Page 58 of Anchor
He stood, tugged his jacket straight, and picked up the phone again. “Get me Ann Arbor. I’m going to clean this up before it becomes a war.”
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN – COMMAND TENT – 1611 HOURS
The tent was taut with heat and tension, the air thick with radio chatter that no one dared voice above a murmur. Ian stood rooted in the center, arms folded, his presence the only thing holding the storm together. The two NSA agents didn’t move.
The secure handset on the table buzzed. For a fraction of a second, the noise cut through the tent like a blade. Ian didn’t hesitate, picking it up.
Pete Walter’s voice carried across the line, taut and controlled. “She’s out of surgery. Torn branch of the vena cava. Foley got the vein repaired. We closed her up.” He hesitated, a sound Ian rarely heard from him. “But she’s very critical. Blood pressure unstable. She’s on a vent. Every shift in her numbers feels like a cliff edge.”
Ian’s jaw shifted. “Talk to me straight, Pete.”
Pete’s tone lowered, steady but grim. “She made it through the OR. But if she swings down again… we may not be able to bring her back.”
The tent was silent but for the faint scratch of static from an open comm. Killian’s eyes flicked to Ian’s face, searching.
Ian replied, “You do what you have to do. Nothing else matters. You keep her alive.”
“We’ll hold her. As long as she lets us.” The line clicked dead.
Ian set the phone down like it weighed a hundred pounds. The NSA agents shifted, ready to pounce into the silence, but his eyes locked on them, steel-cold. “She is fighting for her life because someone put her in a sniper’s crosshairs. And until I have the truth, no one in this tent moves a goddamn inch.”
The shorter agent swallowed, his lips parting to speak.
The second line buzzed. A different tone—priority channel. Killian’s gaze sharpened. Noah straightened.
Ian lifted it slowly, the room leaning toward the sound. “Chase.”
Director Keating’s voice came hard and fast, no preamble. “Ian, don’t let them touch her. Do you hear me? Not the NSA. Not State. Not even her mother. I’ll handle the fallout.”
Ian’s eyes flicked to the agents, his voice a calm hammer. “Then say it louder, Robert. Because your people are standing in my tent waiting to take her.” He turned the speaker toward them.
Keating’s pause was only long enough to pull air through his teeth. Then his voice thundered down the secure line. “Stand down, effective immediately. That’s a direct order.”
The agents froze. Ian’s eyes never left them. He didn’t smile. He didn’t blink.
He only set the phone back into the cradle with deliberate precision. “You heard your boss. Get out of my tent.”
OUTSIDE THE COMMAND TENT – 1619 HOURS
The zipper flap whispered closed behind him, sealing the murmurs and hum of radios inside. Out here, the afternoon air was cool, cleaner, the buzz of campus life dulled by barricades and Chase’s perimeter.
Ian stood still, hands at his sides. The faint wind tugged at his jacket, carrying the smell of wet grass and distant exhaust. He exhaled once, the sound more like stone shifting than breath. Pete’s words replayed anyway:Very critical. On a vent. Cliff edge.
For the first time since he’d walked into the tent, Ian let it show. His jaw slackened, shoulders tight as if someone had tied steel cable through his chest. He’d buried good men. He’d ordered missions where losses were inevitable. But this wasn’t that. This was Joe Bowman’s daughter. Joe, who died under his watch. Joe, whose name still sat like an unhealed scar in the back of Ian’s mind.
Claire had been dragged into the open. Punished for seeing what no one wanted her to see.
The sky above was washed-out blue. Ian stood there long enough that someone watching might have thought he was praying. He wasn’t. He was measuring every debt, every failure, every promise he had no right to keep but still would.
Then the moment ended.
Ian’s voice was iron again as he stepped back inside the tent. “Killian, contact Zach. We move to containment. I want everything—Heather, the NSA, and campus police locked down before they move on us again. No leaks. No cracks. And contactthe board—no one leaves Ann Arbor, and anyone gone comes back.”
The man who stepped into the tent wasn’t the one who’d stood under the afternoon sky. The hesitation was gone. All that was left was steel.
CHASE MED – ICU – 1942 HOURS
Claire’s world came back in fragments. A sound first: the slow, mechanical sigh of air pushing in and pulling out.
