Page 97 of Code Name: Harbor

“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.

CHAPTER 24

Josie

The world comes back in pieces.

Sound first, except it’s not sound.

It’s the absence of it.

Only a high flat ring like someone struck a tuning fork against the bone.

Then touch.

The floor.

I’m on the floor and I don’t remember getting here. There’s grit under my cheek and something wet at my hairline and the taste of copper in my mouth.

I open my eyes and the room is wrong.

So much smoke. The great room is full of it, gray and rolling, lit from behind by something that shouldn’t be glowing. Where the wall of windows was there’s a ragged black mouth full of cold air and the smell of chemicals.

A hand on my shoulder. Finn’s face, close, smeared with soot and blood, his mouth moving but I have no clue what he’s saying.

But wait… yes, I can hear him. It’s tinny, as if from a distance.