Tied Up in Knots Read online

  Once I was alone, I let Chickie out, got the towel ready for him when he came back in, and started washing dishes. When I heard a soft knock on the back door, I turned and saw Barrett there, and with the lighting in the background, he was bright, outlined for a moment, and then he was in shadow again. I trotted over and opened up slowly.

  “Hey,” he greeted me softly. “Can I talk to you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know that we have that much to say.”

  “No, I think we do.”

  “Listen, Barrett, I—”

  “Miro, I want you to meet my old friend from New Jersey.”

  I began to say no when another man came up behind him, wet like Barrett was, about his same height, but nowhere near as handsome. He was thicker, with lots of muscle on him. What riveted me, though, was not his countenance, but the Walther P22 he had in his hand that was pointed right at me.

  “I need a word,” the man said coldly.

  “Who the fuck are you, and what’re you doing here?”

  “I’m Eamon Lochlyn, Kerry’s older brother.”

  Of course he was.

  Chapter 17

  WHEN HAD I become such a crappy judge of character?

  “Don’t blame yourself, Miro,” Barrett said kindly. “There was no way for you to know about us. Nobody did.”

  “What do you want?” I asked Lochlyn.

  He looked at me oddly. “I would think by now, after the others, that that would be self-explanatory. Clearly, I want to kill Ian Doyle for what he did to my brother.”

  “And what was that?”

  “He and the others drove him out of the Army, and my parents drove him to suicide because they told him he was a failure and not a real man because he couldn’t be a soldier.”

  “Your parents are dead, I understand.”

  “Well, they are now.”

  When you’re an orphan, you dream of having parents. I always had. To imagine anyone hurting theirs was beyond me and made my heart hurt. “You killed your own parents?”

  He cleared his throat. “No. Barrett did the honors there.”

  I glanced over at the man who I thought had been my friend. We’d been to hockey games together, had dinners and bowled. And all that time, I missed who he really was. “You killed people?”

  He nodded.

  Lochlyn snapped his fingers to get my attention.

  “So as I said, I want to kill Ian Doyle, but he’s better trained then the others—the man’s Special Forces, after all—so getting the drop on him is damn near impossible.”

  I would have agreed, but I was listening, not talking.

  “So when he comes back, I’m going to point the gun at you, have him follow us outside, and then I’m going to shoot him dead.”

  My stomach threatened to empty, but I took several deep breaths in rapid succession.

  “And I know what you’re thinking right about now,” he informed me. “Those men who are supposed to be watching the house will protect me. But unfortunately they’ve both died very recently.”

  “Those were FBI agents; you’ll get the needle for that.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about what’s going to happen to me,” Lochlyn said with a smile. “Because about a second after I put a bullet in Ian Doyle’s head, I’m going to shoot you and everyone else who walks through the door with him.”

  I would put money on Ian not getting shot, and he was trained to not negotiate for hostages because nine times out of ten, the hostage died too.

  Ian would be all right.

  It was the girls.

  It was Liam and Sajani.

  They would panic, and Lochlyn would start with shooting Liam and work his way down to that beautiful little baby girl.

  I could never allow that.

  Charging forward, I plowed into Lochlyn, catching him off balance, spinning him around and slamming him down onto my reclaimed barn wood floor. It was solid, I knew it was, and as hard as his head hit, he wasn’t getting back up.

  The gun went skittering across the floor, and I scrambled off Lochlyn’s prone body to grab for the grip, but Barrett wasn’t tangled up, and he ran.

  He reached the gun first and aimed it at me. “The hell was that?” he shouted, furious and scared at the same time.

  “People never expect you to rush them from a fixed position, so they let their guard down,” I informed him. “It’s a thing they teach you.”

  “It’s a gamble.”

  “It is, but it was worth it.”

  “How so?”

  “There’s only one of you now, and I can yell out for Ian before anyone else gets in here. I may die, but Ian’s safe.”

  “Eamon!” he yelled.

  “He’s out,” I informed him. “He ain’t getting up any time soon.”

  “Shit,” he said angrily, pointing the gun center mass on me. “What the hell was he thinking? He had no respect for the fact that you’re a marshal.”

  “And you do?”

  “Of course I do,” he admitted. “Jesus, Miro, I’m completely enamored of you.”

  “And yet”—I tipped my head, indicating Lochlyn—“you’re in love with a crazy man.”

  “What? No, you’ve got it all wrong. I loved Kerry. Kerry was the one I wanted, but he came back from Afghanistan all messed up, and then he said he couldn’t be with me anymore because he was no longer a soldier.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “I know, but he believed that being a soldier made the gay all right, but without the military… it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t a real man, then.”

  As horrible as that was, I had a terrible fear that Ian thought the same thing. If he wasn’t a Green Beret anymore, if the Army was no longer part of his life, was he still a man? Was Ian figuring out who he was going to be?

  “Everyone turned their back on Kerry, and I tried to be everything to him, I wanted to be, but his parents hurt him too deeply, and so I made sure they paid, and Eamon promised me he’d make sure all the soldiers did too.”

  “It was a division of priorities.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And now you—oh shit.”

  Turning, I saw what Barrett did.

  I’d forgotten all about him, too caught up in the life-and-death struggle in the kitchen. But Chickie had come in through his doggie door, dripping water after he’d been outside running around like a dork because I wasn’t there to call him in.

  “Keep him still, Miro,” he warned.

  Chickie was unsure, I could tell. His head was down, his ears were laid back, and that was because of me. I was acting weird; I wasn’t moving or yelling at him or reaching for the towel to dry him. None of that was normal, so he looked from me to Barrett and back again, deciding, checking, waiting for a sign from me that wasn’t forthcoming.

  “I’m not kidding. He needs to stay still.”

  “Stay, Chick,” I commanded, terrified he wasn’t going to listen to me. It was touch and go at best on most days. Chickie was better at following Aruna’s orders than mine.

  Hard to say what it was that gave the dog pause. It could have been the timbre of my voice, the breathiness or the quaver of fear. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t call him to me, but whatever it was, he took a step forward.

  “I’ll kill him.”

  “No, please,” I begged, and I heard the catch then, the pleading in the air between the words.

  “Then send him out.”

  “Chickie, out,” I commanded, my voice rising in fear for him, not me, swallowing because my mouth was dry.

  He took another step toward me.

  “Out,” I shouted, and that was it.

  He turned and rushed Barrett, snarling, all killing stroke, ready to defend me.

  I heard the shot, saw Chickie get thrown left and slam into the bookshelf between the back door and the tiny hallway. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but what there was, on his head below his right ear, told me he was dead by the time he hit the ground in a crump
led heap.

  The sound that came out of me, one of agony and regret, was loud in my head.

  I never thought when Ian first decided to adopt Chickie after the raid we’d been on that day, that I would ever feel like I did at this moment. I couldn’t breathe, and I thought, I was going to take him with me to do this and this, and it all rushed through my mind, and then boom…. Heart stopped. How did people ever live through losing someone they loved, if the stupid dog could make everything hurt this much?

  I took one shuffling step forward.

  “Don’t fuckin’ move.”

  Lifting my gaze to Barrett, I realized I could barely see him through my swimming eyes.

  “I’m going to kill you now, Miro, and put you right here on the floor next to the dog.”

  I shivered, but not for me. It was for Chickie Baby, who I would miss even in these last few seconds.

  “It’s a shame about the dog. I really liked him.”

  I couldn’t tell that from how lifeless he’d left him.

  “Now Ian will suffer like Kerry did.”

  What was I supposed to say? He already knew Ian loved me, loved Chickie too. That was the whole point of him and Lochlyn doing all this.

  “I really wanted to fuck you.”

  Like anybody cheated on the love of their life.

  “I’ll make sure to comfort Ian when I blame all this on Eamon and say I got here too late to save you or Chickie.”

  “Go to hell,” I spat out.

  “You first,” he said, lifting the gun.

  “Well, now, this is embarrassing.”

  We both froze, and then I looked toward the back door for the second time that night, and there, with a gun in his hand, was the last person on the planet I thought I’d see.

  “Who the hell are you?” Barrett barked at the intruder.

  “Oh, I’m Dr. Craig Hartley,” he said in the velvety tone people always mentioned whenever they spoke of him. It was always on the Internet or in the paper about how refined he sounded, how rich and silky his voice was. “And you have something of mine.”

  I honestly had never had reason to use the saying, “out of the frying pan and into the fire”—until now. It was like when you woke up from a nightmare only to find yourself in another, and then when you came to the second time, only then did you realize how fucked up dreams could be.

  I was about to be killed in cold blood, only to have it stopped by a man who wanted to torture and maim me before he too ended my life. It was a mindfuck.

  Barrett glanced at me and then back at the immaculately dressed doctor—in his three-piece herringbone tweed suit under a chocolate-brown wool overcoat, five layers in all with a pocket square—who was at the moment a wanted fugitive.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Well, Marshal Jones here, of course,” Hartley replied drolly. “He most assuredly belongs to me, and before you even have time to turn that gun on me, I’ll shoot you with mine.”

  Barrett stared wide-eyed at him.

  “You don’t believe me, and us without the time for you to google me,” Hartley mused, brows furrowing in consternation before he lifted them and his face brightened. “Oh, I know.”

  Without a flicker of hesitation, he put four bullets in Eamon Lochlyn, ending his war on the men left in Ian’s old unit.

  Barrett screamed, and Hartley lifted his hand to quiet him.

  “Now,” he exhaled, “let me tell you a little about my gun.”

  I saw the fear and horror cross Barrett’s features then as he regarded Hartley, who’d just killed someone but was preternaturally calm. Really, it was unnerving.

  “What I have here is a .50-caliber Titanium Gold self-loading Desert Eagle that has a six-inch barrel and holds seven rounds. It is, I’m told, one of, if not the most powerful handguns in the world, and, as you can see, makes quite a mess.”

  With a .50 caliber bullet, no way it wouldn’t.

  “It was a gift.”

  “From Aranda?” I offered because Hartley I knew, Barrett I certainly didn’t. Of the two of them—and it was crazy, but still—I’d rather the doctor have the power. Hartley didn’t give a damn about Ian or the girls or anyone else but me. Barrett was the only one in the room who would hurt people I loved.

  “Oh, you heard about that?”

  I nodded, swallowing quickly, not wanting to retch, so afraid that I would and then Hartley would know how terrified I was. It wasn’t that he would kill me—that wasn’t my fear—the horror came from imagining that he’d make me leave with him and then we’d be alone. I never wanted to be alone with him again. “I did,” I managed to get out.

  “It’s always good to have friends.”

  “It is,” I agreed.

  We were just talking like we always did, and it would probably have been weird to other people, I was sure, but I was used to the rambling. Barrett was not, and he was very frightened. It was all over his face.

  “I don’t care who the hell you—”

  “I’m not to be trifled with,” Hartley instructed icily. “I’ll shoot you dead where you stand if you don’t drop the gun into the sink on the count of three, and take five steps back.”

  “No, I—”

  “One.”

  “I can’t just let—”

  “Two.”

  Barrett let the gun slip from his right hand into the stainless-steel sink and took the requisite steps away.

  “Oh, you’re lovely, bravo,” Hartley praised before he walked over to me, reached out, and put a hand on my cheek. The muzzle of his gun was pointed directly at my heart. “Why are you crying?”

  I almost threw up right there. My stomach twisted, lurched, but I inhaled through my nose sharply, and when I noticed he was wearing leather gloves, I fixated on that and the fact that his skin wasn’t on mine, and calmed.

  “Miro?”

  I dared a glance at Chickie.

  “Oh dear,” he tsked, walking over quickly, kneeling down, and touching Chickie’s neck. His eyebrows lifted, and then he touched Chickie’s head. After a moment he put his glove in his mouth, bit down on the tip of his index finger gently—didn’t want to crease the leather—so he could slide his hand out of it before examining my dog’s skull with his fingers again. It was nuts that I even noticed all that, but I did, with him. Always. It was like I studied him so I’d know what he’d do in every situation, and so I never looked away when he was in front of me. Ever. “All right, so he’s unconscious, the poor lamb, but not dead.”

  I gasped and he gave me a smile. “Grab a few dishtowels and tie a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. It’s clotting already, but there should be pressure.”

  “You’re sure he’s not dead?”

  “I’m sorry, when did you become a doctor?” he inquired gently.

  “He shot him,” I stated, rushing to the towel drawer to do exactly as he told me.

  “Well, I didn’t think you did it, dear.”

  “He’ll be all right, you think?” And of course it was beyond insane that I was asking Hartley and praying he was right at the same time.

  “Have I ever, in our association, even once, lied to you?”

  No, he hadn’t.

  The look on his face, patronizing, even bored, as he awaited my reply, made the truth even more obvious.

  I shook my head.

  “Well, there, you see? Your dog has a bullet wedged in his skull that will need to be extracted, and the piece where the bone is cracked might have to be replaced by a metal plate.”

  “But for sure he’ll live?”

  “It’s going to be expensive. Are you prepared to do all that for a dog?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Well, then,” he sighed, smiling at me. “Hurry and wrap up his head.”

  I moved fast and used three towels, one folded over Chickie’s wound, and the other two tied around his head like someone with a toothache in those old cartoons.

  “Why do you give a crap about a dog,” Barrett choked out, f
urious. “You’ll kill me, but not a fuckin’ pet?”

  He glared at Barrett. “I don’t kill children or pets. My God, what do you think I am?” Hartley asked, horrified.

  “Well, you’re clearly insane.”

  Hartley exhaled sharply. “Listen, when I used to watch television, I loved anything about crime, but I could never bring myself to watch things like Law and Order, the SVU one, if it was about kids. That kind of thing makes me ill. I know everyone is someone’s little boy or little girl, but once you’re over twenty-five, the choices you make are your own. If you wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s on you. But children and animals, that’s ridiculous. Hurting them is obscene.”

  Barrett looked at me. “And him?”

  “Miro belongs to me,” he explained to Barrett. “He saved my life, and—oh my God,” he said, turning to me. “I think we’re even now, aren’t we?”

  I nodded, scared and relieved at the same time. “We are.”

  “And now I can kill you,” he said happily, his voice full of relief and glee as he looked back at Barrett. “How fortuitous that you came to be here.”

  “So you’re going to shoot him?”

  Hartley nearly choked, and it took a couple of moments for him to recover. “Shoot him? I’m sorry; did you just ask me if I was going to shoot him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never.”

  “You’re going to let him go?”

  “Oh heavens, no. I came to pick him up and take him with me to Paris, where I plan to torture him at my leisure until he dies from his injuries.”

  And even though I had a moment of shock, of cold deep-down fear, at least I knew his plan. He was not, as I always assumed, about to walk up behind me on the street and shoot me in the head. It wasn’t what he wanted. His heart’s desire was me bleeding out slowly so he could watch every drop of life leave my body. Was it sick? Hell yes. But it would not be quick, so at the moment, I was far safer than Barrett.

  “How are you getting him on a plane?”

  “I have help.”

  Hartley normally did.

  “I don’t understand.”