Page 11 of Code Name: Harbor

“Not quite. They, um… fired at me while I was underwater…” Malik’s eyes flame with fury, prompting me to blurt, “But they missed. Weren’t even close.” I don’t bother to give him the details of how I was so cold I could barely move, how I thought I was going to die, but move right into my rescue. “I was picked up by another boat.”

“Another boat?” he asks in disbelief.

“Um… yeah. Two guys out fishing.”

“In the dead of night?” he asks suspiciously.

“Yeah… that’s what they said, and frankly, I was so cold and grateful, I didn’t really think it unusual.”

That is an absolute lie. I still pegged Finn as some type of smuggler, and I’m not sure why I keep that to myself. I suppose I’m so grateful he saved me from certain death that I just can’t bring myself to get him in any trouble.

“And what about Voronin’s men? Did they see you get rescued? Did they come after you and this…” and here he uses air-quotes, “‘fisherman’?”

I’m going to walk a fine line, trying not to lie while also trying to keep Malik’s worry to a minimum and really trying to keep suspicions on Finn to a minimum. “It was dark and they couldn’t see the boat that picked me up. They were trying to undock to give chase, but my rescuers had a faster boat. Got out of there and I’m not sure if they ever did give chase as I was below deck.”

I don’t tell him that Finn fired on them to give us time to escape. Bold lie.

Malik lets out a long breath and rubs the bridge of his nose as if to stave off a headache. “And then what?”

“They took me to Mukilteo. I took an Uber home.”

“And the Jameson vehicle?”

“Still back where I left it.”

I brace for more questions. There are so many holes in what I’ve told him.

But Malik leans back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the armrest. His head tilts and he stares at the ceiling. I want to blurt out a million things to take the heat off me, off what might be coming Finn’s way, but none of it seems right.

“Permission to speak freely, sir.”

His head lifts, eyes pin on me. “Sir? Since when do I require people to call me sir?”

I feel my face heat up. “Sorry… it’s just… I’m feeling very much in trouble here.”

“You are in trouble,” he says softly. I’d rather he yell at me.

“They went into a panel van,” I murmur.

Malik frowns at the abrupt change in subject. “The women?”

“The women,” I say with a miserable nod of my head. “I had ninety seconds, maybe two minutes, where I could have called you, called the police, hell… called someone. I told myself I needed the photos first. I told myself the photos were the evidence and the call was the follow-up.”

Understanding flashes in his expression and it softens slightly. “You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“I could have made the call.”

Malik nods. “You could have made the call. The call would have brought local PD or the Coast Guard to a dock in Anacortes thirty to ninety minutes after the boat tied up. You know that math.”

“I could have engaged. I had my firearm. I could have held them at gunpoint until—”

“No, you couldn’t have. You’d be dead and you know it.”

“But—”

“So the answer to what could you have done differently is the question you actually have to live with, which is should you have been there at all? And you know the answer to that one too.”

I nod, my heart still aching for those women. “I shouldn’t have been there alone.”