All Kinds of Tied Down (25 page)

His brows furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I grinned slowly. I had successfully restored normalcy and balance.

“It’s not that bad.”

“Janet and Catherine went over there to check your mail, and Cat said she wasn’t going back without making sure her shots were up to date.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Janet said that if I’d let her take my gun, she’d go back.”

“Knock it off.” He chuckled, letting his head fall back when I bumped his chin with my nose. Ian was more relaxed than I’d ever seen him, vulnerable as he lay in my arms.

I pressed a kiss to his throat.

“You’d stay there, right?”

I would sleep wherever he liked for as long as he let me. “Yeah.” I just wanted to be in his bed.

He traced over the two newest scars on my body. “Don’t do this again.”

“I’ll try.”

“Try harder.”

“Yessir.”

W
E
STOPPED
for a late lunch at a pancake place, badges out and strapped for the duration of the trip. I ate like it was my last meal. I was so hungry and between the coffee, orange juice, and water, the waitress wasn’t sure what other liquid I could possibly need.

Ian had coffee and water and watched me hoover up pancakes and sausage, eggs, hash browns, and grits as he wolfed down steak and eggs. I paid like I always did on Fridays, as we had every day of the week accounted for and it was the only way for meals to not devolve into arguments. It used to be both of us trying to treat the other, which got old fast. Our system worked better.

After hitting the bathroom, I met Ian in the lobby, and as I yawned, shoving my coat at him while I put on my hat, two state troopers stepped in front of us. A third was hanging back.

“Help you?” Ian asked.

The trooper tipped his head at the gun holstered on my belt.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, smiling, lifting my sweater so he could see the star on the other side. “We’re marshals. My ID’s in my coat right there.”

He let out a breath, and his smile was instant as the two others joined us. “Your waitress saw the guns when you were getting up.”

“’Course,” I said with a shrug. “You gotta check.”

He gave me a friendly nod before Ian grabbed my bicep, grunted a good-bye, and tugged me after him.

“What’s wrong with you?” I teased once we were outside. I pulled on my coat. It was freezing. “You gotta be nice to local law enforcement.”

“Why?”

“In case we need them.”

The look on his face showed me exactly what he thought of that, and it wasn’t much. “This isn’t even where we need to be, M.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Just come on.”

Once at the car, I put my fist above my palm in the international sign for rock-paper-scissors.

“I always drive,” he informed me.

“Yeah, but,” I began, unable to keep from grinning, “it might be easier for you to get comfortable if—”

“Get in the car,” he barked.

I tried to stifle my laughter.

“Now,” he growled, getting in and slamming the door.

Once inside, I turned to him.

“Navigate already, will you?”

I pulled my phone from the breast pocket of my coat.

“Isn’t that the peacoat you made me buy?”

“Yeah.”

“So it’s mine, but you’re wearing it.”

“Yeah,” I grunted, checking the directions. “Okay, so you’re gonna go out here and head south. You’re looking for 394 to—what?”

He was waiting.

“Ian?”

Taking hold of the wool and cashmere coat, he tugged me close. “This is the weirdest blue, you know.”

“It looked good on you,” I said softly as he pulled the knit cap off my head. “You trying to let the cold get me?”

“In the car with the heater?” He snickered, easing me forward until his lips were a hairsbreadth from mine. “I think you’ll live.”

I sighed, so pleased that he couldn’t keep his hands or mouth off me. “You need to get us on the road.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, kissing me fast, biting my bottom lip, tugging it with his teeth a second, inhaling deep, before he let me go and turned all his attention to getting us out of the parking lot.

“That’s not fair,” I complained, my body thrumming with sudden need. And it wasn’t even sex anymore, though that was always welcome. It was more than that. I just wanted to be naked in bed with him.

“It’ll level off.”

“What’s that?”

“The hunger.”

“We just ate,” I reminded him.

“I’m not talking about food and you know it.”

I did, but I wanted to hear him say it. “If you’re doing it right, it shouldn’t.”

He shook his head. “There’s no way to contain that level of desire for—” His breath hitched when I grabbed his thigh and squeezed tight.

“Listen,” I said seriously, meeting his gaze. “Don’t speak so authoritatively about things you know nothing about.”

His attention focused completely on me.

“Neither one of us has ever been in this exact place before.”

He gave me a quick nod.

“So knock it off.”

He didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either, which I took as a win. Moments later he turned his attention from me to driving the car.

“Level of desire, huh?”

“Shut up.”

I smiled. “Hurry up and get us out of the parking lot, Doyle. I’m e-mailing the boss with status.”

He said nothing, just took a left out onto the street, merged too quickly, and headed for Bristol Highway by way of 394.

“How long on this?”

“Like five and a half miles,” I said absently.

I directed him onto other highways until we were finally on 19E heading for Elizabethton.

“There are a lot of Christmas-tree farms here,” Ian commented as we headed for the Carter County Sheriff’s office.

“Yep, trees and meth are both big business here.”

He laughed softly.

“Hey, do me a favor. When we get there, let me talk to them.”

“What?”

I grimaced. “You always end up pissing the local guys off.”

“I do not,” he argued.

“You do. And stop being so defensive.”

“That’s insane.”

But half an hour later when we had reached our destination and then gotten the run around, he was yelling.

“What the hell?” Ian barked at the deputy in front of us. “How do you release a goddamn federal witness?”

The sheriff was not in, but Chief Deputy Greg Walker was. It was the two of us and nine other men in the office. Ian was trying to get a story out of Walker while I was on the phone with Kage.

“What do you mean they don’t have your witness?”

“Apparently he was released to the Bowman Police Department yesterday afternoon,” I replied.

“Why?”

“He wasn’t coded to be released into federal custody, but police custody.”

“How?” Kage asked irritably. “Are there even local police departments there? I thought there was only one centrally located sheriff’s department and then the state police.”

“I have no idea, but the town’s in Virginia, not Tennessee.”

“Virginia?”

“Yeah, so he’s in Bowman, which is in Lee County, Virginia. So maybe there, there’s a police department.”

“How big can Bowman be?”

“Not sure,” I answered, searching it on my phone at the same time I talked to him once I put him on speaker. “But it’s along US 58 right after Ewing.”

“How far is that from where you are?”

“Almost two hours.”

“What time is it there now, like four something?”

“Four thirty, yeah.”

“All right, so get to Bowman, make contact and get a room for the night. I need status twice more today.”

“Yessir.”

“How’s Doyle?”

“Sir?”

“He just got back, and I understand this last op went bad.”

It had? That was news. I didn’t usually ask how Ian’s missions went, because he wasn’t supposed to talk about them. But I was surprised that he hadn’t said a word to me about it in this case. “Oh, I dunno.”

“But he’s good?”

“He is.”

“All right. Give me status when you reach Bowman.”

“Yessir.”

Kage ended the call, and I looked up in time to see Walker pick up a phone. “You’re out of line, Marshal, and I’m gonna have your badge!”

Of course. During my minute-and-a-half conversation with Kage, Ian managed to piss off everyone in the room.

“You’ll be lucky to make it out of this with yours,” Ian snapped.

“Your ass is mine!”

Technically, his ass was spoken for.

Ian tipped his head and gave him a smirk. “Give it your best shot.”

Everyone was tense, no one moved, and I stood and waited as Walker called the sheriff.

“Sir, I have Deputy Marshal Doyle in front of—” Walker stopped and listened. “Supervisory Deputy?”

Uh-oh.

“I don’t know what he—” Again Walker was interrupted. “He wasn’t listed as a federal—”

I moved up beside Ian. “It’s two hours.”

“Yeah,” he grumbled, not taking his eyes off the deputy on the phone in front of him. “Which is nothing, but still, this is stupid.”

I coughed. “So our boss says that you had a rough op this last time out.”

“They’re all the same.”

“What did you do?” I asked softly.

“Extraction.”

“Did everybody come home?”

He coughed. “No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We saved our target; we accomplished our objective,” he said automatically, but the muscles in his right cheek were doing the
ticking
thing they did when he was tense, and his brows furrowed.

“What happened?” I gently pried.

“The intel was bad, and we got dropped into something bigger than we expected.”

I put a hand on his back. “Will the guy who delivered bad intel get in trouble?”

“That guy’s dead.”

Jesus.

“Ian?”

He shook his head slightly to shut me up as he took a step forward. Walker had hung up the phone.

“The sheriff says that we can put both you and your partner up here, on the department, while we retrieve Mr. Ford from the Bowman Police Department.”

“No thanks,” Ian said snidely. “We’ll retrieve him ourselves. God knows how long it would take if we wait on you.”

Walker’s jaw muscles clenched, as did those in his neck. He
so
wanted to run Ian over with his car. The animosity was transparent.

“We’ll be going,” I said gently.

“We’re at your disposal, should you need us,” Walker said, obviously having been charged with repeating the statement.

Ian scoffed, turning to leave. “Yeah, like that’ll happen. I’d be better off with mall cops and security guards.”

When I closed the door, I heard something shatter against the wall. “Your interpersonal skills are fantastic,” I mentioned for perhaps the hundredth time in our partnership. He could have turned Gandhi into an ax-wielding psychopath.

He grunted, and when we were in the car, he looked at me.

“What?”

“It was a bad op, but I’ve been on even more fucked-up ones that have ended way worse.”

“Okay.”

“But what I hate now is, at the end, when it’s done, I can’t immediately come home.”

“You have to be debriefed, right?”

“I mean after that.”

“You don’t just get on a plane?”

“No, we have to wait for orders to come through.”

“And you don’t like that, the waiting.”

“No. I don’t.”

“How come?”

“That should be obvious,” he said gruffly, starting the car.

“Tell me.”

“Why you think?”

“I’d rather not guess.”

“My home,” he said curtly, “the job, stuff like that.”

“Chickie,” I offered playfully.

“And others.”

“Others?”

“Yeah,” he said sarcastically, “other annoying people who know better than to fish but do it anyway.”

I was very pleased with him and chuckled while I checked my phone.

W
E
DROVE
in silence except for the music on my phone. He never cared what I played which was lucky since my taste could nicely be called eclectic.

“US 23 North to Virginia,” I said, getting drowsy. It was warm in the car, the heat on since it was only 28 degrees outside. “We should stop and get some Mountain Dew or something.”

“Take off your coat.”

It was a good idea. After mine was off, I helped him with his.

“So tell me why Drake Ford is going into WITSEC,” Ian said abruptly.

“Because he saw Christopher Fisher try and burn up Safiro Olivera in an abandoned building in Gatlinburg six months ago.”

“Okay.”

“Apparently Ford and his boyfriend, Cabot Jenner, were running away from home at the time of the incident, and when Ford went out to get something for them to eat, he saw a man carrying what he thought was another man over his shoulder, into a building.”

He glanced over at me. “Are you serious?”

“I can’t make this shit up.”

“Okay, so Ford, he sees something weird, follows this guy Fisher, who happens to be in the middle of committing a murder.”

“Cleaning up,” I corrected. “Fisher is in disposal, not killing. But yeah, pretty much.”

“What an idiot.”

“Who? Fisher or Ford?”

“Both, but Ford more so.”

I chuckled.

“So what’d he see, exactly?”

“He saw Fisher spread out the body of Safiro Olivera, douse it with what he thought was lighter fluid, and then walk away.”

“Walk away?”

“Yeah, Fisher was setting up blasting caps throughout the house with trace amounts of C4.”

“How is that arson, then, and not an explosion?”

“That’s how they know this guy’s an arsonist, it’s his signature. First, there’s a small explosion inside the building, and that ends up triggering a four-alarm fire.”

“Okay. So he leaves, and our boy gets on the phone and calls the police.”

“Right.”

“And they arrive and catch this guy in the act before he actually gets a chance to start the fire?”

“You’re very good at this game.”

“Shut up,” he grumbled and then pointed at the side of the road. “And what the hell is with all the gigantic-ass crosses along the highway?”