Page 79 of Code Name: Harbor

“I will put you back in the Salish Sea myself.”

My phone buzzes against the counter and I snatch it so fast, I bobble it. Once righted, I see the text from Finn, and the warmth that goes through me is embarrassing in its completeness. Four words and I feel it in my whole body.

I’m here for you.

“I have to go,” I say, scrambling out of my chair.

Caroline’s eyes track to the phone, then back to me, and her grin returns, gentler now. “Your guy?”

“Reports, Prescott. Go do your reports.”

“Go enjoy it,” she says with a laugh. “Remember… the working-it-out is the thing. I meant that.”

I leave her in the break room and take the stairs down, and the closer I get to the lobby the lighter I feel. I clear the security doors and step out into the gray Pioneer Square afternoon, and there he is.

Finn’s leaning against the side of his Range Rover at the curb, ankles crossed, looking for all the world like a man with nowhere to be. Except his right hand is tucked into the front of his jacket, resting flat against his side, where I know to the inch what he’s keeping there.

His gun.

His eyes aren’t relaxed. They’re moving—taking in the cars, the corner, the man at the coffee cart, the windows across the street—in the steady sweep of someone who’s managing the whole block until I’m in the car.

It should scare me, but for some reason, it doesn’t. He’s here and I feel free.

It makes me want to needle him a little, because the alternative is letting the fear sit in my chest where it’s been on a low boil since the gallery.

“You know,” I say, crossing to him, “you’re not going to pull that thing and start a gunfight on the street at three in the afternoon. There are witnesses. There’s a man selling oat milk lattes nine feet away.”

“I’d relocate him first.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“I’m a considerate man.” But his hand comes out of his jacket and finds my waist instead. He pulls me in and kisses me once. It’s unhurried like he doesn’t have a care in the world, when I know he’s carrying the weight of it on his shoulders.

When he pulls back, his eyes are still moving. “Get in. I’ll take you home.”

Home. He says it like it’s a settled thing, my things in his closet, and I don’t hate it.

But I don’t get in.

I’ve spent three days going from his house to this building and back to his house, escorted on both ends, watched the whole way. I love him for it. I really do. But I’m also losing my mind a little.

I’m a grown woman and a trained operative and I haven’t stood unsupervised in open air since the gallery. I glance at Occidental Park across the street. The cobblestones and the bare-branched trees call to me.

Normal. Ten yards away.

“Let’s go for a walk in the park,” I say.

“Josie.”

“Ten minutes. Across the street from Jameson. In full view of approximately forty people.” I take his hand, the one that isn’t his shooting hand, and I lace our fingers. “I’m tired of being moved between two boxes, Finn. I need to stand in the actual world for ten minutes with the actual man I’m—” I stop just short of the word, and I watch him notice that I stopped. “Ten minutes. Please.”

He looks at the park and then back to me. I can see him running the math and I can see the exact moment he decides that giving me this is worth more than his worry.

“Ten minutes,” he says. “We stay where I can see the street and if I tell you to move, you move, no questions.”

That’s a bit dramatic, but I say, “Deal.”

We cross at the light, hands clasped tight. The cobblestones are uneven under my heels and Finn keeps to the street side of me without making a thing of it, his eyes never fully still, even as his thumb brushes over my knuckles.