by Cap Daniels
I opened the Pelican case and pulled out an envelope. I placed it in her hands and laid her old passport on top.
When she opened the passport, I watched her lips form the name “Ana R. Fulton.” She pulled at the flap of the envelope and removed the stacks of Russian and American bills and a black credit card from the Bank of the Caymans with the same name etched on the bottom.
She looked at me questioningly and then back at the items in her hands.
I said, “Your father amassed some money throughout his life, and it’s now yours. There’s a little over two million dollars in the Cayman account and about a hundred thousand there in cash.”
I handed her my holstered Makarov. She placed the money back inside the Pelican case and slid the pistol inside her waistband.
“The money is yours, Anya. The pistol is yours. And the car is yours. The Kazakh border is fifteen miles south, and freedom is now yours.”
She took my hands in hers. “But you are not mine. You are now for someone else. Someone who is not spy, yes?”
I sighed. “That’s right.”
“I am no more Anya,” she said. “I am Ana. I have American passport. Would you like to see?”
I hugged her and brushed her hair behind her ear for the last time. “I wish it hadn’t all been a lie.”
She closed her eyes and placed her hand on my chest. “I lied to you about many things, my Chasechka, but never when I said I loved you.”
Chapter 28
Chase Fulton?
Perhaps I should’ve anticipated a yearning to have Anya back in my arms, back aboard my boat, back in my bed, but those feelings never came. Perhaps I should’ve felt some measure of guilt for delivering Ekaterina Norikova into the hands of the Russian Prison system in Anya’s place, but that guilt also never came.
What did come was a newfound respect for a group of men who fought alongside me to accomplish a mission that wasn’t theirs. They followed me as if I were Spartacus or John Wayne. They were brave men, honorable men who believed in freedom in every form. I paid them well, but financial rewards were not the things that fueled men of such valor and spirit. Belief in freedom and liberty is the force behind the fearlessness of such men. I envied their experience and courage, and I would forever treasure the newfound friendships and camaraderie we’d formed.
That’s not all I felt. I ached to hold Penny Thomas in my arms and feel her body against mine. I longed to feel the sense of home that she brought to my life, and I prayed I’d learn to be the kind of man she deserved. And perhaps most of all, I wanted something I’d never truly known: I wanted to experience “normal.” Maybe it was a house that didn’t float, a picket fence, and a boy and a girl and a black lab. Maybe I’d go back to school, and maybe I’d teach psychology to twenty-year-olds who thought they knew how the world worked. Maybe for me there would never be normal.
We landed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and stepped off the plane. The cold north wind stung like a thousand bees, but the flag flying above the passenger services terminal wasn’t discouraged. She snapped and waved as she had for over two hundred years, and I thought I could almost hear her whispering, “Thank you,” as if she were expressing her gratitude for the men and women who served beneath her, making the necessary sacrifices to keep her flying, and occasionally adding stars. I was proud to walk and serve beneath that flag, and I was proud to do so at the side of Clark Johnson, the bravest warrior I would ever know.
I paid Clark before we parted because I doubted the people for whom we worked would be writing him a check for the mission. In fact, I suspected both he and I would have a great many questions to answer in the near future—possibly even in front of Congress. I was confident that our answers to those questions would be nearly identical. Although our backgrounds were quite different, inside our chests beat the same heart that pounded in the chests of the men who threw a few tons of tea into Boston Harbor and dared the British to stop them. The same heart that beat inside the men who charged up San Juan Hill with Roosevelt in the name of freedom. The same heart that beat inside every man and woman who had ever stood in the face of tyranny and were willing to give their last drop of blood defending their home and the home of those they loved. We weren’t elite; we were just chosen to guard the gates and give freedom a place to pour itself out on anyone who wanted it…anyone who needed it. And underneath everything else, there may be nothing any of us needs more than our freedom.
* * *
It was November seventh when I walked back onto the floating dock at the marina on the Matanzas River in historic St. Augustine, Florida. The warm, subtropical breeze blew from the southwest and tasted like salt and home. The sun smiled down, dancing off the rippling water, and seagulls cried overhead. A calico cat raced down the dock beside me in pursuit of a lizard scurrying across the boards. I secretly rooted for the lizard, although I knew the cat had to eat. The eleven-week-old black lab puppy in my arms turned into a twisting, squirming tornado and leapt to the dock in an instinctual pursuit of both the cat and lizard, but he had no idea why.
The chase ended with the lizard diving into the river in a desperate, last-ditch effort to save his hide. It worked, only because the cat hated the thought of getting wet worse than he hated being hungry. The clumsy, lumbering puppy had no clue the chase was over and plowed into the cat with a galloping thud that sent the cat tumbling awkwardly into the river with the lizard. For a second, I thought the dog was going to do what black labs had done for generations: dive into the water and retrieve his prize—a sopping wet cat. But fate intervened, and the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen stepped from the stern of my boat and reached down for the frolicking puppy, who was all too happy to jump into her arms and lick every inch of her exposed skin. Interestingly, I had the same desire.
With the exuberant lab in her arms, Penny ran to me, her bare feet slapping at the dock, and tears streaming from her flawless eyes.
“Oh, Chase. He’s perfect. I love him, and I love you. I’m so glad you’re home.”
I held her in my arms and kissed her until the puppy almost licked both of us to death. I stepped back and took in every beautiful inch of the woman who was my home and who deserved more than I could ever be. I got down on one knee and took her hand in mine. “Penny Thomas—”
“Chase Fulton?”
A resounding, baritone voice full of authority rang out from behind me. I could feel the pounding of the approaching footsteps on the dock sending waves of dread through the trembling knee on which I knelt in front of the woman I loved.
“Chase Fulton, you’re under arrest for the murder of Salvatore D’Angelo.”
About the Author
Cap Daniels
Cap Daniels is a sailing charter captain, scuba and sailing instructor, pilot, Air Force veteran, and civil servant of the U.S. Department of Defense. Raised far from the ocean in rural East Tennessee, his early infatuation with salt water was sparked by the fascinating, and sometimes true, sea stories told by his father, a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer. Those stories of adventure on the high seas sent Cap in search of adventure of his own which eventually landed him on Florida’s Gulf Coast where he owns and operates a sailing charter service and spends as much time as possible on, in, and under the waters of the Emerald Coast.
With a head full of larger-than-life characters and their thrilling exploits, Cap pours his love of adventure and passion for the ocean onto the pages of The Chase Fulton Series.
Visit www.CapDaniels.com to join my mailing list to receive my newsletter and release updates.
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Books in this Series
Book One: The Opening Chase
Book Two: The Broken Chase
Book Three: The Stronger Chase
Book Four: The Unending Chase
Book Five: The Distant Chase
Book Six: The Entangled Chase (Summer 2019)
ap Daniels, The Distant Chase
