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)
No, the thing I understand is money and that people will pay a premium for a three-hundred-and-seventy-five-year-old painting.
And what a journey it’s had. It once hung in an Amsterdam house by a family of Jewish sympathizers. Their home was raided and the art was confiscated by the Nazis, which was typical. From there it was mislabeled, misplaced and forgotten amid the chaos of war. It resurfaced in a private European collection years later with just enough paperwork to look legal but too many missing years to be auctioned off at legitimate houses like Christie’s.
Thus, it sunk into the gray market where it made its way to Canada. To get across the border to the US buyer, my services were enlisted to keep the painting off the books with no customs declarations, no questions.
And now here it sits, waiting for a buyer who has so much money, he doesn’t care if it’s authenticated. He only wants to possess it. Until midnight though, the painting stays in my study.
I exit the room and close the double doors behind me. It’s almost five p.m. and the great room is flooded with amber light.
This house and my ability to buy it speaks to everything I’ve done to claw my way to the top. I’ve spent the past seven years making it the version of itself I imagined when I was fifteen and sleeping under a viaduct off Aurora Avenue.
The kitchen is filled with top-of-the-line appliances, the library is full of the classics I’ll never have time to read. The back wall facing the water is glass, floor to ceiling, and I’m treated to the entire Olympic Mountain Range. On clear days, I can see Mount Olympus.
I pour myself a Lagavulin at the built-in bar and take it out onto the back patio where the heaters are running because October in Seattle is chilly. I sit in one of four chairs positioned around a low cedar table and stare out over the water.
Against my better judgment, I think about the woman.
Josie McAdams.
Lead intelligence analyst for Jameson Force Seattle.
She sat in the cabin last night, wrapped in a wool blanket with her teeth chattering and her eyes the color of the Caribbean Sea. Despite suffering hypothermia and shock, her brain was running on all cylinders. Within minutes she clocked my gun, the patrol window charts and the scanner, putting it all together.
Yeah, I think smart women are sexy.
I don’t know what possessed me to send her flowers and I have to give some thought if I’ll do anything else. I can’t deny I wouldn’t mind seeing her again, in a scenario not so fraught with danger. That could be its own form of stupid though, given she’s got close ties with law enforcement.
My security system chimes and I know it’s Marcus pulling into the drive.
I don’t get up because he’ll let himself in and find me.
Half a minute later, he steps out onto the patio, one hand tucked in his jacket pocket, the other holding a travel tumbler of coffee. He nods at the scotch on the table.
“Must be quitting time.” He smirks.
“Help yourself.”
He doesn’t, choosing instead to plop down into the chair on my left. “Nah… still need caffeine to get me back on track from our late night.”
“I never did get any sleep,” I admit.
“You okay to drive by yourself to the handoff?” he asks with concern.
“Yeah… I’m good. The Quartermaster?”
“She’s all cleaned and docked at Shilshole. Washed her down myself.”
“What’s the word on Voronin?”
Marcus looks out over the water. “Mikhail’s asking around. Not loud though. He’ll get a list of possibilities and we’ll be on it.”
“How far down?”
“Not far enough,” he says, his gaze coming back to me. “Did you contact her?”
The question catches me off guard and there’s only one person he could be talking about. “I sent her flowers.”
No sense in lying.
Marcus’s dark brown eyes bore into me. “You’re going to bring her into this?”
“I’m not bringing her into anything.”
“You are.”
I reach for my scotch, take a savored sip. After I set the glass back down, I angle toward Marcus. “I’m a legitimate business owner. She’s a woman. I sent her flowers. Why does this have to be a big deal?”
“All right,” he says after a beat. “I’m not going to fight you on it. I’m just telling you what I see.”
“And what exactly do you see?”
Marcus leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees. “I see a man who has spent almost ten years keeping his life in two buckets and now he’s about to put a federal agent in one of them.”
“She’s not a federal agent.”
“She’s closer to being a cop than she is to being a smuggler.”
He’s not wrong. It’s a risk to even go sniffing around Josie McAdams.
“Acknowledged,” I finally say. It would be smartest to let it go.