Page 101 of Code Name: Harbor

That’s all I need and I lower my weapon. I lay it on the floor and hold up my hands.

“There’s a man downstairs,” I say, rising to my feet. The cop doesn’t lower his gun but keeps it trained on me. “He’s been shot.”

“He’s being attended to,” he says.

I nod at Mikhail. “That man broke into our home. Shot Finn. Tried to kill me. I’m with Jameson Force Security, and we’re liaised with the FBI investigating this man along with another in a federal sex trafficking case.”

The other two cops pull Mikhail up, cuffs go around his wrists without a struggle. It looks like he’s been drained of energy, his legs wobbly.

The other cop lowers his gun and nods toward the door.

I don’t decide to move. My body decides. I’m across the bedroom and through the door and down the stairs in a stumbling fall, catching myself on the broken railing.

The great room is full of people now, full of light, a paramedic already on his knees beside Finn. I drop down so hard my knees crack on the tile.

He’s so still.

His face is covered in blood and his lips are gray. I put my face right down next to his as the paramedic cuts and presses packing to the wound on his chest.

“Finn.” My tears are falling on him, cutting clean tracks through the soot on his cheek. “Finn, I’m here. I’m here, babe, I’m here. I need you to hold on—”

The paramedic’s hands close over mine. “Ma’am, I’ve got him, I need you to let me work.”

“He threw himself in front of a bullet for me.” I can’t stop talking. I can’t let go.

“Ma’am. Let me work. Now.”

I let go.

I sit back on my heels and I do not take my eyes off Finn’s gray face for one single second.

“Stay,” I whisper. It’s all I have left. “Stay. Stay. Stay.”

CHAPTER 25

Josie

Marcus looks so small in his hospital bed. They’ve got him propped up on pillows, both hands wrapped to the wrist in white gauze, a dressing taped down one side of his neck and jaw where the flash caught him. His left forearm is in a splint. There’s an oxygen cannula under his nose and three different bags dripping into his arm. The monitor beside him keeps a slow green rhythm.

I stand in the doorway for a second and just look at him, because looking at him alive is a thing I need to do before I can do anything else.

Then I cross the room and pull the chair close and his eyes open.

“Hey,” I rasp. My voice is barely a voice. The man who shot Finn had his forearm across my neck long enough that swallowing feels like my throat’s full of gravel and talking is worse.

“Josie.” His own voice is wrecked, smoke scoured. He looks me over—the dried blood, the gauze a paramedic taped to my forehead an hour ago. “Jesus. You look worse than me.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It’s close.” He tries to shift up and winces and goes still. “What happened to you? Where’s Finn?”

In surgery, but I’m not about to lead with that. I might burst into tears.

“You first.” I lean in. “What happened on the boat, Marcus?”

For a moment he just looks at the ceiling. The green line on the monitor keeps its time.

“We made the pickup clean,” he says finally. “Everything was normal. We were running back south, dark, right on the window. Connie was on the bow.” A pause and the next part comes slower. “I saw a boat come up on our six. No running lights. I knew right away it was bad because nobody runs that water blacked out unless they don’t want to be seen, and the only people who don’t want to be seen out there are us and them. I called to Connie to get down. I started to bring us hard to port and then I saw the launch.” His jaw works under the bandage. “A flash off their bow. I’ve seen it before, Josie. In the navy. I know what an RPG looks like coming off a tube and I knew in that half a second exactly what was about to happen to us and that there was nothing I could do about it.”