Chapter Five

Note from the Author:

I hope you enjoy this draft, pre-edited sneak peek at the upcoming novel Lost Fleet. Stay safe, wash your hands, and be kind to each other!

-Chris

Chapter Five

“So sad that he ended like this. He used to be a great journalist.”

“Too bad he couldn’t just let it go. It sucks that he won’t have a chance to redeem himself.”

Kate bristled as she heard the comments from strangers in the crowd spilling from the church. She held a newspaper over her head to block the cold drizzle and mounted the first limestone step.

“Kate? Kate, is that you?”

She whirled around, her foot slipping on the wet step. She stared at the man’s face, its lines somehow feeling familiar, yet different. She glanced at the woman beside him, recognizing her instantly, and then, by association, placing the man’s name to the surgically altered face.

“Richard. Poppy. Good to see you both.” Kate plastered a smile and shook the man’s hand, then let her hands barely skim the taller woman’s shoulders as she air-kissed each cheek. “How are you? Are you still writing for Verity?”

“Heavens, no.” Poppy waved her hand as if she was shooing a fly away from her avocado toast. “No, Richard is weekend anchor for the New York CBS affiliate now, and I’m the assistant features editor for Soirée.”

“Ahh.” Kate’s eyelid twitched. “Congratulations to you both.”

Poppy leaned in, sheltering Kate with her black umbrella. “We’re in final negotiations with the network. Richard is going to be moving up this summer, but it’s still confidential. Don’t tell anyone.” She glanced around at the clusters of people huddled under black umbrellas. “Oh, silly me. You live in Florida now, right? Who would you tell?”

Kate forced a light laugh and lowered her voice as Richard stepped down to the sidewalk and waved to a cab down the block. “Your secret is safe with me. By the way, who did his work?”

Poppy froze for a split second, then tossed her hair over her shoulder and whispered, “He is looking good, isn’t he?” Then she straightened and stepped back, pulling the umbrella just far enough away so the rain shed off its fabric onto Kate’s hair.

Kate ignored the cold drips on her neck. Instead, she focused on forming a smile to warm her core. “It’s been so nice to see you and Richard. Do keep in touch, and look me up if you get to Key West. I can take you on a shark dive you’ll never forget!” She winked at the socialite then inched toward the church’s doors. “Take care, now!” Kate spun and scurried up the steps, leaving Poppy standing alone in the rain.

She slipped through the doors and wiped the water from the shoulders of her blazer. A few mourners still stood talking quietly in twos and threes below a series of intricate stained glass windows. She quietly moved up the center aisle of the church to the front, where a woman was beginning to remove the flower arrangements surrounding a large framed photo of Nicholas.

Kate paused for a moment, taking in the hushed stillness of the church, soft whispers echoing on the wood floor and stone walls. The gilded walls behind the altar shone warm light around the area where she stood.

What did you get yourself into, Nicky?

She breathed in the cloying scent of the flowers. Then she pressed two fingers to her lips and gently grazed the image of his cheek. Her goodbyes said, she slowly turned and returned up the center aisle.

As she passed the back pew, a scruffy-looking man with dark hair and a rumpled suit jacket rushed across the narthex to wrap her in a sweaty hug.

“Kate!” He kissed her cheek, then pushed her to arm’s length and looked her up and down. “You look happy.”

Her eyes flitted around the sanctuary, down the aisle to Nicholas’s photo, then back to her old friend.

“Well, I mean, not happy about Nick, of course, and there’s more loss in your eyes, too. But your aura. You’re at peace with yourself and with the world. We could all do with a little more of that, couldn’t we?”

Her face softened. “Yeah, Bern. We could.”

“We were just heading down the street to Bettibar to meet a few of the old crew for drinks. Come with us. It’ll be like old times.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her out into the cold drizzle.

They scurried across the street and down the block, finally taking shelter in a second-floor bar packed with Kate’s old colleagues and friends. From the top of the stairs, Bernard waved across the crowded room, then dragged Kate through the crowd to a table near the window. A lanky man with floppy graying hair stood and offered Kate his barstool.

“Nathan. So nice to see you again.” She hugged him before settling on the proffered seat and shrugging her backpack off her shoulders.

“Here, let me take that for you, love.” Bernard set her backpack in the corner, then planted himself in front of it like a guard dog and waved to the barmaid.

Nathan wrapped his arm around Bernard’s shoulders and leaned in. “So spill it, Kate. How’s life in paradise?”

“Good. It’s good. Nothing too exciting. Not like covering riots and revolutions, though. You were in Ukraine in 2014, weren’t you?”

Nathan easily rolled into his account of covering Euromaidan, and a crowd gathered around the table, each correspondent adding to the story, or shifting to yet another war zone or political conspiracy. Kate recognized a few of the older faces, but all of the younger reporters looked alike, with the same hungry, ambitious look in their eyes. One tall man with a three-day beard and round tortoise-rimmed hipster glasses who looked barely out of college had just returned from Greece where he was covering the Syrian refugee crisis. Another guy with a man-bun who looked like he hadn’t eaten a full meal in a week had come to New York for the day, but was headed back to Colorado for an exclusive with a state assemblywoman who was becoming a grass-roots favorite for a Senate seat that was opening up.

Kate nursed a sweet, pink gin drink and let her tired mind drift as they told stories until “Bimini Road” caught her ear and snapped her back to the steamy room.

She caught Man-Bun’s eye. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

His face darkened. “He just wouldn’t let the story go, and he wouldn’t let anyone else in, either. Wait, you’re Kate Kingsbury, aren’t you? Weren’t you and Lewis a thing, way back?”

Bernard’s jaw tightened, and he glared at Man-Bun. “Back off, Maddox.”

“It’s okay, Bern.” Kate waved her friend off. “Yeah. Nick and I were together for a while. He helped me get my start at Verity when I was still at Columbia.”

“Yeah, yeah. I read your piece on that tribe in, oh where was it, Ecuador, maybe?”

She nodded, trying to shake off an unbidden image of a camera lens sinking into a thick river of molten lava. “What was it he wouldn’t let go of?”

“Oh, old Nick, man.” Hipster-Glasses pushed into a tiny space at the table. “He’d picked up this crazy theory about some Chinese explorers getting shipwrecked in the Caribbean like a hundred years before Columbus discovered it. All the real academics debunked it, but Nick thought he could find some new proof. Fry pulled him off it months ago, but he kept researching in secret.”

“Fry? Madeline Fry?” Kate folded her arms on the table and leaned forward.

“Yeah. Lemme tell you, she was totally regretting poaching him from Verity.” He scanned the crowded bar. “There she is, over near the stairs. Hey, FRY!”

Kate buried her face in her arms as every head in the bar turned at the youngster’s shout. A moment later, Kate’s former boss, Madeline Fry,  a short, thick woman in her early fifties with blazing red hair, pushed her way through the crowd.

“Jesus, Carter. You have the social grace of a rabid hyena.”

Kate’s jaw tightened. She watched Fry’s hand graze the tall boy’s butt as the woman slid around the table.

“Katherine Kingsbury, as I live and breathe.”

“Madeline. It’s lovely to see you again.”

Madeline kissed Kate on the cheek, then nestled in between Man-Bun and Hipster-Glasses. When she turned toward the bar to signal for another drink, Bern quickly wiped the woman’s garish lipstick from Kate’s face with a clean white handkerchief. Kate winked at him and stifled a laugh as Fry turned back to the table.

“I was telling her about Lewis’ Chinese folly.”

Fry rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how many times I told him to drop that story. Kate, you know the talent he had. It broke my heart to see him wasting it on such nonsense. He could have done so much with the resources available to him at Cavil Media. Where everyone else is cutting back on their investigative divisions, we’re expanding.” She leveled her gaze at Kate. “In fact, have you ever thought about coming back? I’m sure I could make a place for you…”

Kate let the woman’s offer hang in the air and took a sip of her gin. “I’m happy where I am, thanks.”

“Retired to the Florida Keys at thirty. Pity.  Think of all the money you could make. The bylines you could post.”

“The money I could make so I could afford two weeks’ vacation a year at a timeshare in the Keys? No thanks, I think I’m good.”

“But doesn’t it get boring?”

Kate thought about the past fall’s race around the northern Caribbean to find five golden idols and keep them out of the hands of a murderous zealot, and the Christmas cruise gone horribly awry just a month later. She shook her head. “I’m finding plenty to keep me busy. Besides, I think your protégées here would be happy to take up anything you’re willing to assign them.”

“You make a good point, Kingsbury.” Fry winked smugly at both young men, then drained her drink and waved it in the air. The two raced to the bar in a competition to get her refill.

“Bern, I think I’m ready for some food.”

The crowd had begun to thin out. As Nathan pulled Kate’s blazer from a hook and held it out for her, Fry leaned across the table. “He never should have picked that story up. I’m sorry it ended this way, Kate. I truly am.” She pushed away from the table. As she swept through the room, she caught Hipster-Glasses’ hand and pulled him after her down the stairs.

Kate hopped off the barstool and slipped into her blazer. Bernard hiked her backpack over his shoulder, and with him on one side and Nathan on the other, they started through the thinning crowd.

As they passed the bar, a tall blonde nursing a whiskey caught Bernard’s shoulder. “Wait, Bern.”

He shook his head, but the woman’s pleading, red-rimmed eyes landed on Kate. Nathan slumped as he paused in front of the woman. “Kate, this is Norah. She and Nick, uh…” he trailed off, leaving the rest to Kate’s imagination.

Kate scanned the tall, thin woman who looked fragile enough to shatter if she tripped on a crack in the sidewalk. “I’m sorry for your loss, Norah. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

The woman began to speak, her voice catching in her throat. She took a sip of the amber liquid and started again. “Me, too.” A soft smile formed on her lips. “Nicholas spoke so kindly of you. ‘If you need to find something, Kate’s your girl.’ He was so jealous of how you connected dots where no one else could. In fact, he just mentioned you last week when he was reviewing some of his research.”

Kate rested her hand on Norah’s shoulder. Their eyes locked. “He was a good man, Norah. I’m so very sorry. It’s impossibly hard right now, I know.” She paused, the image of Danny bringing a gentle smile to her lips. “But I promise that with time — a longer time than you want it to take — you’ll be able remember him without the tears.”

“Thank you, Kate. I just…” Her eyes welled up again, and she raised a crushed tissue against her nose.

“What is it?”

“This story. I had never seen him so sure of anything before. He just couldn’t seem to put together the last piece.” She glanced around the room and lowered her voice to a whisper. “That’s why he was coming to see you.”

Kate’s breath froze in her lungs.

“I have a box with a few of your things that he had kept. I saw him slip something into it the day before he … left. I think he’d like for you to have them. Will you be staying in town for a while?”

Kate felt Bern’s hand tighten on her shoulder, and she paused to count the bottles behind the bar before she answered. “I was planning to take the train up to visit family, but I could stop by the day after tomorrow to pick it up if you’ll be home.”

“That would be nice. It was so important to him.”

Kate wrapped Norah’s thin shoulders in a hug. She whispered through the thick blonde hair, “I promise I’ll find it for him.”

The woman relaxed and smiled weakly as Kate pulled away. “I’m still in the same apartment. You remember where it is, I’m sure.”

Kate nodded and began to step back, leaning into her friend. Bern guided her toward the steps, while Nathan turned back. “We’ve got your number.” Then the couple led Kate down the stairs and out into the Hell’s Kitchen evening rush.

---

Thanks for checking out this draft preview of Lost Fleet. I’m posting a new chapter every weekday, but the further we get, the more likely we are to run into spoilers! If you haven’t read the first two books (Lost Key and Lost Relics), you can pick them up from Amazon in either eBook or paperback format, or read them for free with your Kindle Unlimited membership!