Challenge (16 page)

67.

Larson descended the escalator at the Waterfront-SEU Metro station at a full run, Hampton right behind him. He’d gotten the call only minutes earlier: just after Larson’s Be On Lookout, a young boy and girl and a dog—with no adults—had been spotted by a transit cop monitoring a closed-circuit television.

“It has to be them,” Larson said over his shoulder.

“Look where you’re going!” Hampton called back. One slip at this speed and Larson would go head over heels down fifty feet of steel stairs.

They were met at the bottom by two men in blue uniforms. The transit police introduced themselves, and one quickly said, “False alarm. When we called, we thought we had them crossing to the north platform. But they came back and got
back on
the southbound train.”

“They what?” Hampton blurted out.

Larson tried to make sense of this. “You’re sure there were three of them, and they were traveling together?”

“A young boy with a girl and dog. Just like the BOL you put out,” the officer said.

“They got
off
the train,” Hampton said. “Went over to the other platform, came
back
to the southbound platform, and got back on? What’s that about?”

“That’s what I’m saying. We called it in because we thought we had them. Mike, here—” he said, indicating his partner, “he headed up to the top of the tube to cut ’em off. But
wham,
there they were getting back on the dang train.”

“What are they up to?” Larson muttered, trying to think this through. Then he said under his breath, “Why does this kid have to be so smart?”

Then he answered his own question. “The
dog
! They’re trying to use the dog to—” He cut himself off. “The kid was concerned about the woman in the photo.”

“But if they’re trying to go after her…they’re headed for trouble,” Hampton said.

“So we’d better stop them.” Larson studied the station, trying to make sense of the kids’ movements. “They were being thorough: that’s why they checked the other platform. They were using the dog to try to pick up a scent. That makes everything fit.”

“That dog was not on a scent,” the transit cop said. “I’m a hunter. I got bird dogs. I know when a hound is on a scent, and that dog may have been looking, but he wasn’t getting anything.”

“They’re going station to station,” Hampton said. “Somehow—don’t ask me how—they know the guy took this line, and they’re trying to pick up the scent again.”

Larson tugged on one of the cops to join him. Together, they sprinted for the escalator. Larson instructed, “Call down the line, station to station, to be looking for them: a dog and two kids. They can’t be too far ahead. We’ve
got
to find them.” He reached the escalator, Hampton right behind him.

The transit cop watched the two men bounding up the long, long rise into the glowing circle of light above them.

“Did you hear me?” Larson hollered back down. “We’ve got to find those kids!”

68.

Steel had to find them: Cairo and Kaileigh had disappeared off the face of the earth. A few blocks from the Metro station the neighborhood turned dirty and run-down. The sidewalks were cracked, the streets in horrible shape—the kind of place where, in Chicago, his mother always locked the car doors and rolled up all the windows. He tried to look confident, but his anxiety overcame him as he walked past houses with small, unmowed lawns of brown grass sprinkled with litter. He passed a gleaming red convertible that held a couple of white guys smoking cigarettes in the front seat. They were covered in tattoos, and they looked at Steel like he was some kind of afternoon snack.

Where’d they go?
he wondered.
How could a girl and
a dog disappear so quickly? What if they were in trouble?

He was drawn by the sound of barking—a sound that kept moving. It wasn’t Cairo’s bark, but it could have been the result of Cairo passing by. First he heard it to his right, so he moved a block in that direction. He found some dogs behind a chain-link fence. They didn’t bark as he passed, and he wondered,
Do they only bark at other dogs?
Then more barking came from up the street, and Steel ran to catch up.

He found these dogs as well, both German shepherds, one on a leash tied to a metal stake, the other on a front porch, too old and gray to go anywhere. Now, more barking in the distance. He looked out at old sofas on porches. A chair with the stuffing bubbling out of it. Houses in total disrepair, many of them boarded up. Did he dare to keep following the sounds of barking dogs deeper and deeper into this wasteland? He looked behind him; at least he wasn’t lost: he had the ability to remember each and every turn he’d taken to get here.

But where was everybody? There wasn’t a person on this street besides him, in either direction. There were a few old cars parked, but most of them weren’t going anywhere—not if you needed tires, doors, or windshields. Of the cars that actually drove past him, most had dark, opaque windows and pulsed from the music that blared from within. They drove slow, like patrol cars, and reminded him of Cairo when she was out hunting. He felt like the prey. He felt a hundred eyes were trained on him, and yet he couldn’t see a soul; he imagined people hiding behind the dark windows of the burned-out buildings and abandoned playgrounds.

What choice did he have but to follow the sound of barking? What other clues were there? He felt so angry at Kaileigh. Then his anger changed to concern, and from concern to fear. What if Kaileigh had caught up to Cairo? What if Cairo had led Kaileigh straight to the man from the train? What if she was now captured and Cairo along with her? What then?

The barking stopped. Silence sat atop the groan and grind of traffic and a distant city. All at once, Steel realized what a comfort the barking had been. Without it, this place seemed twice as dangerous, and he felt twice as desperate. His feet slowed; he wasn’t so eager to go any deeper into this place. It felt like his science teacher’s description of a black hole in space: matter went in but never came out. He didn’t want any part of that.

Then he saw a distant brick building riddled with broken windows. It triggered something powerful in him, a vivid memory trapped in his mind.
What’s it from?
He felt it was something important—critically important—if only he could understand…could place it…. He fought against his fear of this place, the terror that had taken over his mind. Pushed it away…back…back…trying to clear his thoughts.
“Don’t get in your own way,”
his father had once told him, when coaching him for a science quest.
“Don’t be your own worst enemy.”

He took a deep breath now, as he had then. He closed his eyes and pictured something peaceful: snow falling outside the window on a winter’s day. Slowly the snow melted, and there was the image he was searching for: the preacher’s wife tied to a chair; behind her and over her left shoulder, a row of windows—broken windows.

He saw each of the shapes distinctly, his memory locked on to the image: their ragged breaks and missing pieces. Five of them in a row, fairly high up the wall.

He opened his eyes. There, several blocks ahead, a brick building with all sorts of broken windows—the top rows of which were in groups
of five.

He started running. He wanted to be closer, to reverse the image so clear in his mind and try to match windows to windows. He ran a block, crossed the street, and started down the next.

“Steel!” Kaileigh’s voice called out.

Startled, he jumped fully off the ground, lost his balance, and crashed to the sidewalk. He quickly got up, scampered to his left, where Kaileigh, holding tightly to Cairo’s collar, was hunkered down behind a leafless shrub. She was frantically waving at him.

“Where…How…?” He couldn’t catch his breath.

“I almost didn’t catch her,” Kaileigh explained in a forced whisper. “She was on the scent, and running
so fast.
But there were these dogs…and she slowed each time…and when I finally caught her leash, she nearly dragged me off my feet. I wasn’t sure what to do—how to find you. And then you just showed up.”

“It’s the brick building,” Steel said. “The guy from the train. Has to be.” He told her about his memory of the windows in the photo.

“You can remember the
shapes
of the broken windows in the photo?” She sounded either impressed or doubtful; he couldn’t tell which.

“I need to get closer,” he said. “To check out every side of the building.”

“I don’t exactly love it here.”

“No,” he agreed. “What happened to you back in the station? You spaced out.”

Her eyes went wide as if she’d forgotten about it until just now. “Oh, yeah! You wouldn’t believe it! It was this lottery poster. Huge. Up on the wall of the station. You remember the billboard we saw from the balcony of your hotel room? It was sort of like that. You know the balls they use to spell out lottery: L-O-T-T-E-R-Y? Well, this poster had the same balls spelling it out the same way—only they were in this machine, this plastic cube, with a whole bunch of numbered balls. And I just
saw
it. You know? You know like when you’re working on a math equation, or trying to think through a science assignment? You know that moment when you just
get it?
I know you do.”

“Sure.”

“It was like that!” She was excited, her face red, her eyes even wider. She spoke so quickly, Steel could barely stay with her. “All those Ping-Pong balls in that plastic box—and near the top of the box this tube—an opening that sucks out the winning numbers. It just took a minute for me, you know, to
see
it, to see the way it works: all the balls being blown around this box and then the tube sucking one of them up. It’s my science challenge, Steel: the Ping-Pong balls are just little balloons. Right? Just floating around in that box. Only the thing is, whichever balloon floats the highest is the one that gets sucked up—the one that gets counted. My project wasn’t stolen by a competitor. It was stolen by these people. That guy from the train.” She looked up at Steel with anger in her eyes. “They stole my project to rig the lottery.”

For a moment, Steel couldn’t breathe. It was if she’d sucked all the oxygen out of the air. He hadn’t seen the poster, so he wasn’t exactly sure what this box looked like. But he pieced it together from what she’d said: a box of Ping-Pong balls; an open tube near the top; the balls bouncing around.

“Could it be used for that?” he asked.

“What do you think I’m telling you? Of course it could! Remember, my project makes it possible to control which balloon floats the highest and for the longest. In the lottery, the highest Ping-Pong ball is the one that gets collected—gets counted as the winning number. You tweak my project a little, and instead of balloons, it’s Ping-Pong balls, and instead of winning the science challenge, you win forty-five million dollars.”

Steel processed this. “You’re sure?” he asked.

“I promise you it’s possible. Yes. Absolutely. The train left from Chicago. That’s where I live: just outside Chicago. That briefcase…for all we know it had something more than just that photo—like my notes, for instance. Like the whole thing laid out for them.”

“How’s it work?” Steel asked.

“You think I’m telling you? No way!”

“Kaileigh!”

She puckered her face in obstinacy and finally relented. “It’s
so
ridiculously simple. All I did was take a computer chip—I salvaged my first one from one of my dad’s old cell phones—and I use it to
warm
the gas—I used neon—inside the balloon. The chip is activated by any phone that has the walkie-talkie function. The chip picks up the transmission, turns itself on, and immediately warms. The gas warms with it. The balloon rises. Simple enough, but it works like magic.”

“Forty-five million dollars’ worth,” Steel said.

“I’m thinking this gang, or whatever, read about my project in the newspaper and realized it could be used to rig the lottery. Stealing it from school was easy enough. They’d have to modify it some, and obviously they’d need someone to switch out their Ping-Pong balls with the ones usually used. So it’s complicated, but they could do it.”

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Steel said. “I’ve got to get a look at the windows of all four sides of that building.”

“But what about Cairo? Isn’t she enough?”

“She can help. If she scents that building, then we know we’re there.” Cairo wagged her tail as if she’d understood what he’d said. “But if I can identify the floor for them, then they’ll know exactly where to look.”

Cairo suddenly jerked to the left. It all happened too fast for Steel, whose mind was engaged with everything Kaileigh had been telling him.

“Are you crazy? He’ll
kill
you.” A woman’s voice. Angry or frightened, Steel wasn’t sure which.

Steel turned and looked up into the face of the woman from the train.

69.

Larson and Hampton were met at the Navy Yard Metro station by an overweight D.C. transit cop with tired eyes and two silver teeth. His name was Coleman, and he accompanied the two marshals to the bottom of the escalators.

“This is where I was when I first seen the dog. He come out of there like someone fired a starter’s pistol—low to the ground and moving like a greyhound. Hit the escalator ’fore I could grab him.”

“Just the dog?” Hampton said, clarifying.

“Then a girl, fast as greased lightning.”

“And the boy?” Larson asked.

“Dead last,” the man said. “Between him and the girl, I gotta say that he looked the most frightened—the most upset. Like maybe the dog belonged to him.”

“It does,” said Hampton.

“They went up to street level,” Larson said, verifying what he’d been told a few minutes earlier.

“Yes, sir. Up top, and they ain’t come back down since.”

Larson thanked the man. He and Hampton joined the escalator and climbed as quickly as they could, finally reaching street level.

“What now?” Hampton asked, looking around and seeing no sign of the kids. “They could be anywhere.”

“If you’d kidnapped a woman,” Larson said, “and you had her somewhere in this neighborhood, where would it be?”

“Where the fewest people lived,” Hampton answered automatically. “Somewhere that gave me options for escape if people like us showed up.”

“A remote location that’s difficult to contain.”

“You could put it that way,” Hampton said.

Larson got his bearings and pointed north. “That direction, the neighborhoods steadily improve.”

“But that way,” Hampton said, indicating the opposite direction, “is Buzzard Point. A cousin of mine grew up there with his grandma. Not the most scenic part of our nation’s capital.”

“Navy Yard abuts the river. FBI used to have its field office down here in Buzzard Point. Tough neighborhood.”

“What do you want to do?” Hampton asked.

“I want to find those kids before they find Grym,” Larson said.

“Amen to that.”

“We’ll go on foot, but I think it’s time to call in backup. Let’s ask for a couple Metro Police patrols to drive these streets looking for two kids and a dog.”

“I’m on it,” Hampton said, flipping open his phone.

Larson spun once, slowly in full circle. There was little traffic and almost no pedestrians: few people, if any, to begin questioning. This was going to come down to footwork and luck.

Where are you?
he wondered.