by Cap Daniels
The coffee pooled in my lap. It should’ve been scalding my skin, but I couldn’t feel it. Blood oozed from the open wound on my palm, and I wondered why it didn’t hurt.
“I need Fred,” I said in a haunting, shallow voice that didn’t sound like my own.
“Who’s Fred?” asked Padre.
“Fred is a shrink at The Ranch,” said Clark. “He’s the best psychiatrist, or psychologist, or whatever, in our world.”
“Where is she?” I heard myself ask as if I were a thousand miles away in the deepest canyon.
“Again,” said Padre, “I don’t know for sure, but I hear she’s in a safe house in Virginia, recuperating from the surgeries.”
“Is she okay?” I asked without consciously forming the words.
“I hear that she’s healing and strong, but they’re all secondhand rumors, Chase.”
Clark’s eyes filled with determination, and while I saw his mouth form the words, I couldn’t hear him say, “Let’s go get her.”
“Call Fred,” I whispered.
* * *
Clark cleaned the shards of shattered coffee mug from the palm of my hand and bandaged the wound. A shower brought me closer to feeling human again, but I couldn’t think of anything other than Anya. There was no question I was going to find her. I would knock down every door in the state of Virginia if that’s what it would take, but I was going to find her. I was going to see her again, and she was going to look me in the eye and give me the answers I deserved.
“Did you find Fred?” I asked Clark.
“No, not yet, but I talked to Dr. Hamilton at The Ranch. He said he’ll make sure Fred calls you as soon as he sees him.”
“Thanks, Clark. I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate you being here.”
“Cut it out,” he said. “We all have our crosses to bear. I don’t mind helping you tote yours ’cause I know you’d do the same for me.”
“I’ve got to go find her,” I said to no one in particular.
“No, that’s where you’re wrong,” said Clark. “We’ve got to go find her. I’m not letting you hunt for her half-cocked. I’m going with you. Besides, we’ve still got a long way to go to teach you how to win a fight.”
“I can’t ask you to do this with me,” I said.
“You didn’t ask. I volunteered.”
Before I could respond, my phone chirped and I snatched it up immediately. “Yeah?”
I expected to hear Fred’s comical voice. Instead, it was the gruff, smoker’s voice of Gunny, the tactical training officer from The Ranch—the man who’d nearly killed me on my first day of training.
“Chase, it’s Gunny. What’s going on?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Should I tell him about Padre? About Anya? Can I trust him? Does he already know everything, and is he testing me?
“Uh,” I stammered. “I need to talk to the shrink.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Gunny. “He’s here with me, but when one of my operators calls needing a head doctor, I like to know how bad he’s melting down. Are you all right?”
“No, Gunny. I’m not all right. How much do you know about what’s going on with my defector?”
Gunny grunted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . something deflector . . . on a cell phone . . . you’re breaking up. It must be a bad connection.”
Of course he wouldn’t talk about Anya on an unsecure phone. It was stupid of me to start that conversation.
Fred’s voice came on the line. “Chase, Chase, Chase . . . it’s great to hear from you. What’s happening since I last saw you?”
His almost cartoonish voice was refreshing. I had no idea what his real name was. When I met him, he was wearing a name tag that read “Fred,” but he laughed at me when I called him by that name. He said it was proof of how perception is so easily turned into assumed fact by the human brain. He’d never actually told me his real name. He was a weird, mysterious little character who always smelled like French fries, and always dressed like he’d run through a thrift store, grabbing whatever he could snatch up and throw on his body. I assumed he was a psychologist or psychiatrist, but even that was a mystery. I supposed he’d always be Fred to me.
“I’m having some trouble,” I admitted. “I’ve been through some garbage that isn’t what I expected when I signed up for this job, and it’s left me a little screwed up. I think I need your help.”
“My help?” he asked, as if I’d asked for his help building a spaceship. “You don’t need my help yet. You’re not ready for my help yet, but you will be soon.”
Fred had spoken in riddles since the first day I met him. I couldn’t tell if he was brilliant or totally insane. I suspected both.
“I’m screwed up enough without trying to decipher your word games. Can you please just help me?”
“No games, Chase. I am helping you. Now put Clark on the phone and then do exactly what he says afterwards. I’ll see you in a few days.”
I knew I would be wasting my time if I did anything other than what Fred said, so I handed the phone to Clark. Five minutes later, after Clark had said less than twenty words, he punched the end button on my phone and handed it back to me.
“Okay, well, you’re not going to like this,” he said.
“What is it? What did he say?”
Clark frowned. “We’re going to Virginia Beach.”
“Great,” I said. “Is that where they’re holding Anya?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why would we go to Virginia Beach?”
“Because that’s what Fred told us to do. He wants us to sail to Norfolk but with no overnight sailings. We’re supposed to stop at Wilmington and Beaufort before Oriental, North Carolina.”
“I’m lost,” I said. “Why would we do that? If we need to be in Virginia Beach, we can make that trip offshore in two and a half days.”
“I have no idea,” Clark admitted. “You’re the one who asked for his help. I’m telling you what he said for us to do. If you weren’t planning on taking his advice, why did you ask him for help?”
“I’m sorry. You’re just the messenger. We’ll do what he says.”
“There’s more,” he said. “He wants us to stay at the Oriental Marina for two nights.”
“Why?”
Clark glared at me.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “What else?”
“He said he would have a package delivered to us this afternoon, and that we are to spend at least one more night here. And don’t ask me why. I don’t know. It’s just what he said.”
I considered the instructions Fred had given us, but I couldn’t make any sense out of them.
Why does he want us to take the longest possible time getting to Virginia Beach, and what’s in Virginia Beach that’s so important? And where in the world is Oriental, North Carolina?
“Ahoy, Aegis II!” I heard a voice call from the dock.
Clark drew his pistol and held it closely at his side, following me onto the aft deck from the main salon. Standing on the dock beside my boat was a weather-beaten man of perhaps sixty, wearing a filthy Atlanta Braves hat and a Disney World t-shirt. He had a clipboard in his hand and a pair of glasses perched precariously at the tip of his nose.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“I’m Henry from Charleston Yacht Works. I’ve got an order here to remove part of the name of your boat from the stern.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Henry straightened his spectacles. “Says here that the name of your boat is Aegis II, and I’m supposed to remove the II.”
It hit me. The day we’d met Padre for the first time, he had said the name of my boat was impossible. I didn’t understand at the time, but his explanation, along with my thought afterwards, had made it quite clear, and he was correct. There could never be an Aegis II if aegis is an eternal force that could never die. Padre had, no doubt, sent Henry to right the wrong on my stern.
“Su
re,” I said. “Knock yourself out. Just don’t mess up my boat.”
The man went to work. In thirty-five minutes, the impossible had been transformed into the eternal, and Aegis was reborn.
14
Precious Time
“Have you started reading it yet? What do you think? Are you feeling better? Your friend said you had a hangover.”
The barrage of questions was, of course, from Penny the would-be screenwriter standing on the dock beside my boat. I was poring over nautical charts on the electronic chart plotter in the cockpit.
“Oh, hey, Penny. No, I’m sorry. I haven’t had time to look at your screenplay yet. It’s been a busy day.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Can I come up?”
“Sure.” I smiled at her. “Come aboard. Would you like something to drink?”
“No, that’s okay. I thought I’d come say hey. You’re a really nice guy, you know that?”
“Thank you, Penny. You’re a really nice girl . . . or, I mean, woman.”
She giggled. “Girl is okay with me. Thanks, Chase. What’cha doin’?”
“I’m doing a little route planning. We’re leaving for Oriental, North Carolina, tomorrow.”
“No way! So are we. That’s awesome!”
Clark came through the doorway from the main salon and chuckled. “Hey, Penny. I’m glad you’re here. Chase has been talking about you all day and hoping you’d stop by.”
“Aww,” she cooed, and jumped up to give me a big playful kiss on the cheek. “That’s sweet, Chase. I’ve been hoping you might come by to see me, too.”
I glared at Clark.
He smirked. “Hey, we all need a hobby.” With that, he disappeared back inside.
“So,” she said, “have you ever been to Oriental before?”
“No, this will be my first time.”
“Mine, too, but from what I hear, it’s sort of the center of the universe for sailors around here. Maybe we can like hang out or whatever when we get there. I hear there’s some great places to eat. What do you like to eat? I love seafood, but that’s all we eat on the boat. I’d really like to have a steak. Don’t you just love steak?”
I stopped what I was doing and stared at her.
“What? What is it? Do I have something on me? What is it?” She frowned and wiped her hands across her face.
“You’re full of energy,” I said. “Are you always like that?”
“Yeah, I guess. Sometimes I get on people’s nerves. I can tell. Kip and Teri make fun of me ’cause I’m always happy and bubbly and stuff, but I’ve got a lot to be happy about. I’m living on a boat with my two best friends, and now I’ve met you. Who wouldn’t be happy?”
“You’ve got a great attitude, you know that?”
“Thanks. I’m just me.”
“Stick to being that,” I said. “You’re quite good at it.”
“It’s all I know how to do. Besides, why would I lie about who I am? That’s how people get hurt, and I’m not in to hurting people. I know I sound like a hippie chick or something, but think how cool it’d be if nobody ever lied, and we all just loved each other. You know?”
Her little speech stopped me in my tracks. That’s exactly how people get hurt. Maybe Penny has something meaningful to share with the world behind the excitable, happy-go-lucky exterior.
“Is that the underlying theme of your screenplay?”
“Oh, gosh no. There’s no underlying theme. It’s about friendship and how time is the only thing that has any real value.”
I hadn’t expected something so profound from Penny.
“Really?” I asked. “So, you think time is the only thing that has any value. What about friendship?”
She perked up. “What do you do with friends?”
“Well . . . I guess you spend time with them.”
“See? You spend time with them. That’s what’s valuable in that relationship—the time you spend with them. We trade time for everything we have.”
“That’s not true,” I argued. “We trade money for things.”
“Yes,” she said, obviously thrilled I’d fallen into her trap, “but how do you get that money? You trade time for it.”
She was right, but I had sucked her into my own trap. “How about your friend Teri? She inherited land that turned out to be sitting on an ocean of oil. She’s trading the oil, not her time, for money.”
“Oh, Chase, you silly boy. Why do you think her grandfather left her that land? She spent every day of her teenage years with him, taking care of him and making sure he didn’t die alone. He was sick for a really long time, and she’s the only person who gave a crap. She traded seven or eight years of her life when other kids were dating and going to prom. She didn’t do any of that. She stayed with him because she loved him. She didn’t know his land was worth anything. I’m not even sure if she knew he owned any land. She loved him and wanted to make the last bit of time he had on Earth mean something. See, there’s that word time again.”
I put my feet up on the console. “So, are you telling me that her grandfather had no idea oil was under his land?”
“Nope,” she said. “That’s not at all what I’m telling you. What I’m saying is Teri didn’t know. She wasn’t taking care of him for the land or for the oil or anything like that. She was taking care of him because she loved him more than she wanted to go to prom and Friday night football games. It came down to spending time with her granddad because she loved him. That’s it.”
“Amazing. Penny, I’m starting to think you’ve got life figured out.”
“Ha! And to think, you thought I was just a ditzy blonde who talked too much.”
“No,” I protested. “I didn’t think that.”
“Yes, you did. Everybody thinks that, but you’re sweet for not saying so.”
She jumped up and took my hand. “Let’s go!”
“Where are we going?”
“To see Fort Sumter, and then to have steaks and drink something other than beer. Oh yeah, and to spend some time together,” she said, as if I was supposed to have known we had a date planned.
“Sure. Let me get my wallet and tell Clark I’m leaving.”
“You don’t need your wallet. This one’s on me. You can buy on our second date.”
I yelled into the main salon. “Hey, Clark! I’ve got a date with a screenwriter and philosopher. I’ll be back later.”
“Oh, now that’s funny.” She leapt from the starboard hull to the dock.
We caught the ferry to Fort Sumter and did the tour. I’d been there on a high school fieldtrip, but Penny had never done it. She actually listened for almost an hour without talking over the tour, and I wondered if she might explode. She was an interesting woman.
Back ashore, I said, “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s get dressed up and play adult this evening. There’s an incredible steakhouse called The Peninsula. If you really want a great steak as badly as you say you do, that’s where we should go.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like a first date kinda place.”
“Then we’ll call it our second date since our first was a trip to Fort Sumter.”
“Okay, cool. And you agreed to buy on our second date, and a deal’s a deal.”
We walked back to the marina, sweaty and sticky from the South Carolina Lowcountry afternoon heat and humidity. When we arrived back at my boat, Clark was signing for a delivery.
“What’d we get?” I asked.
He tossed the small package to me. “I don’t know. It’s for you, from Anderson Apothecary.”
I turned to Penny. “I suspect I’ll be dressed long before you are, so come back here when you’re ready. In the meantime, I’ll see if we need a reservation. The Peninsula is a jacket-required kind of place, so if you brought a nice dress, this would be a great excuse to dust it off.”
She put both hands on her hips. “I’m a Texas lady, I’ll have you know. And a Texas lady always has a dinner dress . . .
and a pair of boots. So you better clean up like you mean it.”
She trotted down the dock toward Teri’s boat, and I tore into the package from the apothecary. It was a bottle of pills with the instructions to take one pill nightly, twenty minutes before bed. The prescriber was Dr. Frederick Kennedy.
Well, how about that? His name really is Fred.
“What is it?” asked Clark.
“I think it’s something to help me sleep. This must be what Fred said he was going to have delivered.”
Clark lifted the small bottle from my hand and read it carefully. “Well, good. I don’t like seeing you hungover like you were this morning. Maybe you’ll get some quality sleep.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but I’m not holding my breath. There’s a lot of crap that goes wild in my head when I lie down and close my eyes. I can’t seem to stop Anya from running around in there.”
“I know, man. It’s gotta be tough, but hey, it looks like Penny is keeping you entertained for now.”
I smirked. “Yeah, she’s entertaining. We’re going to The Peninsula tonight for steaks.”
“Ooh, fancy,” he quipped.
“I thought it would be nice to do something a little elegant to try to clear my head.”
“I think that’s a great idea. Did she talk you to death this afternoon?”
“No, surprisingly, it was nice afternoon. We went out to Fort Sumter. She’d never been, so it was fun. I’m liking your hobby more and more. It’s okay with me if you keep telling her I’m interested.”
When I climbed the steps from my hull to the main salon, Penny was standing by the galley in a stunning little black dress. She caught me staring and spun so I could see her from every angle.
“Every girl should have an LBD in case a gentleman asks her to dinner unexpectedly. Don’t you think?”
“Absolutely,” I admitted. “And you look amazing. I didn’t expect you to be ready so quickly.”
Perhaps it was because I couldn’t get Anya out of my head, but I hadn’t noticed how beautiful Penny really was. She wore no makeup at all, but she glowed with an energy and natural beauty that few women possess. Her time in the sun on Teri’s boat had left her skin a beautiful brown and kept her long brown hair looking more like blonde. I was quite pleased with my date for the evening.