CHAPTER 23
Finn
I’m in my mother’s kitchen, even though she’s long dead and I haven’t been here in years. It smells like the powdered creamer she kept in a coffee can because real milk was too expensive and only to be used for my cereal.
I’m sitting at the card table where we ate every meal when I was a child. It had a folded matchbook under one leg so it wouldn’t wobble. The linoleum’s peeling up at the seam by the stove and there’s a water stain on the ceiling shaped like the state of Florida.
It’s exactly as I remember it and deep in my subconscious, I know it’s a dream, yet the details are frighteningly vivid.
Mom’s at the counter in her blue housedress, the one with the faded daisies, pouring hot water over a tea bag she’s already used once today.
“Sit up straight,” she says, not turning around. “You always slump when you’re thinking too hard.”
“I’m not slumping.”
“You’re slumping, Finn.”
Begrudgingly, I sit up.
She brings the mug over and sets it on the table and lowers herself into the chair across from me with the small sigh she makes at the end of every day.
It’s the sound of a woman whose feet hurt from standing at a register for nine hours.
She wraps both hands around her mug, knuckles swollen but eyes kind.
“I’m proud of you,” she says.
It’s not something she ever said to me before and my chest flares with warmth. “Yeah?”
“So proud.” Her eyes shine. “My boy. The best there ever was. People talk, you know. They say there’s never been a smuggler like you.
Not in this country. Not in the whole world, maybe.
” She reaches across and pats my hand. “And you did it all yourself. From nothing. From this.” She gestures at the kitchen, the peeling floor, the Florida stain. “Look what you made of yourself.”
I should be happy she’s proud. That’s all I ever wanted… to make her proud. To make enough that she’d never reuse a tea bag again.
But something’s wrong with it.
“Mom,” I say slowly, the way you talk in a dream, like through a long tunnel. “I’m giving it up.”
Her smile falters. “Giving what up?”
“The work. All of it. I’ve decided I’m getting out.”
“Don’t be foolish.”
“I mean it.”
“Finn… you can’t give it up. You’re too good at it.
Nobody’s ever been as good as you. And the money—” Her voice catches on the word the way it used to catch on rent and electric bill.
“The money, baby. You know what that money means. You know what it’s like to not have it.
You’re going to walk away from all that money? ”
And I’m confused, the deep underwater confusion of dreams, because she’s right. I do know what it’s like to not have it and to only want it. How do I explain to the woman who reuses tea bags that I’m going to walk away from more money than she could have counted in ten lifetimes?
And then I think about Josie.
I think about the two of us in the dark in my bed, her head on my chest, her finger tracing shapes on my skin.
The way she told me in a sleepy voice that all she really wants is a home filled with love, a white picket fence around the border, a dog and laughing children.
She laughed at herself telling me, embarrassed, like it was too small a dream for a woman who decrypts intelligence for a living.
I found it endearing and realized it was a dream that never once crossed my mind. But I’ve been thinking about that white picket fence and all the things that could be held inside it, and it’s what I want too. I’m sure of it.
I look at my mother across the card table. “I found something better, Mom.”
“Better than being the best in the world?”
“There’s this woman.”
My mother’s eyes go wide, her mouth curving into a smile.
“Her name’s Josie. And she’s got this dream. A house, a fence, a dog, some kids. Nothing special. The most ordinary thing. And I want it more than I want to be the best at anything I’ve ever done.”
My mother looks at me for a long moment.
And then her face breaks open into the smile I’d have done anything for, the one that used to make this whole falling-down house feel warm.
“Oh, Finn,” she says. “That’s so much better than being a smuggler.”
“You think?”
“I think it’s the best thing you’ve ever told me.” She picks her tea back up. “Get the girl. Get the fence. Be done with the rest of it. I’m so proud of you, baby. I’m so proud.”
And I’m happy. In the dream I’m as happy as I’ve ever been, sitting at a card table in a kitchen that smells like powdered creamer, my dead mother telling me to go get the ordinary life. And somewhere under all of it a phone is ringing.
A phone is ringing…
I surface.
The room is dark and Josie’s warm weight feels so very good against my side. The phone is going off on the nightstand, the screen throwing light at the ceiling, and for just a moment, I’m in two places at once… my mother’s kitchen and my dark bedroom.
My eyes slide to the bedside clock. Three fourteen a.m.
Nobody calls at three o’clock in the morning with good news.
I’m instantly awake, my mind hyper-alert as my hand closes on the phone.
Unknown number, local area code.
Josie stirs as I swing my legs over the edge of the bed.
“Finn?” she asks sleepily, but I ignore her, instead connecting the call.
“Marlowe.”
“Mr. Marlowe, this is Petty Officer David Reyes with Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound. I apologize for the hour. I’m calling as I have you listed as the registered owner of a vessel named The Quartermaster.”
The bottom drops out from under me, and I lurch off the bed.
“Finn?” Josie says again, this time her voice clear and urgent.
I turn to her, put the phone on speaker and hold it between us.
My hand isn’t steady but miraculously, my voice seems to be. “Yes… that’s right. Is everything okay?”
“Sir, I’m really sorry but there’s been some sort of accident.
At approximately oh-two-twenty this morning we received a distress beacon from your vessel’s position in the strait.
A cutter on patrol diverted to respond and by the time our crew reached the location, there had been an obvious explosion on board.
There was very little of the vessel left to recover. ”
Josie’s hand slaps over her mouth, a tiny sound of distress squeaking out.
I can’t speak. The dream’s still on me, my mother’s voice, I’m so proud, baby, and now this man is telling me The Quartermaster’s gone.
“Mr. Marlowe? Are you with me?”
“I’m here.” My voice comes out wrong. “Was there—who was on it? Was there anybody—”
“Sir, that’s the part I want to get to.” A breath on the line.
“Our crew recovered one survivor from the water. A male. He was conscious enough to grab a navigation buoy and hang on, and that’s almost certainly what kept him alive until we reached him.
He’s been transported to Harborview Medical Center. ”
Marcus.
“That’s Marcus Whitfield. How bad is he?” I manage to ask, my voice gruff with anxiety.
“I’m not sure, sir. He has some burns and I think one of the medics said his wrist was broken.”
Josie is out of the bed standing before me, and I’m not sure how she even got there.
“Sir… we’re obviously going to need you to come do a formalized interview, but we need to know if there were any other people on board?”
“One other,” I rasp, and Josie slips into my side, putting an arm around me. “A woman. Her name’s Connie Modesto. You’re looking for her, right?”
“Yes, sir. We have people searching the water not only for survivors but for evidence as to what caused the explosion.”
Christ, hopefully that figurine is at the bottom of the sea floor.
“Sir, I’m sorry. I wish I had more for you, but the Coast Guard Investigative Services is handling this, and we need you to come in now for an interview.”
I close my eyes as he rattles off their address at Pier 36. Josie’s forehead comes down against my shoulder.
“Do you have any idea what caused the explosion?” I finally think to ask.
“Sir, we can’t speculate on cause. There’ll be an investigator at the hospital who’ll want to speak with Mr. Whitfield and the investigation will determine what we’re dealing with. I’d ask you not to draw conclusions until—”
“It didn’t blow up on its own. Those engines are maintained like surgical instruments. Boats don’t just explode.”
“I understand your frustration, sir. But can you please confirm you’ll come down for an interview so I can let the officer in charge know?”
I listen again as he gives me the man’s name and gets my verbal commitment. “Yeah… let me get dressed, then I’ll be in.”
“The sooner the better,” he says.
Fuck him and his sooner. I’m heading to the hospital first to see Marcus.
I lower the phone and my eyes meet Josie’s. They’re sad and scared. “They’ll find Connie,” she says reassuringly.
I pull her into my arms, kiss the top of her head. “You and I both know they won’t but thank you for trying to be positive.”
“Marcus is alive,” Josie says finally. “At least he’s alive.”
“Yeah… I know.” I let her go and move toward my closet. “Let’s get dressed. I want you to come with me.”
Josie nods and grabs clothes from the drawers I gave her. We ready ourselves in silence, my mind unable to process what could have happened. That boat was in a mechanically supreme state, but I suppose there could have been a malfunction in the engine.
It doesn’t make sense, though.
A thought comes to me that has nothing to do with my boat. “Have you heard anything from Jameson yet on the sting against Mikhail?”
Josie nabs her phone and gives it a quick once-over before shaking her head. “No, but they’ll call me when it’s finished.”
We dress fast in the dark, no lights, and Josie’s pulling her hair back as we head down the stairs. My mind’s already at Coast Guard headquarters, already three moves ahead, already rehearsing the answers that will come to the questions as to why Marcus and Connie were out there.
“Let me make some quick coffee for us to take,” Josie says as we come off the bottom stair into the great room. The kitchen’s ahead of us, dark, the wall of windows past it a black sheet with the faint gray suggestion of the water beyond.
“That’s a good idea,” I say as I head toward my office with the intent to grab my ownership papers for the Quartermaster. “Grab your—”
The patio glass doors and windows explode inward.
The entire back wall of the house comes apart at once—a wall of sound, a fist of pressure and a spray of glass that lifts me clean off my feet and throws me sideways into the island.
I hear Josie cry out somewhere to my left, hear her hit the floor, and the cold comes rushing in through the hole where my house used to be.
Glass rains down all around me while smoke swirls, clogging my lungs.
That’s when my ears start ringing, and then I can’t hear anything. I lift a hand to my forehead because it’s throbbing and it comes away with bright red blood.
Another explosion.
The Quartermaster.
My house.
And then I realize these are coordinated attacks.
I push up to my hands and knees, my eyes peering through the smoke in the general direction I last saw Josie.
Fear tears through me like bolts of lightning when I see a large shadow moving through the smoke, stepping through the debris that was the back wall of my house.