Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

“The hell it’s not.”

“Littlefield got shot and decided he never wanted to be shot again. You can’t fault him for that. At least he was honest.”

“And Posner?” He said snidely.

“Oh come on,” I said like it was obvious.

“What? It wasn’t even that big of a jump. I went and looked at it.”

Of course he had. “Not big to you.”

“Not big to anybody!”

Poor guy.

Douglas Posner had transferred out of Investigative Operations—where we were—to Judicial Support after spending just one day backing up Ian. I’d still been riding a desk and so Kage had the new guy sub in. I was never convinced that he didn’t have reservations about Doug Posner and so had used Ian as sort of a trial by fire.

“I don’t care if it was the Grand fuckin’ Canyon,” Ryan went on. “You follow your partner no matter what.”

The reports were spotty at best and when asked, Ian couldn’t say for certain if the space between the buildings was five feet or eight. What was clear was that Ian had been chasing a fugitive and made the leap to follow the guy and Posner had stopped, looked around, and gone back down the five flights to the ground. By that time, he couldn’t provide Ian with any backup as he had no clue where his partner, or the fugitive, was. After that, he’d been lucky to get two words out of the love of my life for the rest of the day.

The fallout was that between the leap he didn’t make, the DEA agent he listened to over Ian, and the background check he didn’t run, he had an infuriated Ian Doyle all over him in the middle of the office at the end of their shift. It was funny because there was Ian, thundering on about standard operating procedure—which coming from the king of “just kick it in” was hysterical—and Posner yelling back that Ian was a menace and a maniac. It might have been okay, possibly, except that I’d come out of the back office then and Posner pointed at me and said that Ian was probably the one who got me hurt in the first place. It took Becker and Kowalski, together, to grab him and hold him.

Kage sent Ian on home—with me—and invited Posner into his office. He was gone the following day, which was good because Ian got worked up all over again on our way in. Four other guys had come through since then with no one gelling with the rest of us.

“I just don’t like new guys,” Ryan concluded.

“Ian and I were both new once.”

“I don’t remember,” he said dismissively, clearing his throat. “Hey, me and Jack are done in a couple hours. You and Doyle wanna meet at Portillo’s for food, and then we can go to The Befuddled Owl?”

It took me a second. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Just say no, Jones!” Dorsey yelled in the background.

“The fuck is the Befuddled Owl?”

Ryan cleared his throat. “It’s a coffeehouse close to the university.”

“And why’re you going there?”

“I just thought it sounded like fun,” he replied cheerfully.

Oh, there was fuckery afoot. “I’m calling bullshit on that.”

“Listen—”

“Do they happen to have live music at the Bewildered Owl?”

“Befuddled,” he corrected.

“Well, do they?”

He coughed.

“Oh, screw you, Ryan,” I snapped. “I refuse to listen to your sister’s band again.”

“Come on,” he begged.

“Once in a lifetime is good enough for The Crimson Wave.”

“They’re not that bad.”

“Not that bad,” I moaned. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“And besides, they changed their name. The drummer was worried that they might get sued by the University of Alabama for copyright infringement.”

“Alabama is the tide, not the wave.”

“Yeah, I know, but I didn’t wanna argue with him ’cause, yanno, the name was gross.”

“The name of the band is not the glaring issue,” I said, unable to keep a straight face. “Jesus, Mike, their music is so bad.”

“So bad!” Dorsey echoed me in the background. “Just say no, Jones. Save yourself!”

I heard a bump and a crash and Dorsey laughing, so I figured nothing was broken.

“Listen,” I told him. “If me and Ian get done with this funeral business at a reasonable time, I’ll call ya and see where you guys are.”

“Good man,” Ryan replied. “I’ll save ya some pie.”

I grunted and hung up and saw Ian scanning the crowd for me. Lifting my hand to get his attention, I saw his face sort of unclench—his jaw, the tight smile, and the furrowed brows as he started toward me. He hadn’t taken more than three steps when a beautiful woman with gorgeous long thick blonde hair stepped out from a crowd of five other women and into his path.

He stopped short or he would have plowed into her, and to keep his balance, he had to take hold of her arms. Her hands went immediately to his chest.