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)
“I’m pulling you off the case.” I close my mouth. “I have another job for you. Pittsburgh kicked us a counterintel engagement for a tech client. There are suspected employee leaks. It’s a low priority but highly billable and you can run it from your desk. I want you on it for the next two weeks minimum.”
“But the Voronin case. I have more information to work through and—”
“I wouldn’t push it right now, McAdams. I’m still angry with you.”
I grit my teeth and remain silent.
He does not look up from his screen. “You’re dismissed.”
I stand and move to the door.
“Josie,” Malik says, his voice soft with gratitude.
I turn back to him.
“I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Me too,” I murmur with a small smile. And I owe all of that to one devastatingly gorgeous—yes, I noticed despite my hypothermia—suspected smuggler.
I’m lost in thought as I make my way back to my desk, and by the time I sit down, I’ve already laid out the framework for working the Voronin case on the side. I’ll work late hours, not a problem. And while I’m technically on another case, I’m still the lead intelligence analyst and have a certain amount of discretion on how I spend my off-hours.
I think about those women being loaded into the van, looking utterly defeated and resigned to their new lives of slavery, and I know I can’t let this go. While I might not be going on stakeouts anymore, I can still run the data. I can still put BOB to work in the background and I can still contribute to saving the next boatload of women who are smuggled in from Canada.
I have one piece of intelligence the official team does not have, which is a fishing boat captain who knew who those Russians were.
I’m going to find Finn Marlowe and I’m going to get more information from him. Yeah… that sounds right.
“You look like shit,” Cole says as he plops down in the chair by my desk, and I’m startled out of my thoughts.
“Late night,” I mutter.
Cole is one of my closest friends here at Jameson. His background is in Special Forces and smoke jumping. He’s wearing jeans and a forest green T-shirt, revealing a tattoo of wildfire flames peeking out at his biceps.
“Just so you know,” I say, rubbing at my temples. “Malik is going to have me debrief you on a situation I got myself into last night.”
Cole’s eyebrows shoot up. “What kind of situation?”
“The type I almost died.”
That causes him to physically jolt but before he can press me, another agent walks up. “Cole… Malik wants to see you.”
I nod toward the boss man’s office. “There you go. He’ll fill you in and then you’ll come and interrogate me.”
Cole rises slowly from the chair. “Can’t… wait…,” he says slowly, utter confusion in his tone. He blinks again. “By the way, Tessa wants you to come over this weekend for dinner. That work?”
“Yeah,” I say, rubbing my temple again. “Sure. Sounds fun.”
And it will be. Tessa’s someone I’ve only recently gotten to know. Jameson helped Cole investigate an arson ring that Tessa was smack in the middle of. A personal side note—Tessa and Cole were old flames, and they reunited through the course of the case.
“Fine,” Cole says, looking a bit unsure if I’m okay.
I offer him an encouraging smile. “We’ll talk later. Promise.”
Cole nods once and then he’s gone.
I turn to my screen and unlock it. The corporate counterintel file has just landed in my queue and I give it a brief scan. It’s the kind of case that matters—at least to someone—and I’m going to do the work.
But not right now.
I open a second tab and type in Finn Marlowe and the results render in three seconds. People far smarter than me at Jameson built the search layer to mine data from both legitimate and not so legitimate sites. I’m able to pull stuff that is considerably more than what shows up in any normal background check.
The screen fills and my eyes fly over the words.
Name: Finn Owen Marlowe
Born: March 16, in Portland, Oregon
Mother: Catherine Marie Marlowe, deceased three years ago, from cancer
Father: Unlisted
Siblings: None
Two known childhood addresses, both in Southeast Portland. I make a mental note to look up the areas. I note that he didn’t graduate from high school, records ending at the tenth grade.
I scroll down to criminal history and my heart pangs a little. He was placed in a Portland boys’ home at age fourteen but left at age sixteen. No address given as to where he went but I’m assuming the streets.
There’s a sealed juvenile record that would not turn up in a normal background check, but I’ve got full access. He served six months in juvenile detention at age seventeen for stealing a car. I gloss over the arrest report, but my eyes stop on the photograph.