Twisted and Tied (Marshals 4)

I nodded, watching as she winced just standing there. “Did he rape you?”

Quick nod.

Turning to Macin, I tipped my head toward the door.

Quickly she took the woman’s good arm and led her away.

“He’s big,” she told me before allowing Macin to move her.

“Oh, I hope he’s stupid enough to fight,” Redeker growled as the two of us drew our guns and headed toward the bedroom.

What the man was, was drunk. Very drunk. Sawing-logs-on-the-bed drunk. Blood streaked the sheets. Redeker went to the bathroom, grabbed toilet paper, took the gun out of the man’s hand, and stood with it by the door as I got on my phone and called it in.

He was probably only about six feet tall, but since the woman he’d beaten up was all of five feet, he seemed “big” to her. Redeker was bigger, and both of us had quite a bit of muscle on him, but he was beefy compared to his tiny, delicate wife.

We stood there, watching him sleep naked in the middle of the bed. I noted the blood on his upper thigh, knowing it wasn’t his.

“I bet you if I punched him in the gut, he’d barf, and then we could watch him choke on it,” Redeker suggested darkly.

“True,” I agreed, hearing the sirens wail in the distance. “That would be fitting since this seems so anticlimactic.”

“I bet you the wife knows he’s coming home drunk, been out all night doing God knows what, so she gets the kids out of the house, makes him breakfast to try and placate the fucker, and then he comes in, maybe even eats for a bit, then beats the shit outta her, makes her hurl up her food, and then rapes her.”

I turned to him, wincing, sad to hear him so easily make assumptions about what went on. There was only one way people knew those kinds of things: experience. “You sound like you know this scenario.”

He shrugged. “My old man, he was like this, except my mom left me and my sister alone to fend for ourselves.”

I cleared my throat. “You protected your sister, huh?”

“Oh hell yeah.”

“Were you in foster care?”

“No. My dad had a sister, and one weekend she drove up in her red Firebird, packed up me and my sister, put us in the car, and drove clear to her ranch in Wyoming.”

“How old were you?”

“I was five. Lisa was four.”

“I like this aunt.”

“So did we. She was our angel.”

“She still alive?”

“No. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded.

Moments later I heard movement in the living room, and then CPD came through the door—six uniformed officers, all looking grim, obviously having seen the woman in the hall.

Redeker and I walked out as we heard an outraged yell.

“I really wanted to shoot him,” Redeker grumbled.

“Me too.”

MACIN HAD no idea in the world how Eric Durant and his wife, Carmen, had qualified to be foster parents. Carmen wasn’t a problem, but Eric had a record of battery, more than a few drunk-and-disorderly citations, and my favorite: mob fighting. I hadn’t come across that one in a while.

We sent Carmen to the hospital, and right about the time she left in the ambulance, Jason came running down the street, clearly in a rush to get up to the apartment.

“Jason,” I called.

He pivoted to face me, and I saw the panic on his face.

“She’s on her way to the hospital,” I informed him. “We’re going there too. Do you want to ride with us?”

He bolted over to me and reached for my hand when I offered it.

“I’m Miro Jones, and I’m from the marshals’ office, and we need to talk so we can figure out what you want to do.”

He took a breath. “I want Carmen and her daughter, Anaj, to be safe.”

“They will be.”

“Are you sure?” He sounded scared. “Can you promise that?”

Could I? I had no power over Carmen and her daughter’s situation, only Jason’s. “I can promise that Mr. Durant is going to jail.”

“Because of the gun, right?”

“Yes.”

He cleared his throat. “My dad was a lawyer, and he said that using a gun to coerce someone else is a serious charge.”

“Coerce, huh?”

He smiled just slightly. “I remember all the words he used.”

“You wanna be a lawyer like your dad?”

“I do, yeah.”

“Good. That’s real good.”

He exhaled long and loud.

“Jason?”

“Yes, Marshal?”

“Do you want to live with Mrs. Durant and her daughter?”

No answer.

“It’s okay, yanno,” I assured him. “No one’s gonna be mad at you, especially Mrs. Durant. I can tell you’ve been a big help to them.”

“She always makes sure the two of us are safe, but it’s like—I mean, he’s like a bomb, and I just… I’m not—”

The kid never knew when an eruption was coming. He was forever living on borrowed time. It had to be terrifying for him.

He shook his head, biting his lip like he was embarrassed.