Page 98 of Code Name: Harbor

His voice reaches me from very far away, swimming up through the cotton. “Josie. Josie. Are you okay? Look at me, babe.”

And beyond that, I hear the shrieking of the house alarm. It steadily gets louder, breaking through the haze of my disorientation and I have a split second of solace that the police will be called.

I get a hand under myself. “I’m—” My voice is gone too, just a rasp. “I’m okay. I think I’m okay.”

“Can you move? We have to—”

And then I see it.

Past Finn’s shoulder, through the smoke. A shape. A man shape. Stepping up over the threshold of broken glass and into Finn’s house like he has every right to be there. It’s unhurried, confident and wholly terrifying.

I can’t see any features, but I know who it is.

It can only be one man and he’s clearly not getting taken down by Jameson tonight on the water.

It’s Mikhail Sokolov. He’s come after us. The explosion on The Quartermaster makes sense.

He’s come for all of us.

“Finn.” It comes out of me as pure instinct. “Finn, behind you—”

Finn moves before I finish the word.

He doesn’t run. That’s the thing I’ll carry forever, the thing I’ll see every time I close my eyes for the rest of my life. He doesn’t run but rather throws himself the other way, toward the figure to protect me.

The gunshot is enormous, even through the cotton in my ears.

Finn jerks, I scream, and his whole body snaps backward in a hard recoil before collapsing to the ground.

“No!” I shriek. “No, no, Finn—”

“Go.” His face is angled toward me, blood spreading across the right side of his chest. He wheezes, coughs wetly as he stares at me with pained eyes. “Josie. Go.”

A second shot, the round punching into the floor inches from my hip, sprays tile chips across my body with such force, I feel them shred my jeans. Somewhere underneath the grief and the terror, a reflex kicks in that I didn’t know I had.

Move or you die.

I move, scrambling on glass and grit. I get the kitchen island between me and the shape just as the third shot blows a fist-sized crater out of the cabinet where my head was half a second ago. I press my spine to the island’s base, my chest heaving and my hands shaking so hard I can barely make fists.

Think, Josie.

Fucking think.

My gun’s upstairs. In the nightstand on my side of the bed, where it’s been every night since I moved in. It’s loaded and ready to go but on an entirely different floor from where I’m at now.

I didn’t carry it with me because I didn’t think it was necessary. I was safe in Finn’s house with an alarm set and doors locked. I think I trusted that Connie didn’t give us up and tonight Mikhail was going to be apprehended.

I shouldn’t have needed that fucking gun, but well, here I am, about to die.

Mikhail is between me and Finn and coming closer. I hear his boots now, crunching glass, calm, taking his time, despite the fact he doesn’t have all night. Not only will the security alarm notify the police, but the neighbors will have called in the explosion.

Two minutes. Maybe five. I just have to stay alive that long.

The boots stop on the other side of the island. “You should have drowned.” Mikhail’s voice is thick, accented, almost gentle. Conversational. “That night. We thought the water took you. Mr. Voronin does not like loose ends, and you have been a very loose end.”

I don’t answer. Answering tells him exactly where I am.

I reach up, slow, and find the wooden block on the counter above me by feel, and I close my hand around the handle of the chef’s knife and slide it free without a sound.