Twisted and Tied (Marshals 4)

“It probably scares people too.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “And you know how much I hate raising my voice.”

“I do.”

“Speaking of ‘I do,’ I understand you got married.”

A chill ran down my back, almost jolting as sharp and sudden as it was. It was strange. I wasn’t scared of him in regards to me, but I didn’t want him knowing anything personal about Ian. That made no sense because Ian and I were entwined—we were one entity—but having Hartley “see” Ian in relation to me was unsettling. “Yes.”

“Well, congratulations.”

“Thank you.” I sighed, leaning back against the wall of the van and staring at him. “Nice shoes,” I said, as was our usual.

“Thank you. You’re the only one in law enforcement who appreciates these things.”

I doubted that. But no one else got the opportunity to give him compliments before he killed them.

A topcoat, scarf, and hat lay on the seat beside him, and it occurred to me I was looking at traveling clothes.

“Are you going somewhere?”

He smiled, and the laugh lines around his eyes crinkled. I wouldn’t have thought serial killers would have those, but Hartley did. “I am, and I wanted to say goodbye.”

I glanced around and saw Kelson in the passenger seat and another man driving. “You could just call next time.”

He nodded. “I would have, but I wanted to see you before I left.”

I jumped at a kernel of hope. “Not planning to come back?”

“Perhaps not,” he sighed, yawning but never taking the gun off me. “I haven’t decided yet. I’m planning to travel through Europe for the foreseeable future.”

I nodded.

“You wouldn’t want to come along, would you?”

“No,” I said gently. “Just got married, as you said, but I do appreciate the offer.”

“I know you do.” He sighed and leaned forward, surveying, taking my measure. “I could insist you accompany me.”

“Yeah, but you won’t,” I said with certainty.

He grunted as he sat back. “You’re right, I won’t.”

It hit me then, how much the two of us had changed.

Over the years I’d been told by several reporters, members of law enforcement, and even prison staff that intensity simmered between Hartley and me. We had a thing, a way of talking, communicating, that people found riveting, even flirty, probably because they didn’t understand that to have a personal relationship with Craig Hartley meant giving up a piece of yourself—in my case, literally—to him. A brilliant man, he could peel layers away so expertly even as he answered benign questions about himself that before you knew it, you were naked in front of him, turned inside out.

I’d seen so many people—from followers, worshippers really, to badass FBI agents—crumble under his scrutiny. I’d always stood apart, even from the beginning, because we started out in a place where he owed me. I’d saved his life. I’d put my body between him and death, and as I’d sprawled there on top of him, bleeding to death, he pressed his hand to the wound he himself had made and whispered soft words of comfort into my ear. We were connected from then on.

But now, after our last collision… confrontation… communion… it was different. We were different. We no longer circled each other, trying to pick apart the other’s weaknesses, looking for a chinks in the armor. We simply sat there, not quite like friends—we could never be that—but something close.

“Miro.”

“Sorry,” I said absently, again astounded that I let my mind wander in his presence. Not many others could, and live.

“No, it’s fine, nice, actually,” he said with a trace of a smile. “But I have something to ask.”

“What’s that?” I exhaled sharply. I really was calm, sitting there comfortably with my wrists resting on my knees as I rode in a van with him holding a gun on me. When had this become… normal?

“Did Kelson try to shoot you yesterday?”

“No,” I lied. “Why would he?”

“Because like everyone else I know, he’s jealous of you.”

All of them just as insane as he was, because no one in their right mind wanted to be Hartley’s favorite. “It’s how I knew he was a fake.”

“Oh?”

I realized I’d said too much and almost choked. I spoke without thought because somewhere in all the time spent in his presence, I’d lost my natural fear of him. It was how a fly forgot about the spiderweb, or the mongoose got a bit too cocky, or a pigeon thought the hawk wouldn’t even see it from way over there.

I watched a documentary once about orcas and how they would play with young seals for weeks close to the shore to get them all good and lulled into a false sense of security before one day they just ate them. It was diabolical. The whales never saw the seals as friends, and I thought that, beyond surprise, the seals must have had their feelings hurt as they were being eaten alive.