by Mary Calmes
“Miro,” he whispered.
I had to keep breathing for as long as I could and try to keep from trembling even though I was suddenly freezing from the inside out.
“My God, man, how many lives do you have?”
“Hopefully enough,” I replied glibly.
He moved forward until I felt the muzzle of the gun against my abdomen. “How in the world did you break your ankle? That’s awfully klutzy, don’t you think?”
“Came down on it funny,” I answered as he slipped his hand between the open lapels of my olive-green wool overcoat and pressed it over my heart.
“You’re scared.”
I shrugged, but it took effort. Modulating my voice, repressing both my fight-or-flight instincts, and appearing calm was taking all of my concentration. “Of course I am. The last time we saw each other, you took out one of my ribs.”
“Yes, I did,” he replied, sliding his hand down my abdomen to my belt and then burrowing underneath two layers, Henley and T-shirt, to my skin. “But the scar is barely there. I did a good job with the surgical glue.”
I wasn’t going to explain that my best friend had gone in through the same incision he made just to make sure he hadn’t butchered me inside.
“I tell you,” he said warmly, running his fingers over the muscles in my abdomen. “Your body is really something. I bet all the boys want to fuck you.”
There was only one boy for me, and hopefully when Hartley was done with me, I’d still be pretty enough for Ian Doyle. God, not that I would tell him that. I could only imagine the knock-down, drag-out fight we’d have about how shallow that would make him sound.
“I feel you’re not focusing on your imminent peril.”
I was so tired of being scared, of jumping at my own shadow, of thinking that the bogeyman was behind every door, even the refrigerator, in every room before I turned on the light or on my front stoop whenever I left the house. I had a reoccurring nightmare that I would open my eyes in the morning and find Hartley looming over me.
“Miro,” he said, pressing the gun hard up under my chin. “What do I have to do to get you to tremble in my presence?”
All of it, from the start—back when I was a detective—was mind games. He had always told me that one day he’d have me, would be there when I woke up in the morning, and at some point along the way I’d internalized that threat and given it life. I’d turned him from a logical threat to a supernatural one, and that knowledge coming as a blast of realization chased out the fear and replaced it with anger.
“We’re going to take a ride, you and I, and once we’re all alone, I can teach you some respect. I suspect that further instruction is needed.”
No.
Never again.
“You fuck,” I growled before I forgot caution, shoved him back hard, turned, and limped away as fast as I could.
“Miro!” he roared, and I heard the gunfire a second before my right bicep felt like it was blown off.
Running down the hall, Hartley behind me firing wildly, I skidded on the heavily waxed floor as bullets bounced off studs inside plaster walls, cracked glass in picture frames, and destroyed a vase beside the bannister I ran by on my way to the dining room.
Plates exploded in the hutch, another vase, and water splattered everywhere as I flew into the kitchen. I stood behind the door, my heartbeat pounding in my ears, panting not from exertion but fear, and when he sprinted by me, I flushed from my hiding spot and went out the same door he’d come in.
A bullet hit the wall beside my head, and I had a fleeting thought that maybe Hartley had tired of our dance and was ready to simply shoot me dead.
“Come on, Miro,” he yelled after me. “There’s more parts of you I want in my collection.”
I squelched down the urge to puke and almost went down—the rubber grip on the bottom of my cast had shitty traction and once again I was back on the wax. But I managed to scramble up the staircase, the cast making all kinds of noise as it collided with each step.
Why did I go to the second floor—why not out the front door? Outside was always better than in. But Hartley was between me and my truck—and my gun—and because going to the basement was never a good idea, I bumped up the staircase ahead of him and hopped and hobbled down the dark hallway.
It was a huge house, three stories, and as I limped through it, I opened every door I passed, finally careening through one and darting inside what looked like the master suite. I ran inside the roomy walk-in closet, closed the door to a crack behind me, and searched for anything I could use to defend myself with. I listened at the same time over my own pounding heart and then simply… stopped.
Even if I happened upon a gun safe, what was I going to do, stand there and try and figure out the combination? And how long did I have before he found me? I had to be smarter than the serial killer.
I wasn’t some virgin in a slasher flick; I was a deputy United States marshal. I needed to start acting like one. If I was protecting a witness, I would have been on the offensive from the get-go. What had taken me a moment to realize was that in this instance, I was the witness.
If I lived, I was never going anywhere without Ian again. With him by my side, I never worried about the outcome. I simply knew I’d live. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t save myself, but the autopilot of certainty was a very compelling argument for having a partner.
I started taking clothes down, suits, shirts, and stacking them in my arms, layering them thicker and thicker until my bicep with the bullet in it was screaming as I stood there, legs braced apart, close to the door, waiting.
“Miro!” he roared from out in the hall. “I won’t be able to stay here much longer. Do you really want me to go? You want me to keep haunting your life? Won’t you eventually go mad?”
It was a definite possibility. The not knowing was the worst. I would rather be dead than have Hartley able to scare me for the rest of my life. It was like those awful stories where people were missing and their families didn’t know what happened. They couldn’t grieve, and hope was so hard to hold on to year after year. In all my years in law enforcement, I’d never met anyone who ever said limbo was the preferable option. Bad news, the worst news, was still closure.
“I can hold out longer than you,” I yelled through the door, finally becoming the cat in our game, sick to death of being the mouse.
I heard him running toward the sound of my voice, and seconds later I saw a line of light under the closet door. The bathroom was beside me, and I knew he was in there, checking, realizing where I wasn’t and where I was before I heard only silence.
Later I would think, What a stupid plan! Who came up with that? and realize that there had only been me there, so the idiocy was mine alone.
From the outside, the light flipped on, the door was thrown open and he strode into the closet at the same second he fired at me from point-blank range, to the left, aiming for my heart.
The bullet should have ripped through my chest, but ridiculously, I had all those clothes in my arms, propped against my chest. A stack of layers—so many that it had to look like I was moving in the middle of the night or stealing them in a snatch-and-grab from a department store with the wheelman waiting right out front.
So instead of me going down from a gunshot wound that should have killed me instantly, the bullet hit the layers and altered course, sliding along the top of my shoulder, barely grazing me. At the same second, my adrenaline kicked in and I charged, driving over him in a play that any defensive end would have been proud of—and not because it was particularly agile, but because it got the job done.
Hartley went down hard, slammed to the floor, his head hitting with a thump. I hurled the clothes sideways, found him disoriented and winded, and before he could lift the gun, I fisted my hand in his sweater, lifted him toward me, and punched him in the face.
I hit him many times, stopping only to grab the gun and toss it out of his reach. I stood up and kicked him in the ribs to get him to
fold into a fetal position and in the head to knock him out.
I waited, checking for movement, then walked out of the closet, retrieved the Heckler Koch HK45C with the suppressor he’d been using, and walked back to him and made sure he was breathing.
I had the momentary thought that, really, shooting him in the head would be the best end to my day. No one would miss him, I’d be saving the taxpayers a crap-ton of money, and no one would even question why I’d shot an unarmed man. He was Craig Hartley; of course I had to kill him.
The issue was that the more I thought about it, the less appealing it became. Hartley had done enough to me. I didn’t need his death cluttering up my psyche for the rest of my life.
Slamming the door shut, I grabbed the chair from the vanity table, wedged it under the closet’s doorknob, and staggered over to the bed. I would have gone downstairs and out to my truck to get my phone, but I didn’t want to leave Hartley alone. It was fortunate the people who owned the house had a landline—which amazed me in the age of the cell phone—and I used that to call Ian. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey, guess where I am?”
“You’re out in Park Ridge for some reason. Kohn tracked your cell phone because you didn’t pick up the fifty times I called. Where the fuck are you?”
“With Craig Hartley in a really nice house that I hope is for sale because I don’t want to think about the—”
“What?” he gasped.
“What?” I heard Kohn echo in the background before I heard him loudly exclaim, “Where the hell are you, Jones?” Ian had put me on speaker.
“I caught Hartley.”
“Oh, no,” Ian groaned. “No-no-no.”
“I’m fine,” I soothed him. “I’m gonna need to go to the hospital. Can you come here and pick up my truck?”
“Your truck?” Kohn was incredulous. “Who cares about your fuckin’ truck? Are you gonna die?”
“Jesus, Kohn,” I grumbled. He wasn’t helping in the least.
“Miro!” Ian shouted.
“No, come on, I promise it’s not like that. I’m not gonna die. I have a bullet in my arm is all, I’ll be fine.”
“You’re gonna make Ian pass out, you fuckhead,” Kohn insisted.
I wanted to use an endearment, tell him I loved him, tell him not to worry, but Kohn was there too, and then I heard Dorsey ask what was going on. “Ian, come see me.”
“I—”
“Have Kohn drive you.”
“What? Fuck no!”
“Ian,” I gentled him, suddenly a little light-headed, realizing blood was dripping down the fingers of my left hand. I was maybe bleeding a bit more than I thought. “Let Kohn drive so you get here in one piece. You’re gonna have to drive my truck, so it makes no sense to bring another car, right?”
“I—yeah—yeah, okay.”
“You need to hurry,” I said as I lay on the bed. “I want you here before the ambulance, before they move me.”
“Have you even called an ambulance yet?” Kohn asked.
“Actually, no, and I need you to call the bureau—unless Kage wants you guys to come collect Hartley. Go ask him and let me know. I’ll wait.”
“You will not wait. We’ll take care of the FBI, you hang up and call the ambulance, you stupid fuck!” Kohn flared angrily. “We’re on our way.”
The line went dead and I knew Kohn had hung up on me. Ian wouldn’t have. I called for help and stayed there, lying down and guarding the closed door as I spoke to the 911 operator. There were no windows in the closet; this wasn’t a horror movie where I’d barricade the door, leave it, and come back to find it open and the murderer escaped. The reality was, if he opened the door, I’d shoot him in the head. With all the lights on, I wouldn’t miss.
AS I predicted, the FBI, as well as the ambulance, were there before Ian and Kohn. Sadly, the older couple who owned the house had been killed and left in the basement, but that had happened a full twenty-four hours before Hartley went out and kidnapped Emerson and Saxon Rice. I was told by the FBI agents on site that Emerson’s husband was going to make a full recovery. The bullet that Hartley put in him had missed everything vital. I was so glad Hartley hadn’t ruined another family.
Sitting up in bed in the emergency room at Advocate Lutheran, I was thrilled to see Ian walk by me down the hall.
“Hey!” I called after him.
Kohn was a few feet behind him, so he heard me first and whistled for Ian. As soon as Ian appeared in the doorway, he exhaled sharply. What was interesting was that even though Kohn came into the room, Ian didn’t move.
“Come here,” I coaxed softly, seductively. “I wanna see you.”
He moved fast, one moment at the door, the next beside the bed, slipping his hand into mine, the other cupping my cheek.
“Guess what, I was wrong,” I teased, waggling my eyebrows at him. “Both bullets only grazed me.”
“Both bullets?”
“Yeah, isn’t that lucky?”
“Oh yeah, that’s great, that’s so much better.”
“What? Nothing to dig out? That’s not good? Come on. All you do is put some Neosporin on both of ’em and a Band-Aid and call it a day.”
“I think I wanna strangle you to death,” Kohn assured me.
“How the hell did Hartley get his hands on you again?” Ian erupted.
“Wait—”
“Are you kidding?” he roared louder, stalking a few feet away before rounding on me. “We’re gonna have to get you a panic button. Jesus Christ, M!”
“Stop yelling,” Kage said as he breezed into the room.
For a second I was speechless, because in all the years I’d worked for the man—including when he came out to collect Ian and me from the middle of the countryside—I’d never seen him in anything but a suit and tie. But it was Saturday, now about eight at night, and he was in black jeans and biker boots, a crew neck white T-shirt with a charcoal button-up, and a pale gray cable-knit sweater with button neck over that. I had noticed how big he was before, but in something that clung to his broad shoulders and massive chest, the effect was a little disconcerting. He could break me in half, and I was not a small guy.
Crossing his arms made the size of his biceps readily apparent. “Tell me what happened, from the beginning.”
So I explained as Ian fumed beside me and the hospital staff came in and took care of me, doing exactly what I suspected would happen: cleaning my abrasions, applying salve, and bandaging me up. When the nurse was explaining wound care, Ian interrupted her and promised that he knew what to do.
“Are you sure?”
“Green Beret, ma’am. I swear I can handle it.”
She was sure I’d be in good hands.
As soon as I was done explaining to Kage, the FBI showed up. Since I was ready to be discharged by then but still waiting on a doctor, the special agent in charge went to speak to the on-call resident, and I was released four hours after I arrived.
I rode with Ian and Kohn back downtown to our building on Dearborn and rode the elevator up to the office in silence. Once we were off, we all headed toward the meeting room.
“Why’re you pissed at me?” I prodded Ian.
“I’m not.”
“It certainly seems like it, and I don’t think it’s fair.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong? What would you have done?”
He had no answer.
Once inside, I sat down, and when Ryan and Dorsey joined us, they brought bottles of water with them.
As we all took seats—except for Kage—the door opened again and we were joined by six FBI agents. The person in charge was Special Agent Oliver, and Rohl and Thompson were among those he’d brought to speak to me.
“Where is Hartley now?” Kage asked Oliver.
“He’s at County Hospital with ten agents, as well as a contingent of uniformed Chicago PD officers. He’s not going anywhere.”
; “Why’s he in the hospital?” Kage wanted to know.
“Marshal Jones broke his collarbone.”
Kage grunted before turning to me. “Shall we begin?”
It was interesting: Whenever the agents started to ask too many questions, Kage shut them down. When they tried getting loud, especially Oliver, Kage lifted his hand for me to stop. It didn’t take too many times for them to realize he wasn’t playing around.
Ian, sitting beside me, had trouble not fidgeting, and every once in a while he’d take my hand under the table and gently squeeze.
We were there for hours, well after midnight, before the entire story had been told and recorded by the marshals service and the FBI. When we were finally ready to break, Kage asked if Hartley was going back to Elgin.
Oliver glanced up at him. “No, he’s not, and you made certain of that, didn’t you?” He barked with so much disgust in his tone that he surprised me, and from the quiet that settled over the room, I was guessing everyone else as well.
It was quite the outburst, angry and accusing, full of venom, almost hatred, and from the way his face screwed up into a snarl, Oliver had to be furious. But even hearing all that, seeing it, wasn’t what threw me. It was my boss.
Never had I seen Kage grin, and it was even more startling to witness because of the way he did it… arrogantly, evilly, like he’d won. I was seeing no trace of the man I knew, the unflappable one, the chief deputy who personified grace under pressure. This man was enjoying Special Agent Oliver’s discomfort, the wicked curl of his lip told me so, and I couldn’t get over the change in him.
“How in the hell did you get him transferred there? He doesn’t even meet the requirements!”
“Oh, he most certainly does,” Kage assured him snidely. “He’s successfully escaped once, he killed again while at large, there is the threat of his followers contacting him, and last but not least, he assaulted a deputy United States marshal. He’s a prime candidate for ADX Florence.”
I turned to Ian and found him staring at Kage with the same expression I must have been wearing—one of utter mind-blown daze.
Holy. Fuck.