Tied Up in Knots (11 page)

His head shake was so slight I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking closely.

“Talk to me.”

He made a noise of disgust. “I’m not proud of it, and they’re not either. I wouldn’t even go, but—Eddie… he’s the one who insisted they go back, even though he didn’t want to.”

“Go back?”

“For me,” he sighed. “Yeah.”

“Where did they leave you?”

“In Musa Qal’ah.”

“Where the hell is that?”

“It’s in Afghanistan, in the Helmand Province.”

I twisted in the seat, angling my body so I could see his face. “Look at me.”

He turned his head.

“Explain from the beginning.”

“I can’t right now,” he said, indicating the driver with a tip of his head. “But I will.”

“I really need you to.”

All I got was another nod of agreement.

AT THE
church we took our seats toward the back, and since we were the only ones in the row, we didn’t end up speaking to anyone. There weren’t a lot of people there, which made the space—even though beautiful inside—seem cavernous and cold. I was betting normal Mass on any given Sunday was a much warmer affair.

After the service we waited as the pallbearers carried the coffin outside to the hearse before following the other mourners. On the steps both of us shook hands with the priest, and then Ian was faced with his fallen comrade’s wife. Whatever he was expecting, from the stricken look on his face when she lunged at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him tight wasn’t it.

“Ohmygod, Ian, you came!” she wailed, crying all over him. “Sherri said she e-mailed you, but I wasn’t sure you would come.”

He was stiff; he didn’t enfold her like he did Aruna when he hugged her or even like the last girlfriend he had. He gave her a pat before he put his hands on her forearms and gently but firmly uncoiled her from him.

When she stepped back, another woman was there, in his space, hugging him.

“I knew you’d come. You were always better than all the rest of them.”

He didn’t have to peel the second woman off him. She moved back quickly and looked around him to me.

“This is my partner, Miro Jones. We’re both marshals,” he explained to the women, hand on my shoulder, drawing me forward. “M, this is Rose Laird, Eddie’s wife, and her sister, Sherri Arbolita.”

Each of them smiled for me as best they could with puffy red eyes. I shook both their hands, and then a woman introduced as Rose’s mother, Janice, appeared, happy to meet me and Ian and insistent that we follow them to the cemetery and on to the house.

Ian cleared his throat as soon as she walked away, heading toward the limousine that would follow first behind the hearse. “I don’t think so, huh, Rosie,” he said gently, his hand on the small of my back. “I just wanted to pay my respects to Eddie, but they don’t want me here, and I don’t wanna make a scene.”

He glanced toward the hearse as he spoke, and when I turned, I saw ten men standing around, all in the same uniform as he was, down to the dress coats. The only noticeable difference was the color of the beret: Ian’s green, everybody else’s black.

“You know he talked about you all the time, Ian,” Rose said, stepping in close, taking his hand. “And he was so sorry that he hadn’t done more.”

“It was a long time ago,” he assured her, slipping his hand up over my shoulder. “And I wasn’t blameless. I fucked up bad.”

“Yes, but it was a personal thing that they made business—or what that amounted to,” she said with a catch in her voice, glancing at me. “At least that’s what Eddie told me.”

“Yeah, well—” Ian took a breath. “—still. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“But—”

“I just wanted to say good-bye to Eddie and tell you how sorry I am.”

Her eyes welled up with tears.

“Listen,” Sherri began, taking hold of Ian’s bicep. “Rose really wants you to—”

“Doyle.”

We turned to see a man standing there, one step down, smoking a cigarette and looking up at him. He was tall—six three, I was guessing—all muscle, no neck, with a blond buzz-cut and small dishwater-blue eyes. I could only imagine how many times a nose had to be broken to have that many bumps.

“Odell,” Ian replied, and I heard the bite in his tone.

He turned his head, blew the smoke away before crushing the butt on the step. His gaze locked with Ian’s a moment before he offered his hand.

Ian shook quickly, and the grip wasn’t warm, not like when he met Barrett the night before and held on and gripped his shoulder.

“Come by the house after the cemetery. Greta and her mom are cooking, so you know that’s gonna be good.”

Ian squinted at him.

Odell cleared his throat. “And the major needs a word.”

“What does Delaney need with me?”

“The fuck do I know. He just said whoever saw you first needed to make sure you showed up at Eddie’s place.”

Shifting on his feet, Ian bumped me with his shoulder. “We’ll have to call a cab and—”

“Nah, man, you can ride with me and Bates. We’ve got room for you and”—he tipped his head at me—“your friend.”

“Miro.” Ian breathed out my name. “This is Sergeant First Class Pete Odell. Odell, this is my partner, Deputy United States Marshal Miro Jones.”

We shook fast, his gloved hand in mine, and then it was done and he was back to dissecting Ian.

“Nice flash,” he said in an odd, strangely menacing way, like a dare and a put-down all together.

“Some of our forces are more special than others.”

Odell tipped his head at the beret on Ian’s head. “The beret says it all, right?”

“I would hope so.”

I hated the modulated flat tone Ian was using because it was so alien, so not the passionate man I knew and loved.

“You followed through on the other, too, huh.” Odell smirked, the condescension crystal clear in his tone when he spoke. “Did the whole marshal thing.”

Ian nodded.

“You in the Reserve now?”

“I am.”

It was not the most stimulating conversation I’d ever heard, but when you were talking around the elephant, it was difficult to think of what to say.

“All right,” Odell wrapped up, leaning in to kiss Rose’s cheek. “We’ll see you at the cemetery, and then we’ll all follow you home.”

Rose nodded and then she and her sister rejoined the priest, who was glaring at Odell.

“What’s with him?” he snapped.

“You put a cigarette out on the steps of his church,” Ian responded dryly. “He probably thinks you were raised by wolves.”

The glare Odell gave Ian should have been scary, but he grinned after a moment to take away some of the obvious hatred.

Bending down, Ian picked up the crushed butt and told the priest he’d take care of it.

“Thank you, my son.”

“You always were a suck-up, Doyle.”

“You’re just mad ’cause you’re going to hell,” Ian responded, his voice flat, emotionless.

“Just come on,” he muttered and turned to walk down the front steps.

Ian grabbed my arm and yanked, so I didn’t even have time to say anything before we were following him.

Odell had mentioned a Bates, so I assumed that was who was driving the white Chevy Tahoe he led us to.

“He’s a marshal now, and this is his partner,” Odell said, disgust in his voice as he got into the SUV.

“Oh, Doyle,” the man said, and he, unlike Odell, seemed happy to see Ian. “You look good. Special Forces agrees with you, I see.”

He was handsome himself, probably my own almost six feet, with dark-brown eyes with lines that said he laughed often.

“Hello, partner,” he said, offering me his hand over his shoulder. “Tyler Bates.”

With his name now confirmed, I shook quickly. “Miro Jones.”

“Good to meet you.”

And that was it until we got to Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum at the intersection of Clark Street and Irving Park.

The drive was oppressive, the day outside gray and cold and wet, inside only the sound of the heater running. I wanted to touch Ian, to comfort and reassure him, but he was leaning against the door, looking out the window, and didn’t seem to need the closeness.

“How the hell is Rose affording this?” Odell asked Bates, looking around and giving a low whistle.

“The family has plots here,” Ian answered, and Odell turned in the seat to look at him.

“How the hell you know that?”

Ian shrugged. “He told me a long time ago. His mother wanted him here with the family, but there was no place for Rose.”

“That’s shitty,” Bates chimed in.

“I’m betting Rose didn’t have a say,” Ian concluded.

“Man, I knew we should’ve skipped this and gone right to the house,” Odell groused.

“We’re pallbearers, man,” Bates reminded him. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Of course, since this was the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we got five inches the night before. It was cold, trudging to the graveside, and the crunch of the packed snow was loud as everyone moved off the shoveled and salted paths to the white-covered grass. Outdoor carpet had been laid down and a canopy put up along with chairs, but there were only so many and the rest of us ended up fanning out.

I watched the soldiers take the flag off the coffin, fold it, and present it to Rose before an older woman I assumed to be Eddie’s mother, as I hadn’t seen her before, took it from her. Rose’s face crumpled and she leaned sideways against Janice, who shot the other woman a murderous glance as her daughter fell apart in her arms.

“Aww, man,” Bates groaned, his gaze meeting mine.

“Gonna be a long day for Rose,” I sympathized, the whole scene almost more than I could bear. It was a graphic reminder of my greatest fear—Ian lying in a coffin while I clutched a folded flag to my chest.

“Amen,” he returned as the priest began addressing the crowd.

FUNERALS WERE
exhausting. I had no idea until I went to my first one when I was twenty-two. One of the guys I was in the police academy with was hit by a drunk driver while crossing the street and died instantly. I barely knew him, but the entire class went to the funeral. When I got home, I’d passed out on my couch and only woke up when Aruna arrived a full ten hours later with food.

She was a good friend, always thinking of me, and as I stood in the cold in the cemetery it hit me that I should call and tell her. I tried to always reach out when I thought of telling someone something, instead of waiting and letting the surge of whatever kind of feeling it was, good or bad, go to waste. Sometimes that wasn’t so great when I was pissed. I vomited out things I should have never said, but when I was feeling grateful, it normally worked out well.

“What?” Aruna greeted after answering on the fourth ring.

Except, of course, when I was calling one of my snarky as hell friends. “Thanks for always bringing me food. You’re a nice person.”

There was a pause. “Why’re you drinking so early in the afternoon?”

“I’m not drinking, you witch. I’m at a funeral and I’m feeling sentimental.”

“Well, knock it off. I got custody of you when everyone else moved away, so I’m contractually obligated to take care of you, and by proxy, Ian. The others send me support payments every month.”

“Jesus, the mouth on you.”

“That’s what Liam says,” she said suggestively.

I hung up because, Christ, that was TMI, and she texted me lips and a heart and the poop emoji. She seriously needed medication.

After I got off the phone with Aruna, I was surprised to get a text message from Mike Ryan, one of the members of my and Ian’s team. The picture I got was of a huge fruit basket taking up most of the space on my desk.

“They’re getting bigger,” Ryan said when he answered his phone on the first ring.

“I told her to stop sending them,” I sighed, smiling as I thought of Oscar Guzman’s mother. “But she won’t.”

“You and Doyle saved her kids from a sex trafficking ring. How’re you not drowning in kiwi for the rest of your fuckin’ life?”

“Is there really kiwi in there?” I asked.

“Oh hell yeah. There’s mango and papaya and—what the fuck is this?”

“Lychee,” I heard his partner, Jack Dorsey, answer in his booming baritone.

“Lychee,” Ryan repeated. “Whatever the fuck that is.”

“Tell him there’s starfruit in there, too, and Valencia oranges that came straight from Spain without stopping at the local farmer’s market.”

“I’ll send her another e-mail,” I told Ryan. “I bet it costs a mint to send that to us every month. Maybe I can get her to go to once every three or six.”

“I’m taking the peaches for my mother so she can make pie. She’s gonna lose her shit when she sees these in the middle of fall.”

“I want some. They’re my peaches,” I said, pulling my cashmere scarf tighter around my neck as I stood on the sidewalk watching Ian shake the hands of more and more people. Rose had wanted to introduce Ian around, so when she slipped her arm into the crook of his, I mouthed that I’d wait for him and got out of the way.

“You realize this is gonna be something else that we’ll have to explain to the new guys we get in here,” Ryan said offhandedly.

“What’re you talking about?”

“You heard Kage a while back, we need a couple more teams of guys.”

“And you’re worried about what, filling ’em in?”

“Yeah man, it’s a pain in the ass having to tell the new guys about all the inside jokes and the way we do things and everything else. He needs to just leave it alone.”

“Because you fear change,” I scoffed. “That’s a great reason not to work at full capacity.”

“You hate it too,” he accused me. “Remember Littlefield and Posner? They didn’t work out and they were supposed to be good.”

“That’s not fair.”

“The hell it’s not.”

“Littlefield got shot and decided he never wanted to be shot again. You can’t fault him for that. At least he was honest.”

“And Posner?” He said snidely.

“Oh come on,” I said like it was obvious.

“What? It wasn’t even that big of a jump. I went and looked at it.”

Of course he had. “Not big to you.”

“Not big to anybody!”

Poor guy.