Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

“Aren’t they the ones that lost Hartley to begin with?” Aruna asked.

Ian tipped his head at her like yeah, that.

It was stupid, but the idea of Ian and Liam walking around together, choosing beer, made me very happy. I wanted the man I loved to bond with the man Aruna loved because, clearly, as evidenced earlier, he was getting close to the girls, and I wanted the same with their significant others. So Ian doing something without me or Aruna, with just Liam, I wanted that. I wanted to build a network of friends, and I could be honest: the more Ian liked everyone, the more rock solid the foundation of our life became.

But at the moment, he wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him.

He shook his head.

And then my hip was bumped as a loud dog yawn caught my attention. There was Chickie beside me, sitting, his head coming to my waist.

I motioned to the dog, because, really, there was no arguing with 150 pounds of werewolf. Chickie’s protective instincts had been proven time and time again.

Ian gave in because it made sense. “Yeah, all right.” No one was stupid enough to try to get past Chickie into the house. That was simply suicidal, and Hartley had never been labeled that.

As I herded everyone out, Ian charged over and gave me a scorching kiss good-bye. When I had to grab for the counter, I got a world-class smirk. He was so proud of himself and of his power over me. I liked seeing him like that—smugly confident. It was very sexy.

Once I was alone, I let Chickie out, got the towel ready for him when he came back in, and started washing dishes. When I heard a soft knock on the back door, I turned and saw Barrett there, and with the lighting in the background, he was bright, outlined for a moment, and then he was in shadow again. I trotted over and opened up slowly.

“Hey,” he greeted me softly. “Can I talk to you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know that we have that much to say.”

“No, I think we do.”

“Listen, Barrett, I—”

“Miro, I want you to meet my old friend from New Jersey.”

I began to say no when another man came up behind him, wet like Barrett was, about his same height, but nowhere near as handsome. He was thicker, with lots of muscle on him. What riveted me, though, was not his countenance, but the Walther P22 he had in his hand that was pointed right at me.

“I need a word,” the man said coldly.

“Who the fuck are you, and what’re you doing here?”

“I’m Eamon Lochlyn, Kerry’s older brother.”

Of course he was.

Chapter 17

WHEN HAD I become such a crappy judge of character?

“Don’t blame yourself, Miro,” Barrett said kindly. “There was no way for you to know about us. Nobody did.”

“What do you want?” I asked Lochlyn.

He looked at me oddly. “I would think by now, after the others, that that would be self-explanatory. Clearly, I want to kill Ian Doyle for what he did to my brother.”

“And what was that?”

“He and the others drove him out of the Army, and my parents drove him to suicide because they told him he was a failure and not a real man because he couldn’t be a soldier.”

“Your parents are dead, I understand.”

“Well, they are now.”

When you’re an orphan, you dream of having parents. I always had. To imagine anyone hurting theirs was beyond me and made my heart hurt. “You killed your own parents?”

He cleared his throat. “No. Barrett did the honors there.”

I glanced over at the man who I thought had been my friend. We’d been to hockey games together, had dinners and bowled. And all that time, I missed who he really was. “You killed people?”

He nodded.

Lochlyn snapped his fingers to get my attention.

“So as I said, I want to kill Ian Doyle, but he’s better trained then the others—the man’s Special Forces, after all—so getting the drop on him is damn near impossible.”

I would have agreed, but I was listening, not talking.

“So when he comes back, I’m going to point the gun at you, have him follow us outside, and then I’m going to shoot him dead.”

My stomach threatened to empty, but I took several deep breaths in rapid succession.

“And I know what you’re thinking right about now,” he informed me. “Those men who are supposed to be watching the house will protect me. But unfortunately they’ve both died very recently.”

“Those were FBI agents; you’ll get the needle for that.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about what’s going to happen to me,” Lochlyn said with a smile. “Because about a second after I put a bullet in Ian Doyle’s head, I’m going to shoot you and everyone else who walks through the door with him.”