St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking is a bounty hunting organization.
Yea, I know what you are thinking, looking at the opening statement. Salvage and Wrecking does not bring to mind bounty hunting in any shape or form. You're dead on there.
Add to the confusion with the fact that the partners who comprise this group are named Michael Finnigan and Katalin Fiero Dahar with nary a Saint nor a Nick in their names.
You might have guessed that the Salvage and Wrecking was a dodge, something to make people looking at the company think it was something totally different and you would be right. Finnigan and Fiero (she goes that name most often) do not do any advertising except by word of mouth and they would prefer that would-be mistaken clients look elsewhere for someone to help them bring up a sunken anything since that is nothing like what they really do. As for the <i>St. Nicholas</i> part, well, it would be more fun for you to read the adventures and learn the story behind it yourself.
Three years before the events of the first recorded adventure these two principals had totally different jobs than the ones they do when we meet them.
Michael Finnigan had been a New York City detective for several years. Being a cop ran in the family with his grandfather and his father and his uncles and eventually even younger sister wearing blue. Then he learned his old man was often more crooked than a lot of the people he arrested and Finnigan got a bad taste in his mouth and quit. He joined the U.S. Marshal service but his "proper, by-the-gook, American-style arrest, leading to an indictment, leading to a trial, leading to prison time" attitude stayed with him.
Katalin Fiero Dahar was a member of the Spanish Intelligence community in a very much untalked-about capacity. She was an assassin. She was very good at being an assassin. She had been one for several years. This extremely beautiful and graceful and athletic daughter of two very prominent individuals had chosen a different path for herself than the public service her parents were in and while she kept the truth from them and everyone else, she had no regrets.
Their lives would change when they were put on an ad-hoc task force. Events in that capacity would be the catalysts for their again changing careers and going into the bounty hunting profession.
Except they weren't ordinary bounty hunters. They worked primarily for a very powerful ranking member of the International Criminal Court, Helene Betancourt, though they had actually never met her. What they do is to find people wanted by court (well, more accurately by the Judge) who have successfully escaped capture and drop them off outside the courthouse doors. No questions asked and no explanation given. Certainly no fanfare or any sort. Just a matter of the wanted being unceremoniously snatched and dragged to finally be tried for their crimes.