Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
The paramedic’s hands close over mine. “Ma’am, I’ve got him, I need you to let me work.”
“He threw himself in front of a bullet for me.” I can’t stop talking. I can’t let go.
“Ma’am. Let me work. Now.”
I let go.
I sit back on my heels and I do not take my eyes off Finn’s gray face for one single second.
“Stay,” I whisper. It’s all I have left. “Stay. Stay. Stay.”
CHAPTER 25
Josie
Marcus looks so small in his hospital bed. They’ve got him propped up on pillows, both hands wrapped to the wrist in white gauze, a dressing taped down one side of his neck and jaw where the flash caught him. His left forearm is in a splint. There’s an oxygen cannula under his nose and three different bags dripping into his arm. The monitor beside him keeps a slow green rhythm.
I stand in the doorway for a second and just look at him, because looking at him alive is a thing I need to do before I can do anything else.
Then I cross the room and pull the chair close and his eyes open.
“Hey,” I rasp. My voice is barely a voice. The man who shot Finn had his forearm across my neck long enough that swallowing feels like my throat’s full of gravel and talking is worse.
“Josie.” His own voice is wrecked, smoke scoured. He looks me over—the dried blood, the gauze a paramedic taped to my forehead an hour ago. “Jesus. You look worse than me.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s close.” He tries to shift up and winces and goes still. “What happened to you? Where’s Finn?”
In surgery, but I’m not about to lead with that. I might burst into tears.
“You first.” I lean in. “What happened on the boat, Marcus?”
For a moment he just looks at the ceiling. The green line on the monitor keeps its time.
“We made the pickup clean,” he says finally. “Everything was normal. We were running back south, dark, right on the window. Connie was on the bow.” A pause and the next part comes slower. “I saw a boat come up on our six. No running lights. I knew right away it was bad because nobody runs that water blacked out unless they don’t want to be seen, and the only people who don’t want to be seen out there are us and them. I called to Connie to get down. I started to bring us hard to port and then I saw the launch.” His jaw works under the bandage. “A flash off their bow. I’ve seen it before, Josie. In the navy. I know what an RPG looks like coming off a tube and I knew in that half a second exactly what was about to happen to us and that there was nothing I could do about it.”
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.”