull before they would need to stop at a hotel for a rest, since Zane had to be as tired as he was. Traveling at night would be quicker and less conspicuous, and the more the two in the back slept during this trip, the better.
The first thing Ty had done after borrowing the sedan was dismantle the active GPS locator; therefore, the GPS unit on the dash was silent and dark as well. They were using an off-brand portable GPS Zane had bought at the pharmacy for directions for their cross-country trek.
“Follow the yellow brick road,” Zane murmured as the GPS unit chirped directions at them in a woman’s voice, telling him how to get back to the toll road.
“I think I love her,” Ty said as he petted the GPS attached to the dash with a suction cup.
“Until she talks back,” Zane said as he settled back in his seat. They were coming up on the bridge they’d crossed less than ten minutes before. Close to the highway.
“That’s what I like about her. She’s bossy,” Ty said with a smirk as he glanced sideways at Zane.
“Like that dominatrix you interrogated last month.”
Ty whistled to keep himself from laughing.
“I feel like I need a psychology degree to be here,” Julian muttered from the back seat.
“I don’t know. They’re kind of entertaining,” Cameron said.
“Our definitions of entertaining vary wildly.”
“You certainly do have authority issues,” Zane drawled to Ty before taking a sip of coffee, ignoring Julian’s and Cameron’s asides.
Ty glanced at Zane and smiled. He was about to respond when he felt a hand come up from behind him, between the seat and door at his side. He shouted as he realized it was Julian reaching for the child-lock button on the door, but before he could grab for him to stop him, his seat belt jerked tight, pinning him to the seat and tightening over his throat. Scalding hot coffee poured over his shoulder onto his chest and lap, and the car swerved across the bridge as Ty slammed on the brakes.
“What the hell?” Zane held his sloshing coffee out in front of him and braced his free hand on the dash as the car fishtailed across the bridge before coming to a stop just feet from the guardrail.
Ty shouted as he fought to get his seat belt undone while pawing at his shirt front. He heard the back door open and struggled with simultaneously trying to get his own door open and trying to get the scalding material of his shirt off his skin.
“Get him!”
Zane was out of his door, and the next thing Ty heard was a gunshot, a spray of concrete, and a scream from Cameron, who had been about to climb out of the back seat to follow Julian.
“Son of a bitch!” Ty finally rolled out of the car. He stripped his shirt off and wiped at his chest with it as he rounded the car and took in the carnage. God, he sort of hoped Zane had shot the Irish bastard.
What he saw was Zane with his gun drawn and trained on Julian, who looked like he had stopped and frozen in midstride. Small chunks of asphalt lay scattered at his feet.
“Back in the car, Cross,” Zane said in absolute monotone.
Ty cleared his throat and swiped at his cooling belt buckle with the coffee-soaked T-shirt. The frigid air hit his damp skin, and he began to shiver.
Julian held his hands up toward Zane and moved back to the car. “No need to get combative, now.”
“Yeah, keep talking with the Irish accent. Makes it easier to shoot you.”
Ty stepped over and grabbed Julian, slamming him against the side of the car. He secured the handcuffs Julian had picked, making them tight enough to leave bruises if they were left on long. They would need something more, because the man was obviously too slick for a single pair of restraints. He searched Julian thoroughly, finally finding the last sliver of metal he had missed on his initial search. Once he was satisfied Julian wouldn’t be escaping again, Ty gripped him by the back of his neck, helping him into the car with a not so gentle shove after Cameron scooted back inside. He banged the man’s head on the top of the door, muttering a careless apology as he shoved him inside and slammed the door behind him.
He looked over the top of the sedan at Zane. “You okay?”
Zane’s jerky movements as he holstered his gun spoke volumes. He took a breath and twitched. “Yeah,” he said after a long moment, though Ty knew it was partially a lie. “You?”
“Burned my nipples,” Ty said, not able to say it without smiling.
Zane gave him a whisper of a smile, and the tension in his jaw and shoulders relaxed. “Open the trunk. I’ve got something that might help that.”
Ty looked at him dubiously, wondering what Zane might have bought at a Walgreens that would help burned nipples—and why—but he decided not to ask. “Let’s stop for the night, okay? Just stop and regroup, figure out a better way to keep Cross tied down. We’ll tackle this shit in the morning.”
“What about Burns?”
“Priority in this mission was low profile, not speed. He made that very clear. I think it’s a good call to stop.”
Zane nodded, and Ty leaned into the car to pop the trunk like he’d been asked. He looked over the seat at the two men in the back. “A for effort,” he told them. Cameron looked a little pale, so maybe now he knew they meant business. To this point he’d been treating them like they might be just as cute and cuddly as the hired killer he called his lover.
Julian met Ty’s eyes, but he didn’t show a hint of emotion or an inkling of what he was thinking. The guy made the hairs on the back of Ty’s neck stand up, and he found himself putting his hand on his gun without first being aware he was doing it.
Zane dug around in the plastic bags in the trunk for a minute, then walked around the car toward Ty. He had a small plastic package in one hand and a wad of brown cloth in the other.
“What’s all this?” Ty asked as he straightened. He reached out to run a hand down Zane’s arm, not caring that he shouldn’t when they were working. Before this morning, he hadn’t seen his lover in days, had barely touched him in a week, and he knew fishtailing in the car had to have set Zane’s teeth on edge. Echoes of a nasty crash that had almost killed them both would do that.
Plus, Ty didn’t care if the criminals knew he and Zane were an item. It was one thing to stay hands-off for a seven-hour flight. Entirely another for a two-day drive. He was tired of being so careful that it looked like he didn’t care.
Zane offered him a more natural smile as he held up the plastic package. “Wet wipes.” He then shook out the brown fabric. It was a T-shirt, and on the front it displayed a picture of a blue robot with yellow eyes and the words “Overkill is one of my many modes.”
Ty laughed and took the shirt and the wipes. “Thanks, Zane.”
“It sounded like you,” Zane said before taking back the wet wipes to open the package so Ty could use them.
Ty watched him with a growing sense of calm. Just having Zane here with him was enough to keep him sane.
After pulling open the package, Zane glanced up at him. “All right, Grady. Strip down or you’ll be sticky and miserable, and then we’ll all be miserable.”
Ty muttered at him but pulled his wet jeans off, right there on the side of the road. Several cars passing by honked at them, but this didn’t even register on the scale as far as Ty’s embarrassing life moments went. He put the T-shirt on, and they used his other shirt to pat down the front seat. Then they tossed his wet clothing into the trunk, where the smell of the spilled coffee wouldn’t make him want to kill things. He changed into a pair of dirty jeans from the small bag he’d been carrying with him and slid back into the driver’s seat.
He sat in the silence of the car and looked into the rearview mirror. “Next time he won’t be aiming at you,” he told Julian.
Cameron’s eyes widened as he looked from Ty to Zane, but Zane was looking out the windshield rather than back at them and offered no comment.
“Understood, Agent Grady,” Julian said. He didn’t seem put out that his attempt had failed, nor did he seem upset with the overt threat to his lover. That bothered Ty more than he liked to admit, and the simple fact that Julian Cross made him nervous also made him angry.
And he wanted to know how the hell Julian had slipped those cuffs so quickly.
He started the car with a grunt. “Buckle up,” he told them, even though neither man could comply because of their handcuffs. He pulled back out into traffic with a less than gentle yank of the wheel that sent both men toppling sideways.
Chapter 6
CAMERON looked out the window at the Comfort Inn, thinking it looked like it had landed right out of the seventies. Two floors, dark wooden plank construction, narrower and higher windows than in newer hotels, but it seemed nice enough for being out in the middle of nowhere, northern Indiana, off the toll road. It was almost three, and Cameron was exhausted. Surely Ty and Zane were too, and after Julian’s attempted escape, they didn’t seem to be willing to take any chances.
He dozed some while Zane was inside arranging their room, leaning his head against Julian, who had pulled as close as he could while handcuffed to the ring on the floor. The handcuffs were something new for Cameron. He’d watched in horror as Julian picked his lock in the car with a flick of his wrist and nothing more, wondering at how much practice something like that would take. His lover never ceased to amaze him with all his nefarious skills.
Cameron sometimes wondered about his own moral makeup, that something like that could sort of turn him on.
He smiled and turned his head to press his cheek against Julian’s shoulder. Julian turned his chin to try to kiss the top of his head, an almost unconscious gesture, but he couldn’t reach due to the way they were cuffed. He sighed, an exasperated sound that Julian rarely made, and he looked out the window, eyes narrowed.
Ty sat in the front seat, muttering to himself, his knee bouncing so quickly it was more a vibration. That Red Bull hadn’t done the man much good, and it had only had an hour to wear off. Cameron was almost amused by the dichotomy of the two federal agents. Zane was so calm and steady and dark, taking things in stride, tolerantly handling any adversity that came their way until Julian’s escape attempt. And then Ty seemed the complete opposite. He was wired to the sky, and he struck Cameron as a big floppy puppy, cracking jokes, attention bouncing from one thing to another, patience thin as a wafer. Ty was the Omega to Zane’s Alpha.
They were both handsome, and while Zane was more Cameron’s type than Ty was, there was something about Ty’s rugged exterior that made him more approachable and attractive.
They certainly were the odd couple of partners, although Zane was the one who felt like a threat to Cameron now that he’d been exposed to them both. Julian obviously felt the same way. Cameron could still feel the tension invested in his tall frame. “Can’t you relax just a little? You’re so wound up,” he whispered, looking up at Julian.
Julian turned and cocked his head to meet his eyes, then smiled. “No more than usual,” he murmured, his voice low and gruff.
“I can tell,” Cameron said, wishing he could get close enough to touch him with something besides his foot or his nose.
“It’ll be okay. Just do as they tell you.”