by Ben Muse
“Like it? I love it,” she beamed. She stood up and walked over to him.
***
Durand ran through his mental checklist as he did before every shot. The most harrowing moment would be the millisecond of time it took for the bullet to zip through the width of the dining room of the smaller yacht and fly just over the deck railing. If his aim were off by the smallest of margins, the bullet would deflect off the metal railing and end up somewhere it wasn’t intended. In sniper circles, both outcomes would be met with snickers from his colleagues, and some would question whether it was time for him to hang up his gun. Such was the need to knock people down. Let them talk; he’d pocket his five hundred thousand and, when the time was right, tell them the real story.
***
“Let me put this on you, my dear,” Sergei said, as he connected both ends of the bracelet with the clasp. He leaned in for a final kiss.
***
The crosshairs zeroed in on the intended spot of impact, and Durand pulled the trigger as he slowly exhaled. He watched the grim drama play out on the telescopic sight for a few seconds.
“It is good?” asked Aref, who was looking through his own sighting scope.
“It is good.” said Durand, as his attention turned to breaking down the rifle.
Aref slid a silenced 9mm Glock from his waistband and promptly delivered two shots to the back of the sniper’s head.
“Sorry, just following orders,” he said to the dead man, as blood began to ooze out of the entry points. Loose lips sink ships. He placed the gun on the van’s center console, slipped into the driver’s seat, and drove out of the parking lot. The police would no doubt see the van exit when they replayed the video feed, but by the time they started looking, the van would be in about eighty different pieces and the sniper’s body incinerated. Cold-blooded, ruthless efficiency.
***
Sergei Durov felt the high-velocity round hit his chest like a hammer, and it spun him to the left and knocked him off his feet. For a moment, he wondered if he would be able to breathe again. He felt certain he had at least a couple of broken ribs. A minute later, he stood up slowly and shakily and saw Viktoria sprawled on the floor of the terrace next to the loveseat, a crimson stain spreading on her peach blouse. Her lifeless eyes told him the sniper’s shot had hit its mark. He shuffled slowly inside to the closest phone and in a frantic voice asked Dmitri to call for medical attention. It was now time for Sergei to play the role of grieving husband. An attempt on his life had failed and taken his lovely Viktoria instead.
Chapter 18
The Anchor Management wasn’t cleared to leave until nine thirty Saturday night. Crime scene technicians had spent two hours going over the sea terrace and master suite with a fine-toothed comb, as well as a yacht docked on the other side of the marina, where the shot ostensibly came from. The murder of visitors was highly uncommon in Nassau—those occurring on multimillion dollar boats even more so—and the police would undoubtedly pull out all stops to ensure tourists felt safe on the island.
I was the only guest who sailed back to Foggy Harbor. My father decided to stay on the island to help the hospitalized Sergei. He had a nasty, ragged bruise over his heart that was a painful canvas of mottled dark greens and ugly purples, as well as two broken ribs. He was damn lucky to be alive. Anna and I had parted with a sad hug and the promise of talking and getting together when she returned to Wilmington. I worried about Anna being caught in the crossfire should the killer return to finish the job.
My mood was somber and I kept mostly to myself. If not for a ship-to-shore call to Pops, I would’ve spoken to no one. We decided that he would have a car pick me up, and I would stay at the house until my father returned. Around midnight, I gave up on sleep and walked up to the sun deck. “This is not a game,” kept looping through my brain, Viktoria’s last words to me. She was genuinely scared this morning, and now she was dead. I played devil’s advocate and wondered if Sergei really was who the killer was aiming for. It was quite a stretch to think Viktoria was the intended target. The man was a billionaire and no doubt had a list of enemies. You didn’t make that much scratch and have everyone’s love and affection. The odds of someone making that perfect a shot had to be a zillion to one. Still, the nagging doubt lingered.
The next evening at seven thirty, Pops met me at the pier, with his fifty-three-year old Rolls Royce Phantom and a big smile on his elongated face. A glimpse of white hair poked out from his brown fedora, and he wore a long, brown coat with a green-and-red scarf around his neck to ward off the early spring chill. He still had the strong Hampton chin, but his ears had gotten longer, and he walked with a noticeable stoop and a gnarled, wooden cane.
“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he said, as he wiped a stray tear from his right eye.
“Hi, Pops. Been too long.” I gave him a hug. He had written me while I was away, but never visited, not that I wanted him to. Old men shouldn’t have to visit their grandchildren in prison. Pops and I had a decent relationship growing up, but he was always busy at the shipyard or running sea trials on the boats in production. My grandmother passed away before I was born, and I never once stayed over at his house or sat in his lap as he read me a story. He was a man from a different age, a provider but not a nurturer. My father had received a healthy shot of this gene.
It was dark, and the fog was rolling in off the Atlantic as we drove through the tree-lined streets of my idyllic little hometown. The gas-lit street lamps and fog combined to give downtown a haunted look. For some reason, I felt like an intruder who just snuck in through an open window. I wondered if the people of Foggy Harbor would accept me again.
“I feel the need to prepare you for what, or I should say, who, is in the house waiting for you,” said Pops in his grand, erudite voice.
“Let me guess. Her name starts with Bailey and ends with Masters?”
“Well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag on this one.”
“I’ll get over her working for dad and NO one telling me.”
“Yes, I suppose you’ll get over that rather quickly,” he mumbled.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m clamming up and staying out of it.” He pulled the Phantom through the black, wrought-iron gate and drove down the well-lit driveway. He pulled into the six-car garage and parked next to a fully-restored, raven black 1966 Mustang. My pride and joy.
The home hadn’t changed at all. It was a sprawling two-story, constructed in a Hamptons shingle style, and built to look rustic and weathered, humble almost, but it was far from that. It was a mix of gambrel roofs, Palladian windows, and gardenia-scented wrap-around porches. It all blended together in a magnificent way.
I walked from the garage, through the nautical-themed mudroom, and into the kitchen. Stainless steel everywhere, along with cherry cabinets and a large marble island smack dab in the center. A large, square, lavender-colored cake with Welcome Home Chase written in green and framed with colorful fondant flowers sat in the center of the island. This had to be the lamest welcome home party ever. The cake may have well as said, Welcome home! Nobody gives a fuck! And Bailey was nowhere to be seen.
“Hmm, something must’ve come up,” Pops said.
“Sounds like a case of the chicken-shits. How ’bout some cake?”
“I’ve got something better,” he smiled. “Come with me and we’ll properly welcome you home.”
I followed him out to the terrace where he produced a slender, greenish bottle and poured us each three fingers of Jameson from the well-stocked outdoor bar.
“Here’s to a new chapter in your life, son,” he said as he raised his glass to me. The amber liquid was smooth going down, infinitely better than the awful, rotgut prison hooch inmates would make out of apple peels, yeast, and sugar pilfered from the prison kitchen.
We sat in teak rocking chairs, sipped our spirits, and talked for about ten minutes before Pops announced he was retiring for the evening.
He made it halfway to the door, turned and said, “Things’ll be different, Chase. For better or for worse. Best just roll with it, okay?”
“What does that mean?” I asked for the second time tonight. I didn’t speak cryptic nonagenarian.
“It means I’m clamming up,” he offered for the second time tonight before finishing his drink. “Goodnight, son.”
With nowhere to go and nowhere to be, I refilled my tumbler from the bar and took the bottle of twelve-year old Jameson with me, down the stone steps to the infinity pool and across the lawn to the beach access path. Constructed of cedar, the path wound its way over the protected sea oats for a hundred fifty feet before ending at Hampton Beach. Pretentious, I know. When I got to the beach, I ditched my shoes on the landing.
The beach cabana lay fifty feet from the last cedar step, and it was my destination of choice. Contrary to what many people think, the beach is not a quiet place, and tonight was no different. A symphony of sounds competed for dominance. Waves crashed on shore, winds rattled the grasses and oats, and seabirds called to each other. Maritime music at its finest, and it comforted me to hear it after so much time had passed.
Cool sand greeted my feet as I stepped off the last wooden step. A security light mounted on the steps combined with the fog to give the structure a ghostly glow. It was an open-air cabana, with a solid back wall and wooden slat walls on the side, which allowed breezes to filter in on hot summer days. A thatched roof gave it that island look. On the raised stone patio sat a grill, table, and chairs. It was dark on the front side of the cabana, but enough light allowed me to see that I wasn’t alone.
Chapter 19
“You certainly took your sweet time, but I figured you would make it out here eventually,” she began in a halting, we’re gonna be here awhile kind of voice. I could just make out her shape in the darkness of the cabana, and I assumed this made her more comfortable. She could hide whatever guilt she felt in the foggy blackness, and I would imagine that she had gotten ugly and bloated these last seven years. A win-win.
“Hello, Bailey. Why are you here? You don’t owe me anything.”
“We need to talk, Chase.”
I took a seat in the chair across from her and sat my glass and the bottle on the small table in between us. “I’ve been available for seven years, yet your shadow never darkened a single prison entrance.”
“It’s not exactly the kind of conversation you have during a prison visit.”
“You know, I don’t seem to recall receiving a single letter from you either. But you had college and law school to worry about. Football games and pep rallies and keg parties, exams . . . life.”
“How did you know about law school?”
“A little birdie told me and its name wasn’t Hank Hampton.” There was a palpable silence as she processed this information.
“Anna,” she said, more a revelation than a question.
“Didn’t think it through all the way, huh, counselor?”
“Guess not,” she admitted.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” I said as I finished my glass. “Where are my manners? Would you care for some of the Hampton’s finest twelve-year old whiskey?”
She reached over, picked up the bottle, and took a healthy glug-glug before placing it back on the table.
“You work for my father. I don’t know why he would keep this from me, but you and I will stay out of each other’s way, and life will go on.”
“It isn’t that simple, Chase.”
“Tell you what, Bailey, if you will answer one question for me, truthfully, I promise you’ll never have to hear my voice again. What happened to our friendship? What did I do that caused you to hate me? That’s all I want to know.”
“You’re right. I did hate you. With every fiber of my being. You had it all, Chase. The big house, money, anything you wanted, and I had to make do in a roach-infested, shit hole of a trailer that was hot in the summer and freezing in the winter.”
“But you had a mother that would walk to the ends of the earth for you. That’s worth its weight in gold,” I interjected.” But I didn’t have a father.”
“I can relate,” I said. “Some might even say I was lacking a mother.”
“Yeah, but you knew your father.”
“Bailey, what does this have to do with our friendship? What I had was never an issue before between us.”
“Nothing, until I found out who my father was, in exchange for my silence and a nicer place to call home. I was mad at you because you were the reason we had to leave.”
“I don’t understand.”
She reached over and took another healthy pull from the bottle.
“Chase, Hank’s my father too.”
It got quiet. I didn’t hear birds, waves, or wind. Hank’s my father too.
“Bullshit,” I said quietly, but in the back of my head I knew it sounded just screwed up enough to be true.
“I’m not lying. He’ll tell you himself,” she said calmly. “He had an affair with my mother. He would stop in from time to time at the Three Sisters for breakfast on his way to work, and one thing led to another, which led to me.”
“My father . . . excuse me, our father, had two women pregnant at the same time, in our small town, and managed to keep everything hush-hush. That’s just too rich. Epic Hank Hampton.”
“He paid mom to keep it a secret.”
“You’re my sister,” I said, still not believing what I was saying.
“Yes. Half-sister.”
“Do we have any other half-brothers or -sisters running around the world that you know of? Have you asked him?”
“I think we’re it.”
“When did you find out?”
“As soon as we unloaded the moving van in Atlanta. He sat me down on our small patio out back and told me. I was sweat-soaked and dog-tired from the trip and the unloading, and I couldn’t muster a fight. Plus, he had an endearing way about him that made you not want to hate him. He helped us pack the night before we left Foggy Harbor, but I didn’t think anything of it. He said you had asked if he could help get us out of the trailer park, so he called in some favors and got mom a job working at a big law firm. Just like that, new school, new place to live . . . a new life. And I hated you for it. Yes, we were poor, but Foggy Harbor was home, and it was my life and I had no say.”
I was dumbstruck. Bailey Masters, my half-sister.
She continued, “Later, I understood why they did it. You and I were becoming too close, and they could see where things were headed. They couldn’t have you and I fall in love as brother and sister; so a separation was needed. Plus, it kept the scandal away from Hank.”
“Yes, how convenient for him. Pack away your troubles in a U-Haul and move it to another state. What an ass. It was true, Bailey. I was developing a different kind of feeling for you. Still, you never wrote or called that whole year you went missing.”
“They convinced me not to. Said it would just complicate things. He was socking money away in a retirement fund for mom in exchange for her silence. He didn’t have to do that. I stayed quiet for mom. We could have threatened to go public, but what good would that have done. I regretted it every day, and then we moved back and I had to play the role of first-class bitch to you.” She flicked a lighter and lit a cigarette. I could see from the flame that she had not gotten ugly or bloated.
“So my father, dammit, our father, let his daughter and the mother of his child live in that squalid excuse for a home for God knows how many years?” I asked. She took a deep drag.
“Welcome to my world,” she said as she exhaled.
“You know, I could almost feel sorry for you, but you’re a Hampton and no one feels sorry for the Hamptons. I’m guessing no one outside the family knows your Hank’s daughter.”
“We haven’t advertised it.”
“I can imagine.” The whiskey was loosening my lips, and the thoughts were careening and pinging off the walls of my brain. It was then that I re
alized how I’d been abandoned. And I began to speak without thinking.
“Why’d you and Crystal move back?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” she said icily.
“Fair enough. How old are you now, Bailey?”
“You know how old I am,” she said cautiously.
“Right, twenty-five, like me. So let me get this straight, because I’ve been drinking with our ninety-three-year-old grandfather and I may be a little fuzzy on the details. Seven plus years ago, I defended you, my half-sister, from a surly and drunk Cam Tanner and went to prison, and not a damn one of you saw fit to bring this sordid but important fact to light. Not you, my sister, or that piece-of-shit father of ours, because you had an agreement! Did it ever occur to you two that maybe this little imperfect fact would’ve helped me out during sentencing or that maybe we would’ve taken this to trial instead of pleading?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d take it all back if I could.”
“I went to prison for seven years and you got to go to college and enjoy life, so you don’t get to play the poor, poor Bailey game anymore. You’re a grown-ass woman, yet you turned a blind eye to me, and stayed silent for seven years. I don’t have a college degree, a job, or anything resembling an identity. People know me as either Inmate 0513717, the man who killed Cam Tanner, or the son of the fine, upstanding, All-American, good, Foggy Harbor citizen and businessman, Hank ‘I fucking cheated on my wife and had an illegitimate child’ Hampton. Thanks for nothing, sis, and welcome to the family. Looks like you’ll fit in just fine.”
I stood, grabbed the heavy tumbler, and sent in crashing into the back wall of the cabana, and walked off toward the sound of the crashing waves.
“Chase, come back. Where are you going?”
“To call my parole officer and request that I be put back in prison. Who knew I’d have more people that I trusted in there. Then, I’m going to try to convince myself that I shouldn’t strangle our father.”
