Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

Barrett quit with difficulty, having to shove his fist in his mouth and bite down.

“Miro, do you have any more towels?”

“Upstairs in the linen closet,” I answered, waiting for what he’d allow.

He bit his bottom lip. “Do be truthful now; is there a gun up there?”

“There are three: two of mine, one of Marshal Doyle’s. But they’re all in a gun safe.”

“I really don’t like the idea of the stairs. You could turn and push me, and you’re stronger and better trained…. No, I’m sorry, I can’t risk it. Use the man’s belt, put it around his leg above the injury on his thigh, and tighten it until you see an ebb in the bleeding.”

Diving toward Barrett, I pulled off my T-shirt, wadded it up, and shoved it against what was left of his knee, at the same time working open his belt and yanking it off him before winching it hard enough to make him cry out.

“Oh, there, see, that’s excellent work,” Hartley commended even as Barrett passed out. “We’ll call the police on our way out, and people will be here shortly to save him and your dog.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pardon?”

“I’m worried,” I began, swallowing to steady my nerves, “that whoever comes will take care of Barrett but not Chickie, and then my dog’ll die after you saved him.”

He thought a moment. “It is possible. People might look at them both and make the wrong choice about who is the more important of the two.”

“Yes.”

“A quandary, yes.” He slowly lowered the gun as he gave my words some thought, as we both heard sirens in the distance. Someone was on their way, probably from when Barrett fired the first round at Chickie.

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

“I do.”

“That changes things, doesn’t it?”

“A bit.”

I stood up from where I was kneeling beside Barrett. “Tell me something.”

“Anything.”

“What’d you do with my rib?”

“What do you think I did with it?” he asked playfully.

“Did you eat it?”

He made a face. “Only to void it later, and have it parted from me? Are you mad?”

It hit me then, like I’d always known the answer. “You replaced your floating rib with mine.”

His gaze was kind, almost loving, or what amounted to that, since it was him.

“Didn’t you.” I phrased it as a question, but it was a statement and we both knew it.

“I did,” he said, grinning in that mad way of his. “Lovely gesture, don’t you think? It hurt me too.”

Which, to him, made us even.

The sirens were getting closer, but there was still a lot of time.

“So?” I prodded.

“I want you to come with me, but your dog….” He sighed.

He kidnapped me without a second thought the year before, but he had help. At the moment his help was elsewhere.

“You’ll never get out of the city,” I promised.

“Stop,” he said dismissively. “We both know that’s not true.”

“I—”

“Oh, I forgot to ask after Detective Cochran. Do you happen to know where he is?”

“Why? Did you go see him?”

“I did, but only his wife and kids were home, so I didn’t stay.”

I didn’t need to ask. I knew he left them as he found them. He only ever kidnapped one little girl, and that was only to force her mother to intercept me. He didn’t hurt her; she’d been scared but rebounded well, as her mother had told me when she came by the office to thank me for her and her daughter’s lives. She still checked in from time to time, and I was betting I would hear from her in the next couple of days now that the news had broken that Hartley was on the loose again. She’d be worried about me and I’d get a phone call.

“So?” Hartley prompted.

“Sorry, he and I got in a fight and it was his fault, so he was assigned to a task force somewhere in the southwest. If he wasn’t home, I’m guessing he left already.”

“I see. Well, I left him a note, anyway.”

“Somewhere he could see it?”

“Oh, he can’t miss it. I used his daughter’s oil paint.”

I was betting his wife would want to move to Japan.

“Miro,” he whispered, taking a step closer, pressing the muzzle of the gun up against the inside of my thigh. “Come here and kiss me and let me see if I like it.”

I had two thoughts in quick succession: One, he might kill me if I didn’t. And two, he saved me and my dog from a guy I actually hated much more than him—Barrett had been my friend, I had trusted him. I’d never had such a bond with Hartley. He couldn’t hurt me like Barrett had.

I grabbed at Hartley, took his face in my hands, leaned in and covered his mouth hard and fast, inhaling deeply, not wanting to breathe with him, done before he even responded. I tilted my head, exhaled sharply, and would have stepped back, but the gun muzzle bumped my hip as he turned it on me and slipped a hand around the back of my neck to pull me close.