Part 3
Caleb was across me before the force of the stop reached our row.
His shoulder drove me back into the seat. One arm covered the side of my head while the other braced against the seat ahead. I heard luggage striking the aisle, a child screaming, and a series of sharp impacts from somewhere near the front.
Rook dropped across my boots and the lower part of my braces.
The train fought its own momentum for several long seconds. My body wanted to slide forward; Caleb held me in place. When we finally stopped, I could still feel movement in my stomach and knees.
Emergency lights came on in a dim line along the car.
“Anything new hurt?” Caleb asked.
I shook my head against his arm. He eased back enough to see my face.
“Tell me.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
Outside the window, a tunnel wall stood close to the glass. Water marked the stone and concrete in dark vertical streaks. We had entered the ridge before the brakes engaged, and the car now sat entirely inside it.
A broken bag lay open in the aisle. Somebody was calling for a husband. The air carried the hot smell of stressed machinery, mixed with dust shaken loose from places passengers never saw.
Caleb checked the passage ahead. One of the door windows had broken, leaving fragments across the vestibule floor.
He bent toward Rook. “Stay with her. Guard.”
The shepherd rose just enough to settle beside my knees again.
I caught Caleb’s sleeve.
“Don’t leave.”
He looked at my hand, then at me. For the first time, I saw him hesitate.
“I have to see what happened. He stays.”
“Couldn’t it be an accident?”
“It could.” His gaze moved toward the forward doors. “After that man walked out, I’m not assuming it was.”
He waited until I let go of his sleeve, then moved into the aisle.
People were checking their phones. Several held them overhead, as though another foot of height might find a signal through the ridge. No one near us could get a call out.
Caleb kept one hand beneath the edge of his jacket as he stepped over spilled belongings. By the time he reached the vestibule, his pistol was out, held low and close where the panicked passengers wouldn’t mistake it for another threat.
I learned the details of those next minutes later. At the time, I could see only his back, then nothing beyond the passengers leaning into the aisle.
The conductor was on the floor beside the connecting door.
His name was Walter Hines. Blood had run from a cut above his eyebrow onto his cheek and uniform collar. He had one hand pressed against the wound and was trying to pull himself upright with the other.
Caleb crouched beside him.
“Don’t get up yet. Who did this?”
Walter blinked at him. “The fellow in the suit.”
“Alone?”
“No. Another man. Leather jacket. Big.” Walter pointed shakily toward the next car. “I asked what they were doing back here. One pushed me. They broke the cover on the emergency brake.”
Caleb checked the door leading forward. Its normal release had been disabled, and something had been used to secure it from the other side.
“They locked us off,” Walter said. “Wouldn’t let me call through.”
“Did they say what they wanted?”
“Cameras.” Walter swallowed. “Wanted to know if there were cameras in this stretch. I told them there weren’t any covering the tunnel. Then he hit me.”
Caleb pressed a folded cloth from the conductor’s pocket into Walter’s hand and helped him place it against the cut.
“Hold that there. Stay below the window.”
At the far end of the neighboring car, Adrian stood near the secured forward door. He had removed his suit jacket. A pistol was visible in his hand.
The second man was moving toward the rear.
He was broad enough to turn sideways between seats, with close-cropped hair and a leather jacket stretched across his shoulders. Passengers flinched as he passed. He wasn’t taking their bags or phones. He shoved a teenager’s backpack aside, looked down, and moved on.
He was checking their legs.
Caleb watched him stop beside another row. Again, the man’s attention went to the floor, then to the passengers’ knees.
A medical appointment. Custom braces. Someone watching a particular young woman rather than choosing among the passengers.
Caleb didn’t yet know what was concealed in my equipment, but he knew where they expected to find it.
The broad man turned toward the rear vestibule.
His name was Darius Keene. The investigation would identify him as a freelance extraction operative with a reputation for leaving very little evidence of his work. On the train, he looked like a man who expected frightened people to make room for him.
Caleb stepped out of sight beside the connecting door.
The tunnel fans made a continuous roar beyond the walls. Metal creaked as Darius pulled the door open and entered the narrow space between cars.
Caleb hit him before he could turn.
The struggle drove both men against the vestibule wall. Darius was strong enough to wrench free of the first hold, and his elbow struck the panel beside Caleb’s head with a noise that carried back into our car.
Caleb stayed close. There was no room for either man to swing properly, no distance in which Darius could use his size. Caleb caught his arm, forced it behind him, and brought him down against the wall and onto one knee.
Darius made a low, strangled sound.
“The braces,” Caleb said near his ear. “What are you after?”
The man tried to turn his head.
Caleb tightened his hold. “What’s inside?”
“A drive.” Darius was breathing hard. “Prototype data. In the side strut.”
“Who sent you?”
Darius spat onto the grating. “You’ve got no idea—”
A sound at the opposite door cut him off.
Adrian stood beyond the damaged window with his pistol raised.
Caleb shoved Darius toward the door and moved at the same instant the shot came.
The remaining window broke inward. Darius took the impact in the protective vest beneath his jacket and crashed onto the vestibule floor. Caleb went backward through the rear doorway, putting the wall between himself and Adrian.
The report struck our car like a physical blow.
I gripped Rook’s harness without meaning to. Around me, people dropped from their seats and crawled beneath them. A man pulled his wife down by the shoulders. The child who had been watching cartoons began screaming for his mother even though she was holding him.
I couldn’t get down.
My right leg had locked again. My left brace was wedged against the seat ahead, and every attempt to move sent a sharp pull through my lower spine. I tried once, then stopped with my mouth open and no breath coming out.
Rook stood over my feet.
He hadn’t followed Caleb. He hadn’t moved toward the shot. His body stayed between the aisle and me, and the sound rising from his chest was deeper than any I had heard from him before.
“Please,” I whispered into his fur. “Don’t go.”
A man several rows ahead got up.
At first, I thought he was trying to escape the gunfire. He wore a faded sweatshirt with the hood drawn forward and a medical mask covering the lower half of his face. I remembered seeing him earlier without really registering him.
Now he was looking straight at me.
He stepped around the people on the floor without slowing. One hand came out of his sweatshirt pocket holding a short steel pry bar.
Rook’s head lowered.
The man stopped at our row and looked at my right brace.
“Hold still,” he said. “This part’s going to hurt.”
He lifted the bar toward my knee…
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