For the week after the interview at Petersen Consulting, Marshall refused to engage when Mary sniped at him. Along with sidestepping her every flame he also dropped all little acts of care. He quit bringing doughnuts and coffee. He casually forgot to bookmark websites of organizations that represented the people Mary offended. He only returned texts from her when explicitly business related. When Stan brought doughnuts, he went ahead and snagged the bear claw he normally left for Mary.
Marshall had deferred his decision about the job for two phone calls, but now a letter arrived spelling out an offer even more generous than mentioned in the interview. "We look forward to hearing from you," the letter closed. In corporate, this meant the ball was in his court. He just needed to make up his mind whether to leave the Marshal Service, his heritage and Mary for the greater possibilities of the unknown or to stay with what he knew.
Mary's voice heralding hot coffee made him jump. He was not ready to have a conversation with her, not about this.
"Half-caff triple capp heavy foam," she plunked the beverage on his desk. He almost burned his hand preventing a slosh. For a moment he was impressed: she paid enough attention to detail to know his customary drink order. He was also immediately on guard. Mary was not generous. Buying coffee was one of her classic good-cop build rapport moves.
The shock on his face registered with her a bit too fast. She was definitely fishing. "What? Can't a co-worker treat another coworker to a complicated coffee beverage?"
Co-worker. Three weeks ago she referred to him as "best friend." Oh yes, Mary suspected something.
"Not when the co-worker is you. You're not a treater." He saw the fighting expression cross her face, and immediately softened his words with a smile. "Not a criticism, just an observation."
Criticisms began bickering matches, and while he did not know the details yet, he knew the day ahead involved him, Mary and a long ride in a government-issue SUV.
She responded by asking for the money. He gave it to her, frowning. "You didn't tip."
"They poor coffee, they're not waiters." No, Mary was not a generous woman.
Just then Stan called them into the office. "Coming darling," Marshall answered. Stan was the only man he knew in law enforcement who could handle that type of ribbing. At five foot two, you don't get to a position like Stan's without knowing something about yourself that equips you to handle anything – even smartass remarks from your marshals.
Marshall hoped he might talk to Stan first about the job offer. But first he needed to make up his mind.
Marshall considered dropping the letter in a drawer – too obvious – or taking it with him into the meeting. He could easily cover it with the legal pad he used for notes. Instead, he left it out on his desk, underneath his phone message pad. The letter sat, innocuous – unless you were fishing.
Stan called Mary twice more before she joined them in the meeting. Marshall chose not to think about what that meant.
While all situations that crossed their paths held strange elements, this particular case felt weird from the get-go. As Stan explained about the witness they were transporting, Marshall felt the need to probe. "As what – her poolboy? Butler? Bullet holder?"
Mary's derisive laugh interrupted his train of thought, and Stan's.
After exchanging an alarmed look, Stan forged on. While all the details were covered, Marshall still had the nagging feeling that they all missed something essential.
As Mary snapped "Fine," and stalked out of the room, Marshall had a sneaking suspicion he knew the cause of today's antagonism.
"What's with the mood?" Stan asked him.
"I have no idea." Actually, he had a guess, but did not want to involve Stan. He quickly constructed a small answer, something that would make Stan feel like he fixed it. "Oh, wait, she wanted me to get four bucks for the coffee."
Stan gave him five. "She likes it when she comes out ahead." This was code: I'm glad she's mad at you and not me.
Normally Marshall enjoyed driving trips with his partner. He and Mary would talk protocol, and then descend into some discussion where Mary might rant about the condition of the world and human misery or he might edify her on why concrete made superior roads. Unfortunately, Mary packed up her mood and brought it as a third wheel on their trip.
She popped her headphones in, ignoring his "Hey." He decided not to share his reservations about the witness, since she obviously didn't care to listen. Besides, it was a routine transfer and ultimately up to his assigned marshals to figure out the guy's real story. He mentally added Mary's behavior to his list of reasons to leave, and drove on to Perryville in silence.
The wait at the prison took three times as long as normal, and with Mary's alternate pouting and snapping, it felt to Marshall like hours. He got himself a cup of godawful prison coffee. He finally spoke because the wait and Mary were both getting to him. "Obviously you want me to go on a fishing expedition to find out what the hell's bothering you, but I'm not going to play that." He meant it. "So when you decide to tell me what's bothering you, you tell me. Fair enough?" Mary continued to pout like a sullen child. He leaned into her, just as he sometimes did with his teenage witnesses. "Fair enough?"
She averted her eyes. "Don't worry about it. In a couple months we won't even be working together."
"You read my letter." She failed his test. He only expected to feel disappointment, but instead he felt a white hot bolt of anger. Part of that anger was directed at his own lack of surprise.
A slow volcano of words began pushing their way from within him, but he was forced to stop and swallow them at the abrupt delivery of Horst.
"Hey watch it pervoid, I don't swing that way." Great, a smartass witness. Marshall casually pinched Horst's trachea. "I can't believe you read my mail."
"What you don't know is that I always read your mail," Mary snapped back. Actually, he did know. Or, more precisely, he knew now.
As Mary insisted on the blood sugar numbers, Marshall sniped back at her. "She needs to know everything about everybody." He could only maintain maturity for so long, and Mary brought out his more Id-like instincts.
"So were you ever gonna tell me or was I going to find out when you just stopped showing up for work?"
Like you'd notice. "Actually I was going to write a letter and mail it to myself. That way I'd be sure you got the news." Especially since she had no respect for him, his privacy or what he might want for his own career or God forbid, happiness.
"Please don't act like you're the injured party here. At least show me that much respect."
Marshall was almost flattened by his own disbelief. "Respect? When have you ever shown me respect? Or anyone else, for that matter?"
"Well you'd get respect if you ever actually did something to earn it."
Unbelievable. "And you wonder why I didn't share my future plans with you."
"No, what I wonder is why I put up with your insipid running commentary for the past three years." Three years of running errands, overnights, watching her back, running personal errands when her car broke down, helping her fend off her family – all without a please or thank you from her. Nice to feel appreciated.
And Marshall could swear Horst was trying to exacerbate their fight.
"Give me the keys, I'm driving," Mary demanded.
"Try not to drive like you stole it," he snapped. He made the dig just because any comparisons to Brandi really pissed Mary off.
They were only three miles from the prison when Horst began whining for the bathroom. "I'm diabetic, that's just the way it is," he'd complained.
After his fifth whine, Mary lost patience. "Hold it in or hang it out the window, because we're not stopping!" Marshall could tell that Mary shared his mistrust of this witness. At least on that much, they were in sync. Neither one felt bad about letting their personal fallout land on this guy because something about him was amiss.
"You know, your job transfer's really starting to make sense to me." Marshall recognized Horst's attempt at manipulative identification. But he still took pleasure in the way it made Mary's pinched expression contract further.
When Horst began talking up Lola's services on behalf of the lanky marshal's career, Marshall was only too happy to let him continue for Mary to hear. Everything Horst said thoroughly communicated his displeasure to Mary, and it let Mary develop her own suspicions about the guy.
The couple that dropped the bottle under the SUV also seemed off to him. The way the bottle fell, and the way the couple looked so carefully average struck him as wrong.
As he waited at the SUV for Mary to return with Horst, he mentally phrased his acceptance of the position at Petersen. He likely had to give sixty days notice, and the new job paid enough he could hire a cleaning service for his apartment.
He suppressed a snicker to himself when Mary slammed Horst into the back of the SUV. This guy was their least favorite witness of all: the kind that acted like he was getting away with something.
The resentful silence as they drove away from the station eventually got to him. "I was going to tell you."
"Really? When?"
"I just wanted to – "
"I'm checking in with Stan." Mary would do anything except actually listen to his side.
He bit his tongue to prevent himself from asking her why the hell she cared. He suspected the answer would only anger him more. "Don't bother. The mountains are full of iron. Wreaks havoc with the radio signals."
"God damn it."
"It's no big deal. We're right on schedule." I might change my job, I'm not joining the Foreign Legion.
"No," her tone changed. "Look at the dash."
"Better pull over before the engine seizes"
Of course, Horst bitched about it, keeping both their minds not just on their hostilities but on how Horst seemed determined to make the situation between them worse.
Marshall knew very little about actual auto mechanics. He could change oil himself on a car made after 1990, and all marshals had to know where a distributor cap and spark plugs were located since it was a common way of disabling a target's ability to escape. His role beneath the hood beyond that was purely ceremonial. He volunteered mostly because it felt good to get at least that much space between himself and Mary.
"See anything?" Of course she expected him to magically know.
"Hang on. It's complicated under here!" Nothing showed any obvious damage. A few more ungenerous thoughts about Mary crossed Marshall's mind as he checked the undercarriage again.
The radiator was leaking, and the hose break looked strange. He took a cloth and wiped along the leak, pausing for a sniff. It smelled acrid, a burning sourness that made him choke a little.
The involuntary response to the smell was why Marshall didn't hear Mary's warning. His mind had already wandered into a connective problem-solving state, so he just did not register the man and woman from the gas station firing on him. He was trying to figure out what Mary said, and then he found himself flat on his back.
Marshall operated on instinct. The adrenaline surge at the sound of continued gunfire pushed him back to his feet, and he felt a fleeting appreciation for Mary's quick thinking in using the SUV as his cover. When the shooters retreated, he felt relief that both he and Mary were standing. It was fortunate, in a way – an ice breaker. "Well that was –" Static appeared before his eyes, as though someone switched the relic TV station channel on the entire world.
He came to with Mary hovering over him, looking more scared than he'd ever seen her. He didn't remember where he was. "I must have bumped my head." He certainly never wound up on the ground for no reason before.
"You doofus, you got shot!"
"Aw, crap." Shock and denial were doing great jobs as painkillers, but now Mary removed that completely.
Horst decided to remind them of his presence right at that moment. "Remember me, the guy you're supposed to be protecting?"
"He's right, this is all my fault." Guilt poured into him at how he just endangered them. Guilt was good. It hurt less than the gunshot wound. "Back at the rest stop she dropped a bottle under the car. He must have smeared some kind of acid on the radiator hose. I looked but I didn't see anything."
Mary didn't respond to his confession. "We gotta get you up. We gotta get you to the hospital."
As she helped him to his feet, pain radiated up his shoulder into his throat. "You're mad, aren't you?" He needed Mary angry. Her verbal abuse could distract him.
"Not as mad as I'd be if I was the one that got shot."
"I respect your honesty." He deserved the bullet. He would never forgive himself if Mary had gotten shot.
And then, for the first time, Marshall saw Mary panic. Even though it was useless, she tried to start the SUV, and finally broke down swearing. He needed to redirect her fear, give her some sense of action, an illusion of control. He needed to remind her that as marshals, they both had people. "It's OK," he told her. "In about four hours every cop in the universe will be looking for us."
"Can you hang on that long?"
"I'm breathing and I haven't bled out, which means no vital organs have been hit, so yeah, maybe." He couldn't exactly play down his pain level with a bullet inside him, and losing consciousness once already was a very bad sign. "But this car's about to turn into a pizza oven - we should find some shade." For the first time in their history as partners, he told her what to do, and she listened.
Horst began fussing about food. Marshall considered recommending she shoot him herself, especially now that his suspicions were confirmed that something about the guy was completely off.
As Mary helped him out of the car, he took stock of their resources. No medic kit – they didn't expect to need one for a four hour transfer. The field medicine course he took a month after Mary became his partner came to mind; he really enjoyed the section about all the MacGyver-like emergency treatments. Marshall called up everything he knew or saw when it came to treating gunshot wounds. While not blessed with an eidetic memory, he did have an extended capacity for interest in the world, and hopefully the world if not Mary appreciated that interest enough to save him today.
"Get the tube that connects to the windshield wiper fluid." The hole in his chest might get bigger without it.
"Why?"
"We're gonna need it." He sent a silent note of gratitude upward that a speeding bullet could convince Mary to follow directions. It was reassuring to know that there was such a power in the universe.
The strain that walking to shelter put on his injury was only increasing his risk of a collapsed lung, and there was very little Mary would be able to do if that happened. It was true that no vital organs were hit, and he wasn't bleeding out – yet. But bullets can move around in a living person after they hit you, and the more he moved around, the more he risked death.
Although it cost them precious time, watching Mary kick Horst's ass was a morale boost. Mary picked up, too, that Horst seemed completely out of line with the situation at hand. As Horst lay on the ground, ears likely ringing too loudly to hear their exchange, Mary asked Marshall "What do you think?"
Marshall marveled that she paused for his opinion. He should get shot more often. "I think if it was Lola, she knows that this is her only shot at Mister Personality before he talks to the feds."
"She's coming back."
The entire situation, the day, it was already so surreal. Why not? "Dun dun dunnnn."
"That's real funny coming from a guy with a sucking chest wound."
Marshall felt a little guilty, especially with Mary's obvious worry. "I know." Horst's ass waving in the air made the situation a little hard to take entirely seriously, shot or not.
Marshall was fading in and out when Mary deposited him on the ancient couch inside the old diner. He would hear Mary speak, and then static, and then her speaking again. He vaguely heard her asking for direction. His brain was doing what brains do – sucking up all the available oxygen as a response to the pain and probable blood loss. It was strange how in times of crisis, relevant information floated before him, a book in the air, hallucination with diagrams.
He struggled to clear the static from his vision. "Tubal thoracostomy." He thought in the correct terms, in the actual languages. Technical terms first and always; that was how his father taught him.
A moment later, he heard Mary yelling his name from far away. He was off, somewhere else. Two older men and a woman sat at a card table. Each one of them wore a shoulder holster, and it looked as though they were playing whist. The woman smiled up at him, his own blue eyes crinkling back at him from behind her glasses. "I'm not dealing you in yet, boy."
Both men shared Marshall's lanky build. They were bickering over who got dealt the better hand. One man wore a dark suit that reminded Marshall of the Kennedy era, and the other wore jeans, a denim shirt and a cowboy hat. The man in the hat looked at Marshall over his shoulder. "You better get going there. She can't do this without you." Marshall opened his mouth to ask a question, to say a name -
And then he was back, coughing out bad air, the diagram of medical instructions still hanging in the air as though his memory simply clicked pause until he returned. "Insert tube through bullet wound, second intercostal."
"What?" Mary reacted just as she would if he'd mentioned how Pi was discovered. At least it was comfortingly predictable.
"Put the tube in the hole."
"I hope you know what you're doing." Marshall could almost feel his lung deflating.
The passing in-and-out actually kept the insertion from hurting more. It was an odd side effect of oxygen loss: without enough, nerves just don't feel the need to keep you informed. He began to drift off, vaguely looking for the card table.
Then the stars and static cleared completely as the tube hissed its assistive exhale. He plunked the tube in the water bottle, taking a few breaths of precious air.
Mary stared at the invention. "Amazing!"
"It's a water seal," he explained. "Gravity and hydraulic pressure allow air in the pleural space to escape but not to go back in." She might not know it was preventing a collapsed lung. Then again, she might.
Mary started at him like he'd grown a second head.
"What?"
The broken down restaurant was the only establishment between the gas station and the city limits. He did not like how very vulnerable this left Mary, especially with their uncooperative shit of a witness. "You should go."
She was stubborn about it. "And you should shut up. I'm not leaving you and a witness like sitting ducks." Her panic passed, and now she was back to arguing with him.
Marshall considered Horst. For all of his idiocy, he was able-bodied and completely uninjured. He doubted he would enjoy the man's company and definitely did not want him to be the last person he saw before he died, if that happened. "Take him with you. It's only a couple miles to the highway."
"It's not going to happen. Forget it." Mary was back to digging her heels in.
"Come on. You know it's the right call." She'd been through the same training he had. He wanted her to know she had permission to leave, and if she wound up hurt protecting him he would never forgive himself.
Mary leaned in closer and whispered what they were both thinking. "I could go a lot faster without him." She also didn't want to leave him alone when he was that hurt, and they both agreed that in terms of risk, losing this witness might not be terrible.
Horst apparently had radar ears. He was really watching them entirely too closely. "Wait, what are you talking about?"
"You can't leave him with me, I can't protect him." Their job was to protect their witness, even if one of them was shot. Even a jackass like Horst should come out of a situation like this one alive as long as they both performed their duties.
Marshall and Mary both looked back at Horst, considering. Without exchanging a word, they came to the same conclusion: the job came first.
"You better not die," Mary told him.
Only Mary would order him not to die. Why not life and death? She already had so much power over him. "I will try not to die," Marshall answered, looking into her eyes. "For you."
Mary stared back at him for a ragged moment, and he wondered if she felt an echo of his raw need for her. She reached for her gun. That was probably the only appropriate response.
She gathered up the handcuffed Horst and handed Marshall a fully loaded weapon. "This is for emergencies only. If anyone comes back you play dead, understand?"
"Do I look like a hero to you?"
Mary didn't answer. "I'll be back." But he saw her little nod, and it warmed him.
Horst waffled. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"
Mary strong-armed him. "Actually this is a terrible idea." She paused. "But what do you expect? It came from him," she jerked her head towards Marshall.
It was the best morale boost he could have gotten.
She checked outside as part of the usual procedure and drew back in immediately. "Change of plans."
As Marshall watched Mary bark orders and set up defenses, he at last understood something about his partner he never had before: she took control when she was scared. Her job scared the hell out of her, most of the time. And it came to him, looking at her moment of uncharacteristic panic earlier that afternoon: the possibility of losing him scared her even more than her job.
She gave him instructions on how to handle anyone coming through the door. "I know the drill." She was always telling him how to do his job even though he'd done it longer.
"I know you do."
Then Horst asked for a gun. "No!"
Time dragged as they sat together while Mary peered out the window. "They're just sitting there." The pain in his chest burned, and the water seal, while functional, might give out soon.
Mary wasn't saying it, but she was asking for his opinion on what was going on. "Probably waiting for nightfall. Improved cover."
"So now we wait."
Horst babbled about a Glen Ford movie. Marshall guessed that he wasn't referring to Superman.
Mary mopped sweat off his face. Dehydration might take him if the gunshot didn't, but as long as the bullet stayed in him he could not safely eat or drink. "How are you doing?"
"Aces," he lied. The screaming pain did keep him fully present.
"They used some kind of GPS to find us. I saw her use it. How's that possible?" Mary was asking his opinion for the second or third time that day. Marshall wondered if he was dying or if he was witnessing a preview of Armegeddon.
"I dunno. It's kind of academic at this point." He hadn't seen anything on the SUV when he checked it.
Mary nodded. "Maybe." She sat beside him. "It'll be dark soon."
He still wanted her safe more than anything else. "You should try to get out then."
Mary wanted to ignore him. "Seriously." She could send help back, and he was not the most important directive in their situation.
"It's a defendable position," she snapped back.
Mary fell silent for a moment, and Marshall felt the shift in her mood. It wasn't crisis mode right now – now it was about using what moments they had. "So how come you didn't tell me?"
If he didn't make it out, she had a right to know why.
Marshall really didn't want to hurt her, and he could tell from the way she drew up her knees to her chin that she hurt more deeply than he thought possible. "I needed to make up my own mind. And that's not always an option with you. You know how you are."
She shook her head. "I thought you loved this job." She didn't get it. She didn't connect all the dots.
"I did," he said, and corrected, "I do." He did not love his job in that particular moment, but he did for the most part like what he did: give people a chance to start over. In some ways he felt a little jealous of his clients, because in some ways they enjoyed choices that he never did. When vocal, aggressive Mary became his partner, his entire world changed. Working with her made his job not just a service, but a reason. Mary became his reason.
That reason, that heart, was bleeding from the chest herself. "Well what then? Tell me? Am I the reason you want to go? Because of how I am?"
In that moment Marshall saw Mary as he had never seen her before. She was vulnerable, and scared, and needed someone to protect her. "No." She deserved truth, but did not deserve an additional weight to go with that. "It has more to do with how I am." His feelings about her – for her – were overshadowing his job. Some days it really was too much for him to bear, especially in the narrow world they shared.
Mary did not understand – was not prepared to conceive of – his true meaning. "I can't believe I'm getting the "it's not you it's me" speech from you! Am I really the reason you want to leave the Marshal Service?" She looked close to tears.
"Not exactly." Marshall hated the idea of going every day without seeing Mary, but that very need made him question his ability to do his job well.
Marshall saw the naked punch of rejection on her face. He fought back tears of his own, hurting at Mary's hurt. "Wish they'd come already."
Marshall recognized her pathetic attempt to hide her self-hatred, and something deep within him ached in response. "Look, it's nothing like what you think."
Mary looked back at him, eyes wide. "Then you should probably explain, because I'm pretty confused. I know you loved the job and I though you -" she struggled to say the words and risk more rejection, "I thought we were friends."
Marshall wished he could hug her. "We ARE friends. You're my best friend." He couldn't imagine his life or the Marshal Service without her.
"Jesus, Marshall," and she looked ashamed, "You're like my only friend."
Marshall's heart broke for her. "I know. And you're like, my only friend." It was true. Their codependence encouraged him to shut out anyone new. Mary couldn't recognize that because she was riddled with such dependencies. He was the healthiest person for her in her life, and it was really unhealthy for him.
Mary was still confused. "So? Sounds like a pretty good arrangement. What's the problem?"
"The problem with us is –" He let the real answer hang in the air between them: I'm in love with you and it's killing me faster than the bullet in my chest.
"Please just tell me," Mary urged.
Marshall paused, trying to tell her the truth without lobbing an emotional grenade at his already over-exposed partner. "I feel like I'm the keeper of this exotic animal. I spend my time either protecting you from the world or the world from you and it's just -," he almost said "too much" but knew it would kill Mary. "It's just a lot of responsibility."
Mary paused, took it in, and accepted it. "I'm sorry, but that's your job." She held his gaze, and Marshall knew before she spoke that she had made his decision for him.
She kissed him on the cheek, and he felt his already straining heart pound a little faster. "And you cannot quit."
As he looked into her eyes, he knew that Mary was what defined his place in the world. "OK." It was never really a choice. He would stay with her. This was all she could give him, and this was all he could take.
Then he started bleeding out. Oh hell, the bullet finally reached an organ. "It's just a little blood," he lied to Mary. "Nothing to worry about."
Mary reacted like she'd told him the truth. She gave him her keys to the cuffs, and he knew what that meant. She might not come back. But if something did happen, they were OK – and that was all that mattered.
"What is she doing?" Something sounded genuine about the fear in Horst's voice.
"She's going to kill them," Marshall answered. "Before they kill us."
The blood loss finally caught up with his brain. Marshall passed out.
Marshall's memories of the rest of the evening were vague. Mary talking, Horst babbling, and then two large, men helping him stagger to an SUV. The weapons were gone. Mary must have made that happen.
He sent a silent thought out as he lay across the backseat: he hoped Mary drove like she stole it.