Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

“Is that what you tell yourself?”

“Don’t say something you’ll regret there, Jones.”

I shrugged. “I’m just wondering why you really left him.”

“I just told you why.”

“Nah,” I taunted, grinning like I did when I was being a dick. “I’m not buying that your buddy was the only guy whose wife was fuckin’ Ian.”

He flushed red. Just whoosh, scarlet. It was awesome. “You son of a—”

“I heard you talk about your wife.” I put the leer in my voice easily, suggestively. “Greta, was it?”

“You better shut your filthy fuckin’ mouth!” he roared, pointing at me.

“Miro?” I heard Ian call out behind me.

“Did he fuck all the wives, or just yours and the other poor sonofabitch?”

He shuddered with rage, and I saw his eyes go dead just as I imagined a shark’s did before they took a big, fat bite out of a seal.

“You don’t have any kids, do you? Around five years old?”

Apparently he did, the way he came at me.

The thing was, if I hit him, I could be suspended, or worse. If I didn’t, how could I ever look Ian in the face again, knowing what I knew now?

There was only one viable alternative. I had to get Odell so enraged that he came at me like a charging bull. He had to throw the first punch. But how in the world did one bait a trained soldier? What did one say to get a man with nerves of steel to crack?

It was a crappy thing to do to the guy, but abandoning Ian to certain torture and possible execution was higher on the scale of fucked-up shit. So when he threw the roundhouse punch and missed, I countered with an elbow in Pete Odell’s conceited, self-righteous prick face. After that the only smug asshole brawling at the funeral was me.

Chapter 7

YOU CAN tell when you break someone’s nose. There’s really never a question. The wet crunch, like a soggier version of stepping on freeze-hardened ice over snow, is unmistakable. And of course the gush of blood and that high-pitched animal wail most people who weren’t boxers or hit men let out. In the movies everyone takes it like a man, even the women, but in real life, knees buckle and down they go.

Odell was impressive. He took a knee, but that was as low to the ground as he got.

Bates shoved me back, and I understood. He and Odell were buddies, brothers-in-arms, so he’d do his best to get me off him.

“Leave him alone,” Odell ordered, rising from his kneel, facing me. “I’ve got this.”

I pivoted when he swung again, so he caught my shoulder instead of my face just as Cochran had the day before. I would have to e-mail my combat instructor from the police academy; her moves were serving me well in the field. Sergeant Garza loved throwing all of us candidates around. She said it was her sworn duty.

“I’m gonna have your ass for this, Jones,” Odell vowed as he spit out a mouthful of blood. “You can kiss your career good-bye.”

“I’m just defending myself, dickhead,” I taunted. “You can’t touch me.”

His eyes narrowed and I took another step back as he came at me fast with moves that might have incapacitated me, or even really hurt me, if any of them connected. When he stopped, and I saw him weave a little, I finally understood why I wasn’t dead already—he was a Ranger after all—and why he’d been letting his buddy handle the driving all day when he had so much to say about how it was being handled.

“He’s fuckin’ hammered,” I announced to Bates.

All things converged at that moment.

Odell stopped midcharge, blood running from both nostrils as he stared dumbly at me, seemingly unsure of what was going on.

“The fuck, M?” Ian must have run because he was there at my side.

“Your partner’s a dead man, Doyle!”

“Are you all right?” he asked hurriedly, ignoring the blustering Odell, checking me over, hands on my arms, shoulders, lifting my chin, finally stilling gently, reverently, on both sides of my neck as he stared into my eyes. “Did he hurt you?”

“Did I hurt him?” Odell was indignant and fuming from the few feet away Bates had dragged him. “Fuck you, Doyle!”

“Don’t you fuckin’ touch him!” Ian rounded on him, and I had to scramble to grab ahold of him before he lunged at Odell.

“He called my wife a whore!”

A surge of bodies enveloped us, men coming from everywhere, and we were surrounded. Ian and I were pushed back, buffered by the crowd. Odell and Bates were mobbed and lost from view. I let Ian go so I could walk beside him and texted Ryan, who was waiting to hear from me.

No lights.

It would make no sense to anyone who wasn’t on our team. “No lights” was one of our boss’s things, a Kage-ism that meant danger wasn’t imminent, but hurry the fuck up and find me and get to wherever the hell I was.