Fit to be Tied (Marshals 2)

“That’s excellent, because I need something of yours.”

“Like?”

“A token, really, but it must be wholly your own.”

I coughed.

“Try not to move,” he cautioned me.

“You’re gonna get your shoes dirty,” I mentioned as the droplets began to rain down and Wojno retched hard.

“I don’t mind,” Hartley assured me as a door opened and another man walked in with a tray of surgical tools. “I just need a saw for a moment.”

It got quieter in the room as the floor blurred, going in and out of focus. I felt detached from my own body, only loosely tethered. “Am I dying now?”

“Oh, not at all, I promise you.”

He was a surgeon, after all. “Okay.”

“Did that hurt?” He was checking on me.

“I feel… pressure.”

“Excellent,” he said before he repeated whatever he was doing.

The sound of Wojno puking was the last thing I heard.

I WAS stiff when I woke up, and my head felt like it was wrapped in gauze. Everything was muffled and I was on my stomach on the cot, head turned to the right, arms and legs back in the straps.

“Try not to move,” Wojno said, and the metal frame of the cot creaked as he perched on the edge beside me. His hand moved in my hair, and even though it was him, the guy who’d betrayed me, it was comforting, and my eyes fluttered shut. “You lost a lot of blood when he operated.”

“Operated?”

“It was fast. Are you in pain?”

“Where?”

“Rib cage?”

I couldn’t tell. “Something’s in my arm,” I managed to get out even though my tongue felt like it was swollen too big for my mouth.

“Yeah, you’ve got antibiotics in one arm and glucose in the other. He really doesn’t want you to die.”

“Until he’s done,” I concluded.

“Yeah… until then.”

“Did he cut my back?”

“He cut into your back.”

“For what?”

“I don’t—he made sure you stopped bleeding. He used that surgical glue.”

It was hard to think. “He’s… biting me.”

“Yes.”

“Did he have me beaten?”

“Yes.”

“I bet I look like tenderized meat.”

“You peed blood earlier.”

“Well, you take enough kidney punches and that’ll happen.”

“Yes,” he agreed sadly. “God, I hope the bites don’t scar.”

I chuckled. “They won’t have time. I’ll be dead before they do.”

He sounded like he was about to cry. “I don’t—things could—”

“Just don’t let me be dead and missing, all right? Don’t do that to Ian.”

His breath caught. “You’re in love with him.”

“No,” I lied. Because we were not friends and I would not have him tell Hartley, who would go after Ian as well. “But he’s my partner. Hartley’s got it wrong. We’re not together.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Please, whatever happens, make sure you find me and tell him or make sure he finds me. I don’t wanna be missing.”

“Okay,” he whispered.

I rested for a few minutes. Just that much talking and I was ready to pass out.

“You didn’t ask me why.”

I knew why. He was being blackmailed.

“I’m the one who told Hartley’s friend when he was coming to the hospital. I’m the one who got her killed by getting him out.”

Of course he had. He was the leak.

“Okay.”

“Don’t you want to know why?”

He needed to confess.

“Yeah, tell me.”

“I covered up a case when I was a cop in Chicago.”

“Go on,” I got out, wanting to stay awake, afraid to fall asleep and him not be there to talk to when I woke up again. It was terrifying to imagine being there alone.

“There was a rent boy that used to work for Rego James, you remember him? James?”

“I remember James—he died in witness protection.” Some guy had realized who he was, just some random guy from his past who passed him on the street, and followed him home, broke in, and ended up stabbing James to death with a knife from his kitchen. We could account for our own witnesses in WITSEC, but we didn’t run every name in an entire town when we placed someone. It simply wasn’t possible.

“I didn’t know that part. I used to go to James’s club downtown when I was an off-duty patrolman, and one night I went to see this kid I liked, Billy Donovan, and halfway through the trick, Rego comes busting in with this other kid I’d seen around.”

He took a deep breath, like maybe he was having trouble telling the next part, and began carding his fingers through my hair over and over.

“So he throws the kid I don’t know down beside Billy on the bed and shoots them one after another.”

I could imagine Wojno there, frozen, terrified, with blood splatter all over him.

“And then it hits me that James isn’t alone, and that’s when I first met Hartley.”

The story came together.

“And right before James is about to put one in me, Hartley stops him and tells him I’m a cop. Apparently the first one James killed, the kid who I kept seeing around, was undercover with vice.”