Challenge (4 page)

6.

Grym shifted from heel to heel, waiting for the gasbag of a conductor to shut up long enough to open the door. Grym had nodded off and lost track of the boy. The moment he’d awakened he’d gone looking for the potbellied conductor who’d taken the briefcase from the boy. He’d found him, smelling of cigarette smoke, making conversation with a woman who was apparently lost. How a person got lost on a train was beyond Grym, but he patiently waited out the exchange and then reported his briefcase as missing, giving an exact description and even producing the key to prove his ownership.

From that point to this, the old man had done nothing but talk—mostly about the batting averages of the Chicago Cubs. Grym had no use for baseball. He was into NASCAR.

At last the conductor unlocked the door and pushed it open. Grym looked into a car lit by a pair of skylights and a long row of overhead light fixtures. The walls were floor-to-ceiling luggage racks and custom shelves, with a single aisle down the middle. Some of the luggage and boxes and bags had been strapped down. Others remained loose. The car smelled oily, but not unpleasant.

“Where’d you put it?” Grym asked rudely.

“It’s down here.” The conductor moved slowly. “Anybody here?” he shouted.

Charlie reached the shelf marked LOST AND FOUND. He rifled through a few of the items and said, “Dang!”

“What?”

“I could’a sworn…” He moved a few suitcases left and right, still searching. “This is where I
should
have put it, at any rate. Lost and found. Pretty obvious.”

“You did or did not put it here?”

“Thought I did, or I wouldn’t be looking, now would I?” Charlie clearly did not appreciate Grym’s tone of voice. “Must have been moved by one of my colleagues…one of the other conductors.”

“The boy…the boy you said turned it over to you.” Grym tried to take the urgency from his voice. “Did you let him in here by any chance?”

“’Course not. Rules is rules. You think I’d leave a boy in here unattended?”

“You can tell me, Charlie.”

“You got the wrong idea, sir,” Charlie said. “Ain’t no passengers allowed in the baggage car, and that includes yourself. We’d better get you out of here, for just that reason.”

“You mind if I look around on my way out? It
is
my briefcase we’re talking about.”

“My guess is one of the other conductors might have moved it. I can check with them and get back to you. One thing’s for certain: that briefcase ain’t going nowhere, and neither are you. Neither am I, for that matter. We got plenty of time to find it, and get things back regular like.”

Grym reached high up on a shelf. He moved more suitcases around and rose to his tiptoes. He bumped into the dog crate and stepped around it.

Cairo whimpered at his feet. Grym possessed no great love of dogs. “Shut up!” he said, giving the crate a good stiff kick.

“Time to go,” Charlie said angrily, mustering as much authority as possible. Under his breath he mumbled, “No need to take it out on the dog.”

Grym said sternly, “I want that briefcase and I want it now.” He stormed out of the baggage car.

7.

Steel pushed Cairo aside and crawled forward toward the wire-mesh door. As he had been curled up in the back of the vinyl dog crate, the briefcase clutched tightly in his arms, his legs ached from cramping as he struggled out through the crate door and, with difficulty, came to standing.

As best he could, he returned the two metal feet to the bottom of the briefcase, but the second did not, and would not, screw in all the way. His mind raced. Could he tell his mother about the photo? Had he broken the law by looking at the briefcase’s contents? What would the owner of the briefcase, the man with the conductor, do if he found out that Steel had been poking around his personal property? Would he tie him up and tape his mouth like the woman in the photo?

He considered returning the case to the shelf, and letting it be found. But that woman was in trouble—serious trouble—and how could he help her if he surrendered the briefcase? The police knew how to handle such things.

He determined to hide it. He searched out and found a spot behind a large suitcase. He slipped the briefcase between the suitcase and the wall, and stepped back to admire his work.

“It’ll never work.”

He jumped, barked out a cry, and felt a wave of heat prickle through him. A girl’s voice from directly behind him. He spun around.

She was sitting on a crate, wearing a pair of shorts, running shoes, a white T-shirt, and a gray Nutrier High School Athletic Department sweatshirt. She had a long face with pink lips and inquisitive green eyes set off by a circle of black on the edge of the iris.

He tried to speak, but his voice got caught in his dry throat.

“They’ll find it back there,” she said.

“Where…the…heck…?”

“I was hiding over there.” She pointed over her shoulder without taking her eyes off Steel, as if she didn’t trust him. “Kaileigh.”

“Steel.”

“What kind of name is that?” she said.

“The kind I’m stuck with,” he said. “My real name is Steven.”

“What’s with the bag?”

“It’s a long story.”

“It’s a long train ride.”

“What’s with hiding in the baggage car?” he asked.

“You might say I’m kind of a fugitive. But if you do say that—to
anyone
—then, believe me, I’m going to make you pay. I’m going to tell about you trying to open it—the case. About taking the feet off. What was all that about, anyway?”

“None of your business,” he said.

“It is now.”

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“That is
lame,”
she said.

“I’m serious: you look familiar.”

“First state, then regional. Not that I noticed you. I didn’t. But I can read,” she said, pointing to the science challenge logo on his sweatshirt.

“Are you serious? You were at the challenges?”

“I was
in
the challenges. I’m the balloon girl.”

“No way.”

“Way,” she said.

“You won,” he said.

“In my category. Sure. But I was up against mostly lame-os trying to reinvent the model airplane. Not the best idea.”

“I watched you in the finals. You used a cell phone to make a balloon rise or fall. It was
way
cool.”

“Microchip technology,” she said. “Simple enough.”

“So we’re both heading to the nationals,” he stated. His initial flash of fear subsided, and he felt more human.

“Duh. You might say that, yeah. Although, I’m kind of only sort of going. Right now, that is; as of this moment. In a way. Just not exactly sure how it’s going to work out.”

“You either are or you aren’t going,” he said. “It’s an invitational.”

“I’m going to Washington providing I make it.”

“Are you
trying
to be mysterious, or what?”

“I’m not exactly supposed to be here. Technically.”

“Technically, where are you supposed to be?” he asked.

“At home. It’s a long story.”

“It’s a long train ride,” he said back to her. She smiled, and to him it seemed like someone had turned up the lights.

She said, “Some dufus stole my balloon gear from school. My project was written up in our community paper. You know: ’Look! A girl can actually do science!’ Right after that someone broke into the school and stole everything. Trouble is, it’s a pretty simple technology—the cell phone places a call, and a chip in the balloon basically answers the phone. It warms when it turns on. The gas in the balloon warms—the balloon rises. Basic stuff. Easy to rip off once you see how simple it is. But the frequencies and powering the chips was complicated to pull off, and that was the only gear I had. Meaning I can’t exactly compete without them. My parents”—she paused and looked at her feet—“they travel a lot. My mom got this trip all set up for me and Miss Kay—she’s my nanny—governess,” she said with a fake haughty accent. “—Whatever. And then when my stuff got stolen, Miss Kay called off the trip. But I still wanted to go,
of course,
because I’m convinced my stuff was stolen so that somebody else could win the nationals. Miss Kay and I don’t exactly see eye to eye. But hey, the train tickets were already paid for. So’s the hotel room. So I figured, why not?”

“But if the ticket’s paid for, why are you back here?” he asked.

“Because we’re coming into a stop. I have a seat. I have a
sleeper,”
she said. “But I’m thinking Miss Kay’s going to try to get me off the train, and that’s not right.”

“You
ran away?”
he said loudly.

“My parents are
never
home, so you can’t exactly say I ran away from them. Besides, there’s no way Miss Kay’s ever going to report me missing, or tell my parents, because it’ll get her way fired. First she’ll try to get me back, and I’ve got to avoid that. I want my project back. I want to compete.”

“A sleeper? All to yourself? You gotta be rich.”

“My parents. Yeah. Really rich.” She looked at her toes again. “You?”

“No. Not so much. My father’s a salesman.”

“What’s he sell?”

“I don’t even know. Technology, though he never explains it.”

“My dad’s a private art dealer. He and my mom, they travel all the time. Did I mention that?”

“You may have,” he said. “You ran away?” This time with great admiration.

“I’m sure Miss Kay is majorly pissed off at me by now. There is no way I can afford to get caught. I am like in serious trouble if she catches me.”

“I won’t say anything.”

“So what’s with the briefcase?”

“I’ve got to get back,” he said. “My mother’s going to freak any minute.”

“The back of the crate,” she said. “That was pretty good thinking.”

“Thanks.”

“Nice dog.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“So why not put the briefcase in the crate with the dog? They didn’t see you when you were in there.”

“Good point.” He wondered why he hadn’t thought of that.

He opened the crate and placed the briefcase in the back. With Cairo up near the wire door, and cream-colored plastic covering up the rest of the crate, the briefcase was basically impossible to see, even when looking through the gate.

“If I come back and it’s missing…” he said.

“No worries. I’m a runaway, not a thief.” She smiled, and again the train car felt different to him. “Cabin ninety-six,” she said. “You could bring me food, if you think about it.”

“I might just do that.”

“Good, because I get kinda hungry.”

“I thought you said you only hide when we’re heading into a stop.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But I avoid cruising the train as much as possible. I’m thinking it’s not such a great idea to risk being seen, on account of Miss Kay could have put the word out. She’s smarter than she looks. And the dining car—that’s a pretty obvious place to look for people. We need to eat.”

“Yeah, well I gotta take off,” he said hesitantly.

“So take off.”

On the way to the end of the baggage car, Steel tried to prepare himself for any questions Charlie might throw at him. Steel believed that saving the woman in the photo could excuse a few white lies. He’d sneaked a peek at the face of the man looking for him through one of the crate’s ventilation slats. The guy looked pretty normal, but he could easily be the woman’s kidnapper, or a murderer, or something like that. Lying to a guy like that would be no trouble at all.

He turned. “How long are you going to stay in here?” he asked.

“Just until we’re under way again. I was lucky to sneak in here when they were loading.”

“I’m going to give it to the cops at the next stop,” he said. “The case.”

“Toledo,” she said.

“That’s the one. Me and my mom are sharing a sleeper car from Toledo the rest of the way.”

“So maybe we’ll be in the same car or something.”

“So…see you later, maybe.”

“You’re going to have to explain that case to me at some point.”

“Promise,” he said.

But for now he just wanted out of the baggage car. His mother had been right: he never should have come back here.

8.

The chartered jet touched down at Metcalf Field, eight miles outside downtown Toledo, Ohio, a city that Larson had never visited. He and Deputy Hampton reached the bottom of the jet’s stairs, where a rental car awaited.

Larson’s quick movements and the tightness of his voice were partially the result of something he and Hampton had seen on the Union Station security surveillance tapes they’d viewed during the flight: a young boy.

The woman on the platform had been approached by a boy. There had been words between them. The boy seemed to be trying to return a briefcase to her, but it couldn’t be ruled out that he was some kind of courier. Larson couldn’t afford to overlook any possibility.

“At least we’re ahead of the train,” Larson said, proud to have beaten its arrival. “We’ll monitor the platform. Anyone matching our suspect, or the boy, gets grabbed. If possible, we’ll board the train and root him out.”

“TPD is meeting us there,” said Hampton, who’d made a call to the Toledo Police Department from the plane.

“We’ll squeeze the train like a tube of toothpaste. If our guy makes a run for it, TPD will collar him.”

“We could have used a better look at the boy,” Hampton said. “We don’t have squat to go on.”

“Agreed.”

“And this time of year, summer break and all, there are going to be a
lot
of kids on that train.”

“I know that.”

“Just trying to cheer you up.”

“You’re doing a great job of it,” Larson snapped sarcastically.

They had the boy’s general size, but that was about it. The distance of the camera and the graininess of the tape had failed to provide a good look at him.

Larson said, “Top priority: we don’t want a hostage situation. This has to be handled carefully.”

“Grym has a reputation for being good with disguises,” Hampton said.

“I know that,” Larson said irritably. “If you’re trying to tell me the odds are against us, I’m well aware of that.” He didn’t like reviewing what had already been discussed.

Larson’s cell phone rang and he took the call, driving one-handed. A moment later he hung up and said to Hampton, “The woman from the platform may have reboarded the train.”

“No way!”

“Our friend at Terminal Security apparently spotted her.”

“Righteous.”

“We keep an eye out for her, as well,” Larson said.

“This is getting interesting,” said Hampton.