Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

I stopped walking, having arrived at the door, and stood there taking a moment, letting my life settle around me. But then I heard a squeal and a hundred and thirty pounds of Josue Hess slammed into me, hard, and I almost dropped my phone in the process.

“For crissakes,” I grumbled, trying to push him off me as I heard the state troopers both chuckling behind him.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again!”

“What? Save your life?”

“Run into a hail of bullets!” He pulled back, frantic, eyes wide, arms flailing. It was kind of cute.

“A hail?” I questioned him. “Really?”

“Oh dear God, you’re arguing word choice at a time like this?”

It was like seeing a pissed-off bunny. “Sorry, sorry.”

He hurled himself back in my arms, and I patted his back as he clung to me like he was the one who almost died.

“The cards didn’t mention that you had a death wish. Maybe we better have a reading before bed.”

No. God, no. “Listen—”

“I have to read Kirkland’s cards first though, I promised.”

I looked over his head into the room where both troopers were shaking their heads at me. “I think they’d both be okay if you skipped that.”

When he glanced over his shoulder, head shaking turned to smiles. Clearly, neither man wanted to hurt his feelings.

“Hey,” I said to get his focus back on me.

Big limpid eyes returned to my face.

“Do you own a warm coat?”

He looked up. “Why?”

“Because you think this was scary, all the flying bullets, just wait until you deal with winter in Chicago.”

“Does it get cold there?”

I made a mental note to get him a snowsuit.

Chapter 12

REALLY EARLY the next morning, I grabbed my bags and the several Josue had with him, threw them into the back of a cab, and got us to McCarran International Airport. He had plenty to say during the flight home. We were in Chicago by noon.

“How come you haven’t told me to shut up?” he asked as we rode the elevator up to the office.

“You’re good company,” I confessed. “I wasn’t going to sleep anyway, and now I’ve learned about Myal and Obeah and the differences between them; I know about your parents and how they met and how much they loved you and how they didn’t care that you were gay, and that they believed in good food and good magic.”

He was beaming at me. “You’re a really good listener.”

“I try.”

Once we got upstairs, I dropped Josue off in the conference room with a Pepsi and a promise of a late lunch before going to my desk. I didn’t even have time to sit down and search for my mouse—which was always missing because someone was forever borrowing it—before the door to Kage’s office opened and he leaned out to call me in.

In his office, basically a glass fishbowl with blinds to keep out prying eyes, I found him along with four men I didn’t know.

“Jones,” Kage said like he was both tired and annoyed. “Have a seat.”

I flopped down on the couch since the chair I usually sat in, the one right in front of his enormous cherry-and-glass-topped console of a desk, was taken.

“These men are from the FBI, and they’ve shared some news with me this morning that I, in turn, have to share with you.”

“Yessir.”

He squinted like he was in pain, and I caught my breath because I just fucking knew.

“The FBI moved Craig Hartley from ADX Florence two weeks ago because they needed to confirm the whereabouts of the remains of five women that one of his followers, Edward Bellamy, killed. Bellamy said that he would only give those names to Hartley face-to-face.”

It was like someone walking up beside you and shoving you into a pool. One moment you were talking, laughing, the next you were drowning for a never-ending second before you got your bearings and pushed up to break the surface and breathe.

“Yessir,” I croaked, my voice going out on me.

He inhaled deeply. “During the course of the transfer, when Hartley was in the custody of the FBI and no one employed by, or affiliated with, the Federal Bureau of Prisons or the Department of Justice… he escaped.”

The bureau lost him, Kage was being clear on that fact. He wanted me to know that my own people—the marshals service—had not failed me.

It didn’t help.

Hartley was free—again—walking around somewhere, anywhere, able to make a house call on me.

The shivering was not a surprise, and neither was the fact that as much as I tried, I couldn’t stop. Just the thought of Hartley’s hands on my skin, his breath, seeing his face, looking into his cat green eyes… I was going to be sick.

“Go,” Kage directed me.

I flew out of his office, bolted through the office without a word to anyone, didn’t see anyone on my way to the bathroom. Everything was a blur until I reached my destination, tore into a stall, and threw up bile and stale coffee because there was nothing else in my stomach.