Out at Night (36 page)

Grace slammed her shoulder into the side of the sliding door, straining to move it, putting everything she had behind it. The metal hinges creaked.

She was pushing hard and she had gravity on her side, but Stuart had madness on his, fueled by rage.

It closed like a sliding door. She said it over and over. Closed like a sliding door, a sliding door. The moon floated free of the clouds.

The last thing she saw was Stuart, the butt of the crossbow wedged into his shoulder. He pulled the trigger. The string snapped. The bolt shot forward.

Chapter 45

Grace slammed the door shut, pitching the boxcar into inky darkness. Outside, the bolt crunched into the door with such force it sounded as if it were shearing metal, and Grace instinctively jerked backward. She’d dropped the metal bar and she swept her hands over the floor, looking for it, her hands making a rough staccato sound. Her left heel nudged the bar and she yanked it up and scrambled back to the door.

She could use the bar as a weapon, striking downward when he jerked open the door, but if she missed in the dark, he’d kill her.

She knew Stuart would be crossing the distance between them in seconds and would try to slide open the door from the outside. She ran her fingers along the groove of the sliding door. She was going to have to do the opposite of what the agents had done. They’d used the metal bar to hold open the door. She would have to use it to seal herself into a tomb.

Outside, muffled feet pounded closer. Her index finger snagged the route of the groove and she followed it. She grasped the metal bar and shoved it down into the groove, jamming the door.

Outside Stuart yanked the door. It shivered and held and she jerked away from the door. She could hear him on the other side, breathing.

I’ve got an extra light on my key chain, you need it
. Johnstone’s key chain. She rocked back on her heels, fished out the keychain and found the penlight, stabbing the narrow beam of light along the edge of the door frame.

Stuart rattled the door again and bellowed in rage and she scrabbled away from the door, afraid. The bellow morphed into a howl and abruptly cut off.

She danced the light along the frame of the door, trying to control the quaking in her fingers.

The strength of his rage had jammed the metal bar up under a metal cross beam in the door and splintered part of the wood.

She was locked in. She wasn’t getting out that way. A wave of claustrophobia surged over her. She was shivering. Her teeth clicked. The inside of the boxcar was cold, and she held herself and rocked.

Mac came into her mind, the piercing way he looked at her, his humor, the smell of his skin. When the bad thing had happened in Guatemala and she’d left, gone to lengths so he couldn’t find her, it was because she had never let herself believe in his goodness, and she realized now, in the stillness of the cold boxcar, how much of her own goodness she’d sacrificed in the process. A loneliness swept over her, and a terror for what was yet to come. She started to cry and clamped off the sound. Stuart couldn’t know.

She wondered what he’d try. Fire. Switching the line. Freight trains plowed right through the yard. Stuart must have worked for Windlift long enough to know how to switch tracks and send a train barreling right into the boxcar.

She slid the penlight off the key chain and examined the rest of the ring. House key, car key and a set of sturdy, oversized Baldwin’s. Besides keys, Johnstone kept a small canister of pepper spray the size of a tube of lipstick.

It was the best weapon she had, but it was small. She’d only be able to use it once. She carefully worked the spray canister free of the key ring and put it in her shirt pocket. She practiced yanking it out, aiming it, and mock-squeezing the button, going over and over the movements until the actions felt fluid. Satisfied, she tucked the canister into her pocket and picked up the penlight. She played the small beam over the freight stored behind her. In the light’s beam, the cargo looked like coffins.

Long arms of fiberglass lay banded and stacked, taking up most of the space. Blades for the wind turbine. Crammed next to them was a wooden crate that came almost to her shoulders, as long as a baby whale. Smaller boxes had been stacked next to it.

Grace waved the penlight in arcs and found the metal ladder welded to the side of the car she’d seen earlier with her uncle Pete. It extended from the ceiling only halfway down, but she could reach it if she climbed up the blades. She squeezed past the wooden crate and stepped onto the blades, moving slowly, taking her time. She cautiously transferred her weight to the ladder and climbed. She aimed the beam of light and studied the panel above her.

She pressed straight up with the heel of her hand, hard. The metal panel was cold and smooth to the touch. The yard men had done a good job. It was a tight seal. She climbed down and roved the penlight over the inside. She needed to know every inch of the boxcar, its geography.

The metal bands clamping the blades would make a good weapon, but she had no idea how to get them apart. More promising was the crate. She shoved a smaller box over and used it as a step. Nails poked out of the lid a good quarter inch. She went back to the wind turbine blades and shoved the flashlight between two blades, taking her time positioning it. That far away from the crate, the light it gave was dim.

She slipped free an oversize key off the chain and jammed it under a nail in the crate lid, rocking the key back and forth, digging it into the wood. The pressure bit into her fingers and she switched hands. She felt the nail pop slightly and switched the key so that the thick side of it stood under the nail head and she could use the length of the key for leverage. The metal bit into the side of her hand and she realized she was bleeding. She kept working. The nail slid free and she put it into her shirt pocket next to the pepper spray.

She repositioned the light. She worked on the easier nails first. She heard a distant train whistle. Her pocket filled with nails and she worried about being able to retrieve the pepper spray if she needed it quickly. She moved the spray to her pants pocket.

She had two sides done now but it was taking too long and she knew it and fresh panic shot through her. Sweat creased her back. She was able now to slide her fingers under the lid and she crouched and lifted the lid, using that leverage to squeeze loose some of the nails. The hard ones she twisted free.

She was working the last side. The nails were popping loose and she wasn’t bothering to save them. She could feel the ache in her shoulders and arms as she rocked the lid.

She stopped. Someone was climbing up the outside of the car.

Chapter 46

She stared at the roof. His tread was heavy and his boots banged. He was directly above her. Something clanged. His voice was soft and insinuating. “Grace. Can you hear me?”

Her hand stole to her pants pocket and touched the pepper spray. She transferred it so that it was on top of the nails in her shirt pocket.

“Talk to me, honey. May as well.”

She worked on loosening the lid, attached now only by the last few nails. It came free in a whine of splintering wood.

“What was that?” He sounded tense and jocular, as if they were having a dinner party and she’d dropped a hot casserole dish in the kitchen while guests waited at the table.

The penlight cast a pale circle onto the crate; everywhere else was darkness. The crate lid was heavy and she moved awkwardly, legs trembling, settling it carefully against the wall in the dark.

“What are you doing down there?”

He’d told her more than he realized.

He couldn’t see her. The night-vision goggles were useless through metal. Until he’d removed the roof panel, she still had time to find another weapon. She wasn’t going to cower and wait.

She patted her way toward the pale circle of light and pulled the flashlight free. She went back to the crate.

Straw—the kind she used to fill Katie’s Easter basket. She yanked out a handful and tossed it. A wink of glossy white metal lay underneath. It was an egg, she was certain. One of the eggs she’d seen at Windlift. Stuart’s job.

“We never had time to talk.” He sounded regretful. “So I guess this it. Let me tell you how this is going to work.”

She put the penlight between her teeth and scraped up handfuls of batting, throwing them on the ground. A grating sound rang through the top of the roof, metal on metal, and she flinched. He must have picked up a bolt cutter. That’s why he’d been gone so long. No. File, thank God. A hasp. It sounded like he was sawing off a bolt. That would take longer.

How many bolts would he need to crack loose before he could crack open the metal panel?

She dug her hands deep and scooped up armfuls of stuffing, carefully playing the light over what was revealed. She was staring down into the cavity of a turbine. The gears seemed to be a series of huge, interlinking pieces of metal. There had to be something sharp in there she could use.

She wondered if it was just her imagination, or if the light was getting dimmer.

“You know if you try to get out through the door again, I’ll pick you off with my crossbow. I’m a little embarrassed by how that’s gone down. I’m better than I seem with it, trust me.”

She emptied out as much of the stuffing as she could pull free and then started on one end of the turbine, moving the light carefully over what was now exposed inside the cavity. A ribbed generator, much like a car’s, was connected by a strong shaft to a bigger metal box. Gears. Rounded edges. Nothing sharp. There was nothing there to save her.

Above her Stuart sawed in silence. A sharp whine cut the air, followed by a metallic click as if something had been bitten off. Inside the boxcar, the severed metal nut of the bolt rained down and clanked to the floor.

“One down. Anything you want to ask, while you can? Time’s running out.” The sound of the sawing rasped through the air, energetic, faster.

He wanted to talk to her. Fine, she’d use it. She kept pulling straw out of the crate, exposing the shaft of the wind turbine.

“What kind of a whacked-out childhood did you have, to create you?”

“Come on, Grace, you can do better than that.” He sounded amused.

“Must be lonely, being so smart. Who do you talk to, Stuart?”

“I love her. The kid, too. It’s a sacrifice, never being able to see them again.”

“Oh, you’ll find somebody else.”

“I already have. I have a life completely apart from this, Grace.”

The filing shifted in tone, and the tip of a second long screw clattered down.

“Nice touch. The twisted fingers.”

“Broke both of them in grade school at recess, trying to catch a hardball. Never healed properly.”

“I don’t get it. Help me out here.”

Grace shifted the penlight beam over the gearbox. The circle of light was dimming, growing smaller. The lower half of the turbine was still buried in padding, the gearbox self-contained. She kept the light moving.

He was cutting through the third bolt.

“Really, I want to know,” she said. “It was brilliant, Stuart, what you did. Modifying the soy. Trying it out on Vonda. Not just Vonda. Yourself. A brave man. A pioneer.”

“To be responsible for killing off an entire race.” His voice was hypnotic. “Not even Hitler managed that. And see, the beauty is, it will end war, Grace. Just like that. All these politicians. Year after year. All of them promising hope or change or holding the old line. Words. They’re just words, Grace. This is change. Powerful. Effective. No going back. Only forward.”

The circle of light contracted like a faint star being swallowed by a black hole. It was less than the size of her fist now.

She skimmed the light over the rest of the turbine, hunting. A large white shaft poked out the far end of the gearbox and she moved her beam along to where the gearbox flared and connected to an enormous piece of white metal. It was the main shaft, which would lock into the blades.

“Why Riverside U?”

Frenzied sawing and a third screw lugnut pelted the floor.

“Dying mothers feel the need to get so much off their chests; unnecessary, really, but what’s a son to do?” The frenzied sound of his cutting a bolt increased.

She jerked her head up, her heart slamming into her chest. Of course.

“Your mother.”

She thought back to the ripped photo that her uncle had showed her, the one that had been taken to the Desert Sun. Bartholomew and Jeanne, young, laughing radicals. But there had been another arm in that photo, a slim female arm, and Bartholomew had been staring at whoever the other person was when the photo had been taken.

Tasha. Samantha. Stuart’s mother.

“You’re Bartholomew’s son. That’s what you came to tell him. You were his son.”

“The fucker didn’t even respond. Stood there dumb-mouthed, as if he hadn’t absorbed a word of it. And then next time I saw him, he pretended not to recognize me. I’d come up with this plan, this perfect plan, putting into action all his words, and what did I get?”

Grace wormed the penlight down deep into the socket, shining it back toward the main shaft. The beam caught a dull spark, buried in the cavity of metal. Grace leaned down into the crate, trying to get a better angle.

It was shiny, slippery almost. A baggie.

Not a baggie, exactly. A small pouch, carefully constructed out of a fluid plastic material. She stretched until she could touch it with her finger and it shivered in the light., the way she imagined a silicon breast implant might move. She slid her fingers under it and gently tugged it loose. She held it in her palm, studying it.

The last of the light flickered and went out.

She stood perfectly still. Wondering if she’d actually seen what she thought she had. Small brown particles in liquid.

Brown soy. The baggie was filled soy.

Above her on the roof, Stuart shifted position, the sawing reaching a frenzied crescendo. Grace put the bag down carefully and patted her way in pitch black around the crate.

“No matter how many times you’d walk him through it, he’d never remember, would he? It never stuck in his head, who you were. So you came up with a plan, the best plan. You played God. And your father wasn’t impressed. He was revolted. You were a nobody. Playing God. Not even your father remembered your name.”