Killing Chase (15 page)

“You’re sure you can get
us in there?” Jenna said as we descended to the seabed in the large freight elevator. It was two a.m., and the Refit section of the production building was empty and eerily quiet.

“Unless they change the codes nightly, I don’t see why not.”

Silence greeted us as we stepped out of the elevator and into the dimly lit hallway. We made our way quietly down to Dock Two, and I opened the roll-up door and entered the same code as Mack had earlier. The door hissed and opened. We were in.

I punched in the code on the inside basin wall and the watertight door swung back into place and sealed. I didn’t want an open door to alert a roaming security guard. So far, the only person we had seen was the guard at the main gate to Aquatic.

Our footsteps echoed lightly as we walked towards the darkened underbelly of the yacht. We had mini-flashlights out, but there was enough ambient light to keep us from turning them on, though the dimness played havoc on our depth perception as we wound our way into the maze of ship scaffolding, until we were standing next to the funnel-like appendage.

“Go ahead and take your exterior pictures. I’ll take a look underneath,” I said, lying on my back and sliding under the structure. I pulled my flashlight from my front pocket, turned it on, and shined it along its length. It was longer than I expected, approximately ten feet in length, six feet wide, and about five feet tall from where it connected to the hull. Jenna began taking pictures, and I cringed inwardly after every flash of light exploded from her camera, positive that it would attract someone. My beam of light landed on a circular hole cut in the center, approximately one and a half times the size of a manhole cover. Suddenly, as I was sliding over to it, an automated female voice came over the speakers hidden high in the Refit ceilings and pleasantly announced, to our horror:
“Dock Two will begin filling in approximately two minutes. Please clear the basin floor.
” Shit! This wasn’t in the plans.

“Chase, what’s happening?” Jenna said nervously.

“You heard the lady. Time to bug out.” Two minutes can be an eternity if you are speaking in front of a group of people, or holding a plank position at the gym. When one tries to escape a massive flash flood in an empty, giant swimming pool, all the while maneuvering through a metal jungle, time simply flies. I slid out before I was able to get a look inside the funnel. Flashlights on, we quickly made our way out of the scaffolding and ran to the airlock door so I could open it before some crappy piece of computer code denied our exit.

“Ninety seconds until Dock Two begins filling. Please clear the basin floor,
” said the voice again. I punched in 7721 and the digital display read, “
Error. Please enter the correct code.”
The first waves of panic began to wash over me. This could not be happening; the damn code just worked not four minutes ago. Then I had a moment of clarity, and I knew we were screwed, because I realized someone was doing this to us and they were in control. Why else would
our
basin be filling with water? It was two in the morning, after all, and too much of a coincidence to think otherwise. I entered the code again and got the same expected result.

“Dammit!”

“Chase, what’s the plan?” Jenna whispered urgently, and shined her light on the panel. Suddenly, the glass casing that kept the keypad dry during wet dock began to lower and close.

“We have to get clear of this floor. In about a minute, that exterior door on the opposite end will open, and sea water will flow in like a tsunami.” I looked for the portable stairs from earlier, but they were nowhere to be found. I then set my sights on the thirty-foot basin walls. Surely there would be metal rungs built into the side for accidental fall-ins, and they did, way up top, near the railing that lined the dock. We were trapped.

“One minute until Dock Two begins filling. Please clear the basin floor
,” the voice said. By now, it sounded like she was mocking us.

“Let’s see if we can climb the scaffolding,” I suggested. The idea was dead on arrival as it clearly wasn’t high enough. I looked all around . . . and then it hit me!

“There’s a circular hole cut into the bottom of the funnel. It may be our only shot, unless you want to deal with a torrent of water and an unstable yacht.”

“You want me to climb into a metal coffin at the bottom of this boat. Are you fucking crazy, Chase?”

“I’m open to suggestions, Jenna.”

“Thirty seconds until Dock Two begins filling. Please clear the basin floor.”

“Let’s check it out quickly so we can have time to get as far away from the boat as possible if this doesn’t work,” she said. Once again, we went into the maze. I slid under the structure, and my light focused on the hole. I went to my knees and stuck my head inside, shined the light around, and saw that it was just an empty, cavernous space, and my hopes sank. I started to back out when my light hit the ceiling of the strange structure, and I spied a handle and a circular outline. A hatch?

“Fifteen seconds until Dock Two begins filling.”

I climbed into the space and grabbed the handle. Someone with a black marker had drawn an arrow in a counterclockwise motion with the word “open” written above it. I turned the handle in that direction and the hatch barely budged.

“Ten seconds until Dock Two begins filling,”

“Jenna, get in!” I looked down, and her head came up through the hole.

“Five seconds until Dock Two begins filling.”

“Get it open, Chase!”

“I’m trying,” I said, as I pulled with all I had. Slowly it started turning, and I could see the hatch begin to lift inward.

“Dock Two exterior door opening,”

“Faster, Chase,” she urged. Sweat had broken out on my brow and slowly, painfully, I continued to turn the handle as we both heard the crashing sound of approaching water.

“Water’s below us,” she said. We were about three and a half feet off the ground, and I stole a quick look at the opening. Her light shone on the seawater as it rushed toward the back wall. It would begin to rise in seconds. We had maybe a minute.

“Keep me updated on the water, Jenna. If I can’t get this open, we’ll have to slip out the hole and take our chances in the water.”
And probably die trying.

I pulled on the handle with all I had and painstakingly got through two full revolutions in about fifteen seconds.

“Chase, water’s up to the hole.” I detected a hint of panic in her voice.

The going was agonizingly slow, and I was about to give up, when Jenna said, “Chase, the water’s not coming in. Do you think the exterior door closed somehow?” The panicked tone was replaced by confusion.

“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t know what to think. All I knew was I had extra time to get the hatch open. It was then that we felt the ship lift slowly from its resting place. Jenna’s question was answered.

I’d read a lot in prison, and something was telling me that the air pressure in the chamber was keeping the water from flooding in. I wondered what would happen when and if I opened the hatch.

“Jenna, here’s the plan. We clearly can’t stay in here. We either need to swim out the bottom of the hole and try to make it to safety or get the hatch open and escape into the ship. I’m opting for the hatch. I don’t want to chance it out there in the watery darkness. What I need you to do is be ready to get through the hatch as quickly as possible. I’ll be right behind you. If my thinking is correct, the minute we open it, this space is compromised and water will fill quickly. Just my guess. Understand?”

“Got it,” she said nervously.

I began turning the handle. It became easier, and I noticed the hatch door inching its way above the ceiling more and more with each revolution. It wouldn’t be long now. “Take a deep breath and be ready,” I advised her. Four turns later, the hatch popped free, and I could hear the hiss of air escaping the chamber. Water rushed in over my feet.

“Go, Jenna.” I moved out of the way and hoisted her through the opening as cold seawater rapidly moved up my body in this strange, dark place. When she was through, I grasped the sides and pulled myself up and out, onto a metal grated surface. The water closed in fast.

“Shine the light on the hatch,” I said quickly as I closed it and began turning the handle affixed to its top. This handle had rubberized grips that made turning easier than its sister handle on the bottom. Small amounts of seawater seeped out the sides of the hatch until it sealed fully and would turn no more.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I’m fine; thank God you got that open. I shudder to think what would have happened.” She buried her head in my chest, and we shared a moment.

“Well, we’re still not out of it. Let’s find our way out of here and move up to the main deck.” We were in the darkened engine room, and our flashlight beams skipped over the large dual-shaft diesel engines and metal ductwork, until they landed on a white stairwell. We ascended through two additional decks as the boat continued to sway gently. We walked out onto the main deck and the floor I’d helped install earlier.

“Remind me to instantly veto any other bright ideas you come up with,” she chided as we looked across the fifteen feet of water that separated us from either side of the dock. “What now?”

“Simple,” I said. “We swim to the rungs and get the hell out of here. I’m sure an alarm has been triggered somewhere.”

“What about the security guard at the gate?” she wondered.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it; unfortunately, we have no bridge to cross now,” I said. “Let’s put our valuables in your backpack, and I’ll swim holding it over my head. This trip wasn’t a total waste. You did get a few pictures we can send to Schmidt.”

Valuables secured, we were set to swim across when our friend came back over the loudspeakers:
“Dock Two drain commencing
,” she said without warning, and suddenly the pumps came on and the water level began to drop.

“Into the water now, Jenna. We have to get to the side while we can still access the metal rungs, or we’ll be trapped until the morning shift shows up.” Already the water level had dropped a foot. Someone, somewhere was watching us.

We jumped in together and made a beeline for the rungs. I got there first and tossed the backpack onto the concrete dock. Water was already a foot below the lowest rung and dropping precipitously when Jenna got to the side.

“Hurry up,” I said as she climbed out. I was clinging to the last rung as the water had dropped to my knees. I used my upper body strength and climbed to the top rung. Jenna grabbed my hand and helped pull me clear. I stood and watched as the water continued to be pumped out.

“You may want to have your gun handy,” I suggested. I still felt like someone was watching us, but we made it through the access gate and back to the golf-cart storage area without incident. Five minutes later, our cold and soaking wet bodies were pulling out of the main gate. The security guard made no effort to stop us, as he simply threw up a hand
.
For the second time in as many days, someone had tried to kill me, and it was beginning to piss me off.

An index finger to her
lips indicated that the ride to her apartment would be a silent one. It was highly probable that my car was bugged.

“What the hell happened to you two?” were Christian’s first words as I tossed my keys on the counter. He was sitting on the couch banging away on a laptop.

“Long story,” she said. Who’s on deck?”

“Ash is, why? What’s going on?”

“What does that mean, ‘who’s on deck?’ I thought that only applied to baseball,” I asked.

“It means one of our team is always sleeping. We have a rotation of sorts and the person asleep is the on-deck person,” she said to me. To Christian she said, “Wake her up and set up a secure conference call with Schmidt. I want everyone on it.”

“Can’t this wait till the morning? It’s three thirty in the morning, for chrissakes.”

“There’s a good chance we’ve been compromised, Christian, so no, it can’t wait,” she said in her first-grade-school-teacher voice.

“What about him?” Christian said, pointing to me.

Have I mentioned that I wasn’t very fond of Christian? He exuded pompousness, and he never seemed to be doing much of anything, save for staring at a computer screen. To top it off, he has great hair.  

“What about him? We’d probably be dead if it weren’t for Chase. He’s earned the right to sit in,” Jenna said.

And sit in I did, for the entire twenty-five-minute call. I made sure to thank grumpy Agent Schmidt for my freedom and to tell him how much I’ve enjoyed the past twenty-four hours of my life. He ignored me.

Schmidt agreed with Jenna that Durov was probably on to me, based on what had happened. He supposed one of Durov’s people had probably seen me enter the Coral Towers to meet Viktoria for something more than a romp in the sack and, on a hunch, had me followed back home.
Great.

Schmidt was sending a two-person counter-surveillance team. They would follow us from a distance to see if they could find our tail. So it goes like this. I’m spying on my father’s firm for the FBI. Durov and his people want me dead, and now the FBI was sending a team to tail us in order to see who else was tailing us. It all made sense, and I was exhausted.

“Chase, what do you make of the contraption you and Jenna were in beneath that yacht?” Schmidt asked.

“I have no idea. We do know that water stays out of it as long as the hatch above isn’t opened. What this could be used for I’m not sure. Scuba diving, maybe,” I suggested.

“I’ll have our analysts take a look at your pictures, Jenna. Maybe they can come up with something,” he said.

“As I told Jenna earlier, we’re taking Sergei on a trip up to New York City next weekend and training his crew on this new feature, even though his yacht will not be ready for more than a year.”

“Keep us updated on that, Chase, and thanks for getting Jenna out of there safely tonight,” The call lasted a few more minutes, but I was tired and tuned out the rest.

Christian left around four fifteen, and it was too late to go to my place, so once again I was stuck with the couch. Jenna stood in the bathroom doorway as I finished brushing my teeth. She looked amazing, even at this hour. Unexpectedly, she reached up, kissed my cheek, and caressed my face. Her lips were warm, and they lingered there for a moment.

“Thank you for getting us out safely tonight,” she offered.

“Consider it payback for saving my life yesterday. It feels good to still be breathing, but I’m exhausted, Jenna, and I have to be at work in a few hours. G’nite.”

She didn’t move out of my way. Instead, she said, “No couch tonight. You deserve a decent couple hours of sleep. No funny business though.” I was too tired to joke, so I silently followed her into the bedroom and shut the door behind me. When we were both under the covers, she turned to me.

“I thought we were dying tonight, Chase. And since, I’ve thought about all the things I wanted to do, but haven’t. Puts things in perspective, huh? I don’t want this to be weird, but would you mind just holding me? I need to feel connected to someone.”

“Um, ah, yeah sure.”
Smooth, Chase.
“Hey, for what it’s worth, I thought you were damn cool under pressure tonight,” I whispered as I put my right arm around her and she laid her head on my chest. We lay like that and slept the sleep of the just, for two hours anyway.

***

My tired eyes opened at five fifty-five, five minutes before the alarm on my iPhone was set to go off. Jenna’s head was still buried in my chest. She had let her guard down and showed a different side, a softer one, and it was nice. I had to remind myself that she was off-limits. I carefully extricated myself from the bed without waking her, grabbed a spare set of clothes that hung in the laundry room and went into the bathroom for a quick shower.

When I came out fifteen minutes later, she was sitting on the couch in her robe, waiting for me with a steaming mug of coffee.

“Thanks for being a gentleman in there,” she said, the remnants of sleep evident in her voice.

“Thanks for letting me see the non-badass side of you,” I replied.

She nodded. “Be careful today and tonight. It’s not a game, Chase.”

I remembered the last time someone told me this was not a game. That person ended up dead a few hours later.

I left the apartment, unsure of when I would see Jenna again, and drove straight to work, expecting to walk into a shit storm. My ID had been recorded coming through the gate early this morning, as well as entering Refit. I had no idea what happened to the yacht after we escaped, but at least it wasn’t flooded. The plan was to clam up if confronted by anyone other than my father, and then I’d wing it from there. Some plan.

I drove through the gate at six forty-five, and there were very few cars in the lot and no sign of an emergency as I walked into the building. My father arrived at seven, and Bailey came into dad’s office fifteen minutes later.

“Will I ever see you outside of here? You’ve been pretty much shacking up elsewhere all week. That blonde from Shooters must be something in the sack,” she joked.

“Jenna and I are enjoying each other’s company. I’m sure she’ll grow bored of me eventually. Plus she’s graduating soon,” I said.

“Don’t you have a date with Anna tonight?” Dad asked.

“I do.”

“Hmm . . . my brother, the player,” Bailey quipped.

I was catching more grief about my dating life than I was about Dock Two, and that suited me just fine.

“A little leeway please. I’ve been out of commission for seven years,” I reminded them.

“Yeah, yeah. Just be careful,” she said.
If you only knew, Bailey.

I was tempted to visit production during lunch to see what, if anything, had happened, but I decided against it. No sense looking for trouble. The entire day turned out to be a breeze, and I was thankful, because I caught myself dozing off a couple of times. Meetings and reading took up much of the afternoon, and by the time I glanced at the clock, five fifteen had come and gone. My father was the first to leave, and Bailey came in a few minutes later on her way out the door.

“Will I see you at all tonight?” she asked.

“Depends on how my date goes, sis.”

“Back for a week, and you’re already getting laid more than I am,” she sighed.

“I guess I was born with the Hampton charm, and you got the work ethic. Maybe you focus too much on work. Plenty of eligible bachelors out there. Shooters was full of them.”

“Right. The problem was the lack of teeth and all around good hygiene in those fine gentlemen. Oh well. I have a date with a nice bottle of red wine that is nonjudgmental and well mannered. Maybe I’ll see you at some point this weekend. Have fun tonight.”

“Will do,” I said. She left and I waited five minutes before I walked out on the terrace. I checked Bailey’s office door and luckily the duct tape over the strike plate was still intact. She’d locked herself out one too many times on a smoke break, and her solution to the problem was to my benefit. I slipped inside quickly and kept the lights off. From my pocket, I retrieved another small black transmitter and hunched down next to the bookshelf near her desk.

Suddenly, her office door opened and the lights came on. I felt like a cockroach caught in the middle of an empty room.
Busted.

“What are you doing in here?” Her tone was deliberate, accusatory, and spot on, and I did the only thing I could think of—I pretended it was no big deal.

“Hey, I’m looking for a book I saw in here earlier,
Principles of Yacht Design.
Can you help me find it?”

“You could have started by turning on the lights.”

“Yeah, but I thought I remembered seeing it on the lower shelf.”

“Top shelf, right side.”
Whoops.

“Oh, there it is,” I said, standing up. I pulled it off the shelf and thumbed through it. “Thanks. Dad mentioned this book would be a good primer.”

“Yachting for dummies,” she said.

“What’s with the attitude, Bailey?”

“I’m not used to walking in on people snooping around my office,” she said, perturbed.

“Well, for one thing, I’m not snooping. I wouldn’t know what I would even be snooping for, and two, I’m your brother, and I share an office with the O-W-N-E-R, who happens to be our F-A-T-H-E-R. So get over yourself,” I said, and winced inwardly at my harshness. I knew she had every right to be upset.

“Wow, you’d think I was the one in the wrong here. Are you finished?” She had her arms folded and stood there by the door. Her eyes burned a hole right through me.

“Yes, I’m done. Thanks. You may want to make sure you lock this outside door, though. The duct tape on the strike plate seems like a possible security no-no,” I said as I walked down the hall.

“I’ll take that into consideration,” she said icily.

As I entered dad’s office, I placed the small transmitter back in my pocket.
Too close
.