Chapter Four

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 Four

Kate jabbed at the screen and checked her watch. The sour stench of garbage and piss whirled between her body and the garish machine, clinging to her skin as it welcomed her back to the underground maze that defined the city she had once called home.

After several more jabs — some effective, some not — the machine finally spit a small yellow card from its slot. Kate snatched it then bolted through a turnstile and down the escalator, reaching the tail of the E train just in time to watch the doors jerk shut. As the metal-on-metal shriek faded into the tunnel, she glanced at her watch. Then she tucked her earbuds in and counted the tiles on the wall as she waited for the next train.

When it arrived, Kate hopped into a center car. She rolled out of her backpack, set it on the floor between her feet, and settled into a seat just as the train began to roll. Within a few stops, the crows began to thicken and the show began. Despite the MTA’s best efforts, which weren’t very good, panhandlers and street performers still frequented the lines, singing and dancing their way into the pockets of tourists. And there were plenty of those pockets on the train that led from JFK into Manhattan.

Kate watched as tourists wearing tennis shoes and printed tee-shirts dug through the packs at their waists to fish out money as the performers aggressively waved their upturned hats. She pulled a worn Travis McGee paperback from the front pocket of her bag and buried her face in it.

Moments later, the train jerked to a stop and the lights flickered off. Groans filled the car, and Kate squeezed the control on her headphones to pause her music. A muffled voice hissed through cheap speakers, filling the car with an unintelligible announcement that could only mean a delay. Kate glanced at her watch, then scrolled to her navigation app. She’d never make it.

The church where Nicholas’s funeral was being held was in Midtown. When Kate’s flight had landed late, she knew she’d be hard-pressed to get there on time. She’d only hoped for an impossibly on-time trip through the subway. But she also knew that the trains were notorious for delays and interruptions for any number of reasons — or for no reason at all.

Midtown.

Either Nicholas had changed since she’d left, or whoever was arranging the funeral didn’t know him very well. He had never been much of a church-goer, but that was forgivable. His real objection would have been the location. The Nicholas Kate had known despised Midtown, calling it a sanitized playground for tourists and the wealthy, and a cesspool of establishment media. One of his favorite topics to rail about over drinks at Sharlene’s was how he’d never be one of the sellouts who moved to Midtown and dialed back the truth to be consumed in headlines and oversimplified soundbites by the masses in an ever-shortening news cycle. Being remembered in the very place he hated had to be one last jab meant to avenge some forgotten (or intentional) slight against the person left to make his arrangements.

She glanced down. Her cargo shorts and sandals might be comfortable for the three-hour pre-dawn drive to the Miami airport, but as much as she didn’t care what anyone thought, even she couldn’t arrive late at a funeral filled with her old friends and colleagues dressed like a fishing guide. Using her phone’s screen as a light, she dug into her pack and pulled out a long wrinkled skirt and a pair of ballet flats. She pulled the skirt up over her shorts and surveyed her reflection in the subway car’s window. The dark gray skirt bulged around her hips, but smoothed out as she shimmied the shorts down around her ankles. Stuffing them into her backpack, and strapping her Tevas under its web of shock cord, she extracted a rolled up black blazer just as the train car’s lights flickered back on. She slipped it over her black ribbed tank and tied a scarf around her neck to finish the transition from Florida dive master to New York reporter.

The train rolled into the Fiftieth Street station eighteen minutes after the funeral began. Kate burst through the doors, tugged the hem of her skirt high, and sprinted up the stairs. Outside the station, she took a moment to orient herself, then dodged a mass of people and umbrellas for three blocks, rounding the corner of Forty-sixth Street just as the crowd of mourners began to pour out onto the street.

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