Cut & Run (Cut & Run #1)(17)
Author: Abigail Roux

Sears looked at her partner in apparent disapproval. Ross shrugged at her and then looked past Ty to glower at Zane.

“Public drunkenness, huh?” Ross snapped at him. “I can smell the beer on you from here.”

“So arrest me,” Zane growled.

“Wiseass,” Ross grumbled.

“We’re working this case beside you, not under you,” Ty snarled to them both, losing the good-humored glint in his eyes as he interrupted the sniping. “Don’t go tailing us when you’ve got more important shit to do. You want us, you f**king call us on the phone.”

“Got a card?” Sears asked with a little smile, still completely unintimidated.

Ty’s lips twitched in slight amusement again, and he reached out and took her hand. He reached under his jacket with the other, finding a pen in one of the inner pockets as Ross bristled angrily. Ty ignored him and held the woman’s hand in his, writing a number on the palm of her hand and then sliding the pen back into place slowly without releasing her.

She smirked at him, looking him over in amusement and just a hint of interest, before she slid her hand out of his and took her partner’s arm to pull him physically away as Ty smirked after them.

Zane took the few steps to stop beside Ty and watched them go, simmering. “They’re going to be trouble,” he muttered.

“No, they’re not,” Ty grinned as he watched them walk away. Ross’s hand now gripped Sears’ elbow rather than the other way around, preventing her from looking over her shoulder at them as he griped about sexual harassment. “They don’t think much of us, which is just how we want it.

They’ll want to work this case on their own, keep us out of the loop. Plus, see how possessive he is? He won’t let her near us again,” Ty chuckled darkly as he cocked his head to admire the sway of her hips.

Zane looked after her. “He won’t, huh? What did you do? Cop a feel?”

“Might need me a Sears catalog when we get home,” Ty drawled out with a sly smile.

“Bastard,” Zane murmured. He dropped the cigarette butt to the concrete and ground it out under his heel.

Ty sighed and looked around at the empty street corners. “Looks like our quarry has gone to ground.” He growled in annoyance, beginning to walk slowly in the direction from which they’d come. “Did you happen to look at the report on that sheet the body was wrapped in?”

“Bleached Egyptian cotton, six hundred-count king-size flat sheet, only sold at two places in New York; Bloomingdale’s and Henri Bendel.

Retail cost four hundred-fifty dollars. No catches, no pulls, no tears, no stains besides blood, still smelled like plastic, thought to be fresh out of the package,” Zane rattled off as he lit up another cigarette.

“Did anyone follow that up?” Ty asked before they crossed the street at a jog.

“I’ll call Morrison and ask him to have someone call the stores. All the report says is that neither had them in stock for a five-day span around the discovery of the body. Bendel’s had a linen sale the weekend before,” he said.

“I’m sure they were flying off the shelves.”

“Great,” Ty groaned. “We’ll go by tomorrow and talk to whoever.

What else? Were the sheets changed with the two dye girls? Was it in the report?”

“Nothing in the report said they were.”

“Goddammit,” Ty muttered. There had to be a connecting factor.

“We’ll find the damn thing,” he muttered to himself.

Zane stopped for traffic, working his way through the cigarette. “I still want to go back to the office.”

Ty exhaled heavily. “Do you understand what we were doing tonight?” he asked softly.

Zane looked at him, not sure if he should be offended, but still irritated merely on principle. Ty looked over at him and raised a questioning eyebrow. “Enlighten me,” Zane invited tightly.

“If it’s an insider that got Reilly and Sanchez, then he may already be tailing us,” Ty explained quietly. “I wanted to see if I could spot anyone.”

“You’re using yourself as bait?” Zane asked disbelievingly.

“Are you getting hysterical?” Ty asked eagerly. “Can I smack you?”

Zane merely sighed and looked away before he could give an acerbic response.

Ty grunted in mock disappointment. “Anyway, if you do go back to Federal Plaza, make sure you’re not alone, and keep an eye on your six. I’m crashing,” he admitted.

“I can take care of myself,” Zane said curtly. He ground his teeth as Ty snorted, and they each loped across the street to come to the front of their hotel. “I usually get going about seven in the morning,” Zane told Ty. “You?”

“Nights,” Ty grunted as he headed toward the lobby doors. “I’ve been working nights. I’m on hour thirty-something trying to right them, so I really couldn’t say.”

Zane nodded, stubbing out the cigarette on the brick wall outside the doors and tossing it in an ashtray sitting outside the doors. “Just come bang on the door when you’re ready in the morning. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.”

He walked toward the parking garage, hands in his jacket pockets.

Ty just grunted in return as they parted ways.

Zane stopped and turned to watch Ty stalk the last several feet into the hotel. Pondering the puzzle of Ty Grady, Zane made his way to the car.

He was infuriating at best. An absolute bastard at worst. And Zane had to grudgingly admit that he might just be good at his job.

ZANE sat at the table, feet propped on the air conditioner unit, notepad in hand as he looked through reams of reports. Paperwork was spread out all over the desk, the small round table, the floor, the second bed, the dresser …

even on top of the television. He’d taped maps to the wall and stuck up photos from the crime scenes. Right now, they were in dated order, but he’d move them around as he formed ideas about how they fit together. Their concentration might be on the two agents who were killed, but the serial itself was just too fascinating and frustrating to leave alone.

He mulled over the ideas about the bodies, the idea Ty had prodded him about last night. He’d made a simple list of how they were found, and he couldn’t help but feel that the killer was following a script of some kind.

Dropping his heels, he reached over to the bed to snag the photos of the tokens left behind at each scene.

There was a gilded mirror found with the twins. A pair of linked plastic rings like the type found in princess costume kits for little girls left with the dyed roommates. A pair of dog tags, complete with rabies licenses, were discovered by the first victim’s maid after the man had died of the meth overdose. The hooker, left in her sheet in the middle of a graveyard, had been left with a small, empty wooden box.