Tied Up in Knots Read online

  Twisted up in the back seat, my gun hit the floorboard and I went down on top of it, wedged there but just free enough to kick the guy I’d fallen over in the side of the jaw. His head swiveled hard, and he was out as I grabbed wrist of the second guy in the back seat, making it impossible for him to shoot at me but not at all impeding the man in the front passenger seat, who shot straight down at my face.

  The sound of the discharge inside the small space was jarring. Hitting his arm from below made it jerk up, and the bullet went over my back and hit the seat, made a decent-sized hole, and continued on into the trunk, where I heard it hit metal as the car accelerated again.

  “The fuck are you doing?” the guy I was tussling with yelled at the passenger. “You’re gonna fuckin’ kill me!”

  “Use your goddamn knife!” the driver shrieked, still grappling with Redeker.

  The Mercedes E-Class sedan we were in had lovely leg room, but after the sharp braking moments before, we were squashed together. I pinned the arm of the guy I was fighting with and hit him in the face with as much leverage as I had between the back of one seat and his lap.

  There was not much power there, especially as he moved his legs and I was sinking, both of us squirming, jostling to sit up.

  “Where the fuck is your knife!”

  A butterfly, maybe a switchblade… that was what I expected. The Crocodile Dundee version that came through the seat at me, grazing over my bicep—I was not prepared for that.

  “Fuck!” Redeker gasped, spotting the knife as the guy in the passenger seat yanked it out, and he hit the driver—finally—at enough of an angle to make him swerve.

  My gun was under me, so no help there, and even though I was pretty flexible, I wasn’t small. I carried quite a bit of muscle, and my chest and shoulders were wide enough that I was stuck, almost upside down. When the car hit whatever it hit, I thought for a second my back was broken before the knife was there again, the light sliding over the curve of the blade I could see over the console.

  Adrenaline was wild. It made you able to do crazy things.

  Heaving myself up, I did my best dolphin impression, contorted in a way that would have given Ian a shock—he was always surprised by the positions I could get myself into—and got my left leg between the front seats so that when the passenger lunged at Redeker, Redeker was able to grab his wrist and the blade.

  “Down,” Callahan yelled, there suddenly over me, gun leveled on the guy I was fighting with as he leaned in and elbowed the passenger in the face.

  “Fuck,” I gasped, still mostly on my head.

  “We don’t normally dive into cars,” Redeker huffed as he clocked the driver and Callahan took guns out of the car and dropped them on the street.

  “No?” I panted, righting myself before opening the back door and stumbling out of the car to stand in the street next to Callahan. “We do in Chicago. We’re hardcore in the Windy City.”

  “Huh,” Redeker groaned before he was gone from sight, out of the car and bending over to catch his breath.

  “My boss is gonna eat you for this, Jones,” Callahan informed me.

  “But nobody got hurt but me and Redeker,” I argued, gesturing around at everything. “How can he get mad at that?”

  Callahan waggled his eyebrows.

  “Well,” I said after a moment, “he has to get in line.”

  Christ.

  I THOUGHT the circus got crazy in Chicago. In Sin City, on this Monday night, it was insane. The police department in New Orleans wanted the men because the threat on Josue’s life connected to their case, but Las Vegas PD said they were keeping the shooters because the incident occurred on their streets. The marshal service trumped both departments until the FBI said that since Alessi was wanted on racketeering and drug trafficking across several states, they would take the men into federal custody.

  It was Barnum and Bailey.

  I’d turned Josue over to the state troopers in the interim. They took him first to his apartment to collect whatever life-and-death items he needed to bring along on his adventure and then escorted him, still under heavy guard, to the hotel and my room. There the sheriff’s department took over, and one man stayed outside the door and one stayed inside with him. I’d given him my number before he left, and he put it into his phone after taking a quick picture of me smiling at him as I stood there bleeding. The blood caused the EMT on-site some concern, and they wanted me to go to the hospital to see if I needed stitches, but I’d been sliced by a knife, not stabbed. I needed a Band-Aid more than anything else.

  Since the only thing no one could mess with was me putting a witness into protective custody, I was cleared by the bureau “to proceed with the intake of my witness.” They were such nozzles. Redeker asked if I wanted to grab a late dinner with him and Callahan, and since I knew Josue was safe—and that the troopers would be ordering him room service—I took them up on their offer.

  They took me to the Peppermill, right on the Strip. It was interesting, with all the neon inside and the big round fire pit and the mirrors and all the noise. The fact that it was loud was usually not something I liked, but I appreciated it since I wasn’t in the mood to talk much. I ordered a BLT with avocado and sweet potato fries and had water to drink because I really needed to hydrate. It felt like the dry heat was sucking the moisture right out of me.

  Callahan got a porterhouse with sautéed mushrooms and water as well, while Redeker had wings, the pastrami burger and onion rings, and mozzarella sticks, all chased with a double screwdriver.

  “You’re gonna have a heart attack and die,” I assured him as his food kept coming.

  The portions on everything were enormous. There was no skimping on anything, including the alcohol.

  “I keep telling him,” Callahan said, “between what he’s eating and what he’s drinking, he won’t make it to fifty.”

  I snorted out a laugh. “Man, you would love Chicago.”

  Redeker looked at me. “Why you say that?”

  “Lots of good food there too.”

  He nodded.

  “Chicago?” Callahan ventured, looking back and forth between us.

  “Yeah,” Redeker said with a cough. “Jones says his boss is looking for some more guys and thought maybe we’d like a change of climate.”

  Callahan nearly choked on his water. “We?” he said when he could breathe.

  Redeker shrugged. “Well, yeah. Why would I go without you?”

  Callahan did a slow turn to look at me.

  “What?”

  “Thanks for the heads-up, Jones,” he said softly, like he really meant it.

  I smiled at him, because I knew what it felt like to maybe have figured something out about your partner. I’d been there, after all.

  THEY DROPPED me off at my hotel, and after I hugged Callahan and shook hands with Redeker, I headed toward the room. I was surprised to get a call from Josue halfway there.

  “What? You’re only supposed to call in case of emergency,” I scolded him.

  “I was worried about you.”

  I grunted.

  “I was! You were all banged up and bleeding. For a knight in shining armor, you get hurt awfully easy.”

  “What are you talk—”

  “The cards!” he reminded me.

  “Oh yes, the cards.”

  “Don’t use that tone about the Tarot.” He was clearly horrified; it was evident in his tone.

  Heaven forbid. “Okay.”

  “You scared me to death. I was just wondering where you are.”

  “I’m almost there,” I said and hung up.

  He called me right back.

  “What?”

  “You should answer the phone nicer. Like, hello, Josue darling, how are you?”

  I sighed loud and long so he couldn’t miss the irritation.

  “So you’re one of those guys who likes pain, huh?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “I mean like that love of pain i
n a minor way… like eating spicy foods or going on a roller coaster or watching a horror movie.”

  “Who doesn’t like all that stuff?”

  “Lots of people, and you have to make sure it doesn’t escalate to taking scary chances in life or on love.”

  Oh, he was going to be a bundle of fun to play guardian angel for. “I think when we get to Chicago that I’m gonna give you to my friends Kohn and Kowalski. They don’t have any children at the moment.”

  “I’m not a child,” he insisted petulantly.

  He was a baby.

  “And I refuse to be pawned off on anyone else. You’re my marshal, my knight.”

  I chuckled.

  “There now see, that was a yummy sound you just made. Have to love a man with a deep, warm laugh.”

  He was going to be such a handful.

  “Guess what?”

  “I don’t—” I was too tired for twenty questions. “Just tell me.”

  “I’ve been playing poker with the sheriff’s deputies—Kirkland, he was outside, came in—and I’m up twenty bucks!”

  Cards? Why was he playing cards? Why wasn’t he cowering in the corner or sitting in the bathtub rocking back and forth? “Why aren’t you scared?”

  “Of?” He asked like I hadn’t just shielded him with my body hours before.

  “Getting shot, doofus.”

  “But I told you already.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes I did.” I could imagine the eye roll with the weight of his exhale. “You’re taking me to my love. I saw that. All the signs point to me being happy and…. I’m not now, so… this is a season of change for me. I’m ready for my adventure.”

  And I was ready to be his guide.

  “You’re my marshal, but you’re also my knight, Miro Jones. I know I’m safe with you.”

  He believed in me, and that was really kind of nice.

  I stopped walking, having arrived at the door, and stood there taking a moment, letting my life settle around me. But then I heard a squeal and a hundred and thirty pounds of Josue Hess slammed into me, hard, and I almost dropped my phone in the process.

  “For crissakes,” I grumbled, trying to push him off me as I heard the state troopers both chuckling behind him.

  “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”

  “What? Save your life?”

  “Run into a hail of bullets!” He pulled back, frantic, eyes wide, arms flailing. It was kind of cute.

  “A hail?” I questioned him. “Really?”

  “Oh dear God, you’re arguing word choice at a time like this?”

  It was like seeing a pissed-off bunny. “Sorry, sorry.”

  He hurled himself back in my arms, and I patted his back as he clung to me like he was the one who almost died.

  “The cards didn’t mention that you had a death wish. Maybe we better have a reading before bed.”

  No. God, no. “Listen—”

  “I have to read Kirkland’s cards first though, I promised.”

  I looked over his head into the room where both troopers were shaking their heads at me. “I think they’d both be okay if you skipped that.”

  When he glanced over his shoulder, head shaking turned to smiles. Clearly, neither man wanted to hurt his feelings.

  “Hey,” I said to get his focus back on me.

  Big limpid eyes returned to my face.

  “Do you own a warm coat?”

  He looked up. “Why?”

  “Because you think this was scary, all the flying bullets, just wait until you deal with winter in Chicago.”

  “Does it get cold there?”

  I made a mental note to get him a snowsuit.

  Chapter 12

  REALLY EARLY the next morning, I grabbed my bags and the several Josue had with him, threw them into the back of a cab, and got us to McCarran International Airport. He had plenty to say during the flight home. We were in Chicago by noon.

  “How come you haven’t told me to shut up?” he asked as we rode the elevator up to the office.

  “You’re good company,” I confessed. “I wasn’t going to sleep anyway, and now I’ve learned about Myal and Obeah and the differences between them; I know about your parents and how they met and how much they loved you and how they didn’t care that you were gay, and that they believed in good food and good magic.”

  He was beaming at me. “You’re a really good listener.”

  “I try.”

  Once we got upstairs, I dropped Josue off in the conference room with a Pepsi and a promise of a late lunch before going to my desk. I didn’t even have time to sit down and search for my mouse—which was always missing because someone was forever borrowing it—before the door to Kage’s office opened and he leaned out to call me in.

  In his office, basically a glass fishbowl with blinds to keep out prying eyes, I found him along with four men I didn’t know.

  “Jones,” Kage said like he was both tired and annoyed. “Have a seat.”

  I flopped down on the couch since the chair I usually sat in, the one right in front of his enormous cherry-and-glass-topped console of a desk, was taken.

  “These men are from the FBI, and they’ve shared some news with me this morning that I, in turn, have to share with you.”

  “Yessir.”

  He squinted like he was in pain, and I caught my breath because I just fucking knew.

  “The FBI moved Craig Hartley from ADX Florence two weeks ago because they needed to confirm the whereabouts of the remains of five women that one of his followers, Edward Bellamy, killed. Bellamy said that he would only give those names to Hartley face-to-face.”

  It was like someone walking up beside you and shoving you into a pool. One moment you were talking, laughing, the next you were drowning for a never-ending second before you got your bearings and pushed up to break the surface and breathe.

  “Yessir,” I croaked, my voice going out on me.

  He inhaled deeply. “During the course of the transfer, when Hartley was in the custody of the FBI and no one employed by, or affiliated with, the Federal Bureau of Prisons or the Department of Justice… he escaped.”

  The bureau lost him, Kage was being clear on that fact. He wanted me to know that my own people—the marshals service—had not failed me.

  It didn’t help.

  Hartley was free—again—walking around somewhere, anywhere, able to make a house call on me.

  The shivering was not a surprise, and neither was the fact that as much as I tried, I couldn’t stop. Just the thought of Hartley’s hands on my skin, his breath, seeing his face, looking into his cat green eyes… I was going to be sick.

  “Go,” Kage directed me.

  I flew out of his office, bolted through the office without a word to anyone, didn’t see anyone on my way to the bathroom. Everything was a blur until I reached my destination, tore into a stall, and threw up bile and stale coffee because there was nothing else in my stomach.

  I heaved for several minutes because every time I calmed down for a second, I thought of Hartley again and the whole cycle repeated. The tears were hot, my vision blurred, and the shivering had become all out shaking. I had no idea how long I’d been in there before I heard a voice on the other side of the stall door.

  “Miro?”

  No one but Ian was welcome.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” I called back too loud, trying to get whoever it was to leave me the fuck alone.

  “Can you open the door?”

  Fuck. Josue.

  “Just gimme a minute, kid.”

  But he didn’t. Instead, under the bottom of the stall came a glass of water with lemon slices in it.

  “What is this?” I asked, taking it from his outstretched hand.

  “Are you kidding?”

  I smiled in spite of everything, because he wasn’t being sassy. He was surprised. Like could I not see what it was?

  “The lemons help with nausea,” he informed me. “D
id you know there’s a huge fruit basket in your break room?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “I know.”

  He coughed softly. “Ginger tea would be best, but that takes a little bit of time and I didn’t see any chamomile, so you got lemon water.”

  I sipped it slowly. Just the smell of it was soothing.

  “I have peppermint oil in my bag that will help too if—”

  “No, this is good. Thank you.”

  Then he was quiet, which was unlike him, and after a couple of minutes, I flushed the toilet and came out of the stall. I was the adult in our relationship; I had to pull myself together. I was his knight, so I had to be strong, and that responsibility calmed me.

  He was biting his bottom lip as he examined my face. “Why’re you crying?”

  I took a breath before taking a sip of my water and turning for the sink. Placing the glass beside the next basin over, I turned on the water and splashed my face, holding on to the counter and taking shallow breaths as I let my head hang down between my shoulders.

  His hand on my back, rubbing gently, was very kind.

  “I’m okay,” I said, opening my eyes and turning to look at him. “I just got some bad news, is all.”

  He stepped closer, into my space, and his hand went to the back of my neck, massaging, his fingers hitting knots of painful muscle. “You need a shower and food and to crawl into bed and sleep for a couple of days.”

  I nodded.

  “And you need me most of all.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes,” he promised. “I will take care of you and sleep with you and hold you supertight all through the night.”

  It was a very sweet offer. “If my heart wasn’t already spoken for, I would totally take you up on that.”

  His smile was warm as his hand dropped away. “I’ll give it some time, but if I don’t see this guy of yours in the next couple of months, I’m making the offer again.”

  “I have no idea how long he’ll be gone,” I confessed as I turned off the water and straightened up, studying my face in the mirror. “God, I look like shit.”

  “You look tired,” Josue corrected, passing me a few paper towels from the stack beside the mirror. “And pale, and the circles under your eyes are really dark.”