Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

I cleared my throat because I had a horrible sinking feeling. “Is that what you talked to him in your office about yesterday, sir?” Ian being my partner was most of what I loved about my job. Without him there, at my side, the best part of my day would be gone. I couldn’t even imagine what that loss would be like.

“No,” he said, almost irritably. “I wanted to talk to him about the Lochlyn investigation, but since he couldn’t tell me much, we weren’t in there long. And of course I brought him up to date on the Cochran situation, in case there was any retaliation from other cops Cochran knows. Turns out I shouldn’t have bothered.”

“Yeah, nobody likes him.”

“Nobody likes him, that’s right.”

“Sir, why didn’t you tell Ian—Doyle—about Hartley?”

“Because I assumed you already would have. I won’t ever make assumptions where you’re concerned again, Jones.”

For some reason that gave me a warm feeling, and I might even have bumped him with my shoulder, but he chose that moment to threaten me again.

“Not one step outside this house, Jones, unless the house is on fire, and I mean heavily engulfed in flames, so much so that your friend Aruna’s husband the lieutenant has to come and put it out.”

“How do you know Aruna, sir?”

“We met at the hospital after you were shot protecting Nina Tolliver. I met them both.”

And he remembered. “Yessir.”

“Not one, Jones,” he said, flipping up his collar and dashing down the steps.

As no one followed him immediately, I turned around, and the other four people were clustered a few feet away.

“Did you need to talk to me?”

“No,” one of the men told me. “We were just waiting for your insufferable boss to be on his way.”

“Scary boss,” another man amended. “I think ‘scary’ is what you meant to say.”

The first guy tipped his head like, maybe.

Once they were gone, Ian shut the door, locked it, kissed me, and then told me to get upstairs to take a shower.

“Yeah, Jones, you stink,” Kowalski said as he pulled some of the curry Aruna had made out of the refrigerator.

As I headed for the stairs, I realized the cleaning crew had done an amazing job and that they too were gone.

“When did they leave?” I asked Kohn.

He shot me a look.

“What?”

“They say that the power of observation is one of the first things to go when someone is overly tired.”

“What?”

He turned to Kowalski. “I know I’m speaking English.”

Kohn groaned before focusing on me. “Listen, you really do need to take a shower and go to bed. We’ll be down here with Doyle, so don’t worry.”

But I wasn’t worried about Hartley. “Do you think anyone will want to still come over with the threat of Prince Charming here?” I asked, using the name the media had coined for Hartley when he was first discovered to be a killer.

“I already called my mother, and she’s really worried about you. She’s making you some of her special matzoh ball soup to bring with us. And she can’t wait to tell all her friends that she’s spending time in a house where Craig Hartley was.”

“Great.”

“He’s big news; you gotta be ready to have people all over you again like they were when you and Cochran first brought him in.”

“I hope everyone else will still want to come to dinner.”

“I don’t think you have to worry.”

I DIDN’T have to worry.

From what I could tell and hear when I woke up, the house was already full. I wanted to go downstairs and say hi, but when I got out of the shower, I was dizzy, and Ian made me lie down again right away. It had been dark when I first fell asleep, and it was overcast when I woke up, and then, of course, because it was Chicago, it snowed. I actually loved being inside on snowy days, and since I could see it falling outside the windows and accumulating on the skylight Ian and I had installed sort of off-center above the bed, it was nice, soothing, and I passed out.

When I woke up again, Ian said it was early afternoon. Kohn brought his mother upstairs, and when I smiled at her, she walked over in her big, fluffy mink coat and hugged me and petted me and told me what a good boy I was. A chair was brought for her so she could sit and watch me eat the soup while we talked.

It was nice. I liked mothers. I was crazy about Janet’s before she’d passed away, liked Ryan’s since she made me my own peach pie and sent it with him, and of course, loved Aruna, who had always mothered me.

I got sleepy again after the soup but woke up when Ian told me he’d been to the vet to see Chickie. He was still doped up, but Dr. Alchureiqi—who met Ian there to give him an update, having left several of his minions to babysit all the patients—said he looked really good and that he could come home the following morning, on Friday.