Page 57 of Anchor
“She’s under my protection. She was shot on U.S. soil, targeted by an external hostile actor. You don’t get her. Not today.”
The shorter agent stepped in, voice harder. “Mr. Chase, we’re not here to negotiate. She signed an NDA. She broke it. If you obstruct?—”
“If I obstruct, you’ll get a call from your director in the next five minutes,” Ian’s voice sliced clean through. “And when he asks you why his phone lit up while I’m still standing here, you’ll explain to him why you thought protocol outweighed gratitude.”
The taller one faltered. “What gratitude?”
Ian stepped forward, his tone low, even, deliberate. “Twenty years ago. Mexico City. Hotel Mariposa. A rising star in your agency nearly had his wife and son sold off piece by piece because he was too visible to disappear quietly. It was my team that cut them out. My team that got them to that airfield alive. He remembers. He’ll never forget.”
The agents glanced at each other, suddenly less certain.
Ian turned away from them, already pulling out his secure line. His voice was steel-calm. “Get me Director Keating. Now.”
The line clicked. A pause. Then, a voice—older, steady, weighted with both power and memory.
“Ian, it’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough,” Ian said quietly. “One of my people is being targeted. She used to be yours: Claire Bowman. Your people are in my space right now with papers. I need the truth before they walk out with her.”
There was silence on the other end. Then, the director exhaled. “I’ll make the call.”
Ian’s hand tightened on the phone. “Make sure it sticks.” He ended the call before the director could answer. Then he turned back to the agents. “You’ll wait.”
The two NSA agents stood awkwardly, their papers in hand, waiting for Ian’s next move. Killian’s jaw worked. Noah’s hand hovered at the edge of the console, just shy of the comm switch.
“You’ll wait,” he said again, voice like cut glass. “Until your director calls you. Until then, she stays in my care.”
The taller agent bristled. “You don’t have authority to detain federal agents.”
Ian took one step closer. “Do you think this is detention? This is me extending you the courtesy of staying inside this tent until your boss tells you to stand down. Because if you walk out that flap before he calls, you’ll be making a choice you don’t want to make.”
The agents froze. Killian’s mouth tugged into something close to a grim smile. Ian turned away from them, back to the frozen feed of Claire on the monitors. He let silence stretch until it was unbearable.
NSA HEADQUARTERS – DIRECTOR’S OFFICE – 01607 HOURS
Director Robert Keating sat behind a desk scarred by years of power. The secure line clicked dead in his hand. He didn’t move for three long seconds, then dropped the phone onto the blotter with a dull thud.
Across from him, two deputies looked up sharply from the briefing stack. “Sir?”
Keating’s eyes were flint. “Claire Bowman. Ann Arbor. Pull every flag, every op-note that’s hit her name from her hire through today. Now.”
One deputy blinked. “She’s the one who?—”
“I know who she is,” Keating snapped. His voice steadied. “I owe Ian Chase my son’s life. Which means I owe him the truth.”
The deputies scattered. One hit the comms. The other rifled through a tablet.
Keating leaned back, eyes narrowing on the blank wall opposite him. “Vos.”
The name tasted bitter. He hadn’t said it in years. But the signature of it—the anomalies, the code threaded like wire through NSA intel streams were there. Too clean to be accidental. Too cruel to be random.
One of the deputies swiveled back. “Sir, there’s chatter in the European feed. Cross-referenced logs with Bowman’s name coded in the Kandahar archive.”
Keating’s hand flattened on the desk. “Jesus Christ.”
The room stilled.
Keating’s voice dropped to a dangerous calm. “We are not letting Heather Bowman and her committee feed her daughter into a grinder because they’re scared of ghosts.”
