Tied Up in Knots Read online

  “We have a lot of people to help us. Anything can happen. Have a little faith.”

  I could do anything now. Ian was staying home.

  Chapter 19

  THERE WAS good news and bad news, and the good was that my kitchen, as crime scenes went, was pretty cut-and-dried.

  All the bullets Hartley fired were in Lochlyn, aside from the one that blew out Barrett’s knee. He didn’t fire any others, and all the blood in the kitchen belonged to either Lochlyn or Barrett. The Walther in my sink had only been fired once in the house, and that bullet was with Chickie at the vet and would be collected from there.

  All the blood by the bookcase was Chickie’s.

  I thought the federal forensics team would take a hundred times longer than the regular police, but the exact opposite was true. They had double the personnel, were hyperefficient, and took enough pictures to recreate the entire room in single photos, if abstract art was their goal. As it was, the sheer number of people processing the room put them at done in record time.

  By the time Ian and I got home, they had been there for three hours already. I would have thought I’d lost time, but as Ian reminded me, Chickie had been in surgery for a while and I’d been sick with worry, so the time sped by.

  “Where’s Aruna and Janet and—”

  “They’re all at home. She and Liam took Janet with them.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s get you a T-shirt and sweater and some tea, all right?”

  I nodded and Kohn bolted over and hugged me like he never did, full body, all up in my space, and squeezing tight.

  “Jones,” Kowalski said as he joined us. “I already called a service to get this place cleaned up, they should be here in an hour and—”

  I eased out of Kohn’s hold, and he grabbed Ian next. “How did you manage that? Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving?”

  “Tomorrow’s in like an hour already, but anybody works whenever as long as you pay them,” he reminded me.

  “It’ll cost a mint.”

  “Do you care?”

  I didn’t, actually. “Thanks, Jer.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, smiling at me, which was a new and different experience. “And now the fun starts,” he groused as in through the front door the suits walked.

  The FBI was leading the investigation, but CPD was there, too, along with Kage—which was nice, that he would come when he was technically off for the holiday, but it was also technically his job—the OPR guy again, McAllister, who was there to listen to what I said and prepare a statement and was also a lawyer and could advise Kage, if needed. Everyone looked crisp and polished, which was impressive for them all coming though the rain and the lateness of the hour the night before a holiday. Kage looked especially good in a navy-checked suit, a black cotton long-sleeved shirt, and monk strap shoes I was fairly sure were Ralph Lauren. He was dressed to go out.

  “Were you on a date?” I asked him, ballsier than normal because of the night I was having. Big highs and horrific lows.

  He did a slow pan to me. “I was, yes.”

  “Sorry.”

  “People trying to kill my marshals take precedence over my love life, Jones, but I warn you now—there had better be no shenanigans tomorrow. Do you understand?”

  “It’s not—this is not my fault.”

  His dismissive grunt told me that maybe he didn’t so much believe me.

  We all sat down in our living room: me, Ian, Kohn, Kowalski, Kage, McAllister, the parade of suits, and Special Agent Tilden Adair, who turned on his phone to record me. He asked me to please explain, as carefully as possible, what had transpired.

  “First, I’m so sorry about your agents. Eamon Lochlyn said he killed them both. I hope they didn’t suffer.”

  “Thank you, and no, it doesn’t appear that they did. We were surprised that Hartley wasn’t the one who killed them.”

  “No, it was Lochlyn. Did he shoot them?”

  “They were both shot, yes.”

  “With the Walther?”

  “The bullets would seem to be a match, yes, but we’re still waiting on ballistics to confirm.”

  “Okay.”

  “What gun was Hartley carrying?”

  So I explained about the fancy Desert Eagle and why he shot Lochlyn, and how Barrett startled him, which was how he got shot. Then I started over, and I left nothing out. I made them all squirm a bit—except Ian and Kage, and, interestingly enough, Adair—as I recounted kissing Hartley, at gunpoint, and how he wanted to hurt me and fuck me in equal measure. I included why and for what reason Lochlyn had decided on his revenge killings and why Barrett Van Allen assisted him.

  “Hartley saved your life,” Adair commented, and I realized I’d never actually met anyone with jet-black hair and matching eyes before. He was a very striking man, though “handsome” might not be the word I’d choose.

  “Yes, he did.”

  “My understanding was that Hartley wanted to kill you in Phoenix.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t want to be rushed when he does it. He wants to kill me on his timetable, no one else’s.”

  Adair nodded. “Are you in fear for your life, marshal?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Do you think that if Lochlyn and Van Allen had not killed the agents, that they would have, in fact, been killed?”

  “No.”

  “And what leads you to that supposition?”

  “Hartley thinks everything out. He never just does anything. The agents would have fired on Hartley as soon as they saw him, but they didn’t do that with Lochlyn or Van Allen, which is probably the reason they were killed. They let them get too close because they didn’t realize Lochlyn and Van Allen posed a significant threat.”

  He nodded. “I would agree. They were both highly trained. They just didn’t expect to be blindsided.”

  “No, how could they have.”

  The question-and-answer session lasted a couple of hours, and I was surprised Adair allowed the crime-scene cleaning team to come in while he was still talking to me until I realized they were all wearing noise-cancelling headphones like tarmac workers at the airport. Kowalski, who had foresight most people didn’t give him credit for, apprised them of the possibility and they’d come prepared.

  “We will keep your name out of the news, of course, but I’m sure that there will be reporters who put events together.”

  “We can deal with that, Agent,” McAllister assured him. “We take care of our own.”

  “Special Agent,” Adair corrected him.

  “Chief Deputy,” Kage said, and since clearly he had the biggest dick in the room, everyone else shut up. “Is that all, Special Agent?”

  “For now, yes.”

  Why it took another half an hour for the Feds to go, I had no idea, but when they finally left, McAllister whirled around and said he would personally contact CPD and have uniformed officers there, watching the house round the clock going forward.

  I shook my head. “If Hartley wants me, he’s gonna get me. But I have to be honest and say that I really do think he’s going to go to Paris like he said he was and be some underground sensation there.”

  “He said he’d have a following?”

  “No, he’d think that was pretentious. But I think he’s got other plans at the moment that don’t include me, if they ever do again.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I just… our dynamic just changed. And I’m not saying that we’re friends, because that would be insane… but he said it himself. He doesn’t want to kill me anymore. Hurt, yes—if he got the chance—but kill, no. So now I’m not like a prop he can move around anymore. He would have to talk to me in a way that wouldn’t include coercion. It’s a problem he has to work out, and it’ll take him a while—maybe even forever—to solve.”

  “So if I’m hearing you correctly, you believe that he’ll stay clear of you until he figures out a way to get you to go with him willingly.”

  “Yes,
exactly.”

  “I’m not sure that you’re qualified to make this call, marshal.”

  “Sadly, no one knows Hartley better than me,” I told him. “So please, don’t waste people here I don’t need.”

  He looked to Kage for help.

  “I agree with McAllister,” Kage said, which was surprising. “Every night there will be men stationed outside this house, but we’ll do that internally. I’ve already contacted Judicial Security, and the assistant director promised me protective personnel starting Monday.”

  “And from now until then?” McAllister wanted to know.

  “Marshal Jones is on house arrest and he’ll be checked in on every four hours, and as you know, he lives with Marshal Doyle, and as an ex-Green Beret, he’s more than qualified to provide protection.”

  “Ex?” I whispered.

  “Lives with?” McAllister asked.

  Ian grinned smugly. “Yeah. We’re getting married.”

  It took several moments, and I was worried for a few of them because McAllister looked so stricken, I thought he was going to either burst into tears or let loose a volley of hateful words. But neither happened. He smiled instead. Huge, wide, which was a surprise because I didn’t think he did that.

  “I didn’t know, but that’s wonderful. Congratulations.”

  “Yes,” Kage said, getting up, which signaled McAllister and the other four lawyers—who Kage hadn’t introduced—to get up as well. I’d found out that if he didn’t like you, he didn’t tell anyone your name. So clearly he found them bothersome and was showing his disdain. It also meant, whoever they were, that they were up there on the food chain. Kage never treated any underling poorly; it wasn’t his way to take out irritation on the messenger.

  “You’re a PR dream, Marshal Jones.”

  “I’m just a marshal on Sam Kage’s team, sir.”

  He nodded. “I must say that after meeting Marshals Becker and Ching, then you, that I suspect the chief deputy of building quite the team.”

  “As fun as this is….” Kage griped before grabbing my bicep and walking me with him to the front door. He opened it and looked out at the rain a moment before directing my gaze to the porch. “You step one foot out here before Monday morning when you come to work, and I will strip you of your investigator status and loan you, permanently, to Finance or Management Support or”—and I knew before he even said it, because yeah, he was evil like that—“Asset Forfeiture.”

  I shivered.

  “Either way, I’d have to find Doyle a new partner, just like I was going to have to find a new one for you.”

  “For me, sir?”

  “He was deployed too often. I would have had to replace him as your partner. I would have kept him on the team, but you need someone here. That’s the whole purpose of a partner.”

  I cleared my throat because I had a horrible sinking feeling. “Is that what you talked to him in your office about yesterday, sir?” Ian being my partner was most of what I loved about my job. Without him there, at my side, the best part of my day would be gone. I couldn’t even imagine what that loss would be like.

  “No,” he said, almost irritably. “I wanted to talk to him about the Lochlyn investigation, but since he couldn’t tell me much, we weren’t in there long. And of course I brought him up to date on the Cochran situation, in case there was any retaliation from other cops Cochran knows. Turns out I shouldn’t have bothered.”

  “Yeah, nobody likes him.”

  “Nobody likes him, that’s right.”

  “Sir, why didn’t you tell Ian—Doyle—about Hartley?”

  “Because I assumed you already would have. I won’t ever make assumptions where you’re concerned again, Jones.”

  For some reason that gave me a warm feeling, and I might even have bumped him with my shoulder, but he chose that moment to threaten me again.

  “Not one step outside this house, Jones, unless the house is on fire, and I mean heavily engulfed in flames, so much so that your friend Aruna’s husband the lieutenant has to come and put it out.”

  “How do you know Aruna, sir?”

  “We met at the hospital after you were shot protecting Nina Tolliver. I met them both.”

  And he remembered. “Yessir.”

  “Not one, Jones,” he said, flipping up his collar and dashing down the steps.

  As no one followed him immediately, I turned around, and the other four people were clustered a few feet away.

  “Did you need to talk to me?”

  “No,” one of the men told me. “We were just waiting for your insufferable boss to be on his way.”

  “Scary boss,” another man amended. “I think ‘scary’ is what you meant to say.”

  The first guy tipped his head like, maybe.

  Once they were gone, Ian shut the door, locked it, kissed me, and then told me to get upstairs to take a shower.

  “Yeah, Jones, you stink,” Kowalski said as he pulled some of the curry Aruna had made out of the refrigerator.

  As I headed for the stairs, I realized the cleaning crew had done an amazing job and that they too were gone.

  “When did they leave?” I asked Kohn.

  He shot me a look.

  “What?”

  “They say that the power of observation is one of the first things to go when someone is overly tired.”

  “What?”

  He turned to Kowalski. “I know I’m speaking English.”

  Kohn groaned before focusing on me. “Listen, you really do need to take a shower and go to bed. We’ll be down here with Doyle, so don’t worry.”

  But I wasn’t worried about Hartley. “Do you think anyone will want to still come over with the threat of Prince Charming here?” I asked, using the name the media had coined for Hartley when he was first discovered to be a killer.

  “I already called my mother, and she’s really worried about you. She’s making you some of her special matzoh ball soup to bring with us. And she can’t wait to tell all her friends that she’s spending time in a house where Craig Hartley was.”

  “Great.”

  “He’s big news; you gotta be ready to have people all over you again like they were when you and Cochran first brought him in.”

  “I hope everyone else will still want to come to dinner.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry.”

  I DIDN’T have to worry.

  From what I could tell and hear when I woke up, the house was already full. I wanted to go downstairs and say hi, but when I got out of the shower, I was dizzy, and Ian made me lie down again right away. It had been dark when I first fell asleep, and it was overcast when I woke up, and then, of course, because it was Chicago, it snowed. I actually loved being inside on snowy days, and since I could see it falling outside the windows and accumulating on the skylight Ian and I had installed sort of off-center above the bed, it was nice, soothing, and I passed out.

  When I woke up again, Ian said it was early afternoon. Kohn brought his mother upstairs, and when I smiled at her, she walked over in her big, fluffy mink coat and hugged me and petted me and told me what a good boy I was. A chair was brought for her so she could sit and watch me eat the soup while we talked.

  It was nice. I liked mothers. I was crazy about Janet’s before she’d passed away, liked Ryan’s since she made me my own peach pie and sent it with him, and of course, loved Aruna, who had always mothered me.

  I got sleepy again after the soup but woke up when Ian told me he’d been to the vet to see Chickie. He was still doped up, but Dr. Alchureiqi—who met Ian there to give him an update, having left several of his minions to babysit all the patients—said he looked really good and that he could come home the following morning, on Friday.

  “That’s great news,” I whispered, smiling up at him.

  He bent and kissed me once, then again, and finally stretched himself out on top of me and kissed me long and deep. I wrapped my arms around his neck so he couldn’t move.

  �
��I love you so much, and thank you for retiring and planning to marry me, and I just don’t want you to have any regrets, okay? Not any.”

  “No,” he whispered, kissing along my jaw. “No, baby, no regrets.”

  Man… “honey” and “baby” added to “love.” I was really crazy about the new, solid, confident Ian Doyle I had in my arms. His demeanor, everything was different. Like he felt good in his skin, not worried about what anyone else thought, just grounded and secure. He’d decided who he was going to be, and the happiness was simply rolling off him.

  “You look so good.”

  “Well, I feel good,” he rumbled before he kissed me again.

  I managed to roll him to his back right before Aruna and Janet came up the stairs.

  “And people wonder how gay porn could be hot.”

  “Who wonders if gay porn is hot?” Janet asked her seriously.

  Ian got up—to much whining from all of us—and explained to the girls that we were not there to entertain them and told me he’d be back.

  They got in bed with me, on each side, and we cuddled as I promised I was fine, just exhausted. I really wanted to go downstairs as soon as I could stand and not get dizzy. I could sit up, but that was as far as I could get.

  Ned showed up around three, came pounding up the stairs like a pissed-off rooster, found me propped up on pillows talking to Liam, and got on the bed and hugged me.

  “You’re in bed with him,” Liam remarked as he himself was sitting in the chair that had come up with Kohn’s mother and never moved.

  “I’m a man confident in his own heterosexuality,” Ned told him. “And besides, it’s really comfy, and I had a long flight.”

  We ended up taking a nap together as Liam kept vigil while watching a football game on my iPad.

  Margo Cochran, Norris’s wife, whom I hadn’t seen since he and I stopped being partners, came over about four and brought me her special carrot cake that I’d always loved. It was my favorite, not too sweet, moist, and the frosting was thin on the top.

  “Why?” I asked as I sat up in bed and looked at her. Becker’s wife, Olivia, had taken it from her when she came upstairs. Olivia was there thanking me for backing up Becker the night of the traffic stop, and I said of course; he was my brother. We were hugging when Margo was allowed up by Aruna, who had made herself guardian of the stairs.