Chapter 10 - The Train That Carried No Passengers
Rafe reached Lily first.
He lifted her off the platform as a maintenance cart burst through a service gate below. The cart carried a metal case wired to a transmitter. Gabriel's men surrounded it, but Mara shouted through their earpieces not to touch anything.
June remained seated.
"It is not a bomb," she said. "Not yet."
Elena lunged for her. Gabriel caught Elena's arm before she could strike.
"Where are the twenty-four people?" he asked.
"Some are workers. Some are witnesses. One is a judge. One is a child you have never met. Every device monitors a heartbeat and a location. If my signal stops, instructions are released."
"To whom?"
"People who do not ask whether instructions are moral."
Gabriel looked at the train ticket. "Haven Ridge."
June nodded. "The 6:10 train is waiting. It will take Lily, Elena, Samuel, and you. No guards. No weapons."
"Samuel cannot travel."
"Then square seventeen remains closed, and the workers' money remains poisoned."
Lily looked at June. "Why do you hate my mom?"
June's smile faded. "I do not hate her. I hate what men become when they decide a frightened girl is proof they can be redeemed. Samuel betrayed his family for Elena. My father destroyed himself trying to recover what Samuel stole. David spent his life begging to matter. Gabriel built an empire from guilt."
"And what did you build?" Lily asked.
For the first time, June looked offended.
"Order."
The 6:10 train waited on an unused platform. It consisted of one locomotive and two dark passenger cars. No conductor stood outside. The windows were tinted.
Mara objected to every part of the plan. Gabriel listened, then ordered her to remain in control of the city operation.
"If we disappear," he said, "release everything we have to the federal task force and the press."
"June may be counting on that."
"Then make sure she regrets the count."
Samuel arrived in a wheelchair, against medical advice. He wore a dark coat over hospital clothes. When he saw June, anger brought color to his face.
"You forged Elena's letters."
June looked at him with almost tender sadness. "You needed a reason to survive. Hatred was more durable than hope."
"You kept me in chains."
"Corvin kept you in chains. I kept Corvin funded. Distinctions matter."
David was not invited, but his absence troubled Lily. He had become the obvious villain in a story whose hidden villains kept multiplying. She wondered what he knew that June still feared.
At 6:09, Lily, Elena, Samuel, Gabriel, and June boarded the first passenger car. Rafe tried to follow. The doors closed between them.
The train moved.
Inside, the car resembled an old dining room. A long table had been set with five places. At each seat lay a file bearing one name.
ELENA CARTER.
SAMUEL VALE.
GABRIEL VALE.
JUNE MERCER.
LILY CARTER.
Lily opened hers.
The first page was a birth certificate naming Samuel as her father. The second was a trust document. The third was a photograph of a newborn wrapped in a yellow blanket.
On the fourth page was a death certificate.
LILY ANNE CARTER. DECEASED AT BIRTH.
"This is fake," Elena said.
June took her seat. "It was legally filed. For nine years, Lily did not exist in the original system. The identity she uses now was created later through a midwife who owed Corvin money."
"Why?" Lily asked.
"Because a dead child can inherit without being found. A living child can unlock an inheritance when needed."
Samuel opened his file. It contained records of every forced signature he had given under the tower. Gabriel's file contained lists of payments his companies had made to Saint Orison through intermediaries.
"You used my shipping firms," Gabriel said.
"Your father used them first," June replied.
The train entered a tunnel. The lights dimmed.
Elena opened her file and found statements supposedly written by the three girls she had named years ago. Two blamed her. One thanked her.
The third statement ended with a recent date.
The missing girl was alive.
Her name was Rosa Navarro.
The train emerged into open countryside. Snow covered the hills around Haven Ridge, though the city behind them had only rain.
June pointed through the window.
A private prison stood beyond the trees.
"Square seventeen is not a locker," she said. "It is a person."
The train slowed beside a fenced platform.
A woman in a gray uniform waited under armed guard. She had a scar across her jaw and a brass bell token hanging from her neck.
Elena stood, trembling.
"Rosa."
The woman looked at Elena, then at Lily.
"You brought the child," she said.
May you like
June smiled.
"Now we can begin the trial."
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