Fit to be Tied (Marshals 2)

“Hey,” I greeted them loudly, putting on. “Come watch my buddy take a shit, man. We’re putting it on YouTube!”

“He’s gotta stand over the bowl,” Ian announced, even louder than I was, before he pretended to fall off the toilet in his stall. “Oh fuck!”

I howled with fake laughter. “Awww, man, you didn’t get shit on you did you?”

The one in front pressed his closed fist to his mouth, one of the guys behind him turned and darted, and the third guy almost retched.

Shooting people in the head was one thing. Getting some other guy’s fecal matter on you was a whole other ballgame.

The guy in front was breathing quickly in and out through his nose in an effort, I assumed, not to hurl. “You assholes see anybody else come in or outta here?”

“No,” I cackled, lifting my phone. “Dude, you gotta see this… it’s epic!”

That was it—he pivoted, shoved his friend who was also trying to not throw up toward the door. They were gone seconds later.

Ian came out of the stall and knocked on the one Lozano and his girl were in. “Kick your gun out under the door, and then you and—”

“Donatella,” she chimed in.

“You and Donatella come out of there.”

His Heckler & Koch P30 slid out under the door and Ian stopped it with his foot.

“Do you want mine too?” Donatella asked.

“Yes, please,” I answered as Ian did a quick brass check on the gun.

Donatella’s micro Uzi was a surprise.

“I have a big purse,” she said defensively as the door opened and she and Lozano stepped out. And she was right; her Juicy Couture bag was enormous.

I held up the automatic weapon for her. “Why do you need this?”

She gave me a look like I was stupid, made all the more obvious as her eyes were so heavily frosted and her lashes so very fake.

“Okay, fine. Tell me why you’re meeting Lozano here to fuck in a bathroom stall. You seem classier than this.”

“Oh, do I?” she baited.

I took a step forward and stared her down. “Yeah, Donatella, ya do. I think the Four Seasons or something. I think this is slumming, for you.”

And with that, the dam broke and she launched herself at me, wrapped her arms around my neck as she sobbed and chanted over and over that she loved him, hand to God.

“For crissakes, Lozano,” Ian said, waving the gun he’d picked up. “Why didn’t you tell the marshals that took you in that Donatella had to come with you?”

His brows lifted almost to his hairline. “I can do that?”

Ian groaned and Donatella lifted her head to peer up at me with her now swollen raccoon eyes. “I can go to Iowa too?”

“Well, it won’t be Iowa anymore,” I assured her as I pulled my iPhone from the breast pocket of my slim-fitting motorcycle jacket and called the office. We needed backup.

“Yeah? Could it be Brooklyn? I got family there.”

I rolled my eyes as she sighed and cuddled against me, fiddling with the hem of my gray cashmere sweater.

“You gotta girl at home, marshal?” she asked seductively.

“What?” Ryan barked from the other end of the phone.

“That is not a greeting, asshole,” I assured him.

“What the hell do you want?”

“I need Ching and Becker and an extraction team to meet me and Ian at Kid Lobo over on Clark Street. We’ve got Eric Lozano and his friend Donatella—”

“Fenzi,” she purred, tightening her arms and nestling even closer. “I hope you have a girl, marshal, ’cause all this here should not be going to waste.”

“Fenzi,” I repeated as Ian grabbed her arm, spun her around, and shoved her at Lozano.

“Are you fucking with me?” Ryan cracked, sounding incredulous. “You and Doyle caught Eric Lozano, accountant for the Tedesco crime family?”

I moved the phone from my mouth and watched Lozano smiling down at Donatella, who was wrapped around him even tighter than she’d been around me. It was easy to see the difference between the friendly, appreciative hugging I’d been getting and the seductive body press she was giving Lozano. Sadly, Ian didn’t have any female friends, so he didn’t know what the friendship kind of snuggling looked like.

“You’re an accountant?” I asked Lozano.

He looked over at me. “Yeah.”

“I thought you killed people.”

“No, man—I do taxes, I launder money, move it around, shit like that.”

“Do you even know how to fire a gun?”

He made a face like maybe and then nodded.

“What the fuck, Jones,” Ryan grumbled over the phone.

“Extraction team,” I insisted.

“Coming now.”

“We’re in the bathroom.”

“Of course you are,” he said as though he were in pain, clearly appalled. “Where are White and Sharpe?”

“Doing shots.”

“You know what, don’t tell me anything else. I’m hanging up now. Just stay there. Ching and Becker will be on site in twenty.”

“Way-way-way—is the ballistics report back on the shooting?” I asked eagerly.