Page 102 of Code Name: Harbor

The word lands hard.

RPG. Rocket-propelled grenade.

A military launcher fired across open water at a supposed fishing boat in the middle of the night. Not an engine fire. Not an accident. A weapon of war, aimed at Finn’s boat, by Voronin’s men, no doubt.

“The rocket hit forward. The whole bow came apart. The fuel went up. I went over the side and when I surfaced, The Quartermaster was already gone. Just fire on the water and… I don’t know what happened to Connie.”

“They haven’t found her,” I tell him and his eyes fill with pain. “I’m so sorry.”

He nods, tries to adjust his body and grimaces. “I grabbed a nav buoy and I held on. I waited to freeze to death and instead the Coast Guard found me.” He turns his head, slow, against the pillow. His eyes are dry and terrible. “Are they still looking for her?”

“Yes, they are. Maybe she made it.”

But even I know that sounds lame. I’ve been given limited information since coming to the hospital with Finn in the ambulance. They wheeled him into surgery, and the wait is killing me, but one of the Coast Guard officials told me there’s not much left to collect of The Quartermaster.

“I need to tell you something else,” I say.

His eyes come back to me.

“Mikhail came after me and Finn.” My voice scrapes raw on every word and I let it. “He blew out the back wall of the house with some kind of charge and he came through. He shot Finn in the chest.”

Marcus goes very still. “Jesus.”

“Finn’s alive. He’s in surgery right now, downstairs, and I don’t know yet, I don’t know how it’s going to—” I stop. I breathe. “I fought Mikhail off and he’s in custody. But Finn’s…”

My voice cracks and I can’t say anymore. For a long moment Marcus doesn’t say anything either.

Then his bandaged hand moves across the blanket toward me, and I take it as carefully as I can around the gauze, and we hold on.

“They hit us both,” he says quietly. “Same night. Same hour. The boat and the house.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not two things, Josie. That’s one thing.”

“I know.”

“It means Connie gave you up.” His grip tightens, just slightly, through the wrapping.

I watch the enormity of it land on Marcus the way it’s already landed on me—the grief and the fury fused together.

“She gave us up,” he says. It isn’t a question. “She went to Mikhail and she gave them you, but giving you up means she gave us all up.” His throat works. “Eighteen years and she handed it over.”

“I’m sorry” is all I can think to say to him. The betrayal is as deep to him as it is to Finn.

“And the thing is…” His voice cracks a hairline. “The thing is I don’t think she ever once thought they’d come for her. She thought she was buying something. Getting you out of the way, keeping Finn out of prison, getting her family back the way it was before you. She made her deal and she got on that boat for a normal run like the deal protected her, like Voronin’s people keep their word.” He stares at the ceiling. “They blew her up with the rest of it. She sold us to save us, and they killed her for free.”

A tear cuts through the soot still on the side of his face that isn’t bandaged.

“I think she was desperate.” Another lame statement. What I really want to say is that she was a stupid, stupid woman driven by jealousy and it cost her her life.

“She was mean and she was loyal and she loved that man so hard it rotted something in her and she did a terrible thing, but she didn’t deserve to die for it cold and alone in the dark.”

“Both of those are true, Marcus. I don’t know how you hold both of them, but they’re both true.”

And we sit there, the two of us, the only two people in the world who know the whole story of this horrible situation. The betrayal and the rocket and the woman in the water and the man on the operating table and we hold on to each other through a fistful of gauze and we let it be as terrible as it is.

After a while, his eyes start to drift, the pain meds pulling him under.