Graham Brown - Ghost Ship

As the Marine strike force turned inbound, Kurt made his way around the side of the Brèvard palace. Lights aimed up at the structure meant the last ten feet or so would expose him no matter how the infiltration suit attempted to compensate. Instead of crossing through them, he swung wide, passed an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and made his way around the back. There he found an overhanging veranda.

Using a chair to boost himself up, he clambered onto the deck and sprinted forward. He managed to force the door and slip inside.

Thankful that he’d set off no alarm system in the process, he moved into the hall and found himself surrounded by framed works of art, intricate tapestries, and statues that looked as if they might belong in a museum.

He needed to find a stairwell that led upward and began to move down the hall, stopping at the sound of footfalls coming his way from an adjacent corridor.

He backtracked and took cover behind a statue of some Greek hero with a laurel leaf on his head and pressed himself as far into the shadows as possible until the figure passed by.

It was Calista. She was speaking into a radio, giving orders about something. She never saw Kurt or even looked in his direction. As she reached the far end of the hall, she disappeared into a room.

In a house of many rooms, Kurt knew he’d be hard-pressed to find the right one in time. But seeing Calista pass by brought a new idea to mind. Checking the hall in both directions and seeing no one else coming, he moved from behind the statue and backtracked, heading toward the room Calista had just entered.

Calista was ready to leave. Over the years she’d begun to feel claustrophobic in the family home, a sensation that had only gotten worse over the past few months. Grabbing a small backpack from a shelf in her closet, she began to pack.

Ever the pragmatist, she didn’t care for the clothes or the jewels. Her items of importance were those that would be useful: passports in several names, bundles of cash in a few different currencies, a knife, a pistol, and three spare magazines. The one item of sentimental value she had was a necklace with a diamond ring hanging from it that had belonged to their mother. Sebastian had given it to her.

She eyed the necklace for a moment and then placed it into a side pocket and zipped the pocket shut. Nothing else in the opulent mansion mattered to her. It was all fake. The artwork, tapestries, and the antique furniture were nothing but good forgeries. That’s what their family did. They gave life to lies.

About the only thing she would miss were the horses. As she thought about her favorite, a horse named Tana, which meant “sunshine” in Malagasy, it dawned on her that Sebastian might have rigged the stables to explode like everything else in the compound.

This struck her as cruel. Humankind was fairly worthless in her eyes, but animals, in their innocence, were something else. They had no schemes or desires other than to please their masters and receive their rewards in the form of food and shelter and attention.

She zipped the bag shut and decided to hike down to the stable and turn the animals out. There was no reason for them to burn to death.

Throwing the pack over one shoulder, she left the bedroom, entered her sitting room, and tracked straight for the door. As she approached the door, she noticed it was closed but not shut. That was more than odd, she never left the door unlatched.

She put her hand in the bag, grabbing for her pistol.

“Sorry, Calista,” a voice said from behind her. “I’m afraid it’s game over.”

She froze in her tracks. The timbre of the voice was easily recognizable, as was the calm and certain delivery of the words. She had no doubt that Kurt Austin was standing behind her.

“Toss the bag on the floor and turn around slowly,” he said.

She let her shoulders sag and flipped the backpack into a corner. Pivoting slowly, she found Kurt sitting in a high-backed Victorian chair, aiming a lethal-looking rifle in her direction.

“I believe we’ve done this before,” she said.

“We have,” Kurt replied, standing up. “And we’re going to keep doing it until we get it right.”

She studied him for a moment. He looked out of place with all the armor. Less handsome, less unique. As if he’d read her mind, he pulled off the hood.

“How on earth did you get in here?” she asked. “We have cameras, guards, motion sensors.”

“Nothing’s foolproof,” Kurt said.

That much was certain. “You can’t expect to get out alive,” she said. “We’re ready for you. We’ve been waiting for you to make a move.”

His eyebrows went up. “Really?” he said. “Because it doesn’t look that way to me. Your men at the front gate are half asleep. The gang in the bunkhouse are celebrating like it’s Bastille Day. And we’ve already found the hostages while taking out two of your guards. All without the slightest peep from the rest of you.”

“There are at least fifty men here loyal to my brothers and me. You’re overwhelmingly outnumbered.”

“For now,” he said smugly.

She pursed her lips. So there were reinforcements coming. And coming soon. Her brother was sitting around foolishly thinking they were not in danger yet. Her feelings were torn. Silently she cursed him for his arrogance even as she wished she could warn him.

“If you’ve already won, then what do you want from me?” she asked. “Answers perhaps? Are you still trying to figure out what happened to you on the Ethernet ?”

He smiled at her. It was a grin both endearing and proud. “Too late for that,” he said. “I know what happened. Enough of it anyway. It all came back once they debugged me in Korea.”

She shifted her weight. “Then you know if it wasn’t for me, you’d have been killed and buried at sea in the hull of that yacht just like all the others we encountered.”

“Considering that you caused the danger in the first place, that doesn’t really carry a lot of weight with me. On the other hand,” he added, “I do have a newfound appreciation for the importance of remembering the past accurately, thanks to you. That being the case, I thought I’d return the favor.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, growing tired of the conversation.

He studied her with those ice-blue eyes, taking her in, measuring her. Finally, he unzipped a diagonal pocket on the right sight of his vest and pulled from it a folded sheet of paper. He placed it down on the small stand between the chairs, smoothed it flat, and then pulled away.

“Take a look” was all he said.

She hesitated and then stepped cautiously forward, reaching for the paper like someone might reach for a dangerous animal, keeping as much distance between her body and the printed sheet as possible.

She tilted the page to catch the light and gave the image a quick once-over. “What is this supposed to be?”

“It’s a family,” he said. “Believe or not, it’s your family. Your real family.”

She looked up at him suspiciously. “What are you talking about?”

She noticed he was watching her with a sort of detached, almost professorial look.

“The Brèvards aren’t your family, Calista, the people in the photograph are. The woman’s name is Abigail. She was your mother. Her friends called her Abby. The man’s name is Stewart, he was your father. The two boys are Nathan and Zack — or I should say, they were named Nathan and Zack.”

For reasons she couldn’t pinpoint, she began to feel sick. “You expect me to believe this?”

“Look at the woman. Look at her face. You two could be twins.”

She wasn’t blind, she saw the likeness. It was nonsense. “You think you can trick me?”