Twisted and Tied

by Mary Calmes

  “We did all that,” I apprised her. “You saw me and Redeker on the phone.”

  “I know! How the hell do you guys have access to someone’s whole life that fast?”

  I looked at Redeker, who only shrugged before returning my focus to her. “We’re United States marshals, ma’am. We don’t wait for anything.”

  She just stood there shaking her head in disbelief.

  “We all missed lunch,” I announced into the silence. “I think we should have a late one. Who’s with me?”

  “I saw an Indian place,” Redeker chimed in. “How’s that sound?”

  She looked back and forth between us. “Things don’t happen this fast.”

  “You keep saying that,” I apprised her. “But in my world,” I said, hand over my heart, “in his,” I continued, placing my hand on Redeker’s shoulder, “they do. They always have.”

  “Maybe in other areas, but not where kids are concerned.”

  “I don’t see the difference.”

  “I know you don’t, but you should because sooner or later you’re going to bump up against a situation you can’t wave your magic wand over.”

  I scoffed at her.

  “Marshal, I promise you, there are not fixes like this in the real world.”

  “We’re not Child and Family Services,” I reminded her. “You get that, right?”

  “I do. Of course I do. But you’re still a government agency!” she maintained, willing me to understand the point she was trying to make, which I suspected was that there were miles and miles of red tape I was skirting.

  “We are, and normally we move slower too, but this is witness protection,” I clarified, “and we don’t work through regular channels for that. We don’t have to.”

  “We move fast,” Redeker said, giving her his lazy cowboy grin. “I mean, it’s life-and-death, after all. You can’t dick around with people’s lives, especially kids’.”

  She still looked like she was at a loss.

  “C’mon, Indian food, my treat,” Redeker said, taking her arm gently and leading her to her car. He drove her car—she was that out of it—and I followed in the Ford.

  Kama Bistro was on South La Grange Road, and once we were inside, Macin took a breath and calmed down.

  “I just had no idea that kids could be rescued like that,” she conceded. “I’ve been a social worker for three years, and I’ve not seen anything like what I’ve seen today.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. That’s what has to happen in WITSEC. We make quick decisions and hope they’re right. It doesn’t mean we always make the best ones,” I amended. “But that’s why we check and double-check and triple-check to make sure that everything we think we did correctly actually stays that way.”

  She nodded.

  “Eat, you’ll feel better,” I said, smiling.

  “No,” she protested, “you misunderstand me. I’m not upset or—I’m just going to get spoiled if I keep working with you. I’ll want it to work like this for all the kids, not just the ones in WITSEC.”

  “It should work like that, and I wish it did. But it takes vigilance, right?”

  “It does.”

  “We’re not perfect. Look at Cullen. Kids died on her watch. We have one in the morgue right now that we’re trying to get to the bottom of. Sadly everything that happens with kids in the foster care system is only as good as the people administering those services.”

  “It takes a village and all that,” Redeker said, smiling up at our server as she approached the table.

  After we got our drinks and the appetizers came out, masala fries and chicken lemon tadka, Redeker asked her where we were off to next. Macin just put her head in her hand and looked at him.

  “What?”

  “I’ll go anywhere with you guys.”

  It was nice to hear.

  Chapter 8

  WE WERE on our way to see a kid who lived in Brookfield when Kage called and ordered me and Redeker back to the office. We waited with Macin until Ryan and Dorsey showed up, taking over for me just for the rest of the day.

  I watched Macin’s gaze roam over Mike Ryan from head to toe as he closed in on us. I thought she might like hanging out with Ryan better than me and Redeker. Though if I thought about it, I wasn’t sure Redeker wouldn’t be interested in her. Just because I knew Callahan was into him—and really, he into Callahan—didn’t mean Redeker couldn’t also be interested in Macin. What was clear, however, was Mike Ryan was her idea of pretty.

  “So are you two going to be changing the lives of kids today too?” she asked Dorsey, tearing her eyes away from Ryan with difficulty.

  “Well, yeah,” Dorsey assured her. “We’re marshals, ma’am. We can do whatever we want to keep a witness safe.”

  She rolled her eyes, and he shot me a look.

  “She’s not used to things getting done so fast.”

  “Ah,” he said like that explained everything.

  It took an hour to get back to the office in traffic, and while Redeker tried to find a station he liked—not being into the hard rock Ian was—I called the man I loved.

  “You all right?” Ian answered on the second ring, sounding frantic, voice higher than normal.

  “Can you stop asking me that?” I teased. “I just wanted to hear how you’re doing.”

  “I’m fine,” he said dismissively. “Tell me how you are.”

  “Well, Redeker and I have officially freaked out the nice social worker.”

  “Why? What’d you do?” It sounded like he was afraid of the answer.

  “Apparently the marshals service moves a little quicker than Child Protective Services.”

  A moment of silence. “Well, yeah, I would think so. It’s life-and-death with us.”

  “Yeah, but it is with CPS too.”

  “And I know that,” he agreed, “but with vigilance on the part of the social workers and decent foster families, a lot of those kids will make it out of the system in one piece, right?”

  “Taking into consideration those two factors—yeah,” I allowed.

  “But with Custodial you’re talking about kids being hunted and killed if the person they’re testifying against gets ahold of them.”

  “Right,” I obliged, “and that’s the part that the social worker riding along with me and Redeker has never seen in action.”

  “Got it.”

  I coughed softly. “You know, I’m doing pretty well today.”

  “Why do you sound surprised? You’re great with kids,” he said, defending me.

  I smiled into the phone. We argued all morning, back and forth, and then simple statements like that told me exactly what Ian’s true feelings were about my capabilities. He’d have me sighing like some schmuck in a rom-com if I wasn’t careful.

  “I am good with kids, but I can see the difference between this being my job and what the commitment to being a parent is.”

  “You’re beating a dead horse here, you know that.”

  Perhaps, but I needed Ian to hear it, that I knew what I could truly do. “So off topic: guess who had homemade empanadas today?”

  “What?”

  I cackled.

  “Empanadas?” he whined. They were one of his absolute favorites and hard to find—the ones he truly loved, not greasy, not super flaky, just the perfect in-between.

  “I might have eaten a few.”

  “And you, what, didn’t snag me one?”

  “Didn’t wanna be a glutton,” I taunted.

  “You know I was worried about you, you dick.”

  He still was, but it was good to laugh, even though he hung up on me.

  “I dunno if your relationship with your husband is all that healthy,” Redeker said after a few minutes of silence.

  But it so very much was.

  IT WAS after four when we made it upstairs to the bullpen. I was surprised by all the suits there, and Becker crossed the room to me with Adair and three others in tow. He excused Redeker, told him t
o check in with Ian on the other side of the room for his partner assignment, and then turned to me as the men clustered around.

  “We’re in the conference room, Jones.”

  I nodded, looked around him for Ian, who gestured me over to him.

  “One sec, I’ll meet you in there,” I told him, brushing by the others to follow Redeker over to Ian.

  “I’ll be right with you,” Ian said to Redeker as he took hold of my bicep and led me a few feet away. “You still doing all right?”

  “I am. Like I said, it’s been busy but good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I mean, we got some kids moved out of some bad situations, saw some others that were fine. All in all, for a first day, I’ll take it.” I grinned.

  He smiled back, lifted his hand like he was going to touch my cheek, but remembered where he was and lowered it. “Mine’s been… different.”

  I snorted.

  “Hey,” he said, glaring. “I’m a billion times more patient than I thought I was.”

  “Oh?”

  “You have no idea.”

  I took hold of the lapel of his suit jacket. “You’re coming to the conference room?”

  “I will. I’ll be right there.”

  I nodded and then turned to rejoin Becker and the others.

  Kage was standing by the whiteboard at the front of the room when I walked in, and he pointed at a seat at the end of the table across from three empty places. When I sat and Adair tried to take the seat beside me, Kage told him to take the next one down. Two others tried, but Kage kept it open for Ian, who was the next to last one in the room. He moved quickly, crossing the room, moving the chair closer to me, bumping my knee with his as he sat. There were twenty people in the room when Becker held the door open for one last man, then came in and closed the door behind them.

  “Everyone,” Kage began, “this is Andrew Ryerson, assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch of the FBI.”

  Ryerson moved to the front of the room beside Kage and stood there looking over all of us before he turned his attention on me. He was a handsome man, I was guessing midfifties, with traces of gray in his hair—less than Kage, who had lots of silver streaks in his hair now but somehow made that look good: fatherly, debonair, and classic. Ryerson had a thin, drawn, pinched face with no laugh lines. His suit was immaculate, it fit perfectly, and he looked like he belonged on a magazine cover, not in front of a room full of rumpled men who’d worked all day. Kage was the only one who looked just as good, though standing up there next to him, Ryerson looked almost fragile.

  “Marshal Jones,” Ryerson addressed me.

  “Sir.”

  “I’m going to be frank with you, Jones, and skip all the jargon and the posturing because I’d like us to all get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible,” he said, voice strained, clearly exhausted but still professional. “Is that acceptable?”

  “Yessir.”

  He took a breath. “This morning it was made painfully clear to us that Special Agent Cillian Wojno was not the only leak in our office connected to the escaped felon Craig Hartley,” he explained gravely. “After only a cursory look into profiler Kol Kelson’s personal correspondence, it appears that he’s been communicating with Hartley since he escaped from federal custody before you were taken two years ago.”

  I never stood a chance. The thought threatened to drown me.

  Hartley was brilliant all by himself, and on top of that, he’d had not one but two corrupt federal agents working for him. The deck had been stacked against me from the beginning, and the worst part was he wasn’t paying either of them.

  Wojno was dead, killed by the man who had blackmailed him into service.

  Kelson was still a mystery. I had no idea if some sin he’d committed had ruined him and put him in Hartley’s path, like had happened with Wojno, or if he had been willingly seduced to the darkness. Either way, the FBI, which should have had a hand in protecting me, had done the exact opposite. I was used to it at this point, to their failings, but it didn’t make the admission any better.

  “Through Kelson, Hartley was given direct access to FBI databases containing private information such as your home address and—”

  Ian scoffed loudly.

  “Doyle,” Kage warned.

  “Stop,” I muttered.

  “Sir,” Ian replied to Kage, his voice a mixture of consternation and a sharp, serrated edge. Anyone who knew him at all could tell how disgusted and furious he was.

  Kage answered with a scowl because he was, I knew, angry. But in a different way, not protective and possessive as Ian was. His feelings about Hartley and the FBI were more righteous indignation than the simmering fury Ian had been holding on to since last November.

  “Is there an issue I’m not aware of?” Ryerson asked sharply.

  “No, sir,” I answered before Ian could.

  “Yes, sir,” Ian nearly snarled, not caring in the least that I was trying to build a bridge, not burn one down.

  “And what is that, Marshal?” he challenged Ian.

  “Well, I just wanted you to know that we are well aware that Craig Hartley knows where we live since he was just fuckin’ there!”

  Ryerson processed that in silence before he turned back to Ian. “I’m sorry?”

  I cleared my throat so Ryerson would focus on me and took that opportunity to lean on Ian. He needed to feel how close I was, the warmth of my body, the reassurance I was right there. We didn’t talk about it, but between what we had been going through with Ian being deployed all the time and Hartley popping up out of the clear blue sky multiple times, we had been on the verge of walking away from everything. But Ian had decided I was the most important thing in his life, and Hartley and I were on a new path that did not, I was fairly certain, include me being dissected, even if I inadvertently tumbled into a trap.

  “Marshal?” Ryerson barked.

  “Craig Hartley was just in my house last November,” I explained clinically, not letting him hear what that encounter had done to me. “So there’s not a question of if he knows where I live—he absolutely does.”

  The FBI guys in the room made startled noises, sounding scared, maybe even sick, as did the new marshals in our group. And I understood. I probably would have been freaked out too, hearing the news for the first time that a serial killer visited my colleague. If it could happen to me, maybe it could also happen to them. It had to be sobering, terrifying to think about.

  “Perhaps you didn’t have time to read Jones’s file on the flight in,” Kage suggested, his voice rising over the others, his arms crossed, looking at Ryerson like he was a total tool.

  “No, I—” He gestured at Adair, who was sitting on the other side of Ian. “Please.”

  “Bottom line is,” Adair began, leaning forward in his chair so he could see me around Ian. “We need to take you into protective custody, Jones. It’s become an issue of—”

  “No,” I told him flatly. “We already tried protective custody, and it didn’t make a bit of difference. Hartley knows everything about me, from the fact that I got married four months ago to the fact that he’s the one who saved my dog.”

  “He did what?” Ryerson asked, floundering, looking as flummoxed as the other members of his team and the newbie marshals. Again, I understood. Hartley was a psychopath, and yet he kept my dog alive? What in the world was going on? “The hell are you talking about, Jones?”

  “My dog was shot, and Hartley saved him,” I answered, bumping Ian before leaning away from him. “So I have to say that if he wanted me dead, I would be. You should really focus your efforts on somebody else.”

  Ryerson blurted, “But we cannot guarantee your safety if—”

  “I don’t need my safety guaranteed,” I told him. “He won’t hurt me.”

  “You can’t know what—”

  “Ask Kelson,” I argued. “He’ll tell you.”

  “He’s not speaking.”
r />   “Then bring him in here, and I’ll ask him. He’ll talk to me.”

  “And how the hell do you know that?”

  I exhaled deeply. “He’s got a hard-on for Hartley, and I don’t know why, but he does. You all think that was Hartley this morning in that gallery, and I think you’re wrong. I don’t think any of that was Hartley’s doing, but I have no idea what’s going on with your boy.”

  “He’s not our—”

  “Just—no one knows Hartley better than me, so Kelson will want to talk to me.”

  Ryerson studied my face for a moment, checking to see if he was looking at resolve or just bravado, but he must have decided I wasn’t full of shit because he turned to a couple of his men and commanded them to bring Kelson into the briefing room.

  Minutes later Kelson was brought in, in cuffs, Rodriguez and Brodie flanking him, and they put him in the chair across from me between the two of them.

  All eyes were on the disgraced profiler as he stared at me, his eyes that same flat, cold lifelessness as before.

  “Go ahead,” Ryerson directed.

  “So,” I said to Kelson, “they think Hartley wants to hurt me. I say no. What do you say?”

  The silence went on for several moments before Ryerson began speaking.

  “I told you, Jones, he—”

  “No,” Kelson agreed, cutting off his former boss. “Craig Hartley would try and take you, but not hurt you. That’s why the gesture today.”

  I nodded, leaning forward in my chair. “You would’ve been in trouble if you killed me.”

  “Yes. He would have had me killed if I’d succeeded.” And for the first time, I saw actual fear on his face, the worry in the twist of his mouth, the furrow of his brows.

  “He never has to know,” I said with a slight smile, whispering the last conspiratorially. I needed him on my side so he’d talk to me. This was the only in I had.

  He had sounded sad, dead, but suddenly he snapped his head up, and a light infused his face. “You won’t tell him?”

  “Well, I hope not to talk to him soon, but no, I won’t tell him.”

  “Thank you,” he said breathily, clearly overwhelmed.