Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

I would put money on Ian not getting shot, and he was trained to not negotiate for hostages because nine times out of ten, the hostage died too.

Ian would be all right.

It was the girls.

It was Liam and Sajani.

They would panic, and Lochlyn would start with shooting Liam and work his way down to that beautiful little baby girl.

I could never allow that.

Charging forward, I plowed into Lochlyn, catching him off balance, spinning him around and slamming him down onto my reclaimed barn wood floor. It was solid, I knew it was, and as hard as his head hit, he wasn’t getting back up.

The gun went skittering across the floor, and I scrambled off Lochlyn’s prone body to grab for the grip, but Barrett wasn’t tangled up, and he ran.

He reached the gun first and aimed it at me. “The hell was that?” he shouted, furious and scared at the same time.

“People never expect you to rush them from a fixed position, so they let their guard down,” I informed him. “It’s a thing they teach you.”

“It’s a gamble.”

“It is, but it was worth it.”

“How so?”

“There’s only one of you now, and I can yell out for Ian before anyone else gets in here. I may die, but Ian’s safe.”

“Eamon!” he yelled.

“He’s out,” I informed him. “He ain’t getting up any time soon.”

“Shit,” he said angrily, pointing the gun center mass on me. “What the hell was he thinking? He had no respect for the fact that you’re a marshal.”

“And you do?”

“Of course I do,” he admitted. “Jesus, Miro, I’m completely enamored of you.”

“And yet”—I tipped my head, indicating Lochlyn—“you’re in love with a crazy man.”

“What? No, you’ve got it all wrong. I loved Kerry. Kerry was the one I wanted, but he came back from Afghanistan all messed up, and then he said he couldn’t be with me anymore because he was no longer a soldier.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know, but he believed that being a soldier made the gay all right, but without the military… it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t a real man, then.”

As horrible as that was, I had a terrible fear that Ian thought the same thing. If he wasn’t a Green Beret anymore, if the Army was no longer part of his life, was he still a man? Was Ian figuring out who he was going to be?

“Everyone turned their back on Kerry, and I tried to be everything to him, I wanted to be, but his parents hurt him too deeply, and so I made sure they paid, and Eamon promised me he’d make sure all the soldiers did too.”

“It was a division of priorities.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “And now you—oh shit.”

Turning, I saw what Barrett did.

I’d forgotten all about him, too caught up in the life-and-death struggle in the kitchen. But Chickie had come in through his doggie door, dripping water after he’d been outside running around like a dork because I wasn’t there to call him in.

“Keep him still, Miro,” he warned.

Chickie was unsure, I could tell. His head was down, his ears were laid back, and that was because of me. I was acting weird; I wasn’t moving or yelling at him or reaching for the towel to dry him. None of that was normal, so he looked from me to Barrett and back again, deciding, checking, waiting for a sign from me that wasn’t forthcoming.

“I’m not kidding. He needs to stay still.”

“Stay, Chick,” I commanded, terrified he wasn’t going to listen to me. It was touch and go at best on most days. Chickie was better at following Aruna’s orders than mine.

Hard to say what it was that gave the dog pause. It could have been the timbre of my voice, the breathiness or the quaver of fear. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t call him to me, but whatever it was, he took a step forward.

“I’ll kill him.”

“No, please,” I begged, and I heard the catch then, the pleading in the air between the words.

“Then send him out.”

“Chickie, out,” I commanded, my voice rising in fear for him, not me, swallowing because my mouth was dry.

He took another step toward me.

“Out,” I shouted, and that was it.

He turned and rushed Barrett, snarling, all killing stroke, ready to defend me.

I heard the shot, saw Chickie get thrown left and slam into the bookshelf between the back door and the tiny hallway. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but what there was, on his head below his right ear, told me he was dead by the time he hit the ground in a crumpled heap.

The sound that came out of me, one of agony and regret, was loud in my head.

I never thought when Ian first decided to adopt Chickie after the raid we’d been on that day, that I would ever feel like I did at this moment. I couldn’t breathe, and I thought, I was going to take him with me to do this and this, and it all rushed through my mind, and then boom…. Heart stopped. How did people ever live through losing someone they loved, if the stupid dog could make everything hurt this much?