Killing Chase (21 page)

“Bailey, wh . . . what are you
doing?” my father stammered, gut-punched at the turn of events.

I was also knocked back. “It was you all along. The insider. You flooded Dock Two the other night and almost killed us. You had Kenny killed,” I said, staring at her as if I were in a trance. I didn’t know this person anymore.

“It’s amazing what you can do with an iPad these days, right from the cozy confines of your bed,” she said as she sniffled.

“Bailey, you don’t have to do this. I can tell you are conflicted,” I said in the calmest, most neutral voice I could muster. “Just put down the gun, please.”

“You mistake my tears for sadness or indecision. These are tears of relief, Chase. This is MY therapy. Do you know how long I’ve waited for this moment? Growing up not knowing who my father was, hoping that someday he would show up and rescue us from the trailer park. Instead, he sends us away, me away, into the arms of a rapist. Your good friend, Jackson Ellis,” she sneered to our father. “I bet he didn’t tell you he had his way with me. Did he? DID HE?” The sneer turned into a scream.

“Bailey, what are you talking about? Streak would never do that.” my father pleaded.

“Wrong answer,” she said. She redirected the pistol, and thunder rolled from the barrel. My father fell to the floor and blood poured from the bullet hole in his forehead, masking his face and lifeless eyes.

Time stood still, and bile rose to my throat. As I watched the murder of my father unfold, a memory imprinted on my brain. Maybe it was my body’s way of coping. Third grade, late spring. The hill behind our school. I sat on a blanket in front of my father; my fingers were sticky and my entire mouth a deep purple from the bag of cotton candy Bailey and I had just shared. I watched her dance and skip through the maze of other families lounging on blankets, as she munched on her baseball-sized hunk of spun sugar, and the elementary school choir sang
America the Beautiful.
She looked back at me, her mouth as purple as mine was, and she smiled. Happy. Content. Satisfied.

Much like the smile on her face now, I thought, as the horror of what had just happened, returned. Happy. Content. Satisfied. A coldness ran through my body, even as I felt immense sorrow for what she had endured and lived with all this time. Empathy? I wasn’t sure. She’d just put a bullet in our father’s head.

“Dump him overboard, Chase. I’m tired of looking at him.” she said.

“No.” I said it quietly. She raised the gun, and I closed my eyes, unable to face her.

Shots rang out, but not from the gun in Bailey’s hand.

“Shooter, portside stairs,” I heard Dmitri yell. I opened my eyes and saw two of Sergei’s operatives go down by the front of the dry-docked tender. They weren’t moving. The cavalry had arrived. Bailey’s attention turned to Detective Reigart, who was crouched behind a jet ski, and I rushed her and knocked her to the floor. The gun slipped from her hand, and I tried to gain traction to grab it, but my foot slipped in the expanding pool of my father’s blood. I lunged for the gun again and managed a tenuous grip on the handle, but Bailey had recovered. She kicked it out of my hands. A lightning bolt of pain exploded in my head, and this was the last thing I remembered before I passed out.

When I came to, I was propped against the railing of the terrace, my hands tied behind my back. I looked around, and my father’s body was gone. A ragged, two-foot-wide trail of blood, from where he fell to the opening in the railing, told the tale. He was home now. Unceremoniously dumped overboard. Burial at sea would have been a fitting send off, if not for the hole in his head, put there by my batshit-crazy sister.

“Get on your feet,” she said to me. The pain in my head was now just a dull ache as I rose unsteadily.

“Where’s the detective?” I said. Deep down, I already knew the answer.

“He didn’t make it, but he went out in a blaze of glory. Killed two of Sergei’s men, plus Dmitri.

“Too bad he didn’t put you out of your misery.” She took two steps forward and slapped me.

“You slap like a girl.” It was the best I could do, given the situation. That earned me a punch to the gut, but I saw it coming and tightened my abs to absorb the blow.

“Maybe you should just shut up,” she advised.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you, Bailey. You must know I never wanted you to leave. In my eyes, you abandoned me. I didn’t know you were my sister or that our father was going to ship you off to Atlanta. I wanted you and your mom to move in with us, but I never got to tell you that because you shut me out of your life when you returned to Foggy Harbor.”

“I’m sorry; I’m done with the past, and that includes you. Goodbye, Chase.”

I didn’t beg. Instead, I just stared at her. I waited for my bullet to the head, but she had other ideas.

Five months later

If you are still reading
this, then by now you must have determined that Chase Hampton is dead. In fact, as much as I would like to tell you otherwise, that is the truth. He died that night, five months ago, in the cold waters of the Atlantic, fifty miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, never to be seen again. The last clear image he saw was that of his half-sister, as she pushed him to his certain death off the
Anchor Management
terrace, a fuck-you sneer planted firmly on her face. I’m here to tell his story, because as he entered his watery grave, new life was breathed into him and ultimately a new man was born. This is where his story begins.

I remember the last moments of my old life: the cold water beginning to encompass me, my legs tiring from furiously treading water in the choppy Atlantic, my arms tied behind me, useless. The lights from
Anchor
had faded as I swallowed and gagged on the seawater. Surrounded by darkness, I fought to stay on the surface for five minutes or so, before I gave up and took one last deep breath. With my fate accepted, I slipped quietly beneath the surface. I thought it sad that I should die at the hands of my own flesh and blood. Strangely enough, I still didn’t hate her, even after this betrayal. I believed that the unspeakable act she endured so many years ago had soured her soul and left her adrift on a sea of misery and loathing.

As I began to lose consciousness, I witnessed a dull, green glow and thought it a part of the dying process, until something, or someone as I would later learn, grabbed me from behind and thrust life into me. Life being a breathing regulator, and my savior, a Coast Guard rescue diver. The green glow came from an underwater dive light affixed to his head. I remembered coming to sometime later, on the deck of a Coast Guard cutter, groggy and still coughing up seawater. One of the first things I saw was a pair of emerald eyes that stared at me on the brightly lit deck, as the cutter’s medical staff tended to me. For a moment, I couldn’t remember her name. Tears slid down her face, and our hands interlocked. I just knew I was safe. Then I remembered. Elizabeth.

I wasn’t taken to a hospital. Instead, Elizabeth and I were transported to shore on a helicopter and driven to an FBI safe house, where the only eyes that saw me belonged to two FBI doctors. They monitored me for two days before they pronounced me healthy . . . physically. Mentally, there are still scars, but I’ll take those over death any day. Given time, they will scab over and heal. For now, I share my sleep with the nightmares.

Later, Elizabeth told me the story of how I was saved and how Sergei’s plan was foiled. Of the two shots I received in the medical unit at Ashmore, before my release on March 15, one was an injection of an extremely accurate and newly invented miniature GPS device that would be used to track me during my release, in case I decided to flee . . . or drown myself. Ha! My sense of humor was making a comeback
.
Thank God for paranoid Feds.

Before he engaged Sergei and his men on the beach deck, Detective Reigart was able to alert Jenna to the bomb’s actual location. A United States Navy’s fast attack sub that was patrolling off the East Coast identified
Gemini
’s acoustic signature as it entered Chesapeake Bay. The sub then launched a nonlethal torpedo into
Gemini
’s screw that rendered her immobile. I don’t know what happened after that, but it’s been six months, and Washington is still on the map, and the Eastern Seaboard wasn’t subjected to a nuke-induced tsunami.

For all of Sergei’s planning, it was damn stupid to attempt a mini-sub insertion so close to one of the U.S. Navy’s submarine bases. Unfortunately, Sergei escaped on
Calypso
before the Coast Guard and FBI could board the
Anchor Management.
I haven’t been told anything, but I’m willing to bet he and Bailey were picked up by one of his many boats. I say they, but more than likely it’s he, as he would have no more use for my sister. She made her own bed, and I imagine she is sleeping with the fishes. I do not say this to be funny.

I haven’t told anyone that Bailey was working with Sergei. I don’t know why—maybe because at the end of the day she’s still my sister and, before that, someone I cared deeply for. Bonds like that are damn hard to break. Hokey, I know. She broke ours and wanted me dead. As far as the FBI is concerned, Dmitri tied me up and shoved me into the water. I told them that the last I saw of Bailey, she was tied up next to me.

With Sergei Durov and his unlimited resources still out there, Agent Schmidt has put me into the Witness Protection program. One day I may have to testify against Sergei (doubtful) and my testimony will go smoother, I’m told, if I’m breathing.

My entire identity has been erased, my death reported as a drowning. Even in death, I get no respect.
Death on the High Seas: Noted Shipbuilder, Ex-Con Son and Female Aquatica Executive Perish off Virginia Coast
read the headline in the
Wilmington Star
.

The Feds have done a good job at keeping the details of this story under wraps. It behooves them to do so.
Missing Russian Suitcase Nuke Threatened East Coast
would not make the public feel good about its safety or about its elected leaders. The story from the FBI is that Sergei was attempting to use the
Anchor Management
to explore a concentrated area of lanthanum off the Virginia coast. It’s a thin story, but it’s all they’ve got.

It is a truly strange thing to read about your own demise, and it will be even stranger if Chase Hampton rises from the dead in the future. I look forward to that day.

I think about Pops from time to time and I wish I could pick up the phone and just tell him I’m okay. That’s it. Nothing more. As far as he knows, he has outlived us all, just as my father said he would, and I know it hurts his old heart. Aquatic Expeditions is back under his control from what I’ve read, though he’s just the figurehead.

I also think about Anna, beautiful Anna, an innocent pawn in her father’s deadly game. Sergei left her on the ship, and I don’t know what happened to her. Perhaps I’m better off not knowing.

But Chase Hampton had a mother, who must be crushed upon hearing her son had died. The truth is I’ve talked to her twice, in person. Of course, she didn’t know she was talking to me. A little plastic surgery and colored contacts can do wonders in altering appearances. I visited her in Palm Springs and struck up a conversation in a coffee shop as she drank her morning chai tea. She’s content, but still a couple bananas shy of a bunch. I think about what I will do someday if I’m blessed with a child of my own. Do I take a chance and introduce my child to his or her crazy grandmother?

My child’s name will have the word Jay in it. I considered using detective, but I don’t think that would go over well. According to my FBI-provided therapist, a lot of what I’m dealing with is survivor’s guilt. I survived; Detective Reigart did not. He is the hero in this story. All he wanted was justice for Kenny Jackson, but he ended up making the ultimate sacrifice while saving an untold number of lives in the process. I can’t help but think it could have been me. Should have been me.

But the living have to live, so life goes on for me, Alan Larsen. On paper I’m worth around fifteen million dollars, or rather Chase Hampton is. Hidden under the electronics and cash in that aluminum suitcase I received on my first night of freedom was another envelope. This envelope contained a single piece of Cayman National Bank stationery with an account number written on it. A series of numbers and letters that added up to that fifteen-million-dollar figure. It generates about a hundred fifty thousand a year in interest and would provide a comfortable life for where I’m living. It was this document, along with what was left of my ten-thousand=dollar gift from my father, that I handed over to Jenna that last night before I sailed on
Anchor.

So Chase Hampton would be doing well. Alan Larsen is just doing okay. A five-hundred-thousand dollar Thank You from Uncle Sam, along with a one-year-only stipend that takes care of lodging and food is my only source of income. Not that I need or want for much. Peace and quiet is my currency of choice. Someday I will be able to claim the big money. There’s a lot of good to be done there.

With 3.79 million square miles of United States territory to pick from, I am but the smallest of specks on the map, and try as anyone might, I will not be found. Not even by Sergei Durov. He thinks I’m dead anyway. But I can find whomever I wish. I have the full resources of a recently retired FBI agent at my disposal. She goes by Alex now, and her shoulder-length hair is shorter and red in color. She is my family now, until she decides otherwise. We sleep in most mornings and—

“Are you done writing? You’d hate to be late for your first solo flight,” she said, coming down the stairs. She’s chosen jeans, a white V-neck tee, and leather bomber jacket as her ensemble for today, and being ex-FBI, I’m sure she has a surprise or two on her person. You can never be too careful. My therapist has suggested that I put my story down on paper as a way of moving forward.

“Just finishing up,” I said. I’ve grown a beard (Alex approves), and I’ve been taking flying lessons, as you just learned. It’s the only extravagance I’ve allowed myself to have. It seems I have a knack for it, and I’m sure somewhere, Hank Hampton is smiling as he watches me commandeer the controls of a Cessna. It’s when I feel most connected to my past and most confident about the future.