Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

“Holy crap.”

“I know. She’s an entrepreneur at twenty-two.”

“Can she cook?”

He tipped his head at me, and I took a bite of the messy sandwich and found out quickly that yes, God, she certainly could.

“That’s amazing.”

“That’s her mother’s hot and spicy chorizo recipe, with a fried egg and enough cheddar cheese on it to stop your heart.”

It was heaven on a plate.

“Her mother must be an amazing cook.”

Kage nodded as he ate, and Iris brought us two large clear cups with lids, filled with coffee mixed with milk, but it wasn’t a latte. It was different.

“It’s a dark-roast coffee poured on top of sweetened condensed milk,” Kage explained. “That’s why it tastes that way.”

“It’s good.”

“Eat your sandwich.”

“Yessir.”

Chapter 13

I WAS exhausted. I hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours in the past forty or so, but I got my second wind after I ate and even remembered to bring back a sandwich and coffee for Josue. He was very appreciative of the food but made sure Dorsey knew he was still listening attentively to all the facets of witness relocation he was going over for him.

Social Security card, driver’s license, school enrollment—which Josue was certain he wanted no part of—and job placement.

“We’ll be here every step of the way,” Dorsey assured him.

Josue would go from being Hess to Morant, and we had new documents ready to go. It made him sad to give up his name; I could tell from the quick inhale of breath and the bite down on his bottom lip.

“It’s not forever,” I reminded him. “Really.”

He nodded instead of crying.

“It’s only for a while, and whatever you do as Morant will be reinstated to Hess as soon as you’re out of the program. Or you could fall in love with Morant because it’s all yours and keep it forever. It’s up to you.”

Another quick nod as he wiped under both eyes.

“But whatever you want.”

“Okay.”

Dorsey went on to explain about the furnished apartment he’d be living in until we found him a permanent one that would be his to do with as he saw fit.

“You’re starting a brand new life, and that takes a fuckton of stuff,” I said, interrupting for maybe the tenth time.

“Do you wanna do this?” Dorsey groused.

I shut up because reading through the titanic document, pointing out where to sign, and giving the whole spiel was not something I was up for at the moment.

It took another two hours, and then Sharpe and White went with me to show Josue where he’d be living in the interim.

The federal safe house we took him to was a suite in a high-rise downtown close to our office, in a scary security building with a guard at the door and another behind the front desk. Sharpe gave Josue the key fob that gave him access to the elevator, showed him how to use it, and White gave him the laminated instructions Josue would need once we got up to the suite. White watched him change the key code for the floor, as well as the one to get into the apartment. It was a whole ordeal of punching in digits and then using the lock on the door, which also had one of those special computer keys that couldn’t be copied at Walmart or wherever. It was all state-of-the-art crap that, as far as I knew, no one had ever tried to bypass.

Josue was not a high-threat target; he was a low-risk one. High-risk assets were not kept downtown close to the federal building like he would be. They were not kept in cabins in the middle of nowhere like on TV, or in quaint little beach towns. They were kept in bunkers underground or in prison. Informing on the mob or our government or a foreign power was not at all glamorous, and that kind of security was suffocating. Regular people, like Josue, were normal everyday people who if, and only if, they were geographically accessible, would get capped. But once we moved them out of state, gave them new lives and new identities, the possibility of someone finding and killing them dwindled down to zero. As far as I knew, no one in the protective custody of the marshal service had ever been harmed.

Josue would be heavily guarded when he was being escorted to pretrial meetings or trial itself or during any other court-related appearances, but that would be the only time. The rest of his life was his own. We checked in after all court appearances had concluded and during the asset’s entire time in WITSEC. Some of us even after the witness left the program. But for Josue, as it had been for Drake and Cabot, the threat was tiny, so what we were doing at the moment was overkill. Still, I watched him pick codes for the alarms and tried not to yawn.