Chapter 15 I’m Not the One

Chapter 15

I’m Not the One

I left the CIC and turned toward the navigation bridge. Captain Sprayberry’s insistence that I could come aboard the bridge anytime I wanted without expressed permission would never feel natural to me, but I gave it a shot.

“Good afternoon, Captain.”

“Well, look at you. Just sashaying in here as if you own the place.”

I stuck out a hand. “I sort of do own the place.”

He shook my offered hand. “Yeah, I guess you do. How was the flight?”

“Perfect. How about your trip around the Keys?”

“Not bad. We’ve got a couple of small issues in the engine room, but Big Bob is getting them straightened out. We’ll be back at full strength by the end of the day.”

He suddenly had my full attention. “A couple of issues? What limitations do those issues create?”

“We can only make about eighty-five-percent power, and one of the generators is out of service.”

“Can we still run on the foils?”

He said, “We can, but it would take a couple of extra minutes for the engines to get us up since we can’t produce full power.”

One of the most unique characteristics of the Lori Danielle was her ability to deploy four foils and fly the hull out of the water. That capability gave her the guts to make almost sixty knots in smooth seas. I didn’t know of any ship in her class who could come close to those speeds.

“Keep me posted,” I said. “I don’t anticipate the need to run or chase, but I don’t like the old girl being crippled.”

“She’s not crippled,” Captain Sprayberry said. “She’s just sore.”

“Call it what you want, but keep the fire burning under Big Bob.”

The captain chuckled. “Bob doesn’t respond well to fires under his butt, but I’ll stay in his ear. I’m confident he’ll have her back on track in twelve hours or less.”

“Good enough. If you need me, I’ve got my radio and sat-phone.”

“Welcome back aboard,” he said. “It’s nice to be in command of a warship instead of a lowly research vessel.”

Behind the Lori Danielle’s demure exterior beat the heart of a lioness on the prowl. Not only could she outrun almost anything at sea, she could also go fisticuffs with any foe afloat. I was proud to have her in our arsenal and even more proud to have Captain Barry Sprayberry at the helm.

My next stop promised to be far less cordial than my visit with the captain, but it had to be done. I found Anya on the stern deck with her face lifted toward the afternoon sun and her hair blowing on the breeze. Everything about the scene took me back to the afternoon on the beach in St. Thomas, where I saw her for the first time without a rifle in her hands.

“We need to talk.”

She pulled her hair into a ponytail and slipped a rubber band from her wrist to hold it in place. “This will be talk about Skipper, no?”

“You bet. First, why did you agree to train her before talking with me?”

She leaned against the rail and cocked her head. When Anya Burinkova lied, she had only one tell. Her command of English diminished, and her Russian accent grew. It was no secret she could sound like a native English speaker, but I let her get away with the accent for two reasons: First, she believed she had everyone around her fooled into thinking the accent was authentic. Second, I thought it was cute.

“What did she tell to you?”

I caught my smile before it materialized. “Just that you agreed to teach her everything from manipulation to murder.”

“Is not murder, Chasechka. You know this.”

“You know what I’m talking about. Why didn’t you come to me when she asked you to train her?”

Anya picked at a flake of paint on the rail. “Tell to me exactly what she said.”

That sent my head in a new direction, but I played along. “She told me that she asked you to teach her to fight.”

Anya closed her eyes. “This is only part of truth.”

“So, tell me the whole story.”

“Skipper is friend to me. She has been hurt very badly, and this makes me sad for her. She wants to fight back against world that took her husband. I told to her she cannot win this fight, but she does not care.”

She paused, and I prodded. “Keep talking.”

“At first, I tell to her I will not teach her these things because she will be killed. She does not have foundation for learning what I know.”

“Go on.”

She abandoned her paint chip and took my wrist in her hand. “You must first promise to me you will not be angry with her.”

I pulled away. “Tell me what she said, Anya.”

She finally looked up to face me. “She told to me if I would not be for her teacher, she would tell to Penny you and I are…”

I gritted my teeth. “You and I are what?”

She closed her eyes. “She said she would tell to Penny that you and I are sleeping together.”

I swallowed the bile in my throat. “She wouldn’t do that because it’s not true.”

“She is desperate, Chasechka. She will do anything to fight back against all of world that took Tony from her.”

I spun on a heel, but Anya grabbed me. “Wait! Do not be angry with her. She is hurting, and you must remember how this hurt feels. Think of young boy whose parents and sister were murdered inside jungle of Panama.”

I yanked my arm from her grip and shoved a finger into her face. “No! You don’t get to use that against me. That’s out of bounds, and you know it.” I withdrew my pointed finger. “If you’re telling the truth, what Skipper did is unthinkable, regardless of her state of mind. She is not going to threaten any member of this team and get away with it. That’s not how we play ball.”

She softened her tone. “I am not member of team, my Chasechka. I am person who sometimes you ask to help, but I am outsider.”

“That’s not true. You’re just as much a part of this team as any one of us. What Skipper did is the kind of crap that destroys teams and families, and I won’t have it.”

“Wait,” she almost begged. “I can change her mind. I can make her understand this is terrible idea. You must trust me.”

I let myself lean against the rail. “I’m not qualified for any of this. I’m a gunslinger at best. I don’t know how to investigate floating body parts or deal with threats inside my team. I’m not—”

Before I could finish my own pity party, she drew a knife from some mysterious, concealed location and swung it toward my neck.

I didn’t think and merely reacted, capturing her wrist before the blade reached my flesh. I spun her until she was pinned against the rail and stripped the knife from her forceful grip. Taking one long stride backward, I assumed a fighting stance with my newly acquired knife at the ready.

Anya held up both hands. “You may not believe you are qualified, but there are maybe fifty or fewer men on Earth who could survive unprovoked attack from me. You have inside you something others do not. This is why you are here in charge of team…as head also of family. Now, give to me knife and go do job that is yours.”

I dropped the knife at her feet. “I’d much rather be stabbed in the face than in the back. You make sure that’s the first lesson you teach Skipper.”

I left the deadliest woman I’d ever known standing alone by the stern rail while demons danced inside my head. Until that moment, I believed everyone around me would turn their back on me and burn my world to the ground before Skipper would ever betray me. But that belief had imploded and lay in pieces at my feet. I yearned for someone to give me the direction I needed to keep my world together, but the longer I begged for a single name I could turn to, the lonelier the man inside of me became.

Clark never led a team like mine. Dr. Richter was gone. My father was on the other side of eternity. And I was left standing in the darkest of holes…alone.

Everything inside my logical mind told me to walk away and let Anya teach Skipper the one lesson she needed to learn more than any other, but the wounded animal in me couldn’t do it.

I thundered through the doorway of the CIC and found Weps—our weapons officer—Dr. Mankiller, and Skipper huddled around a console.

I ordered, “Give us the room.”

Two of the three occupants looked up, but the third did not.

Weps cocked his head. “Is everything all right?”

“Give us the room,” I demanded again.

Without another word, Celeste and Weps hurried past me and secured the hatch behind them as they made their exit.

Skipper held up a finger. “Chase, don’t! You don’t understand what it’s like. You don’t know…”

I drew the deepest breath I’d ever taken. “Put your finger down, and tell me what makes you think for one second that you get to tell me what I’m allowed to do on my ship with my team. What you did is tantamount to treason. You drove a wedge into this team. You made a threat with a lie that could destroy me. Me! Do you get that? I pulled you out of the worst hole you could’ve ever fallen into, and…” I drove a finger through the air toward the stern. “And that woman…the woman you threatened with that lie. She took a bullet for you that day and came as close to dying as anyone can. Tell me you’re not so blind that you could forget that. You wouldn’t be alive if Anya hadn’t been there that day. How dare you?”

She didn’t raise her voice. Instead, she stared straight into my soul. “Chase, would you have this same reaction if I had threatened Penny?”

My stomach churned, and rage filled my head, but before I could burst into the next tirade, Skipper said, “Your first instinct was to protect Anya. Why don’t I deserve the same? Why didn’t you immediately come down on my side? I’m the widow here. I’m the one who lost the man she loves forever. I’m the widow here, Chase. Me. Anya’s got you. Penny’s got you. Neither of them lost the man they love. That was me, and that’s what gives me the right to do whatever I have to do to avenge my husband.”

The rage softened enough to dull the next words from my mouth. “What do you think would’ve happened if you came to me and asked for training?”

“I don’t have to think about that, Chase. I know what would’ve happened. You would’ve given me the same old tired speech about how valuable I am right here in this chair and how you can’t afford to lose me.”

I wanted to pour out a thousand reasons why she was wrong, but she wasn’t.

She continued. “You’re going to lose me if I can’t do something with all of this anger and hatred and fury. It’s going to kill me. Then what will you do? Who’s going to answer the phone at two in the morning when one of your crazy ideas won’t let you sleep? Who’s going to sit in this chair and run your missions in the field? Whose voice is going to ring in your head when you need a way out, a way in, or a way around the problem you can’t solve with guns and knives? Huh, Chase? Who?”

I let myself settle onto a chair beside her. “You’re right…about all of it. But what you did is still wrong.”

“I wouldn’t have actually done it,” she said. “It was just desperation. I wouldn’t have really told Penny you were sleeping with Anya.”

“That’s the first lesson you have to understand about what we do in the field. We make a thousand threats a minute when we come face-to-face with an enemy who’s ready to fight. We put muzzles in their faces and fingers on our triggers. We don’t bluff. If you throw around empty threats on the battlefield, your body will be carried off that field if you’re lucky. If you’re not, there won’t be anything left to bury.”

She nodded, and I rolled closer. “If you really want to learn to fight, Anya will teach you. But if you ever threaten to stick a knife in the back of anyone on this team again, we’ll find a new analyst. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m bluffing.”

She nodded.

I softened my tone. “When this mission is over, I’m hiring a psychologist to get you through this thing.”

She laid a hand on my arm. “I don’t want another psychologist. I’ve got you.”

I shook my head. “Not for this one. I’m too close, and you don’t see me as an option. If you did, you would’ve come to me weeks ago before giving Anya an ultimatum. I’m not the one, but we’ll find someone who can help you. I promise.”