Page 13 of Code Name: Harbor

“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.

He was a good-looking kid. His hair was a lot longer but still with those piercing green eyes that are full of intellect and cunning. There’s no fear in his booking photo, but no defiance either. Merely the expression of a kid who’s already metabolized whatever the system is going to do to him next and is calculating his way out of it.

I leave that behind and move to his adult record. I can’t say I’m shocked to see he did time in prison for trafficking in stolen property. He pleaded out, served four years, and was released early on parole at age twenty-five. That expired two years ago.

One would think that a man who was raised in the system would continue to move in and out of it, but to my surprise, the records reveal that Finn opened a fine art gallery five years ago, which is surprisingly right here in Pioneer Square, not more than six blocks away.

The business is registered to an LLC he owns outright, and tax filings show consistent revenue in the mid-six-hundreds. The business is clean and he was even audited two years ago. There are no flags at all. His gallery looks legit, representing twelve living artists. He mounts eight exhibitions a year and participates in three international art fairs.

In the last nine years, Finn hasn’t had so much as a parking ticket in his name.

Was I wrong about him being a smuggler?

I scroll deeper and check out the property records. He owns a single-family home on Perkins Lane West in Magnolia with private water frontage on Puget Sound.

“Holy shit,” I murmur as I lean forward to look at a picture of the house pulled up from Zillow.

It’s massive and is currently assessed at $5.8 million.

My head spins over how this man went from rags to riches in a handful of years. I barely register that he has a 2025 Range Rover and a 2021 Ford F-250.

There’s no other information listed. No spouse, no children, no other family.

I push slightly away from my desk and lean my chair back. This is the man who pulled me out of the water in the wee hours of the morning. He’s a convicted felon turned successful and apparently wealthy businessman.

On paper, he’s two completely different men.