Cut & Run (Cut & Run #1)(20)
Author: Abigail Roux

Zane ignored him, looking over the menu with a content expression.

“Mmmmm. Waffles,” he murmured, giving them proper consideration.

Ty just rolled his eyes and waved his hand at the waitress. “Eggs, bacon,” he ordered. “And my idiot friend here would like a stale bagel,” he said with a wave of his hand at Zane.

The waitress raised her eyebrow and looked over at Zane questioningly, who just rolled his eyes. “Waffles and sausage links. And orange juice.” The waitress nodded, chewing her gum, and took off after making note of their orders.

“I appear to be moving up in the world,” Zane pointed out, deliberately prodding at Ty all he could while the man was tired and not as snappy with the comeback as yesterday.

“By being an idiot?” Ty asked with a tilt of his head. “Yeah, I suppose that is a step up from your usual state.”

“Better than a prickly ass,” Zane commented, turning his head to look out the window.

“Other than the little bit of buckshot still left in it, my ass is perfectly smooth, I’ll have you know,” Ty replied easily.

“I hope so, since I’m supposed to kiss it after breakfast,” Zane said facetiously as the waitress arrived with his drink.

“I don’t do that before lunch,” Ty cautioned. “Can I have an orange juice, please?” he asked the waitress with a brilliant smile that fell back into a tired frown immediately after she turned away.

Seeing the wide-spectrum mood shift on Ty’s face, Zane let the odd moment of teasing die and instead watched MSNBC on the television over Ty’s shoulder.

“See? I can be nice,” Ty pointed out as they sat there.

Zane’s eyes shifted to Ty, and he nodded. “Yeah. I’m only a little suspicious of what you’re going to want, but nice is good. For a change.

Occasionally.”

Ty sat there looking at him for a long moment, face expressionless.

“Shut up,” he finally muttered.

Lips twitching, Zane did, until the waitress came over with their food.

He thanked her politely.

“So, aside from being annoying and shaving every four hours, what is it you do, exactly?” Ty asked Zane as he picked up a piece of bacon and crunched into it.

“I just finished six months in a stock market brokerage’s computers,”

Zane answered evenly.

“Is that a euphemism for Hell?” Ty asked seriously.

“Very nearly,” Zane said, voice dark. “I have new respect for the nice, plain insanity of terrorists after those cyber freak bastards.”

Ty hummed noncommittally and crunched another piece of bacon, finally waking up some more and shaking off the last of the exhaustion.

“What’d you come up with last night, anyway?” he asked finally. “Did I ask you that?”

Zane smiled a little. “Yeah. And the answer was noth —” The smile fell off his face as his eyes focused totally over Ty’s shoulder, and without warning he was up, tossing a twenty on the table. “Time to go,” he said sharply, pulling out his cell phone as he stalked past the television and out the door.

Ty cursed quietly and gathered his bacon in a napkin haphazardly as he got up to follow, glancing up at the lurid red letters scrolling across the television screen: “NYPD reports Tri-State killer strikes again.”

ird flu,” Ty repeated in disbelief as the medical examiner gave them the autopsy report. He held a white mask to his face, “Be refusing to put the little elastic bands over his ears. "What the hell?”

The woman nodded and shrugged as she handed Special Agent Ross the file. “ ‘What the hell’ is not my job,” she answered with a small smile that showed in her eyes. The white mask she wore over her nose and face covered the rest of the expression.

“Isn’t bird flu pretty rare?” Ty asked her in a mystified voice. “How would he get it?”

”Well, more than two hundred confirmed cases of human infection with avian influenza A viruses have been reported since 2004,” the ME answered, sounding to Ty as if she were reciting facts she’d just recently looked up.

She flipped her hair over her shoulder and frowned. “The virus isn’t easily sustained from human-to-human transmission, but it can mutate to be highly contagious. Still,” she went on with a shake of her head, “the most likely source would have been from handling dead birds that were infected.

And, to my knowledge, there haven’t been any reported cases in the Tri-State area in at least three years.”

“So …,” Ty prodded as he leaned closer expectantly.

“Unless he was traveling in east Asia or the Middle East, Special Agent Grady, I don’t believe he would have been able to contract it by natural means.”

“He was intentionally infected,” Ross concluded with a frown.

“How?” Zane demanded before the ME could even answer.

“I’d rather wait to get the preliminary reports before speculating too much,” she answered hesitantly. “But the easiest way to do it—and safest for the person who did it—would have been an injection.”

“How long would it take for an injection like that to infect someone?”

Special Agent Sears asked, looking up from her notes. Sears and Ross hovered near the exam table. Ross merely held his mask to his face like Ty did and looked down at the body in distaste. He handed the file to Zane absently without looking up.

“Incubation period would be about the same as if he were infected in more typical ways,” the ME answered. “I can tell you that bird flu does not have to be lethal. Most cases, in fact, if treated promptly, there’s a full recovery. That’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge.”

“So what you’re saying is, either he didn’t know he was sick, didn’t care that he was sick, or wasn’t able to get to a doctor?” Ty asked with a deeper frown.

“Pretty much,” the woman nodded.

“For two weeks?” Zane asked. “Were there any signs of restraint or struggle?”

“None,” she answered with a shake of her head. “Is there anything else?” she asked as Zane flipped open the folder and started reading. “I’ve got more in the morgue.”

Zane closed the file and looked back up at her. “Thank you, Karen. I hope we won’t be seeing you again while we’re still breathing,” he said. She gave him a little laugh.

Ty rolled his eyes and looked away. She shook their hands and went back to work, and Zane turned to look at Ty. “We need to talk to the cops.