by Mark Stone
The boy collapsed into Chloe’s chest, sobbing bitterly and moaning “Oh God,” over and over into the woman’s chest.
Anchor swallowed hard, adding, “Much bigger problems, Cross.”
Cross looked over at Chloe’s bleeding body and immediately felt like she should wear the blame for what had just taken place. No matter how hard she tried to get rid of the guilt bubbling in her stomach she couldn’t. She wasn’t used to feeling like that.
Chapter 12
“Does someone want to tell me what the hell happened out there?” Marcus asked, walking into the hospital waiting room where Kate and Anchor sat, nervously waiting for Chloe to come out of surgery.
The poor woman was a mess when the ambulance pulled up to get her, bleeding and unconscious on the floor of a bakery. And what had Cross and Anchor gotten for their trouble? The black cloaked figures were gone by the time Kate rounded to the back, no sign of them anywhere.
“Nothing good,” Kate said, looking up at her boss with worried and pensive eyes. She’d made a decision back there. She chose to help save Anchor’s life when she could have made sure Chloe was safe. Sure, she never thought Chloe would end up like this, clinging to life in an operating room. She should have, but she didn’t. She thought the woman would be kidnapped and used before being discarded like the rest; scared and horrified, but not physically harmed. Not that she wanted that for Chloe, but it was a far better fate than having a bomb strapped to her chest and being blown into a million pieces. She was wrong, and the decision she made might have very well just cost a woman her life.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Marcus answered, his voice a near roar.
He looked around the waiting room. It was pretty sparse today, which was probably a good thing, given the setting. Still, a family, a woman with two young girls, sat in the far corner of the room. They looked tired, the same sort of tired Kate remembered seeing in the mirror after her father went missing. These poor girls had been through some sort of hell and, if they were still in a hospital waiting room, it probably wasn’t even close to over.
Marcus walked toward them, pulling a few bills out of his pocket. He knelt down, looking at the woman and smiling.
“You look like you could use a coffee, and those girls could probably use some ice cream. There’s a pretty decent shop on the first floor. I’d like to pay for it if that’s okay.”
The woman blinked at Marcus, as if she was coming up from being underwater. “You don’t have to do that.”
“But I do,” he answered. Pulling out his badge, he added, “You see, I have some business to attend to, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to trouble you for some privacy. Coffee and ice cream is the least I can do in return.”
The woman nodded, then looked over at Kate and Anchor. “Of course,” she said. “The girls would love some ice cream.”
The woman gathered up her girls and their belongings. She shot Kate another look as she left the room. She closed the door, and Kate turned back to Marcus. Her boss was standing over them, arms folded and nostrils flared. Definitely not happy.
“This wasn’t her fault,” Anchor said from his spot beside Kate.
Kate turned to him, a flash of anger rushing through her body. Who the hell did this guy think he was? Did he really think that, after one day, she needed him to stand up for her, to jump to her defense like some sort of knight in shining armor. She didn’t need a knight. She basically was a knight.
As it turned out, it seemed Marcus might have felt the same way.
“I’m not talking to you, Anchorage,” Marcus said, his gaze never leaving Kate. “Not yet.”
Anchor balked loudly. “I’m just trying to-”
“Don’t,” Kate said, standing to meet her superior officer. “I’m the cop in this situation, the only trained person in the field, as it stands. Crap hitting the fan lands on me whether I did anything to cause it or not. It’s all on me. Anchor shouldn’t hold any of the blame. I just don’t know why I’m being scolded like a child.”
“I’m not trying to be hard on you, Kate. But you have to admit that you deserve it,” he answered flatly. “You know how things work.”
“And so do you,” Kate shot back. “You want to know what happened? Wait for my report.”
“Not good enough,” Marcus said. “There’s a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property damage and a woman who very well might have already died on the table.” He shook his head. “And, to make matters worse, you’ve got nothing to show for this. Not one damned thing. Did you pick up even one clue?”
“Not in the traditional sense,” Anchor said, standing as well. “But that doesn’t mean-”
“Wrong,” Kate said. “We know there are at least five of them, that one of them is male, and that he’s likely from the American North, possibly the northern Midwest.” She stepped forward, bridging the gap between herself and Marcus. “And I haven’t even had the chance to question Patrick yet.”
“Patrick?” Marcus asked, his eyebrows raising.
“The employee, the one who fought off the guild member who tried to take Chloe,” Kate explained. “He got closer to one of them than anyone else ever has with the exception of Anchor.” Kate looked over at the explorer. “Let’s hope he got more information though.”
“Ouch,” Anchor muttered.
“It’s alright, Mr. Anchorage,” Kate said, as she walked toward the door. “Not everyone’s cut out to be a detective.”
“Are we back to Mr. Anchorage now?” Anchor asked, following Kate even though she thought her tone was enough to tell the man that that was the last thing she would have wanted.
“We were never away from it,” Kate said, turning as she settled in front of the closed door. “Anything other than that was for convenience and to keep up our cover.” Her eyes moved over to Marcus. “And, just so you know, your boy here isn’t the best person in the world to go undercover with. His television show might have been canceled, but it apparently had enough of an audience to make him recognizable.”
“What can I say? I have star power,” Anchor muttered.
“What you have is a big mouth and ‘leap before you look’ attitude that very nearly got all of us killed,” Kate said, a growl in her tone.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Anchor asked. “I saved you.”
Kate’s mouth dropped open, her eyes widening. “You’re not serious right now, are you?”
Now Anchor’s eyes got wide. “Should-should I not be?”
“You threw yourself into the line of fire!” Kate said, finding her arms to have stretched out dramatically at her sides. “You put yourself in a dangerous situation, and you made sure that I had to follow. What’s more, you made it impossible for me to stop what happened to Chloe out there.” She turned to Marcus. “If this idiot wouldn’t have turned himself into a sitting duck, then I might have had the time to get to Chloe before she got stabbed.”
“Or everyone might have gotten killed,” Anchor said. “We were outnumbered. We were outgunned. It was only a matter of time before they stopped playing coy and took us out to get to Chloe.”
“A car plowed through a building in the middle of the city. There was backup on the way,” Kate roared. “And you had no idea we were outgunned when you ran out there, waving your tiny little knife like it would be any help at all. For all you knew, all they had were those old timey weapons.”
“The hell I did,” Anchor shot back. “Those outfits they were wearing; they’re called slip dressing. Sects of pirates in the 17th and some in the 18th centuries used to wear them in particularly dangerous terrain. The idea was for them to blend in at night. So that rival pirates wishing to dock their ships and overtake them wouldn’t be able to see how heavily guarded the vessel was. They’d come with just a few people, enough to take out a sparsely populated ship. They’d find themselves overrun by pirates who looked to be coming from the darkness, ‘moving shadows’ as they came to be known.” Anchor shook his
head. “More than that, slip dressing always had a pocket sewed on the inside and then sealed with easily tearable stitching. Inside those pockets, they’d always hide their most potent weaponry. That way, even if they were somehow defeated, their enemies would still find themselves screwed.” He nodded as he stared at Kate. “And that’s what we’d have been if they’d have brandished those rifles with Chloe still in the room, screwed.”
Kate grimaced loudly. So what? This guy knew crap about old stuff. Even if that crap was somehow connected to everything that was going on here, what did it matter? It hadn’t helped matters today. Knowing about slip clothing or whatever hadn’t stopped Chloe from getting stabbed, and it hadn’t stopped the Willful Guild from getting away with no way of finding them. The car that had plowed into the window of the bakery tracked back to a vehicle stolen from an elderly woman a few days ago. A sweet old thing, she left the keys in the visor for safe keeping. So, there was no lead there.
“And as for the rest,” Anchor said, pulling the switchblade out of his pocket. “Saving you wasn’t the only reason I ran to those guys.” Kate saw that, at some point, Anchor had placed the knife in a plastic bag. It was blade out and, on the blade, was thick coating of blood, presumably from the guild member he had stabbed. “Is that enough for a sample?” he asked Marcus before turning back to Kate, the cocky smile spreading across his face again. “Not bad for a tiny knife, is it? Didn’t anyone ever tell you the size of the boat doesn’t have anything to do with the force of the waves?”
Chapter 13
"You sure do live out in the sticks, don't you?" Anchor asked, looking over at Patrick as they turned onto a back road so far away from the hospital that they technically weren't even in Vero Beach anymore.
The kid was shaken. It didn't take a detective to see that, which was a good thing. Since Kate had spent the last few hours giving him all the reasons he wasn't a detective anyway. That was probably why he was doing what he was doing now, driving a kid home who had very little connection to all of this, aside from the fact he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chloe was out of surgery, though still unconscious. The doctors said it would be at least a few hours before she was up and able to talk about anything. Given the fact that the Willful Guild had gone through so much trouble to try to apprehend her the first time and failed, Kate figured it was best if she kept watch over the woman herself, even if the hospital had pretty decent security.
Marcus had taken the blood sample back with him to the precinct. Anchor felt pretty good about that one. With any luck, that old knife of his could hold the key to cracking this thing wide open. If the guy he stabbed was found in the database, not only would they get a picture of him, but also his last known address and a list of all his priors. It was a block in a Jenga tower, and Anchor hoped it would be enough to send the whole damned thing tumbling down.
Of course, Marcus and Kate mustn't have been as impressed with the man as he was with himself, seeing as how they gave him the busy work of driving Patrick home. Hell, they hadn't even let him be in the room when they questioned the kid. They just sent him to the vending machine for snacks and sodas.
That didn't mean he couldn't question the kid right now though. To hear him tell it, Anchor had always had a way with people. A couple of minutes and a beer with a guy, and Anchor could get his life story out of him. Hell, and that was before he was famous. Patrick didn't look old enough to drink, and they couldn't partake in it anyway, seeing as how Anchor was driving. He had little doubt he could get the boy to spill what he knew (if he knew anything) anyway.
"I like it out here," Patrick said, looking out the window, his voice low and distant. "It's quiet."
"Hell, of a long way from work, though," Anchor answered.
Patrick shrugged. "I only go out there three days a week, and it doesn't look like it's going to be much of an issue anymore anyway."
"Who's to say Chloe won't have the entire place fixed up in a month?" Anchor asked, knowing that was more than a little unlikely. Still, Patrick seemed like a nice kid. There was no reason to make him feel bad about being out of a job for what was likely the foreseeable future.
"A month for a car through the front wall?" Patrick balked, shaking his head and pushing his black rimmed glasses up the bridge of his noise. "That doesn't sound very likely, but I envy your optimism."
"What can I say? It's a gift," Anchor shrugged.
"It's okay," Patrick continued as he pointed out which direction Anchor needed to head down. The road Patrick motioned to was so remote, it basically amounted to a gravel path running back into the woods. Anchor grimaced at the idea of taking his cherry convertible down such a path, but hell, he had already been shot at, beat on, and almost run over today. It seemed silly to draw the line at a back road.
"It's not what I want to do with my life anyway," Patrick said as Anchor turned down the back road.
"Yeah. You don't strike me as a bakery type of guy," Anchor said, sighing and pushing all that car related stress out of his mind.
"Good," Patrick said without missing a beat. "You just hit the nail on the head. To be completely honest with you, I suck at it. The only reason Chloe hasn't thrown me out on my ass is because we're family." He chuckled hard. "Which is cool, seeing as how the only reason I was even working there in the first place is because we were family." He looked over at Anchor. "I just felt obligated, you know?"
"More than you could possibly imagine," Anchor said, thinking about all the hours he'd put into his grandmother's greenhouse when he was a kid. To this day, he could still tell how big an tulip was going to be just by looking at the bulb, not that he'd admit that to anyone. "But that does beg the question, kid. What is it you want to do with your life?"
"Interpretative dance," Patrick said quickly.
"O-oh," Anchor said, trying with all of his might to imagine this young man in front of him doing Interpretative dance. He was no detective, but it didn’t make a lot of sense. “That’s seems like a- like a solid career path. Are there, like, classes for that?"
"Hell, if I know. I'm just screwing with you," Patrick said, reaching over and giving Patrick a light punch on the shoulder. "I want to do what you do, bud. I always have."
"Is that right?" Anchor asked, smiling at the boy. "Not that I'm officially a detective or whatever. Still I guess I'm close enough. You sure do have it in you though, seeing as how well you protected Chloe from that guy who wanted to take her. It was a guy, right?"
Anchor held his breath, waiting for the answer. This was it, the moment he had been waiting for, an opening to organically ask the boy questions about what had happened back at the bakery.
"Not a detective," Patrick said, shaking his head and pursing his lips. "I want to be on television. I want to make those big bucks." He stuck his head out far, looking at the side of the car. "You don't get a ride like this on a detective's salary."
Anchor shuffled uncomfortably as he drove down the narrow lane. At the end of it sat a weathered looking mobile home; the kind with a rusted roof and old sheets covering the windows. It reminded Anchor a lot of the place where he grew up. Hell, there was even an old muscle car up on blocks. It was a late sixties mustang from the looks of it and maybe a good five grand away from being in anything close to running condition. One look at this place, and he knew more about Patrick than any words could have ever told him. Anchor knew what this life was, and he knew what wanting to leave it more than anything in the world was too. It was a burning. It was a desire so great, so rampaging, that it could rip anyway every other piece of you if you weren't careful. It could leave you a pulsating mess, a singular focus more than an actual person. That was what it had done to Anchor. It was what forced him out, what narrowed his interests and focus down to the singular thing he believed would facilitate fulfilling his dream.
And, of course, it did. That came with its own set of issues. Stardom had never been what Anchor was after, not really. A funny thing happened when he dove
into the salt laden footsteps of Herbert Cross. He began to love it. More than a means to an end, it became a part of him. It became the great passion of his life. And then, in one fell swoop (on one horrible afternoon) it all washed away like so much sand on Vero Beach.
"It's more than you think," Anchor said, Andy's face flashing through his mind. "It's a lot more actually."
"That's what I'm hoping for," Patrick said, obviously missing the dour tone in Anchor's voice. "I'm telling you, Anchor. I'm going to do it. I'm going to be just like you one day."
The car pulled to a stop in front of the weathered mobile home. Anchor looked at Patrick and, one last time, saw himself where the boy was sitting. "I hope you do, kid. I really do." He nodded. "And, if you do, promise me you'll do it better. Promise me—”
Before he could finish the sentence, something slammed into the back of his car, knocking him forward. His face collided with the opening airbag and, in an instant, Anchor fell unconscious.
Chapter 14
Kate walked into Chloe's room as quietly as she could. She had always hated this part of the job. Hospitals were never anyone's favorite place in the world, but for Kate that sentiment was jacked up a thousand percent. Something about being here just made her uncomfortable. This was the other side of what she did, proof that the people she saved after being shot or (like Chloe) stabbed, didn't have the happy endings she hoped for. At least, they didn't get them without having to work their asses off first.
Chloe was a mess of bandages and tubes when Kate looked at her. The pretty woman, a woman who had already been through so much with the loss of her husband, was now going through something nearly equally as trying. She was conscious, but tired looking in a way a person only seems to get when their life is on the line.