by Mary Calmes
“And what is your supervisor’s name in Chicago?”
I cleared my throat. “His name is Chief Deputy Sam Kage, sir.”
“With a K,” Ian chimed in.
“Excellent,” Mr. Guzman said.
“How did your son get away, sir?” I asked, because from the bits and pieces I could decipher, I knew Oscar had told him the whole story.
He took a breath. “His sister shoved him out of the car as soon as it stopped and she ordered him to run.”
“Smart.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “She was brilliant for keeping him safe, he was good for listening to her. For once.”
“It’s fortunate they didn’t go after him.”
“They would have never caught him unless….”
No one wanted to consider what unless could have meant.
“I need to make sure that every cell phone is accounted for,” Ian said into the sudden silence. “We can’t have any pictures of your daughter leaked.”
Mr. Guzman nodded.
“I’m going to follow up on that now, make sure the FBI is made aware.”
“Please,” he murmured.
Ian gave Sofia a last hug, turned her over to her father, made quick eye contact with me, and then jogged back to the gathered suits, all the FBI and police still talking.
“We’re ready to go to the hospital,” Bryson announced.
Sofia and Oscar did not want to leave me, and when it became apparent that it really would not happen without tears, I agreed to go with them and their mother to the hospital, Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, which was not far away.
I went to find Ian first. I took hold of his bicep as I excused us both for a moment from the discussion with the LEOs.
“What?” he asked, his gorgeous blue eyes softening the moment his gaze met mine.
“Listen. I have to go to the hospital with the kids, but I’ll be—”
“No,” he directed in his I know everything and it’s all decided voice that he pulled out upon occasion. “Just stay there, and I’ll meet you as soon as I can.”
“So stay put until you come get me?”
“Yeah.”
I was exhausted, my adrenaline had bottomed out, I was responsible for killing people, and I had to turn over my gun to the Phoenix PD for processing, so now I was without a weapon until I got back to the apartment. Ian was not because he hadn’t shot anyone with his Glock, but I felt vulnerable and that was not helping.
“Because I’m what, five?”
He stepped into me, close, crowding me, in my space, and while it could be mistaken for him trying to impart privileged information, it was also, very clearly, a display of dominance and possessiveness. “Just fuckin’ wait for me,” he growled.
My hands itched to touch him, to slide up under his shirt and caress his skin. I breathed out slowly in an effort to calm my racing heart as I watched his pulse beat in his throat. I wanted to lean in and kiss that spot, the need nearly overwhelming.
“Don’t stand here and make me beg, simply do what I ask.”
“Okay,” I agreed, voice weak, realizing that being the entire focus of his attention was making it hard for me to breathe.
“I’ll see you,” Ian said before gently squeezing my elbow.
Watching him leave me was harder than I thought it would be. The only upside was that I got to ride in the back of the ambulance going to a hospital and for once I wouldn’t be on the verge of death on the way. It was really sort of novel.
GRUELING WAS the word of the night, very early morning, and then late morning. Ian never got away to collect me because he was stuck there, recounting what had occurred to the FBI and Phoenix PD, and I was at the hospital with Greg Hollister from the State Department and Efrem Lahm from Homeland Security.
“You understand how sensitive this is, marshal,” Hollister said patronizingly, giving me a serious look with furrowed brows, narrowed eyes, and the knowing nod. “We needed to determine what kind of attack the Guzmans suffered because as a cultural attaché who works at the Spanish consulate, what the FBI first thought was a kidnapping and ransom ended up being a run of the mill abduction for the purpose of filming child pornography.”
It was surprising that it wasn’t me who lost my temper. One second I was parsing what had just come out of Hollister’s mouth, and the next he was pinned to the wall outside of Sofia’s hospital room with a forearm across his throat.
“Are you fucking kidding?” Lahm, blond-haired, green-eyed, and pretty Lahm, whom I had taken for easy-going, lost his shit and slammed Hollister back hard enough to make him yell. “That just happened, right? Those kids were just put through something horrific, and you just used the words run of the mill when you described it?”
Hollister squirmed against the wall like a trapped insect on the end of a pin.
“You better put some respect in your tone and your verbiage, Agent, or you will be treated to my displeasure.”
Hollister was rapidly turning gray.
“Do you understand?”
Hollister nodded and Lahm moved fast, like coiled snake fast, and in the next moment, the man who had seemed so full of himself bent over and threw up.
I stepped back—I was wearing my Alexander McQueen black monk strap boots, and I didn’t want vomit on them, after all.
“Okay,” Lahm said calmly, like Hollister hadn’t just bolted down the hall, looking, I assumed, for a bathroom. “Here’s what we—”
“That was great,” I interrupted. “You sticking up for the kids.”
He crossed his arms like he was bored. “Most of those guys are pretentious pricks,” he informed me. “And they’re so used to dealing with heads of state, they forget how to talk to regular people.”
I nodded.
“Okay, so, here’s how it went down.” He described how the kids’ bodyguards had taken them to Bookmans over on 19th Avenue to trade in some of Oscar’s PlayStation games and for Sofia to pick up more manga. Because it was such a routine outing—the kids loved the store and went often—only one member of their protection detail accompanied them. On the way back they stopped at a Circle K to get drinks, and Sofia had asked to use the bathroom. On her way out, she was grabbed and taken out the back, away from the car where the now fired bodyguard had been waiting. The man who carried her informed the clerk that his daughter was sick and had thrown up. The clerk insisted that Oscar resisting, screaming and crying while being dragged out, was a temper tantrum when he had to explain to the FBI why he’d done nothing to help the little boy who was clearly, from the video surveillance, terrified.
“Jesus,” I whispered, feeling bad for Oscar all over again.
“The FBI has spoken to three of the men who lived through you and your partner’s siege on the house —”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t just—”
He lifted his hand to shut me up. “It looks like the plan was to move Sofia to Mexico within the next few days and sell her to a whorehouse. If Oscar had showed up without backup, he would have suffered the same fate. Clearly this has nothing to do with Homeland Security, as it was not, in fact, an act of terrorism.”
“Why was the State Department here?”
“They had to make sure that the attack was not made specifically against the Spanish consulate or Guzman.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Once they determined it wasn’t, they’re off the hook too.”
It was nice of him to stand there and explain it all to me.
“What the heck is this?” an orderly asked as he stopped at the puddle of vomit a few feet behind Lahm.
He glanced over his shoulder at the man. “Some drunken frat boy, man. I’m sorry.”
“I’m so sorry, gentlemen,” he said quickly. “I’ll be right back to clean this up.”
“No worries, it ain’t like it’s water. No one’s walkin’ through that.”
Once the orderly was gone, Lahm turned back to me.
“So this is all the bureau now.
They’ll follow up on whatever the bigger picture is here, how big this operation is or isn’t. You and your partner did a very good thing, marshal. You should be pleased.”
I nodded as he offered me his hand.
“So,” I said as he turned to go. “You think you’re gonna get any crap from Hollister for putting him on the wall?”
“And he would say what? I was talking smack about a couple of kids and Lahm took offense?” His right eyebrow arched evilly. “I think not.”
“Okay.”
“And besides, you’d back me up, right? I just have to get out there to Chicago and track you down.”
I wasn’t really surprised. He was Homeland Security, after all. “You like living here in Phoenix?”
He scoffed. “I live in Washington DC. I wouldn’t make it here on the surface of the sun.”
I liked him. I knew we could be friends if we lived anywhere near each other. “Have a safe trip home, Agent.”
“You, too, marshal,” he said as he walked away from me, down the long hall.
“Miro?”
Turning, I found Oscar.
“Hey buddy,” I greeted him.
He gestured for me, so I followed him back into the room.
It turned out that Sofia’s left wrist was sprained, but other than that she was in good shape. Oscar was dehydrated, but other than a few cuts and bruises, he too was fine. Once Mrs. Guzman heard that, I got kissed and hugged all over again.
“I know you’re the reason that both my children are still with me, Miro.”
“I can’t take all the credit,” I assured her, because I knew that without Ian giving me backup—as always—I wouldn’t have been able to save both of them.
“Yes, I know,” Mrs. Guzman agreed, smiling sweetly at me, like I was dear to her. “Marshal Doyle will be in my prayers along with you for the rest of my life.”
I grinned. “I appreciate that, you know. I can always use the help.”
She sighed deeply as she hugged her kids.
When I finally had to leave to join Ian at the office, Mrs. Guzman took my information and put it in her phone so if she felt like it, she could call, e-mail, or text me. It was the only way the kids would let me out of the room. Their mother would have kept me had six bodyguards not shown up. They all shook my hand, and as I surveyed them, I was really glad I meant the family no harm. The men were enormous, tall and muscular, and each one carried some kind of firearm. I wouldn’t have wanted to mess with them. I left knowing Mrs. Guzman and her sweet kids were in safe hands.
The FBI sent a team to pick me up and take me back to their field office where Ian, Segundo, and Hewitt waited. We were joined by Brooks Latham, who was explaining to Supervisory Special Agent Zane Calhoun that his men had followed all procedures and that Ian and I were incorrigible. He’d disciplined us yesterday afternoon for a different incident, after all, and he was very concerned that with the clear lack of discipline we were used to operating under that—
“Hold up,” Calhoun said, smiling, having raised a finger to get Latham to shut up. “You think that Chief Deputy Sam Kage is soft on discipline?”
“I—”
Calhoun’s snort of laughter sounded funny coming from such a serious-looking man. “I so wish we could get on a plane tonight so you could tell him that in person. I would pay good money to see that.”
“I—you know their boss?”
I was interested in that answer myself.
“I do,” he replied, nodding, “and if I told you how many times I wanted to break protocol when we worked an op together and how many times he recited the book to me…. Except for once,” he added, like he was remembering something before he was back, present and focused. “You’d pass out. That man is a walking manual, so I suspect that Smith and Morse here are very well versed in the procedures of being a marshal.”
“Yes, but begging your pardon, I think—”
“Tonight’s incident was a special circumstance,” Calhoun said, glancing from me to Ian and back to Latham. “And I have a remedy for the situation in either case.”
We all remained quiet as he turned toward a knock on the door. In came two men with sealed plastic bags. Ian, me, Segundo, and Hewitt were all given one, and inside the bags were our guns.
“These have all been processed, gentlemen, and your accounts of who you shot at and why are now in the record. While it will take another few days for you to all be cleared, your weapons are being returned at this time.”
“That’s fast,” Ian commented.
“We’re the FBI,” Calhoun said smugly.
A woman came in then, walked over to Ian, and delivered the Heckler & Koch P30L he had used last night.
“This isn’t mine,” Ian stated.
“You used it,” Calhoun told him, “and we ran ballistics on it and it’s clean. The serial number is gone, burned off with acid, so the gun is completely untraceable. I’m giving it to you because it will play well undercover for what I’d like you and your partner to do. At the conclusion of the op, you’ll return it to us and we’ll have it destroyed.”
“I’m sorry?” Ian asked.
“What part of returning the gun didn’t you—”
“No, sir, not that,” Ian expressed quickly. “You said undercover?”
“I spoke to Sam Kage, and he gave me permission to move you onto my task force with the DEA. You need to collect your things because I need you two in place and ready to go tomorrow morning.”
I was going to bitch… DEA… no… but Ian shot me a look to shut me up.
“You—what?” Latham sounded panicked.
Calhoun pivoted to face him. “I’m taking these two marshals off your hands, and as our office has, as you know, taken over the Guzman case”—his arms crossed quickly, daring Latham to speak—“you can go back to work tomorrow, business as usual.”
Latham opened his mouth to protest.
“That will be all, marshal.”
Latham was excused, and whereas my boss—and me and Ian, for that matter—would have never taken shit like that from the FBI, I wasn’t sure if Latham had any idea what he did and didn’t have to put up with. Not that he cared, though. In his opinion, Ian and I were clearly trouble—better to not have to deal with us. I was sure he was pleased.
“Sit down, gentlemen. We have a lot to go over,” Calhoun said and then told one of his aids to bring in Orton Taggart from the other room. “And I want you to meet your new fake boss.”
Combined FBI/ DEA drug ops. Had to love them.
THE FEDS had a lot of cars at their disposal, and Ian finally decided on a 2012 Cadillac Escalade ESV because, as muscle, we needed room to carry lots of people in a little higher-end car to make the story stick. It seemed like a good choice to me.
“Latham hates you both,” Kage told us over the phone on the way to the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa. “And I trust Calhoun. It sounds like a simple op in cooperation with the DEA, undercover on a drug dealer as bodyguards. You’re basically just following the front man in.”
“We met him,” I replied. “Taggart. He seemed okay.”
He was young, was what he was, but he was supposed to be playing flashy, punk, from big money, used to dealing with the Mexican cartels bringing drugs across the border into Texas. The background was put in place, but it didn’t need to be too deep; it wasn’t a two-year or five-year deep-cover op. It was set up as a quick bust because DEA had caught the real drug trafficker, Chris Bello, and to skip jail time, he rolled on all his friends. So now they were introducing Brock Huber—Taggart—as a new player on the scene with a solid reputation because he had people the Feds had leaned on to vouch for him. More importantly, his bank account was huge.
“It’s a straightforward op,” my boss continued. “Calhoun just needs new faces to go along with his agent. You guys fit the bill.”
“Yessir,” I agreed for both Ian and me.
“I told Calhoun that you could start tomorrow. I can’t imagin
e you’ve slept yet.”
God bless him, sometimes he was actually human.
“And you can’t run in the heat, Jones.”
Of course they’d told him about that. “No sir.”
“Pull your head out of your ass and hydrate. You’re in Arizona, gentlemen.”
I took it back—he was the devil.
“Touch base with Calhoun when you get to the hotel so he knows you’re there, get some food, sleep tonight, be ready to go in the morning.”
He didn’t wait for me to acknowledge him or agree, he simply hung up. I turned to look at Ian. “His communication skills are seriously fucked up.”
He snickered. “So are yours, M.”
“Mine?”
Ian stopped the car on Lincoln Drive, pulling off the road into the dirt under the shade of several trees. He turned and cupped my cheek in his hand. “I want to be alone with you so badly my skin hurts.”
There was a time when he would have never admitted to that. I was so pleased it had passed. Being told I was needed and wanted was so much better. “Me too.”
He grinned. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
I squinted. “Besides feeling like my life is on fast forward and that we’re stuck in an oven on broil because a psychopath is after me?”
“Yeah.”
I took a breath. “Can I wait until I sleep a little?”
He shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Because whatever it is, is making you weird and I don’t like it.”
I was hesitant to say.
“I know you want to get married,” he said, defaulting to what the issue had been for months. “But I’m just—”
“It’s not that,” I sighed.
“Oh?”
“No,” I said, my voice rising in panic. Ian never got to think that I didn’t want him. “I mean, clearly I want that, but that’s not what’s eating at me.”
“Then speak.”
“It’s not that big a deal.”
“Fine, if it’s not important, then just tell me,” he whispered, moving his hand, stroking the nape of my neck.