Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

I almost threw up right there. My stomach twisted, lurched, but I inhaled through my nose sharply, and when I noticed he was wearing leather gloves, I fixated on that and the fact that his skin wasn’t on mine, and calmed.

“Miro?”

I dared a glance at Chickie.

“Oh dear,” he tsked, walking over quickly, kneeling down, and touching Chickie’s neck. His eyebrows lifted, and then he touched Chickie’s head. After a moment he put his glove in his mouth, bit down on the tip of his index finger gently—didn’t want to crease the leather—so he could slide his hand out of it before examining my dog’s skull with his fingers again. It was nuts that I even noticed all that, but I did, with him. Always. It was like I studied him so I’d know what he’d do in every situation, and so I never looked away when he was in front of me. Ever. “All right, so he’s unconscious, the poor lamb, but not dead.”

I gasped and he gave me a smile. “Grab a few dishtowels and tie a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. It’s clotting already, but there should be pressure.”

“You’re sure he’s not dead?”

“I’m sorry, when did you become a doctor?” he inquired gently.

“He shot him,” I stated, rushing to the towel drawer to do exactly as he told me.

“Well, I didn’t think you did it, dear.”

“He’ll be all right, you think?” And of course it was beyond insane that I was asking Hartley and praying he was right at the same time.

“Have I ever, in our association, even once, lied to you?”

No, he hadn’t.

The look on his face, patronizing, even bored, as he awaited my reply, made the truth even more obvious.

I shook my head.

“Well, there, you see? Your dog has a bullet wedged in his skull that will need to be extracted, and the piece where the bone is cracked might have to be replaced by a metal plate.”

“But for sure he’ll live?”

“It’s going to be expensive. Are you prepared to do all that for a dog?”

“Oh yes.”

“Well, then,” he sighed, smiling at me. “Hurry and wrap up his head.”

I moved fast and used three towels, one folded over Chickie’s wound, and the other two tied around his head like someone with a toothache in those old cartoons.

“Why do you give a crap about a dog,” Barrett choked out, furious. “You’ll kill me, but not a fuckin’ pet?”

He glared at Barrett. “I don’t kill children or pets. My God, what do you think I am?” Hartley asked, horrified.

“Well, you’re clearly insane.”

Hartley exhaled sharply. “Listen, when I used to watch television, I loved anything about crime, but I could never bring myself to watch things like Law and Order, the SVU one, if it was about kids. That kind of thing makes me ill. I know everyone is someone’s little boy or little girl, but once you’re over twenty-five, the choices you make are your own. If you wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s on you. But children and animals, that’s ridiculous. Hurting them is obscene.”

Barrett looked at me. “And him?”

“Miro belongs to me,” he explained to Barrett. “He saved my life, and—oh my God,” he said, turning to me. “I think we’re even now, aren’t we?”

I nodded, scared and relieved at the same time. “We are.”

“And now I can kill you,” he said happily, his voice full of relief and glee as he looked back at Barrett. “How fortuitous that you came to be here.”

“So you’re going to shoot him?”

Hartley nearly choked, and it took a couple of moments for him to recover. “Shoot him? I’m sorry; did you just ask me if I was going to shoot him?”

“Yes.”

“Never.”

“You’re going to let him go?”

“Oh heavens, no. I came to pick him up and take him with me to Paris, where I plan to torture him at my leisure until he dies from his injuries.”

And even though I had a moment of shock, of cold deep-down fear, at least I knew his plan. He was not, as I always assumed, about to walk up behind me on the street and shoot me in the head. It wasn’t what he wanted. His heart’s desire was me bleeding out slowly so he could watch every drop of life leave my body. Was it sick? Hell yes. But it would not be quick, so at the moment, I was far safer than Barrett.

“How are you getting him on a plane?”

“I have help.”

Hartley normally did.

“I don’t understand.”

“I want to bite him until he bleeds and chew his flesh in my mouth.”

Barrett’s face, the terror on it, was sort of comical considering he himself had planned to kill me. “You’re a cannibal.”

“No, no, no. I’m not some fictional character who eats livers with beans. I’m not going to cook him and use him in lasagna or such. I just want to eat some of his flesh, drive knives and perhaps skewers of some kind into his back, and I think… suck his cock.”