Fit to Be Tied [Marshals: 2] (31 page)

A
S
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.

It was overkill, and I was humbled. While I knew it wasn’t just me who Kage had done it for, I was the one he looked at every day, so at the moment, it was feeling damn personal.

The only way Dr. Craig Hartley was getting out of that supermax prison was in a body bag. I’d been there once, invited to tour the facility, and the utter isolation once you were inside the soundproof cells, how easy it would be to lose all track of time, the immovable concrete furnishings, timers on the lights and the sink and shower, an automated existence that stripped away all your humanity… I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It had been hard to breathe. I couldn’t think of a worse fate for the egomaniac Hartley was. There would be no one to worship him; in fact, there would be no one at all. It was exactly what he deserved. To not be studied or asked for help, instead put in a box and forgotten.

I was mute, so struck by the level of endgame that Kage, without putting a needle in Hartley’s arm, had achieved. He’d killed my bogeyman. Hartley could never again haunt my dreams. It was completely, and utterly, done.

“I wasn’t saying he should be remanded back to Elgin,” Oliver shouted, done in by my boss’s smirk and seeming boredom, “but another prison where we would still have access to him for purposes of—”

“I wanted him stuffed in a hole twenty-three hours a day, and guess what? Now he is.”

“You’re being completely shortsighted! Hartley has never been the kind of prisoner who needs that!” Oliver choked, clearly incensed even as he took a quick breath.

“Oh no? I have a marshal who would disagree with you. I have people who lost their parents who would also. I have nineteen women who lost their lives, and lastly, I have a little girl who was kidnapped, and her parents had to live through that.”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ve had someone I love kidnapped. It’s a nightmare I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

I was struck by Kage’s voice when he said that last part, how it rose slightly, got louder, and I wanted to ask what had happened even as I knew it was not my place to ever even broach the topic. It was clear that remembering the incident still hurt, and for a moment, I wished we were closer so I could offer him some word of comfort.

“You’re putting emotion into a situation that—”

“No,” Kage said flatly. “I asked my boss for ADX Florence for Craig Hartley and it’s done. His paperwork was signed four hours ago, and tomorrow he’ll be transferred. If you want to see him from now on, you’ll have to put in a request six months prior.”

“Amazing how quickly things can work when we want something, isn’t it, Chief Deputy?” Oliver said, his tone sharp and accusatory, the perspiration on his forehead and upper lip pronounced.

Kage could not have appeared any more unimpressed if he tried.

“What about the people Hartley’s saved by helping us with our investigations over the years since his incarceration? It seems to me you’ve conveniently forgotten all that.”

“The risk doesn’t outweigh the reward,” Kage answered mildly, nothing Oliver was saying doing anything to change his mind. “And my boss—and yours, I might add—agree with me.”

I was the one they had sent to talk to Hartley whenever they wanted his insight, so I actually understood what Oliver was saying. The doctor had saved lives by steering law enforcement in the right direction at times, and the fact that a lot of the people perpetrating the crimes were from his legion of fans who contacted him, who he could name, didn’t hurt either. So I got where Oliver was coming from, that one marshal’s life wasn’t worth what could be gained by continual access to Hartley. But I didn’t get to decide. My boss did, and apparently, to him, the scale tipped in my favor.

Oliver moved quickly then, apparently pushed to the breaking point, and I could tell when he drilled two fingers into Kage’s collarbone that he was far more upset than I was even giving him credit for since he took his life in his hands by putting his on my boss.

“You’ve always been a self-righteous asshole, even when you were a police detective!”

It was interesting to watch Kage simply stand there and wait until Oliver realized what he’d done and let his hand drop. I knew Kage wouldn’t report Oliver; it wasn’t his way. But Oliver would know for the rest of his life that he’d lost his shit in front of witnesses.

“Will that be all?” Kage asked like he could give a fuck.

Oliver muttered something under his breath and the FBI agents filed out of the room. None of us said a word, and when they were gone, Kage closed the door behind them and turned his steely slate blue stare on me.

“You won’t have to worry about Hartley again. Now that we have him, we’re not going to let him go. His following, such as it is, will no longer have any access to him. Everything will settle down now, Jones.”

“Yes sir,” I answered, still shaken by what he’d done, and at the finite end I was suddenly facing. The surge of overwhelming emotion made it hard to speak.

I was safe.

Ian was safe.

We were all safe because of Sam Kage.

I exhaled all of it, the prickling disquiet of life balanced on the edge of a razor, the burden of uncertainty and dread.

I inhaled relief and calm and most of all, gratitude for my life, because it belonged to me again. It took great concentration not to throw myself into Ian’s arms.

“Jones.”

“Sir?”

“Take your laptop home with you and file the reports from there. Since you missed having today off, take Monday, and you and Kohn, too, Doyle. All three of you take Monday. I won’t call unless I need you.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, standing up. “For all of it, for everything.”

“Yessir, thank you,” Ian said roughly, rising beside me.

All five of us were on our feet as he walked out the door without saying another word.

Dorsey nodded before turning to me. “Damn, Jones, boss man dropped Hartley in hell for you. ADX, that’s some serious shit.”

“Yeah,” I agreed after a moment, glancing around the room, “but he would’ve done it for any of us.”

Kage was built strong and solid, a little scary, and a lot protective, which was why we’d all take a bullet for him, no questions asked.

“It’s what he does.”

No one could argue that fact with me.

O
NCE
WE
were home, I wanted to talk to Ian, but he made me go upstairs and take a shower while he made us something to eat. Since he was finally talking to me, even though all he was doing was issuing orders, I didn’t stand there and debate but instead simply did as I was told.

It was difficult—no water on my cast, no water on either of the new wounds where the bullets grazed me—but I managed to wash all the important parts and even get my hair back to looking like I had a messy top cut and not like I’d just rolled out of bed in the morning. I hadn’t been using any product lately. I hadn’t cared about anything, but now I felt like me again because it was all finally over. I had kicked Hartley’s ass and the experience fixed what was broken. I’d been off balance, and I’d been knocked back into alignment. I felt like dancing. Or at least having dessert before dinner.

Everything had survived the chaos of the day, even the cupcakes, so I was surprised when I came back downstairs in flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt to see them shoved on top of the toaster while he fried the steaks.

“Why are the cupcakes ostracized?”

He glanced over at me, scowled, and then returned to his dinner prep.

“Hello?” I said, walking over to the counter and getting the container. The four cupcakes were all beautifully frosted, and I couldn’t wait to eat one.

“Aruna, as usual, is thrilled to have Chickie spend the night,” he muttered.

I shrugged, peeling the wrapper away from the sides of the confection. “She loves him, they all do. It’s no big deal.”

“Yeah, so I was thinking that I really need to decide what’s best for him.”