Killing Chase

by Ben Muse

  There was silence on the line as she assessed her options.

  “Why should we trust you?” she eventually said.

  “Because I’m one of the good guys, and I want Kenny Jackson’s murderer brought to justice. Check me out; you have the resources.”

  “Looks like I have no choice but to, now. What can you tell me so far?” she asked, an air of resignation in her voice.

  “It seems the Anchor Management has a mini submarine attached underneath her, connected to something called a moon pool. Training on it starts in the morning and again tomorrow night. And lobster is being served tonight, complete with drawn butter and asparagus. Baked Alaska is dessert.”

  “Thanks for the menu rundown. Please tell Chase to call me as soon as possible, detective,” she said before disconnecting.

  Chapter 39

  The night was cool and breezy on the darkened sun deck as Anna and I relaxed on the L-shaped couch, the only light coming from the spa tub. I could see the moon periodically as it slipped into and out of the passing clouds, a celestial game of hide-and-seek as we cruised northeast at fifteen knots. I’d invited Anna up here, arriving ten minutes before she was to join me so that could install and activate the Aquatracker before she arrived. I affixed it to a space high on the outside part of the wall where no one could see it. A small, green light blinked intermittently to let me know it was active.

  In my lap lay Anna’s head; the rest of her was stretched out on the loveseat, hidden under a thick blanket she’d purloined from her room. I sat there silently and stared at the hot tub where this entire adventure began almost two weeks ago. Poor Viktoria. Like most things in life, this too was coming full circle, though hopefully not ending with my demise.

  I ran my hands through Anna’s thick, black hair and wondered if I had the temerity to turn away from her. I considered feigning illness or seasickness, but in the end, I knew I would probably give in. She had a way of weaving herself into me, and her pull was strong, but the memory of last night with Elizabeth was fresh on my mind. “Conflicted” was the name of the game, and I tried rationalizing that I would never see Elizabeth again.

  “I didn’t think you were going to make it today,” I said to her as she pulled the blanket up to her neck.

  “Mr. Durov asked me to stay home, but there was no way I would pass up this trip.”

  “I don’t think he was happy when you showed up.”

  “There aren’t many people who go against his wishes. I am one of the few who can get away with it,” she said.

  “Aren’t you worried about angering him and getting banished to the Siberia branch of Sergei, Inc.?” I wanted her to tell me she was Sergei’s daughter. I needed to hear that from her.

  “I do excellent work for him, and he knows I’m irreplaceable.” She turned on her stomach and kissed me, then looked at me with those intense, blue eyes.

  “Do you find me irreplaceable, Chase?” she said, and I could hear an unusual lack of confidence in her tone.

  “Extremely,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster, but inside I wavered. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Anna. I wanted to trust her, but I also didn’t want to get blindsided in case she was involved with whatever Sergei was planning.

  “Tell me about your parents, your upbringing, Russia. I want the Anna Petrov story, the entire, unedited version.” Anything to keep your clothes on, because it is game, set, match otherwise, and I need to keep my head about me.

  “It’s quite unremarkable,” she said, leaning into me and pulling the blanket up with her. “I’m cold. Let’s go back to my room and open a bottle of champagne. I’m sure that will get me to open up to you, Chase, as if there has ever been a problem with that.” Her voice oozed sexuality—whatever doubt she’d had was gone.

  I had an uncomfortable image of Detective Reigart calling Elizabeth and holding the satellite phone up to the receiver. Thought you should hear what your informant was up to, Jenna. He said you would want the information in real time.

  I blinked away that unsettling thought as we rose and walked hand in hand down to the her suite. As we entered, I turned to make sure the door was closed, and clicked the pen, turning the listening device off. My bed’s all yours, detective. All things considered, there were worse places to be.

  ***

  From the shadows of the main deck, Bailey watched Chase and Anna descend the stairs. She took one last drag of her cigarette, flicked it over the railing, and exhaled. The cigarette did nothing to settle her nerves. Perhaps she should get laid. The thought nauseated her as she remembered the night almost eleven years ago. Jackson Ellis. She’d cursed him every day of her life since. He fucked Chase too, she thought, and took some comfort in that, as screwed up as that sounded. Streak knew all along they were brother and sister, even as he convinced Chase to take the plea deal. She walked back to her room, resigned to another night of loneliness.

  Chapter 40

  Thursday, March 29, 2012

  I slipped from the covers at six thirty and dressed quickly. The first rays of orange sunlight filtered in from the east-facing window, and I could tell Anchor had stopped. I glanced outside and saw land about half a mile away. Sometime during the past couple of hours, the captain had navigated the ship through Ocracoke Inlet, the narrow channel between Portsmouth Island and Ocracoke Island. A tall, white lighthouse dominated the rapidly brightening skyline.

  The waters of Pamlico Sound were calm, and Ocracoke looked sleepy. According to my father during dinner last night, it was one of the most remote islands of the Outer Banks, accessible only by public ferry, private plane, or private boat. It was also the place where Blackbeard the pirate was killed in 1718. I took that as a good sign. I wasn’t superstitious by nature, but this trip needed all the positive mojo it could muster.

  Before leaving, I kissed a very naked and still- sleeping Anna Petrov on the forehead. I slipped out of the room, still with more questions about her than answers, but I decided to trust her after considering everything. She’d done nothing to betray my trust. As far as having feelings for both Jenna and Anna, this was just something I would have to deal with if I made it off the ship alive. The main thing was to keep my focus on the job at hand.

  As I opened her door to leave, I clicked the pen to turn the transmitter back on. In the ship’s hallway, I whispered, “Coming in”, and I hoped the detective was awake. I swiped my room key and entered.

  “Morning sunshine,” he said, through toothpaste-covered lips.

  “Morning, detective. Sleep well?”

  “Like a baby.”

  “How’d Jenna take your call?” I asked, already wincing before he answered.

  “She was not happy, but she accepted it, and she wants you to call her,” he said handing over the sat phone. I handed it back to him and pointed to the window.

  “We’re anchored off Ocracoke, so I should be able to get cell service on my phone.” I called and she answered on the second ring.

  “Good morning,” I said. “I know you are probably pissed at me.”

  She was quiet for a moment, but then said, “What’s done is done. Let’s just focus on why you’re there. What can you tell me?”

  “We’re on the sound side of Ocracoke Island. Training starts in about an hour. It’s hard to read Sergei, but he is very anxious to get his men aboard Gemini. That I know.”

  “What’s the plan for the rest of the day and night?”

  “Around noon, we’ll pull anchor and head north up the sound. According to my father, we’ll exit Pamlico Sound at Oregon Inlet and parallel the northern Outer Banks until we are offshore Virginia Beach, sometime tonight. Then we’ll drop anchor again and do some night training.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “Can you confirm that Aquatracker is working?”

  “It is. We’ve got a strong signal. Stay safe, Chase.” She clicked off before I could respond, probably still angry at me bringing the detective aboard without her knowledge. After
a quick shower, I called the kitchen and ordered a large breakfast, more for the detective’s benefit than mine. Food was the last thing on my mind.

  ***

  I sat down behind my father in a black leather chair on board Gemini, and my first thought was that Sergei was going to steal Anchor and leave us stranded in a mini sub near the island, which wouldn’t have been the worst news in the world. My second thought was that I was about to have the ride of a lifetime. I turned into a little kid as I sat staring out the large and thick plexiglass windows on the front and sides of Gemini. I pictured us surfacing at the marina in Silverlake Harbor, while confused and perplexed Ocracokians stared at us as if aliens had just landed. The thought served to lighten my mood further as we prepared to leave the mother ship above us.

  Bailey sat to my right in a similar chair, and the look on her face showed she clearly didn’t share the same enthusiasm for the excursion that I did. Her face was white, and she looked nervous.

  “Hatch secured,” my father said into the small microphone attached to the headset he was wearing. With that complete, he sat back down and pressed a button to the right of a black joystick.

  “I’m beginning to fill the ballast tanks with water so that when they deactivate the locking system, we’ll sink a little. Don’t want to risk damaging the moon pool or the mini.” Thirty seconds later, he gave the order to release Gemini.

  She sank briefly and then leveled off. Dad moved the joystick to the right, and she responded with a nimble turn as dual, three-horsepower motors each powered a ten-inch propeller. Pamlico Sound was a shallow body, so we maintained our depth at ten feet for the run into Silverlake Harbor. Shafts of sunlight pierced the water, and we saw Spanish mackerel, cobia, and red drum as they swam over, under, and next to us. It was exhilarating, and I even saw Bailey smile . . . once she discovered that we weren’t going to die from lack of oxygen.

  We entered the oval-shaped harbor and did two laps with Bailey and I each taking the controls for a lap. The Hamptons take Ocracoke! As dad took the controls for the run back to Anchor, he stopped Gemini and brought her to periscope depth. Her center console display came on and the screen focused on an old, thirty-two-foot schooner that looked well taken care of. Painted white with blue trim, it was tied up to a dock that had seen better days. Dad zoomed in on the boat, and we could make out the name, Miss Sheila, and he further zoomed in on an older man moving about between the ship’s twin masts. I imagined this man probably loved boats as much as my father did. He looked about seventy-five, with a face chiseled out of years of sun, sand, and wind—a real salt-of-the-earth type. I watched my father watch the man on the screen, and I got the sense that he envied that man. He had the one thing my father didn’t have, something money couldn’t buy. Time.

  The short ride back to the ship was quiet and would be the last time the three of us would be together, alone, as a family, if we truly ever were. Part of me still can’t believe, nor accept, the events that happened later that night.

  Chapter 41

  By the time we weighed anchor a few minutes after noon, and headed for Oregon Inlet and the deeper waters of the Atlantic, the day was already a solid eight and a half on a scale of one to ten. As my father and Sergei’s sub jockeys made run after run in underwater training on Gemini, above the surface it was playtime on the Anchor Management. The Beach was opened, jet skis were lowered into the water, and the grills were fired up. The smell of grilled burgers and hotdogs filled the air as the staff was given a couple of hours of downtime to relax and enjoy all Anchor had to offer.

  Anna was tanning on the Beach, and I had an idea. I dove in the water on the port side of the ship and swam around to her side. She lay on her stomach with her bikini top undone, and I splashed her, thinking she would sit up and expose herself to me, but instead, she calmly clasped the bikini straps back together and looked in my direction. With an evil grin, she dove over the top of me into the water. As I waited for her to surface, she pulled my swim trunks clean off me. Before she could swim away with them, I grabbed at her ankle and managed to snag a foot. I pulled her to me, and she brought my swim trunks out of the water and held them above her as if she were initiating a game of keep-away.

  “You can have them back on one condition,” she said as she broke into a big smile.

  “And that is?”

  “Hot tub, tonight, under the stars. Just the two of us,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry; Dmitri and I are arm wrestling tonight and then watching Rocky IV in the movie room.”

  She handed my trunks to me under the water and then without warning gently took my balls in her hand.

  “Maybe you should rethink your plans,” she said, gently applying pressure to her grip.

  Definitely Sergei’s daughter. She gets what she wants. “Sounds like a deal I shouldn’t refuse.”

  “I should think not.” Her sultry eyes dared me to refuse her. I pulled her to me and kissed her as we both held on to the portable ladder.

  “So that is a yes?”

  “That’s a yes, Anna. You make a very convincing argument.”

  She released the Hampton jewels and, as she climbed the ladder to the terrace, shook her perfect little Russian butt in my face and said, “I promise you it will be worth your while.”

  I slipped my trunks back on and swam to the other side to, uh, ahem, cool down from our little encounter. As I climbed out, I came face to face with Sergei.

  “Mr. Durov.”

  “You seem to have taken a liking to my employee.”

  The non-gentleman part of me wanted to tell him that I was going to have his daughter six ways from Sunday, tonight.

  “Yes, Dmitri and I are fast becoming friends,” I deadpanned. He chuckled.

  “I’m sure Anna appreciates your sense of humor. Tell me, did you enjoy your ride on the sub today?”

  “I did until I sensed that my father was finally coming to grips with his mortality.”

  He considered my statement, brought a mottled hand to his chin and looked out over the waters of the sound. “Yes, it is a terrible thing to know you are dying. But truthfully, aren’t we all?” Then he turned to me. “Some just faster than others.” His dead, gray eyes said more to me than his words. He turned to go and then looked back.

  “Be good to Anna; she’s like a daughter to me.”

  That may have been the most honest thing I would ever hear him say to me.

  ***

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” my father said as he closed the door to his suite and pointed me toward the loveseat. He looked exhausted. It was late afternoon, and we’d passed through Oregon Inlet and were now steaming north-northwest, fifteen miles east of Corolla.

  “I just wanted to see how you were doing. You’ve had a long day and you’re no spring chicken.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.” He turned his whole body towards me so he wouldn’t have to keep moving his neck.

  “Dad, let’s turn her around and head home. You don’t need to be doing this, running yourself ragged to sell a damn yacht. You’ve got nothing left to prove.”

  “It’s in my blood, Chase. I can’t go home, sit around, and wait to die. That’s not me. Never has been.”

  “So let’s go home and you teach me to fly. We only have a finite amount of time left. Tell Sergei you aren’t up to this. If he’s your friend, he will understand,” I pleaded. I wanted to tell him everything, but I didn’t.

  “Did Bailey put you up to this?” he asked pointedly.

  “No. She doesn’t know I’m doing this.”

  “Is something going on that you aren’t telling me? Do you not want to work for the company and learn the business? You’ve been coming in early and showing a great deal of initiative. I thought you were enjoying it.”

  “I do enjoy it, but I value our time more. You don’t have to make a decision now, but just consider it. Okay?”

  He swallowed hard. “Okay . . . I’ll think about it.” He’d aged te
n years in the two weeks since my release.

  I left him to rest and headed back to my room. Before I said a word to the detective, I picked up the phone and ordered him a steak, baked potato, and corn on the cob, with apple pie for dessert.

  “Bless you, son,” Reigert said. “One more damn granola bar and I would’ve lost it.”

  “You get plenty of rest today?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Good. After your meal arrives, I’m sacking out for a couple of hours until dinner.” I sat down on the couch and rubbed my eyes.

  “Heard your conversation. I’m sorry about your father.”

  “Thanks. All my life he’s been absent, doing his thing, building his business. Now that he wants to spend more time with me, he’s dying. Life, huh?”

  “We are not in control, Chase.”

  Boy, was he right.

  Chapter 42

  “To the realization of dreams,” Sergei said as he stood and held his glass aloft in a toast. The other seven of us seated around the dining room table raised our glasses as well, including my father who looked somewhat rested. Sergei sat down, and I noticed him glance inconspicuously at the expensive Rolex on his wrist. He seemed fidgety. Dmitri, seated to Sergei’s left, promptly got up and left the table.

  “I’m afraid the sea does not agree with Dmitri,” he said. “Please do not attempt to harm me while he is throwing up. It would embarrass him greatly.” This drew some laughs. Appearing nightly on the salon deck, the one-liners of Sergei Durov—comedy to die for. However, the seas were only running two to three feet at most. I had my doubts about the big Russian’s queasy stomach.

  ***