Twisted and Tied

by Mary Calmes

  I scrambled to sit up as the van lurched forward and saw—

  Craig Hartley.

  Immaculately put together as always. As usual he looked like he was styled for a magazine shoot, from the three-hundred-dollar haircut to the Carlos Santos brown wingtip boots. The Soho-fit herringbone navy wool suit was stunning on him, setting off his thick blond hair, styled in a side part that looked particularly good. Funny, his boots were the exact ones I’d been shopping for just weeks before. We had always shared a similar taste in footwear.

  Even after how many times our paths had crossed over the years, it was still a surprise to see him. I always expected each time to be the last.

  “Nice gun,” I commented, swallowing hard, tipping my head at the automatic rifle.

  “Oh, thank you,” he said, smiling fondly. “I found that I needed more bullets than the Desert Eagle afforded me, and I’m not a terribly good shot, but with this,” he said, lifting the Heckler & Koch MP7A1 I’d taken off more than one would-be gangster, “I don’t have to be.”

  “It probably scares people too.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And you know how much I hate raising my voice.”

  “I do.”

  “Speaking of ‘I do,’ I understand you got married.”

  A chill ran down my back, almost jolting as sharp and sudden as it was. It was strange. I wasn’t scared of him in regards to me, but I didn’t want him knowing anything personal about Ian. That made no sense because Ian and I were entwined—we were one entity—but having Hartley “see” Ian in relation to me was unsettling. “Yes.”

  “Well, congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” I sighed, leaning back against the wall of the van and staring at him. “Nice shoes,” I said, as was our usual.

  “Thank you. You’re the only one in law enforcement who appreciates these things.”

  I doubted that. But no one else got the opportunity to give him compliments before he killed them.

  A topcoat, scarf, and hat lay on the seat beside him, and it occurred to me I was looking at traveling clothes.

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  He smiled, and the laugh lines around his eyes crinkled. I wouldn’t have thought serial killers would have those, but Hartley did. “I am, and I wanted to say goodbye.”

  I glanced around and saw Kelson in the passenger seat and another man driving. “You could just call next time.”

  He nodded. “I would have, but I wanted to see you before I left.”

  I jumped at a kernel of hope. “Not planning to come back?”

  “Perhaps not,” he sighed, yawning but never taking the gun off me. “I haven’t decided yet. I’m planning to travel through Europe for the foreseeable future.”

  I nodded.

  “You wouldn’t want to come along, would you?”

  “No,” I said gently. “Just got married, as you said, but I do appreciate the offer.”

  “I know you do.” He sighed and leaned forward, surveying, taking my measure. “I could insist you accompany me.”

  “Yeah, but you won’t,” I said with certainty.

  He grunted as he sat back. “You’re right, I won’t.”

  It hit me then, how much the two of us had changed.

  Over the years I’d been told by several reporters, members of law enforcement, and even prison staff that intensity simmered between Hartley and me. We had a thing, a way of talking, communicating, that people found riveting, even flirty, probably because they didn’t understand that to have a personal relationship with Craig Hartley meant giving up a piece of yourself—in my case, literally—to him. A brilliant man, he could peel layers away so expertly even as he answered benign questions about himself that before you knew it, you were naked in front of him, turned inside out.

  I’d seen so many people—from followers, worshippers really, to badass FBI agents—crumble under his scrutiny. I’d always stood apart, even from the beginning, because we started out in a place where he owed me. I’d saved his life. I’d put my body between him and death, and as I’d sprawled there on top of him, bleeding to death, he pressed his hand to the wound he himself had made and whispered soft words of comfort into my ear. We were connected from then on.

  But now, after our last collision… confrontation… communion… it was different. We were different. We no longer circled each other, trying to pick apart the other’s weaknesses, looking for a chinks in the armor. We simply sat there, not quite like friends—we could never be that—but something close.

  “Miro.”

  “Sorry,” I said absently, again astounded that I let my mind wander in his presence. Not many others could, and live.

  “No, it’s fine, nice, actually,” he said with a trace of a smile. “But I have something to ask.”

  “What’s that?” I exhaled sharply. I really was calm, sitting there comfortably with my wrists resting on my knees as I rode in a van with him holding a gun on me. When had this become… normal?

  “Did Kelson try to shoot you yesterday?”

  “No,” I lied. “Why would he?”

  “Because like everyone else I know, he’s jealous of you.”

  All of them just as insane as he was, because no one in their right mind wanted to be Hartley’s favorite. “It’s how I knew he was a fake.”

  “Oh?”

  I realized I’d said too much and almost choked. I spoke without thought because somewhere in all the time spent in his presence, I’d lost my natural fear of him. It was how a fly forgot about the spiderweb, or the mongoose got a bit too cocky, or a pigeon thought the hawk wouldn’t even see it from way over there.

  I watched a documentary once about orcas and how they would play with young seals for weeks close to the shore to get them all good and lulled into a false sense of security before one day they just ate them. It was diabolical. The whales never saw the seals as friends, and I thought that, beyond surprise, the seals must have had their feelings hurt as they were being eaten alive.

  It felt like that.

  As Hartley sat there like a circling orca waiting to eat me, I thought, how stupid am I? Letting my guard down was idiotic. How had I ever been soothed into trusting Hartley?

  It all went back to the last time I’d seen him and had everything to do with my dog.

  All of my fear had been expelled because of Chickie.

  He’d saved my dog.

  How were you supposed to be scared of someone who saved your dog?

  “Miro?” he prodded gently.

  “I— When his boss said he knew you best… I was suspicious.”

  “Suspicious or jealous?”

  “Jealous?” Had I heard him right?

  “That someone was claiming to be closer to me than you.”

  “But there are lots of people, I’m sure.”

  “I’ve outgrown so many.”

  “Well, he was talkin’ out of his ass,” I said, looking past him at Kelson when I said it.

  “I was not!” he roared, which got a slow pan from Hartley.

  Instant silence as Kelson swung around to look out the front window.

  “How he was trying to blame that mess on you was ridiculous,” I continued.

  “He told me you’d believe it, but I knew better.”

  I shrugged. “You know I pay attention.”

  “Yes, I do,” he practically purred.

  I took a breath. “So what’s the plan now?”

  “I have no idea,” he answered, his smile serene, almost bored. No, really bored.

  “Holy shit,” I blurted. What I thought I was hearing, seeing, was actually God’s honest truth. He all but sighed like an angsty teen with nothing to do on a Saturday night. I had seen hundreds of emotions cross the man’s face over the years, but this was brand-new, and I was stunned. How in the world did a serial killer wake up in the morning and find themselves filled with ennui? How was that even possible?

  He startled. “What?”

  “You’re bored,”
I announced, matter-of-fact. “Jesus Christ.”

  He gave me a dismissive wave.

  “You are. That’s why you’re leaving. That’s why you haven’t killed anybody in—how long’s it been?”

  He had to think. “Since whatshisname in your house, the one who was passed out.”

  “When you killed him, that was more to prove a point than anything else.”

  “It was.” He yawned. “True.”

  “You know, for fun, you might let the FBI catch you. Then you can fuck with the profilers, play mind games with them.”

  He sighed. “I actually thought about that, but when you’re captured, there’s always so much manhandling, and people are so rough. I just want to be spoken to nicely, treated like a gentleman, not like a common criminal.”

  He really was ten kinds of crazy.

  “And the supermax was so boring, you really have no idea.”

  “You realize they’re made like that on purpose.”

  He made a noise of agreement.

  “What if I stayed with you the whole time until you were incarcerated, and what if the supermax was off the table?”

  “Well, for one, you would have to go home eventually, and for two, you can’t say for certain where I’ll go, and now this Ryerson thinks I’ve done something to him personally, and that’s going to be—”

  “I can fix that,” I asserted, studying him. “I told him that wasn’t you, and I can let him know that it was Kelson who took his son.”

  He grimaced, unconvinced.

  “Your track record speaks for itself. It’s not like you to target anyone in law enforcement.”

  “Except you.”

  “Not because I was a cop and now a marshal, but because I saved your life.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Believe me, I can explain what happened.”

  “And you’d do that for me?”

  “It’s the truth,” I said, avoiding that trap.

  He pointed over his shoulder at Kelson. “Well, all I ever wanted was access to the FBI, which I had first with Wojno and then with Kelson.”

  “Right.”

  “But my interests have changed,” he said deliberately, flicking his pale blue eyes to mine, holding for a moment, and then dropping them. The action told me all I needed to know about Kelson’s life expectancy. He was one step from the grave.

  But Hartley would never kill him in the van. He wouldn’t want any splatter.

  “So you’re flying to Europe?” I asked for clarification.

  “Yes,” he said with an indulgent smile, and we both heard my question as I intended it, that he, no one else, was traveling. I couldn’t see the driver’s face, but he was good, whoever he was, because the van had not slowed once since I got in. Of course Stigler was wrong; they had taken me rather quickly past the safe zone she’d set up.

  “You know,” he said after only moments, “I do believe you’re the only person I’ve ever truly cared for.”

  “Such as that is,” I teased, but gently. Poking a viper was never a wise decision.

  “True,” he said, smiling fondly before turning to look over his shoulder out the front window.

  I could have rushed him, done something, but we’d developed a strange trust between us that I didn’t want to mess with. The idea of returning to a time when I feared what he would do to me was exhausting even to consider. In my life now, he was not one of my day-to-day concerns. I didn’t want to change that. I didn’t need the arrow back on me. I did need to check something, though.

  “I don’t want us to be on bad terms, but I also can’t have you hurting people, because then that’s on my head too.”

  “How?” he asked, turning back to me.

  “I’m responsible for what you do.”

  “Why? Because you won’t trade your life to stop me?”

  “You won’t kill me.”

  “If it’s me or you, you know I would. I only do not because you allow the charade of power.”

  “The whole ‘you holding a gun on me that I know you won’t fire’ thing.”

  “Unless, of course, you come at me with some kind of murderous intent.”

  “I have confinement intent,” I admitted and couldn’t help chuckling.

  “Yes,” he agreed, unable to keep from smiling in return. “But you know the rules, and we both play by them.”

  We did, it was true. I didn’t push; he offered me no real peril.

  “But see, I can’t have you out there killing people again.”

  He thought about that before saying, “I have no intention of killing anyone at the moment. I think it was a phase that ran its course, but I’ll make you a deal.”

  “G’head.”

  “If I get any new homicidal urges, I’ll call first and tell you where I am, and you can hop on a plane and try to stop me.”

  “From halfway around the world?”

  “This is your issue, not mine; don’t make it an annoyance simply because you don’t have a valid passport.”

  “I’m a federal marshal. Of course I have a passport.”

  “Well, then,” he contended like it was a done deal. “I’ll alert you, and you can come try to stop me. It will be just like old times.”

  “I’m going to put out a red notice on you, you know.”

  “Do what you feel you must.”

  “You don’t sweat Interpol, huh?”

  “Not ever, no.”

  “All right, so I have your word? No one dies unless you call me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay.”

  He held out his hand. “Let’s shake on it.”

  I rolled forward to my knees and stretched for his hand, not about to crawl over to him.

  His hand was warm and dry, and he wrapped his long, elegant fingers around my hand as he stared into my eyes. Unlike Kelson, Hartley’s eyes were clear, intent, and showed his happiness at having made a pact with me.

  I squeezed tight and would have let go, but he held on.

  “Whyever did you squeeze my hand?” he asked, lashes fluttering as he smiled, bemused.

  “I have no idea,” I sighed, shaking my head.

  “You know, I suspect this will be the last time we’ll talk, maybe ever.”

  “I would agree,” I said softly.

  The van stopped then, and he rose to slide open the door.

  I moved quickly, hopping out, and when I was standing on the side of the road, I looked up at him.

  He breathed in deeply. “Leaving Chicago is so odd. I never thought I would.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m glad I was able to see you.”

  “So am I,” I whispered, and I realized a part of me was happy because this, right here, was finally closure.

  “That’s it?” Kelson gasped, scrambling out of the van, charging up on me, his Glock 20 leveled at the center of my chest. “You’re just going to let him go?”

  “Of course,” Hartley replied smoothly but snidely, the disgust on his tongue and all over his face as he stared down Kelson. “I’m not a barbarian.”

  “But he’s an idiot, and he thinks he—”

  “He doesn’t think anything…. He knows,” Hartley corrected, turning to smile at me. “He’s my oldest friend.”

  “Friend.” Kelson heaved out the breath, and I saw in that instant, with those last four words, that Hartley had broken him.

  Completely, utterly, annihilated him.

  Kelson had been so clever. He’d planned, done everything to impress the man he so desperately wanted to be. The problem was, though, I’d gotten there first.

  It was simply a matter of timing.

  I was the one who saved him.

  I was the one who visited him when he was locked up in Elgin.

  I was the one who sat and listened for hours on end to his thoughts, to the why of what he’d done and became his witness—the voice in his head, he’d told me once—and eventually, after he saved my werewolf, a man I didn’t br
eak out in cold sweats over anymore.

  We weren’t friends, it wasn’t that, but we were… something. I’d have to figure out what at some point.

  But Kelson didn’t have the benefit of knowing our history and was instead hampered by his own jealousy and hatred and bitterness. What he thought would never matter more than what I did, and it was killing him. His face said everything. Where I couldn’t read him at all the day before, now I saw his intent clear as day as he squinted at me and pulled the trigger.

  I didn’t have time to yell. I didn’t think about Ian and how much he’d miss me. I didn’t see Aruna or Catherine, Janet or Min. I didn’t regret all the kids I wouldn’t be around to help, or even think if Redeker would pull his head out of his ass and tell Callahan that, fuck yeah, he wanted him too.

  Nothing went through my head except for the fact I was going to die with Hartley looking down at me after all. And somehow that wasn’t as bad as it once was.

  Something hit me hard and hurled me into the grass and mud on the side of the road. It had snowed the day before, and because it hadn’t been warm enough to melt, when I went down under what I abruptly recognized as a hundred and eighty pounds of Craig Hartley, my back hit the ice over snow, and it took every puff of air from my lungs.

  Stunned, shaken, I saw the pale sky, heard a high-pitched shrieking wail before the weight on my chest lifted and the sound of machine-gun fire filled the air in quick staccato bursts.

  Kelson screamed, and when I lifted only my head, I saw him lying on the same cold, hard, ice-covered ground I was splayed out on.

  Already my back was damp. The chill was seeping into my skin, sending a quick tremor through my frame as I gulped air and sat up. When I turned my head to the left… only then did I see Hartley.

  His mouth was open, and he was breathing, but it was labored, and in the next second I saw the reason. Blood staining his jacket over his heart.

  Scrambling sideways, I pressed both hands to his chest, pushing hard, which made him wince in pain.

  “Useless,” he husked as a tear rolled from his left eye down toward his ear.

  “The hell were you thinking?” I rasped, my voice, fractured, stilted, sounding odd, frightened and hollow.

  “Well,” he huffed, each syllable a labor. “I was thinking that no one is allowed to kill Miro Jones… but me.”