CHAPTER 7
Finn
The Quartermaster sits low at her slip with the tide running out underneath her. Connie has her boots on my chart table again.
“Off,” I growl, giving them an elbow.
“So grumpy,” she mutters and drops them to the floor with a thud.
“So impolite,” I shoot back.
Marcus ignores both of us, his head bent over patrol routes as he chews on the end of a pencil.
The cabin is warm from the space heater, and the windows are starting to fog at the edges. Outside, the October light is fading fast and without apology. Marcus has his thermos of coffee and a full pot he just prepared on the small galley stove.
“Three weeks from Tuesday,” Marcus says, tapping his index finger on the table. “Pick up at Steveston.”
“Is this the same broker who bought the de Hooch?” Connie asks, propping an elbow on the table and resting her chin in the palm of her hand.
“Yeah,” I say, tracing a finger from Steveston down through the islands toward Walt Brown’s dock. “He was very happy with our work.” I look to Marcus. “What’s the crossing window?”
He takes a sip of coffee from his tumbler. “Coast Guard cutter rotation gives us a gap between oh-two-fifteen and oh-four-forty on a Wednesday morning. We pick up at midnight on the Canadian side, run dark down the strait, hand off at Walt’s by oh-five hundred.”
“I can handle getting the retainer to Walt,” Connie offers and I nod at her. “What are we transporting?”
“A Cycladic figurine. It’s only about fourteen inches tall, so easy to hide.”
There are half a dozen places on the boat to tuck it into in case we were to get boarded by any type of water patrol.
“What’s a Cycladic figurine?” Connie asks with interest. Marcus doesn’t care at all about the history or the art, only the paycheck. But Connie’s always curious.
“It’s an abstract figurine from the Aegean Sea’s Cycladic Islands. Made from marble, they’re usually abstracts of the female form. About five thousand years old.”
“What’s that puppy running?” she asks, eyes twinkling at the prospect because Connie cares about the money too.
“Three point two.”
“Nice,” she drawls, exchanging a toothy grin with Marcus.
My cut on this particular transport is ten percent or $320,000 for a day’s work.
I’ll take sixty percent and give forty to Marcus to split with Connie, and the kicker is that this is a smaller job.
We’ve smuggled in works valued at over $20 million before.
Marcus leans back and stretches his arms, tossing his head left, then right to crack his neck. “So the route we’ll take is from Steveston down through Active Pass, around the south end of Pender into US waters somewhere between Stuart Island and Roche Harbor. From there, south through Haro Strait.”
I let my eyes roam over the maps, noting the patrol routes and using my years of experience to analyze the risks. “Yeah… that’s the best route.”
It’s one of the same routes we’ve run a dozen times in the last nine years. The same route that, four nights ago, put me in proximity to Voronin at the exact wrong moment.
Or rather, it was the exact right moment because I saved Josie’s life.
Neither Marcus nor Connie have brought up that night. We’ve talked about the piece, the buyer, the cut, the timeline and the crossing window, and we’ve all very carefully not talked about the woman I pulled out of the water.
Footsteps on the deck above have all of us freezing and Connie quickly pulls the maps from the table, spins toward the head, and slips inside to close the door. She’ll be hiding them in the small cabinet on the wall.
Marcus and I look at each other for half a second and his hand goes to the small of his back where his piece is tucked into his pants. I shake my head once and he casually picks up his tumbler for another sip.
The cabin door opens without a knock and Mikhail Sokolov steps through. Whoever is with him stays above.
Mikhail’s a dark Russian with nearly pitch-black hair and a pockmarked face that makes him look almost gruesome. He’s wearing a dark wool coat over a dark sweater, dark slacks, dark shoes. Everything about him is dark, including his eyes, the iris and pupils nearly indistinguishable.
He makes a very pointed move, pushing one edge of his coat back to tuck a hand in his front pocket, exposing a leather pistol harness on his chest. The butt of a Ruger peeks out.
Connie steps from the bathroom, wiping her hands on a paper towel as if she had just finished washing, and tosses it in the trash. “Oh, look… visitors.”
Mikhail’s gaze lands on Connie, slides to Marcus, lands on me. “Finn.”
“Mikhail.”
“You have a minute?”
“For you, always.”
I don’t stand up and he doesn’t sit down.
“Looking for some information,” he says, his Russian accent guttural and thick.
I lean back against the bench, elbow on the table. “What kind of information?”
“Tuesday night. North end. Somebody fired on one of our pickups.”
“Why would they do that?” I inquire.
Mikhail’s black eyes narrow on me. “If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be here.” His eyes cut over to Connie who stands with her arms crossed over her chest. “The shots came from the water. A small craft with no lights.”
“Sorry,” I say, lifting a shoulder. “We haven’t made a run in several weeks. But I’ll keep my ears open.”
“You do that.” Those three words are a very pointed threat. “And if you hear anything…”
“You’ll be the first to know,” I promise, or rather, lie.
Lie through my teeth.
“In fact, you hear of anybody on the water that night, you tell me.”
“Understood,” I say with a nod.
He looks to Marcus, who understands the demand. “Got it, chief.”
Then Mikhail looks at Connie. “I’ll sing like a bird,” she promises.
We’ve all agreed too quickly, and he doesn’t trust us a bit. His eyes are like black pools of ice. “If you know something, and you don’t share it with us”—a small pause—“it’s the same as if you’d fired the shots yourself.”
“I know how this works, Mikhail,” I say, my tone glacial.
“I sure hope so,” he says, eyes cutting to Marcus and Connie before returning to me. “For all your sakes.”
I stand up from the table and square myself up to the Russian. “Anatoli and I have been giving each other wide berths for nine years. I’m not stupid enough to break that arrangement. If I had information for him, he’d have it without you having to ask.”
“He might like to hear that from you directly.”
“I’m a busy man, same as he is. Pass the message on.”
Mikhail’s mouth flattens. He clearly doesn’t like his authority being questioned. He looks at me for one more beat, then turns away, making his way back up on deck. We listen as their footsteps recede and then they’re gone.
The cabin is very quiet.
Marcus exhales slowly through his nose, and Connie says nothing for ten seconds.
Then she says, “Holy fuck.”
“Breathe.”
“Holy fuck, Finn.”
“Breathe, Connie.”
She’s breathing, face pale. “He’ll kill us if he finds out you were there.”
“That’s old news,” I point out.
“No, I’ll tell you what’s news,” Connie says angrily, leaning over the table and slamming her hand on it. “That woman you fished out of the water is bad news.”
“Connie,” I say on a long sigh, turning my gaze toward Marcus to get his read on the situation.
“Should have let her drown,” Connie mutters.
I turn my head and look at her. “Don’t say that.”
“Why? It’s true. They’re not going to give up looking for her. And now they’re coming for us, because somebody fired from a dark boat and they know it wasn’t a cop. It could only be someone like us.”
“They don’t know it was us,” Marcus points out.
“Yet,” she snaps.
“Connie,” I say on a longer sigh.
“They will, Finn,” she exclaims, her cheeks turning red. “Mikhail didn’t come to chat. He came to look at our faces while he asked us questions.”
“I handled it.”
“No, you didn’t. I want to know what you’re going to do about her,” she demands.
“Nothing. We don’t do anything about her. She’s not our problem.”
“She’s the only problem.”
I take a slow breath and look out the small porthole at the dock. Christ, I want a drink.
“You know what would solve it?” Connie says quietly.
I look at her. “Don’t even say it.”
“Anonymous tip,” she says, looking to Marcus with hopeful eyes. “We give them her name and the problem goes away. We go back to working and we’re safe.”
The temperature in my veins drops about thirty degrees and I can see Marcus bowing his head and slowly shaking it.
“What the fuck did you just say?” I growl, fury rippling through me.
“Finn—”
“What the fuck did you just say to me?” I bark at her.
“I’m just—”
“You’re suggesting we hand over a woman to Anatoli Voronin, who will kill her on the spot.”
“I’m—”
“You know what he does to women, Connie. You know exactly what he does to women and now you’re standing in my cabin telling me we should deliver a woman to him.”
“I’m freaked out, Finn, and I’m merely offering options,” she whines.
I move toe to toe with her. “I don’t give a fuck how you feel about this. If I hear you say one more thing like that, ever, to anybody, you take your shit, you walk off this boat, and you don’t come back. Not for work. Not for anything. Do you understand me?”
Marcus’s head whips my way and Connie’s eyes flare with pain. “Finn…”
“Do you understand me, Connie?”
She doesn’t say anything for a second. She looks so wounded, as if I’d driven a knife in her heart. Then, “Yeah… I understand.”
“Good.”
Her capitulation should settle it, but I’m still angry. Pissed as hell she’d even suggest such a thing, and not just that she doesn’t seem to have any regard for an innocent woman dying, but that it’s Josie she would hand over to a monster.
The cabin is suddenly too small for me to be in. I take my jacket off the wall hook and head up the steps to the deck without looking at either of them.
The air outside is cold and clean. I inhale deep breaths to clear my head, wondering if I was too rough on Connie now that there’s a little distance between her words and me.
But fuck that. She’s talking about a death sentence to Josie and…
My hands curl into fists.
I hear Marcus’s footsteps behind me but don’t turn around. Instead, I walk down the gangway, onto the dock and toward the gate. The marina is quiet except for somebody two slips east playing music low through a cracked door.
Marcus catches up to me halfway down the dock and falls into step.
I ignore him as we walk past the end of the slips, past the harbormaster’s office, through the gate and across the gravel lot toward where my truck is parked.
“Talk to me, Finn,” he finally says as I reach in my pocket for the key fob.
I look out past the breakwater and exhale. “I had dinner with her last night.”
From the corner of my eye, I can see Marcus jolt. “Oh.”
“We had dinner on the Catherine,” I say, turning to face him fully.
He blinks in surprise.
Because he knows what that means. I don’t bring anyone on the Catherine. That boat is my sanctuary. It belongs to me, the one thing that doesn’t touch any other parts of my life. It has no part in my criminal underworld and represents the small part of my life that is good and normal.
“You must like her very much,” Marcus finally says.
“I like her way more than I should.” I look at him meaningfully. “And I’m going to keep her safe, Marcus. Whatever it takes and if Connie—”
“She won’t,” he assures me. “I’ll keep her in check.”
I stare at him, a silent message that I won’t tolerate her going off the rails.
“She’s scared, Finn,” Marcus says in a low voice. “Cut her a little slack. She’s had your back for a long time and deserves a little credit.”
I’m slightly chastened. “Yeah… fine.” I rub my neck, lifting my eyes back to Marcus. “Are you going to tell me I’m being stupid?”
He grins at me, bright white smile. “For following your heart? Never. But I am going to tell you to be careful. This is a dangerous game you’re playing with Voronin. You and I both know Mikhail wasn’t here to try to get information. He was here because they suspect it was us there that night.”
“I know,” I say on a long exhale. “Maybe I should stay away from Josie. Would that be the best way to keep her safe?”
“Maybe,” he says but then claps me on the shoulder. “But I’m going to tell you to eat the cheesecake.”
My chin jerks inward, an eyebrow shoots up. “What does that even mean?”
“You know… life’s too short. Eat cheesecake. Josie’s the cheesecake.”
“An incredibly weird metaphor,” I point out.
“You get what I’m saying,” he says, taking a few steps backward. He lifts a hand, points it at me. “I got your back, brother.”
“I know you do,” I murmur and watch as he turns on his heel and heads toward The Quartermaster.
I get in my truck and drive home. I think about Josie’s hand at the side of my neck last night and the way her breath caught. I think about Mikhail and the certainty if he gets his hands on Josie, she’s dead.
Lastly, I think about Marcus telling me to eat the cheesecake and I wonder just how stupid it would be of me to pursue something with Josie.
It could end very badly for both of us.