Page 91 of Code Name: Harbor

I lie there with my face in Josie’s hair and my heart hammering its way back down to normalcy.

But I recognize a pain in my chest. More of a squeeze of realization that my prior life is gone. It’s the knowledge that starting right now, I’m a man who built his whole life around never needing anyone and now I need this woman to survive. It feels like the first warm day after a winter so long you stopped believing in spring.

Josie’s fingers move slowly through my hair, scratching lightly at my scalp. “Hey,” she murmurs.

“Yeah.”

“You good?”

I push up onto my forearm so I can see her face. Her hair’s a mess across the pillow, her cheeks are flushed, and she’s looking at me with that same expression from before, the one that takes me apart faster than her hands ever could.

“I’m getting out,” I say.

Her hand goes still in my hair. “What?”

“The run tomorrow. It’s the last one. I’m done after this.”

She pushes up onto her elbow so we’re face-to-face, and I watch her go from soft to sharp, the analyst surfacing through the afterglow. “Finn. Don’t say that to me right now because of what we just shared.” She gestures between us. “Don’t make a decision in a bed you’ll regret in a boardroom.”

I can’t help but snort. “I’m hardly boardroom qualified, but I made the decision before this. I told Marcus and Connie out on the patio and I’m going to turn everything over to them. I’ll give Marcus The Quartermaster and he’ll run things. Connie keeps her cut, the crew survives, and I walk. The gallery’s clean and I start a new chapter in my life.”

“Why?” Her voice cracks a little. “Why would you ever do that? It’s who you are. You built it out of nothing.”

“I’m doing it because I’ve fallen in love with you and there’s no way for our worlds to co-exist. I’ve got to go straight.”

Josie goes completely still.

“I’m choosing you. The work was who I was when I didn’t have anything but expensive trinkets to mark the value of my life. But now I have you, and you’re worth more than everything I’ve ever accomplished.”

Her eyes brighten and well with tears and her lower lip trembles. For a second she doesn’t say anything at all, just looks at me with her whole chest moving.

“I love you too,” she says finally, barely above a whisper. “I’m not falling anymore. I fell. I’m there. I love you, Finn.”

I kiss her.

I kiss her slowly and I kiss her long and somewhere in it I feel her laugh against my mouth. It’s disbelieving and happy, and I gather her, rolling us so she’s tucked into me. I hold Josie there in the lamplight with the chicken going cold downstairs and tomorrow’s run waiting out in the dark.

I feel as she drifts off against me, boneless and warm. I’ll let her sleep for a bit, then I’ll wake her up so we can go down and eat. But for now, I plan the future.

I plan it in broad strokes. The details will come later. A vacation somewhere with Josie when the Voronin thing is behind us, Sunday breakfasts with Bill and maybe grabbing the occasional beer with Marcus so we can talk about old times. I’ll learn how to be just one man instead of two and for the first time in my life, the future isn’t a thing I’m bracing against.

It’s a thing I’m reaching toward.

CHAPTER 22

Josie

The buzzer goes, the front door releases, and I’m through it and into the Jameson lobby. I throw a backward glance over my shoulder in time to see Finn’s taillights pull away from the curb and merge into the morning traffic.

I’d received a text from Malik an hour ago proclaiming an emergency meeting about the Voronin case and now here I am.

Once again at Jameson, having just left Finn’s house. The two places I exist and I’m getting tired of these prison walls.

I nod at a few agents, pausing to drop my purse at my desk before heading into the main conference room.

It’s already full when I push through the door and the temperature of it tells me everything before anyone says a word.

This isn’t a recap or a check-in. Recaps have coffee and chitchat but it’s dead quiet. While Malik offers me a small, welcoming smile and nods at a chair, he looks ready to storm a country. Cole sits beside him with a legal pad and no expression, and Reid looks unbelievably focused. At the far end of the table, Special Agent Royce stands, head bent over a notepad before her. She’s in a sharp black pantsuit, hair pulled back into a severe bun that rests at the nape of her neck.