CHAPTER 6 #2
Finn’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but I also see respect there. “I get the feeling you’re not the type of woman who does anything half-assed.”
“I was raised by Bill McAdams,” I say, lifting my chin. “Of course not.”
“And your mom?” he asks, his voice soft as if he knows she’s not in the picture.
“She died a few years ago, breast cancer. My dad just moved here to Seattle a few months ago to be near me.”
Finn nods, as if this all makes sense with what he’s gleaned so far about my past. “And how did you get from the NSA to Jameson?”
“Just got tired of government work and the private sector spoke to me.”
Finn stares at me a long moment. “That’s not the whole answer.”
I lift my wineglass in salute to his perceptiveness. “No, it isn’t.”
“Tell me the whole answer.”
I cock my head, wondering why he even cares.
But the way he stares back at me, as if the answer matters very much, has me spilling my guts.
“I was a senior analyst, running collection on a particular foreign network for about eighteen months. It’s the kind of work where you spend half your time disagreeing with your own conclusions because you can’t tell if what you’re seeing is actually there or if you’ve started to want it to be there. ”
He nods as if he understands.
“Anyway, there was an operation coming. It was a direct action with multiple agencies. Our package was the intelligence backbone, which included pattern analysis, target validation, that sort of thing.”
“I don’t really understand what that means, but it sounds like important preparatory work,” he muses.
“It’s all to keep our people safe,” I say grimly. “The day before the op was supposed to go forward, I had a feeling.”
“A gut instinct,” he says softly.
“It wasn’t anything I could point to. There wasn’t a piece of contradicting intel. There wasn’t a data point that flipped the picture. I just looked at the file and felt wrong about it.”
“What did you do?”
“I wrote a memo and flagged my concerns. I recommended a forty-eight-hour delay to look at three specific indicators I wanted to recheck.”
“But…”
“But my supervisor said the flag was insufficient. She wanted hard data, which I didn’t have. Only a gut feeling and three indicators that could or could not be coincidence.”
“They went forward.”
“They went forward and two operatives in the field died.” I glance down into my wine. “I never met either of them. I don’t even know what their faces looked like, but their deaths were on me.”
Finn sets his glass down and to my surprise, leans over and takes my hand.
He doesn’t say I’m sorry and I’m grateful, because I’m sorry is what people say when they don’t understand what you’ve just told them.
Oh, he might not understand the politics of it, but he clearly understands the repercussions.
“And you left because of that?” he asks, his thumb grazing over the back of my hand in a way that feels too good.
I shake my head. “I stayed four more months, but I just could never find any joy in what I was doing. I mean, a lot of my work was going toward the greater good, but I couldn’t get past that one failure.”
“You didn’t fail, Josie. Your boss did by not taking you seriously.”
“Maybe I should have spoken louder or more insistently,” I counter.
Finn gives my hand a squeeze and releases it. He leans back in his chair, lifts his chin. “Now I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Your zeal to get Voronin. Your drive. You’re not going to fail again.”
I blink at him in surprise, because yes, a lot of what pushes me is what happened at the NSA. I don’t want to fail any human life again.
He doesn’t force me to acknowledge that, though, and instead asks, “And why did you choose Jameson?”
“They recruited me. The owner, Kynan McGrath, knew my father through his work and they were looking for an analyst. It seemed like the right move.”
“And you said yes.”
“I said yes.”
“To what, exactly?”
I smile at him. “To trying to figure out if my gut still works.”
“I’m sure it works just fine,” Finn says, reaching over to the bottle of wine and topping up our glasses.
“Can I ask more about your background?” I inquire.
“What do you want to know?” he asks easily, as if he’s a fully open book. I’m sure that’s not true, but I’m going to see what I can get.
“You said you did time in juvie, and I know you lived in a foster group home for a while. Can I ask about your childhood?”
“I don’t mind. It’s what made me who I am today.”
Charming and successful? Or potentially a smuggler?
“I’m all ears,” I say, settling back into my chair and crossing one leg over the other.
“I grew up in Southeast Portland with a single mom, Catherine.” Ah…
the boat’s name. I should’ve made that connection from my prior research.
“My dad wasn’t part of the picture. She worked three jobs, busted her ass to put food on the table and I never appreciated it enough.
I was a punk, out on the streets, getting into trouble and skipping school.
By fourteen, I was getting into so much trouble my mother put me in a Portland boys’ home for four months.
” He pauses, looks out over the water. “I hated her for it for a very long time.”
“But you knew that everything she did and demanded of you was out of love,” I hazard a guess.
“I realized that eventually, but not in enough time to ever really make it up to her.”
“You said you moved to Seattle after your time in juvenile detention,” I poke around the edges of his life.
“Lived on the street, existed on petty crime for a while until someone took me in and gave me a job.”
“Someone?”
“Jim Price was his name.”
“And the job?”
“Unfortunately, the type that lands you in prison,” he says, his upper lip curling slightly.
“I’m sorry. He doesn’t sound like he was a good role model.”
Finn laughs and shakes his head. “On the contrary, he was. The only person other than my mother who loved me unconditionally. He was like a father to me, and the only person to blame for me landing in prison is myself. I made a stupid mistake.”
I’ve got a million questions. I know his time served was for trafficking in stolen property, which is the biggest reason I think he’s a smuggler. I want to know how someone considers another criminal to be a father figure, and more importantly, how in the hell did he turn his life around?
But I get the sense that Finn is a complicated man with so many layers to his history that I’ll never uncover it in one dinner.
I also know he’s only going to tell me what he feels safe in doing so, and he’ll never divulge anything criminal.
Moreover, I really don’t want that level of information. I don’t want to be in a position of having to turn him in.
Daniel emerges from the cabin, his footsteps causing our heads to swing his way. He’s carrying a silver platter with the first course, which he sets on the table. “Hama Hama oysters on the half shell. I recommend the mignonette with lemon, but my cocktail sauce is to die for as well.”
“Thank you,” I say, setting my wineglass to the side and leaning forward to check out the beautiful display on a bed of crushed ice.
“Do you like oysters?” Finn asks, taking a tiny silver fork from his place setting.
“I love them,” I reply.
I pick up one of the ramekins of mignonette and drizzle it over a large oyster.
I spear it with my fork and place it in my mouth.
It’s a burst of bright lemon and saltiness, the flesh firm as I chew it.
It’s probably the best oyster I’ve ever had in my life and I’m sure it has nothing to do with the oyster and everything to do with this boat and this man and his complicated but compelling story.
“What about your mother?” I ask, sipping my wine to cleanse my palate. “Did you repair the relationship?”
Finn’s eyes lose a little of their luster. He nods, but his tone is somber. “I did. We enjoyed a very good relationship, but she passed a few years ago, so you and I have that in common.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry you lost your mom too,” he says with a gentle smile.
We look at each other across the small teak table. The boat creaks softly in its slip and we feast on fresh oysters while we fill in the holes of each other’s childhood memories.
Daniel comes back with halibut done in a piccata style with charred asparagus. It’s all beautifully plated, served with a new wine pairing, but I only accept half a glass. During the main course, I delve more into Finn’s gallery.
Daniel offers us both a small trifle with Washington blackberries and cups of decaf coffee with cream. I don’t think I can eat another bite, but after I take a small taste, I know I’ll eat the entire thing.
Finn thanks Daniel for his work, slides him an envelope, and the man leaves us alone on the boat.
I take a breath. I’ve been waiting for the right moment all night. “I have a question for you.”
He looks at me, dipping his spoon into the trifle. “Go on.”
“I found a vessel pattern that could potentially be trafficking lanes Voronin uses. There’s a correlation and two of his ships appear in it.” Finn listens as he puts the trifle in his mouth and doesn’t seem to be put out. “I was hoping I could show you the data and get your thoughts.”
I have phrased this very carefully. I’m not asking him for identifying information, only to confirm a pattern.
He sets his spoon down, takes a sip of coffee. When he puts the cup back on the table, he says, “No.”
“No?”
“No,” he says with a firm nod.
“No you won’t look at the data? Because you said—”
“I said I’d help you but only if you agreed to a date.”
“But I did. I’m here.”
“The date’s not over. Not by a long shot.”
My heart skitters, thumping madly. I don’t know what he means by that, but I know my pulse likes it. “We had a deal.”
“We did. And I’m happy to sit down with you sometime and discuss what I might be able to give you about Voronin. But it’s not going to be tonight. Not on this boat. Not while you’re sitting across from me in that sweater.”