CHAPTER 3 #2
“I’m pulling you off the case.” I close my mouth.
“I have another job for you. Pittsburgh kicked us a counterintel engagement for a tech client. There are suspected employee leaks. It’s a low priority but highly billable and you can run it from your desk.
I want you on it for the next two weeks minimum. ”
“But the Voronin case. I have more information to work through and—”
“I wouldn’t push it right now, McAdams. I’m still angry with you.”
I grit my teeth and remain silent.
He does not look up from his screen. “You’re dismissed.”
I stand and move to the door.
“Josie,” Malik says, his voice soft with gratitude.
I turn back to him.
“I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Me too,” I murmur with a small smile. And I owe all of that to one devastatingly gorgeous—yes, I noticed despite my hypothermia—suspected smuggler.
I’m lost in thought as I make my way back to my desk, and by the time I sit down, I’ve already laid out the framework for working the Voronin case on the side.
I’ll work late hours, not a problem. And while I’m technically on another case, I’m still the lead intelligence analyst and have a certain amount of discretion on how I spend my off-hours.
I think about those women being loaded into the van, looking utterly defeated and resigned to their new lives of slavery, and I know I can’t let this go.
While I might not be going on stakeouts anymore, I can still run the data.
I can still put BOB to work in the background and I can still contribute to saving the next boatload of women who are smuggled in from Canada.
I have one piece of intelligence the official team does not have, which is a fishing boat captain who knew who those Russians were.
I’m going to find Finn Marlowe and I’m going to get more information from him. Yeah… that sounds right.
“You look like shit,” Cole says as he plops down in the chair by my desk, and I’m startled out of my thoughts.
“Late night,” I mutter.
Cole is one of my closest friends here at Jameson. His background is in Special Forces and smoke jumping. He’s wearing jeans and a forest green T-shirt, revealing a tattoo of wildfire flames peeking out at his biceps.
“Just so you know,” I say, rubbing at my temples. “Malik is going to have me debrief you on a situation I got myself into last night.”
Cole’s eyebrows shoot up. “What kind of situation?”
“The type I almost died.”
That causes him to physically jolt but before he can press me, another agent walks up. “Cole… Malik wants to see you.”
I nod toward the boss man’s office. “There you go. He’ll fill you in and then you’ll come and interrogate me.”
Cole rises slowly from the chair. “Can’t… wait…,” he says slowly, utter confusion in his tone. He blinks again. “By the way, Tessa wants you to come over this weekend for dinner. That work?”
“Yeah,” I say, rubbing my temple again. “Sure. Sounds fun.”
And it will be. Tessa’s someone I’ve only recently gotten to know. Jameson helped Cole investigate an arson ring that Tessa was smack in the middle of. A personal side note—Tessa and Cole were old flames, and they reunited through the course of the case.
“Fine,” Cole says, looking a bit unsure if I’m okay.
I offer him an encouraging smile. “We’ll talk later. Promise.”
Cole nods once and then he’s gone.
I turn to my screen and unlock it. The corporate counterintel file has just landed in my queue and I give it a brief scan. It’s the kind of case that matters—at least to someone—and I’m going to do the work.
But not right now.
I open a second tab and type in Finn Marlowe and the results render in three seconds.
People far smarter than me at Jameson built the search layer to mine data from both legitimate and not so legitimate sites.
I’m able to pull stuff that is considerably more than what shows up in any normal background check.
The screen fills and my eyes fly over the words.
Name: Finn Owen Marlowe
Born: March 16, in Portland, Oregon
Mother: Catherine Marie Marlowe, deceased three years ago, from cancer
Father: Unlisted
Siblings: None
Two known childhood addresses, both in Southeast Portland. I make a mental note to look up the areas. I note that he didn’t graduate from high school, records ending at the tenth grade.
I scroll down to criminal history and my heart pangs a little. He was placed in a Portland boys’ home at age fourteen but left at age sixteen. No address given as to where he went but I’m assuming the streets.
There’s a sealed juvenile record that would not turn up in a normal background check, but I’ve got full access. He served six months in juvenile detention at age seventeen for stealing a car. I gloss over the arrest report, but my eyes stop on the photograph.
He was a good-looking kid. His hair was a lot longer but still with those piercing green eyes that are full of intellect and cunning.
There’s no fear in his booking photo, but no defiance either.
Merely the expression of a kid who’s already metabolized whatever the system is going to do to him next and is calculating his way out of it.
I leave that behind and move to his adult record. I can’t say I’m shocked to see he did time in prison for trafficking in stolen property. He pleaded out, served four years, and was released early on parole at age twenty-five. That expired two years ago.
One would think that a man who was raised in the system would continue to move in and out of it, but to my surprise, the records reveal that Finn opened a fine art gallery five years ago, which is surprisingly right here in Pioneer Square, not more than six blocks away.
The business is registered to an LLC he owns outright, and tax filings show consistent revenue in the mid-six-hundreds.
The business is clean and he was even audited two years ago.
There are no flags at all. His gallery looks legit, representing twelve living artists.
He mounts eight exhibitions a year and participates in three international art fairs.
In the last nine years, Finn hasn’t had so much as a parking ticket in his name.
Was I wrong about him being a smuggler?
I scroll deeper and check out the property records. He owns a single-family home on Perkins Lane West in Magnolia with private water frontage on Puget Sound.
“Holy shit,” I murmur as I lean forward to look at a picture of the house pulled up from Zillow.
It’s massive and is currently assessed at $5.8 million.
My head spins over how this man went from rags to riches in a handful of years. I barely register that he has a 2025 Range Rover and a 2021 Ford F-250.
There’s no other information listed. No spouse, no children, no other family.
I push slightly away from my desk and lean my chair back. This is the man who pulled me out of the water in the wee hours of the morning. He’s a convicted felon turned successful and apparently wealthy businessman.
On paper, he’s two completely different men.
The person I met in the cabin of his fishing boat was most definitely a third, but I have no proof of that.
I close the tab just as one of the newer agents walks up to my desk, a young woman named Felicity who came straight from an enlistment as an army helicopter pilot.
“These were just delivered for you, Josie,” she says brightly.
My jaw drops as I take in the massive bouquet in a crystal vase. It’s jammed full of peonies and ranunculus in soft pinks and creams.
She places them on the edge of my desk and plucks out a card, handing it to me. “I didn’t know you were dating anyone.”
“I’m not,” I murmur as I take the small envelope and open it.
I slide the card out and turn it over.
Hope you were able to get some good sleep and recuperate from your adventure last night. - F
I read it twice, my eyes cutting back and forth between it and the flowers.
I’m flabbergasted he reached out to me, and in such a… romantic way? Or maybe it’s just thoughtful.
But flowers.
That means something, right?
But what? He’s a criminal. Or he used to be. Maybe still is.
“What’s it say?” Felicity asks.
I slip the card into my desk drawer. “Nothing. Just a sweet note from a thoughtful friend.”
“If you say so,” she replies, lifting a shoulder before turning away.
I stare at the flowers, reaching out to touch one of the peonies. My hand shakes slightly.
Six women in a panel van. A man with a fast boat who shot at the Russians on my behalf. A bouquet from a smuggler.
I have no choice but to find him.