Page 2 of Anchor
When Tuck stepped out onto the porch, Reid followed. The river rushed through the trees, and a dog barked somewhere to the south.
“Heard from Sam,” Tuck said. “She’ll be here first thing in the morning.”
“Say it,” Reid replied without preamble.
Tuck didn’t pretend. “You’ve been white-knuckling yourself through steel for too long.”
Reid leaned on the rail, the wood smooth where forearms had rested thousands of times. “You saying I’m broken?”
“No,” Tuck said with no pity, no pep talk, just truth. “I’m saying you’re carrying more than you should alone. The job teaches you to out-stubborn pain. It doesn’t teach you when to hand off the burden so your hands can do what they’re best at.”
“You recruiting?” Reid’s mouth tilted. “You brought a compass the last time we stood out here. Back when I still had a dad and a functioning mom.” He pulled the compass from his pocket. He still carried it, turning it in his hand, feeling the pull he pretended not to. “This is…”
“Real,” Tuck finished. “Like what you’ve been doing. But real leaves marks. Some you see. Some you don’t.”
They let that hang a moment. Three generations of Hanlons wrapped up in a brass device. Reid stared into the distance at nothing and everything.
The porch light clicked on by itself like a benediction. The memory flooded back. “New speech.” Reid looked at his uncle. “Sounds like a setup.”
Tuck’s lips curled, amused. “No setup. I’m your uncle. I brought dinner and an exit.” He let the words land. “Chase International could use you. Different fight. Cleaner lines. You get to walk guys out of the fire instead of back into it.”
“You left jumping out of planes to babysit surgeons?”
Tuck snorted. “I left to join a place where the people who keep everyone else alive don’t get left on gurneys in hallways. Where care reaches everyday folks, no matter if they can pay. I don’t babysit surgeons—I tell them where the blade stops. Ask around.”
Reid watched headlights skim the curve of the river road—the same bend that had taken his father. “I’m not a hospital guy.”
“Good,” Tuck said. “I’m not offering you a clipboard and a stethoscope. I’m offering you a team. Chase International’s planting a flag in Ann Arbor. Killian Moynihan, fresh from New York, is taking command. Noah Paulsen’s his XO. They’re standing up a brand-new tier-one unit, and they want operators who can see the whole board.”
Reid didn’t move, but his pulse ticked harder. “You setting me up for a desk?”
“I’m setting you up for a life,” Tuck said, soft and immovable. “It’s where the job doesn’t eat the man doing it. You’re ready to pivot, Reid. Take the goddamn hand I’m offering.”
The silence between them carried weight.
Reid closed the compass, feeling the needle tug true under brass. “When?”
“Ten days,” Tuck said. “I’ll run your medical myself. Pete will pretend not to watch, then absolutely watch. Killian’ll make you sweat. Noah’ll see right through whatever you think you’re hiding.”
Reid’s rueful laugh came short. “Then I should show up sober.”
“Try fed too.” Tuck clapped his shoulder. “Eat tonight. Sleep. Pack light. You won’t need more than you can carry.”
Inside, a nightlight carved a square of gold into the hall. The house still held pictures of a man long gone and the ghost of a woman who’d never survived his loss. Reid wondered, not for the first time, how long he could run before circling the same bend and finding himself at the beginning again.
He flipped the compass once in his palm and slid it back into his pocket. “Ann Arbor.”
Like a promise, Tuck confirmed, “Ann Arbor.”
TWO
CHASE INTERNATIONAL HEADQUARTERS – ANN ARBOR – JUNE 7 – 0814 HOURS
Security didn’t announce itself at Chase HQ; it simply existed. The building rose in reflective glass and steel from a square of deliberately indifferent landscaping, its clean lines bordered by a ribbon of water that looked like art but functioned just as well as a moat.
Sublevel 2 smelled faintly of filtered air and fresh paint. Reid parked where Tuck directed him, followed a corridor free of scuff marks, and stepped into an elevator that seemed to study him as closely as he studied it.
Tuck was waiting in the atrium, his badge clipped neatly to his blazer. He dressed like a director but stood like a PJ, as ready to apply a tourniquet in one moment as he was to deliver a board proposal in the next. “This way,” he said. “You’re meeting the heads before anyone hands you something you could break.”
