I ducked behind the locker row as his gunshot cracked through the room. Metal screamed. My ears rang. I ran blindly into the main hall, slipping on wet tile, my shoulder slamming into the ticket booth.
“Emma!” Monroe shouted from somewhere above.
Above?
I looked up.
There was a mezzanine I had forgotten, an old office level overlooking the hall. Monroe was there, one hand pressed to her arm, blood dark on her sleeve. The other marshal struggled with a man near the stairs.
Marcus came out of the baggage room behind me.
I ran toward the platform.
Another shot shattered the glass beside my head.
Outside, rain hammered the tracks. I jumped down from the platform and landed badly, pain shooting through my ankle. Behind me, Marcus vaulted down with terrifying ease.
There was nowhere to go except the tracks.
I ran along them, breath tearing in my throat.
The river bridge loomed ahead, black iron slick with rain.
A horn sounded in the distance.
For one wild second, I thought memory had made it.
Then the rails began to hum.
A train.
Of course a train.
Briar Glen had been abandoned, but the freight line still ran twice a week. Dad had brought me here to watch it.
Marcus knew it too. He slowed just enough to smile.
“No more running,” he called.
I reached the edge of the bridge and stopped. Behind me, Marcus raised the gun. Ahead of me, the train horn wailed again, closer now, its light growing through the rain.
And then I saw it.
Below the bridge, half hidden by weeds, was the old maintenance ladder.
Dad had once climbed down it with me on his back when I dropped my boot near the riverbank. Mom had screamed at him for an hour afterward.
I stepped backward onto the bridge.
Marcus followed, gun steady. “Give me the package and you live.”
“I don’t have it.”
“You know where it is.”
“So do you.”
He glanced toward the station.
Only for a moment.
But again, a moment was enough.
I grabbed a fist-sized chunk of loose ballast from the track and threw it at his face.
He fired as he flinched.
Pain burned across my upper arm, hot and immediate, but I was already moving. I dropped over the side of the bridge, caught the ladder with one hand, and nearly screamed as my injured arm took weight.
The train roared closer.
Marcus shouted something I couldn’t hear.
I climbed down three rungs, slipped, caught myself, and pressed flat against the ladder as the freight train thundered onto the bridge above.
The world became noise.
Metal. Wind. Rain. The scream of wheels. My bones shook. My teeth rattled. Sparks flew from the rails overhead.
Through the blur, I saw Marcus at the edge of the bridge, trying to aim down at me.
Then Monroe appeared behind him.
She hit him like a storm.
They went down hard on the wet boards between the rails.
The train was still coming.
Not on their track—on the parallel rail beside it—but close enough that the wind shoved everything sideways.
Marcus rolled, swinging the gun toward Monroe.
I climbed.
I don’t know how. My arm was on fire. My ankle screamed. My lungs were empty. But I climbed.
I came over the edge as Marcus aimed at Monroe’s chest.
I slammed into him from behind.
The gun flew from his hand and skittered across the bridge.
He backhanded me so hard I saw stars. I hit the boards, rain in my mouth, blood on my tongue. Marcus scrambled for the gun.
Then Neil appeared.
Quiet, steady Neil, bleeding through his shirt, holding a rusted length of pipe from the station.
He swung once.
The pipe cracked across Marcus Hale’s wrist.
Marcus screamed.
Monroe was on him before he could recover. She pinned him facedown on the bridge, knee in his back, cuffs snapping shut around his wrists as the last freight car thundered past in a wall of rain and steel.
For a long moment, nobody spoke.
The train vanished into the dark.
The rain softened.
Monroe looked at me, soaked and bleeding and furious. “When I say stay in the car, that is not a suggestion.”
I laughed.
It came out half sob.
“I’ll remember that.”
Neil sat down hard on the bridge. “Could someone arrest me too? I’d like to lie down.”
Backup arrived minutes later, though it felt like hours. Lights filled the woods. Agents swept the station. Paramedics wrapped my arm, bandaged Neil, and tried to take Monroe to an ambulance, which she ignored until Marcus Hale was locked in the back of a federal vehicle.
The key was found near the station wall, caught in a patch of weeds below the broken window.
Locker seven opened with a shriek of old metal.
Inside was not one package.
There were three.
The first was a sealed federal evidence container, dusty but intact.
The second was a cedar box with my name carved into the lid.
The third was a plain envelope addressed to my mother.
Marshal Monroe handled the evidence container herself. She cut the seal only after two agents had cameras ready and another had logged the time.
Inside were files, microdrives, photographs, and a black notebook wrapped in oilcloth. Monroe looked through only enough to confirm what it was. Her expression told me it mattered.
A lot.
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