For Everything a Reason (24 page)

Chapter
Forty-Seven

Icy patches made Joseph almost lose his footing. Slipping
and sliding, he kept up the chase. The dangerous conditions were also thwarting
the Russian’s escape. Joseph watched as Yurius fell to his knees. He clawed his
way up and then cut across the street, heading quickly for one of the adjoining
alleyways.

Joseph stepped off the
sidewalk, almost falling under the wheels of a truck. The blare of a horn
stopped him short, just as flesh and chrome were about to meet. The truck
whizzed by in a blur.

Hurriedly, Joseph crossed to
the opposite sidewalk. A few pedestrians stood back out of his way, unwilling
to either engage or obstruct this frantic-looking man. The clatter of a
trashcan lid falling to the floor reverberated towards him. Joseph took off in
pursuit.

The alleyway narrowed quickly
to become a tight funnel of brickwork. The open trashcan forced Joseph to step
carefully. It slowed him down. He pushed the thing to one side and scooted
around it. Clearly, Yurius had simply vaulted over it, catching the lid as he
went.

Joseph stumbled his way towards
the end of the alleyway. An abandoned parking lot opened out before him. Just
one car was parked there, and it was this vehicle that the kidnapper made his
way towards.

“Yurius!” Joseph bellowed. “I
know who you are! Where to find you!” This went against everything Carter had
told him. Nothing mattered more now than getting Jake back, and this unexpected
announcement halted the Russian’s escape.

Yurius stopped abruptly.

Joseph entered the parking lot.
“Where’s my son?” he demanded.

Yurius stood square-on, his
hand slipping into his jacket.

Joseph stopped.

Only fifteen yards divided
them.

Yurius grinned, his perfect
white teeth beaming. His hand appeared, and it held the silenced weapon.

Joseph stood his ground.

“Big Bear fell for trick. Now
foot in trap,” Yurius said. The weapon rose to Joseph’s chest. “You loose end
that needs snipping.”

“Where’s my son?” Joseph asked,
unfaltering, even this close to mortal danger. He took two steps closer and,
surprisingly, Yurius took two back.

“You stay there,” Yurius
ordered.

“What’s up, Yurius. You
scared?” Joseph asked, taking a few more steps.

The Russian grinned again. “Not
by dead man.” His hand rose and the weapon levelled at Joseph’s head.

Joseph stopped.

Yurius seemed to regain his
confidence. Just a few yards separated them. The trunk of the car – an old Ford
– lay within Yurius’s reach. Using his free hand, he dug into his pants pocket.
A set of keys jingled in the wind. A high-pitched bleep, bleep sounded and the
Ford’s indicator lights flashed together for a second or two.

“Lots of car thieves,” Yurius
mocked, taking his finger off the alarm button. He half sidestepped and twisted
at the same time, leaving the firearm out straight.

“What are you doing?” Joseph
asked.

“I have gift,” the Russian
said. The key slid into the lock, and the trunk popped open by a couple of
inches.

Joseph felt sick. What lay
inside? His son, no doubt. But dead or alive? “Open it,” he demanded.

The contents of the trunk were
concealed.

“Open it!” Joseph yelled,
needing to know what the Russian had done.

Yurius slipped his fingers
underneath the trunk lid. He paused for a moment, almost pushing Joseph to
breaking point. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he revealed what lay inside.

Joseph’s knees buckled.

Jake lay motionless. He didn’t
turn to look up, or shield his eyes from the sudden glare. His hands and feet
weren’t tied together, nor was he blindfolded or gagged.

He just lay there limp and
lifeless.

“Oh… no…”
Joseph cried,
tears filling his eyes instantly. He took a faltering step closer, the weapon
only a few feet from his head. He turned to Yurius and his agony turned to
instant hatred. He rushed the kidnapper then, all thoughts of his own safety
forgotten. Yurius sidestepped, evading the awkward, lumbering attack. The butt
of the gun struck across Joseph’s temple. The boxer fell to the ground, the
world turning dark for just a moment.

“My boy…” Joseph wept. “What
have you done?”  

The Russian waved the keys
around, back and forth, as if trying to get the attention of a disobedient dog.
“I am not monster,” he said.

“What..?”  

“Yurius is not monster.”

Joseph managed to get one knee
underneath him. The world tilted and a bout of nausea made him gag. “What?” he
asked again, swallowing heavily, holding back bile.

The Russian swapped the gun to
his other hand. He half perched on the trunk opening, forcing the car to drop
slightly. Then he forced his free arm under Jake’s limp body.

“Careful,” Joseph said. He held
out his arm, hand spread wide, offering caution, needing to believe Jake was
still alive.

Yurius lifted Jake clear. The
boy’s head rolled listlessly.

“Oh – God, no,” Joseph
breathed.

Yurius placed Jake on the
ground, not far from Joseph’s feet. The Russian stepped back, allowing Joseph
to drag himself to his boy.

He snatched Jake up. The boy
felt warm and supple, and Joseph cried out in relief.

Was Jake still alive?

Tears cut two pathways down
Joseph’s cheeks. “Jake,” he said, holding him tight. The hollow boom of the
trunk shutting forced him to look towards Yurius.

The Russian gestured with the
gun. “Come, Big Bear – you know price for boy’s return.” The hammer of the gun
clicked back, and the dark eye of the barrel bore into Joseph.

Chapter
Forty-Eight

On this side of the train station things continued as
normal. The brutal event that had just happened in the main foyer had not, as
yet, had any effect here. Most passengers stood about idly waiting. Some busied
themselves with the morning papers, while others tapped their feet to tunes
that came from oversized earphones. A couple of small groups chatted animatedly
– fuelled by large doses of caffeine. Just a few commuters glanced towards the
connecting tunnel, somehow aware that things were afoot, their primeval
instincts more attuned towards trouble.

Presley Perkins barrelled
through the steady flow of passengers, receiving a torrent of abuse as he went.

“Watch where you’re going, fat
ass!”

Another cursed in Spanish – a
long string of profanities – that thankfully saved the ears of a young white
girl, who was holding onto her mother’s hand.

Presley pressed on. A thick
sheen of sweat had broken out over his face. He reached up to wipe this
stinging irritation from both eyes.

“Perkins!” someone yelled.

The voice was too high-pitched
to be Carter’s. Spinning back, Presley saw a woman rush towards him. He paused,
wondering who the hell she could be. Her look of hostility made him understand
that she was after his blood.

He pushed his way through the
crowd of waiting passengers. Most stepped away from this agitated stranger.

“Stand back,” the woman was
shouting now, waving people out of her way.

Presley scanned left and right.
Both offered escape routes, but to nowhere in particular. The right stretched
out towards a tunnel, and the left gave way to a crisscross of tracks and
signal boxes. The fear of the dark pushed Presley to his left. He raced to the
end of the platform, now alone, and checked for another exit.

He found nothing. No second
tunnel, ramp, or barrier to scale, which would lead him to safety.

He thought about crossing the
lines to the other platform, but after checking behind him, he concluded the
woman would simply do the same and catch him on that side instead. With no
other option, he started towards the signal boxes and network of tracks.

He stumbled along, his
attention pinned to where his feet landed. A set of tracks to his right started
to hiss. He took a fleeting look upward, expecting to see the arrival of a
train, but the route ahead was clear. With a backwards glance, he checked the
pathway behind him.

The roar of a diesel engine
filled his ears. The jarring noise and appearance of the freighter made him
stumble. Hot, oily breath burnt at the side of his face. His feet slipped on
the bed of stones and, for one terrible moment, he thought he was about to be
crushed. In the next second the train hurtled by, drawing up a wind current
that snatched at Presley’s sweat pants and threatened to pull him under. He
battled to remain upright, slipping and sliding as he went. In a blur of bright
chrome the last carriage whipped by, which left Presley gagging for a cleaner
breath.

The woman shouted something
from behind, but the roar of the passing train drowned out her words. It
mattered not; Presley wouldn’t have heeded them anyway. He carried on deeper
into the maze of ironwork and sleepers. The stones underneath his feet were
becoming fewer and fewer, now replaced by a continual stretch of train lines. 

Here, the hiss of the lines
sounded like a nest of snakes. All about him the metalwork vibrated. Up ahead,
he saw the towering front of an Amtrak passenger train. The distinctive colours
of red, white and blue broke through the grey morning. Presley hopped onto the
tracks to his right. The deafening blare of a horn scared him half to death.
From behind came another engine, this one covered in dirt and grime, pulling a
thousand tons of cargo and moving at just half the speed of the oncoming passenger
train. He quickly stepped back into the first set of lines.

The cargo train rolled lazily
by like a bloated serpent. Presley’s left leg moved over to next set of tracks.
Before he had the chance to place his foot down, a bullet ricocheted just inches
from his position. His foot stayed on this side of the tracks and, in the next
second, a third train roared by – an express that must have been going at
nearly 80mph, which almost took his leg with it.

The noise from both trains,
coming from either side, was deafening. Now, Presley found himself trapped in a
forward moving corridor, with no way out. He stumbled and almost fell to his
knees. This blur of movement was nauseating. His senses were overloading with
both visual and audio input. He clamped his hands over his ears in an attempt
to gather his wits.

He stopped, turned and looked
back the other way. The woman was still coming, like him trapped between these
moving masses of metal. She was staying close to the slow cargo freighter,
putting as much distance as possible between her and the fast-moving express
train.   

She was yelling to him,
pointing at him. He stood confused for a second before realising she was
actually pointing to something beyond. He spun around to find the oncoming
passenger train only three hundred yards away.

“Oh Jesus…” he moaned.

He tried to pick up his pace.
It was no use. Even the slow cargo freighter was moving too fast for him to
outrun. He tried to grab onto one of the carriages, but his fingers slipped. He
tried again. His fingers found purchase but he couldn’t pull his ample frame up
alongside.

Glancing up, he saw the
passenger train was now just two hundred yards away, and coming fast.

He whined hysterically.

He had to go back.

His heels dug into the stones
as he turned tail and quickly headed in the opposite direction. He tucked his
head down and pushed himself to go as fast as he could. A voice came to him
then, faint and indistinguishable. He looked up and was amazed to see the woman
standing firm, with her arm out straight and weapon on view. She clearly wanted
him to stop and give himself up.

Fuck that you crazy bitch, he
thought. He reached into his jacket and drew the Derringer. And then, without
really aiming, he simply fired the pistol. He heard a crack, even over the
roaring trains, and was astonished when she fell to the ground, her weapon lost
and her hands clutching at her thigh.

With his pathway cleared, he
redoubled his efforts. He was closing on her fast. Yet the train behind him was
gaining ground with every second. He chanced a look over his shoulder. His
bladder opened. The passenger train was only fifty yards away.

He was never going to make it.

He almost clattered into a
metal post, sidestepping it at the last moment, before grasping what it was
he’d just passed.

A lane changer.

With a panic-stricken cry, he
reached behind him, aiming with the Derringer. He fired his last shot, in an
attempt to activate the lever. In his short life he’d only fired a weapon four
times before, each time hitting his target. He had the Midas touch – right? How
could he miss?

He didn’t.

The bullet hit the lever dead
centre. However, the mechanism was designed to work in a vertical direction,
not horizontal, and with a brief shower of sparks, the handle maintained its
position and the tracks stayed fixed in the same configuration.

In the next second the
passenger train hit Presley full on. For just the briefest of moments, less
than a millisecond really, he was pinned to the front of the engine, his arm
and legs splayed out in a star-jump configuration, before his entire body
exploded in a bright red shower of gore.

***

Detective Tyler watched in horror as Presley Perkins
vanished from existence. The train bore down on her. Then, mercifully, with
only a second to spare, the last carriage of the cargo freighter passed. She
launched herself into the next tracks. The passenger train zipped by, leaving
behind it a crimson cloud.       

Tyler rolled onto her back and
watched as the Amtrak Superliner cut its way through the station, before
disappearing into the tunnel on the opposite side.

She scanned quickly around. For
now, the network of tracks was empty. The cargo freighter and express train had
both rolled out of sight. She held her hand against the leg injury, feeling hot
blood leaking from between her fingers. She climbed awkwardly to her feet and
hurriedly hobbled back towards the platform and the startled passengers who
stood there.