CHAPTER 5
Josie
Malik’s wife, Anna, has a habit of spoiling the Jameson agents.
At least once a week, she cooks a meal for us all to eat in the communal break area.
At least a few times a week, she leaves a basketful of sweet treats in the kitchen and today’s offering is oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
I’m on my second one because today I’m eating my feelings.
The break room is more than what its simple name implies.
It’s centered on the fourth floor, which houses apartments for agents who want to live at the Jameson headquarters.
Like the rest of the building, it’s beautifully decorated.
Tall windows look south over the Pioneer Square rooftops.
Exposed brick walls are decorated with black-and-white photos of the Olympic Mountains and the Seattle skyline.
Deep leather couches arranged around a flat-screen TV the size of a small car make up another good space to take a break.
A full-scale kitchen gets used quite often except for the massive espresso machine that only a few have mastered.
All in all, it’s the best place in the building to disconnect and well… cookies!
I take a bite and cock my head to the side to read the little note sitting by the plate.
From Anna’s kitchen, with love. Eat up. — A.
“I’m on it, Anna,” I murmur to myself with an amused chuckle and relish the butter, brown sugar, oats and a specialty dark chocolate chips that Anna orders from Switzerland.
I take a third cookie and ponder whether I really need it. I mean… my emotions need it, but my hips do not.
“Why are you staring daggers at that poor cookie?”
I startle, looking up to see Caroline Prescott entering the kitchen. She ignores the espresso machine and crosses to the drip machine that always has a fresh pot.
“I’m wondering if I really need a third cookie,” I admit and watch as she pours herself a mug and then adds two pumps of caramel syrup that nobody on the team will admit they drink despite all of us drinking it.
Caroline turns and leans her hip against the counter to face me, eyes dropping back down to the cookie. “Want my advice?”
“Sure,” I reply.
“Always eat the cookie. Life’s too short.”
I point at her with conviction. “Sold to the woman leaning against the counter with very good common sense.”
Caroline laughs and reaches across to grab one. She takes a bite and moans much the way I did upon my first taste.
Her blue eyes crinkle with delight. “These are magical.”
“Very magical,” I agree, and polish off the last of my second cookie.
Caroline transferred from the Vegas office to help staff the new Seattle office.
Like Felicity, she’s a former army helicopter pilot and has been working in the private sector for the last handful of years.
Her long black hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun, which tells me she’s here doing catch-up paperwork and reports.
If she were going out in the field it would be in a secure braid, and she’d probably be wearing tactical gear.
As it stands, she’s in a pair of yoga pants and an oversized sweater.
She takes a slow sip of her coffee. “It’s a Saturday. Why are you in today?”
I shrug because I’m not really sure. I’m on no active cases that require fieldwork and while I always have more computer work than enough hours in the day, I could easily do that from home.
But here I am, and I suspect it has something to do with the fact I’m restless.
I had a not-so-pleasant conversation with my father this morning.
He’s the most important person in my life and I love him madly.
We see each other at least once a week, if not more.
Dinner, coffee, a beer after work. But I’ve been putting him off this week because he’s too attuned to my moods and would know this Voronin case is weighing on me.
That would lead to incessant picking at me for details, and then I’ll blab to him, and he’ll be worried.
I just can’t do that to him right now so I went with the whole, Work has me so busy I can’t meet this week, but next week for sure line.
After I hung up with him, wracked with guilt because he was disappointed, I paced around my kitchen for an hour before finally giving up and coming into the office.
As it turns out, I’m thinking about tonight’s date with Finn as much here as I did at home.
“What about you? What do you have going on?” I ask, picking off a piece of my third and final cookie and placing it in my mouth.
“I’m helping develop a security plan for the lieutenant governor. He’s apparently moved into a new home and wants a state-of-the-art system installed.”
“Oh… that’s…”
“Boring,” she inserts with an annoyed eye roll. “I’m a field agent and a trained helicopter pilot. I swear, I really do love this job, but I hate this type of work. Know what I mean?”
I think about the fact that just two days ago, I was almost killed in cold blood, and then almost drowned, and then was rescued by someone who I believe is a smuggler.
Not sure I understand boring these days.
“What are you working on today?” Caroline asks.
I wince at her tone, so completely oblivious to my fuck-up and near-death experience. I blew my cover and almost died. “Not much. I’m riding desk for the foreseeable future.”
“Yikes,” she murmurs sympathetically, but doesn’t push for details. “If it makes you feel any better, I botched one of my first assignments with Jameson and yet I’m still here and thriving.”
“You’re installing a camera system and alarm in a politician’s house,” I point out with a grin.
Carolina pounds on her chest. “That hurts, Josie. Really hurts.”
“What hurts?” Reid asks as he walks in, making a beeline for the cookies. He grabs four of them and then hops up on the counter with his legs swinging.
“My ego,” Caroline mutters.
Reid takes a bite of the first cookie and looks at me like he’s just experienced nirvana.
“Good, right?”
“To die for,” he agrees around a mouthful of oats and chocolate. He swallows and says, “Heard you took on the Russians single-handedly night before last.”
Caroline’s head turns slowly toward me. “You did what?”
“Oops,” Reid says with a duck of his head. “I thought it was common knowledge.”
“It’s fine,” I assure him. Gossip travels fast in this building.
“Russians?” Caroline prods.
“Russians,” I affirm.
“Like the Russian Russians.”
“Those are the ones.”
“And you took them on single-handedly?”
“I went to scope a landing site BOB had flagged. Things went sideways and I ended up in the water. A guy in a fishing boat pulled me out. End of story.”
“A guy in a fishing boat.”
“Yes.”
“Just a guy.”
“Just a guy.”
But that’s not true. Finn Marlowe is so much more than “just a guy.”
Caroline takes a slow sip of her coffee. “And the Russians?”
“Working a trafficking pipeline out of the Salish Sea.”
“Women?” she guesses.
“Yeah,” I reply glumly, the memory of what I witnessed haunting me.
Caroline sets her coffee down. “Jesus, Josie. Those fuckers are the type who will kill you just for looking at them sideways.”
“I know. They almost did kill me.”
“Josie,” she drawls in a low, disbelieving tone.
“I know, I know. It was stupid and it won’t happen again. Lesson learned and all that.”
She looks at me for a long moment. Then she picks up her coffee and takes another sip and does not say what she clearly wants to say.
Reid hops off the counter and nudges me with his hip. “Next time, McAdams, you wait for your partner, right?”
“Yeah… I got it. Enough with the recriminations.”
As a peace offering, Reid gives me another cookie and I take it. “Malik went easy on you. You know that, right?”
“Yeah. He could have fired me. I get it. My punishment is to work a counterintel case, which can be done from the comfort of my desk.”
Reid snorts and shakes his head. “There’s no way you’re not working the Russian trafficking case, McAdams. I know you. You’ve got BOB running on something right now and you’ll run leads down regardless of what Malik says.”
“I wouldn’t—”
Reid leans in closer, looks at me pointedly. “And if you do find a lead you need help running down, you call me. I’ll go with you. Deal?”
I swallow the retort that was on the tip of my tongue, because I expected him to tell me to stay out of the case. Instead, he’s sort of offering encouragement to keep snooping.
“Deal,” I say, giving him an affectionate nudge back.
Because I fully intend to do whatever it takes to bring these monsters down and save future victims. What Reid or Caroline or any of the others don’t know is I have more than BOB and my analytical skills.
I think about yesterday… the drive to Finn’s place in Magnolia and the whole conversation about Voronin while we sat on his patio and watched the sun sink into the water.
I remember the way he proposed the trade—a date for info—and that I was in no way put off by the offer.
And now I have a date tonight with the mysterious art gallery owner and possible smuggler.
Yeah… I have more than BOB.
I have the only living person outside of Voronin’s organization who has been close enough to Voronin’s operation to know names and routes and timing. And that person—for reasons I don’t yet fully understand—wants to take me out on a date.
Which is something I intend to keep to myself.
Of course, Cole knows part of this. Not the part I’m thinking about right now, but a piece of it.
My debrief happened this morning, just after eight in the small conference room on the main floor.
Cole brought me a coffee, which was sweet, but there’s no mistaking he was all business.
His job was to ferret out every piece of information he could so that we can use it to build a better case against Voronin.
He picked and prodded. He came at the same details from three different angles. He found the gaps Malik hadn’t found because he had the time to dig deep.
He walked me through every minute of my ordeal from the time I pulled up to the rendezvous spot until the time the Uber driver dropped me off at my house.
Cole obviously got Finn Marlowe’s name, which I knew he would. He got the name of the boat, the description of the man named Marcus who drove the boat, and the details of how they fished me out of the water.
He didn’t get out of me that Finn fired warning shots over Voronin’s men, but that’s only because he never asked me if Finn had a weapon. I know that’s because I portrayed the situation as just two guys out fishing doing a good deed.
Cole doesn’t know about the frequency scanner, the chart with the patrol-window notations in pencil or my suspicions. I glossed over the details with references to the fact I was suffering from hypothermia.
Had Cole asked if they had weapons, I would have told him the truth.
If he had pushed at me for the minute details of what the interior of Finn’s boat looked like, I would have divulged the scanner and charts.
But he didn’t, and it’s because I intentionally withheld my feelings that Finn might be up to no good out there on the seas.
As it stands, I’m feeling all kinds of guilty I didn’t volunteer it, but I can’t at this point. I don’t want Finn to get into trouble. He saved my life and while I know in my gut he’s probably some type of criminal, I know he’s not a human trafficker.
What I end up doing with that information is another matter, but for now, I want his intel on Voronin, so I’m willing to keep his secrets.
It has me walking the tightest line of my career. While I didn’t lie to him—because Cole would have caught a lie—I told an incomplete truth and made the gaps seem like they couldn’t be filled.
At the end of the conversation, Cole clamps down on my shoulders. “Wish I could shake Mr. Marlowe’s hand. He did Jameson a solid by saving you.”
That made me feel slightly better about protecting Finn.
“Yo, McAdams,” Reid says, snapping his fingers in front of my face. I blink at him, still holding the cookie he gave me. “Where’d you go?”
“Just thinking about the case. I’m sure BOB will give us something to help us make another run at Voronin.”
“We’ll get him,” Reid says confidently.
“Which is my cue to get back to work,” I say, offering them both a smile. “Catch you two later.”
I choose to take the huge, reclaimed timber staircase back down to the main floor, finishing the last cookie on the way and washing it down with a sip of coffee. At my desk, I unlock my display and enter BOB’s main screen. I open the file he flagged at four this morning.
It’s a new vessel pattern spanning times and tide cycles over two months of historical data. Two of the ships pinned are Voronin’s. Leaning back in my chair, I think about my date tonight.
I have a man who said Don’t ask me questions you might not want the answers to and a list of questions I’m going to ask, anyway.
Because I’ve decided that I need the answers.
I lean forward, tap on my keyboard and export the information over into a database I built for this case. I give a command to start cross-referencing the new information to the existing data.
A few more keystrokes, and I’ve got a summary report no longer than two pages that I print. I tuck it into my purse and wonder if I should bring it out during the main course or wait for dessert before I start grilling my new source.