The Night's Legacy (24 page)

Chapter 22

It wasn’t easy to carry a bucket of chicken in one arm while riding the motorcycle to Sam’s hideout.  The side dishes she managed to cram into a storage compartment on the bike, but the eight pieces of chicken from a deli near the hospital she had to cradle against her body with one hand while using the other to steer.  When she needed the second hand, she balanced the chicken as best she could and hoped for the best.

In retrospect a pizza might have been a better choice.  The fla
t box she might have been able to tie to the seat behind her so she wouldn’t have to worry about it falling off all the time.  But when she’d gone into the deli, she saw the fried chicken and thought of picnics in the park on lazy Sunday afternoons.  It wasn’t Sunday, but they could still have a picnic.

The idea to do something nice for her father came after she and Tony said their awkward goodbyes.  She had stood in the great hall, watching him leave with the others.  Only after he had gone did she let out a contented sigh, remembering their make-out session in the hall.  Her head still surrounded by a fog of romance, she had thought of doing something nice for Sam.  When was the last time he’d eaten anything that hadn’t come out of a garbage can?  Probably not since his last trip to the hospital.

The chicken survived the trip to the old Brinkman Electrical Company intact.  She left the bike by the freight door and unpacked the side dishes from the storage compartment.  She just hoped Sam hadn’t already left for the night or that he wasn’t out foraging for food.

“Sam?” she risked calling out.  “It’s me.”

She waited for him to spring from the shadows and put his gun to her head like he had before.  There was no sign of him, though until she peeked inside the generator.  There she found him curled up on his bed.  Even with his eyes closed there was still a hardness about him; his facial muscles never relaxed.  He looked so different than Mom, who unless she was having a bad dream would look as sweet and innocent as a child even at fifty.  It made her wonder what she looked like when she slept.

She set the food on the table and then sat down on the chair to wait.  It occurred to her that she might not want to startle Sam; he probably kept his gun handy and wouldn’t be afraid to use it on an intruder.  She could always go outside to summon the armor to protect herself.

Before she could reach a decision, she heard him mumble, “You’re early.”

“Were you awake the whole time?”

“Most of it.”

He still had his eyes closed, making no attempt to get up.  “Are you all right?” she asked.  “Is the shoulder bothering you?”

“I’m an old man.  I need my sleep.”

She had to admit he was an old man, probably pushing seventy by now and he had not exactly taken the best care of himself.  For lack of anything else to say, she said, “I brought us dinner.  I got some chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy—”

He grunted at this.  “Don’t you like chicken?  I could get something else.”

“I already told your mother this:  there’s no point trying to domesticate me.  It’s much too late for that.”

“I just thought we could have one nice meal together.  Like real people.”

His eyes finally snapped open, the whites webbed with red.  He must not have gotten much sleep.  “Today it’s one meal.  Then you’ll want me to go to the hospital with your mom.  Then you’ll want the three of all living together.  It’s not going to happen.”

She kept herself from crying at this outburst.  Instead she stood up to leave.  “You can keep the food.  Let the rats have it for all I care.  I don’t know what Mom ever saw in you.  You’ve been nothing but a selfish son of a bitch since day one.”  She held up a warning finger before he could say anything.  “And don’t give me that shit about you wanted to protect us.  You just didn’t want to be around because then you couldn’t go around playing vigilante anymore.  That’s all you care about.  Me and Mom don’t mean anything to you.  So I’m sorry I thought maybe you could act like a civilized person—like my goddamned father—for one lousy meal.  I guess that was too much to ask for.”

She was halfway to the bike when she heard him shout, “Wait!”

She turned around and saw him standing by the generator, looking down at the floor.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “It was a nice thing you did.  I messed it up.  Come back and let’s talk.”

She considered telling him to go to hell, but the sheepish way he looked down at his feet changed her mind.  “Sure,” she said.  “Let’s talk.”

There wasn’t a grassy meadow for them to sit on, so they had to make do with a tarp spread out on the floor.  She left the drumsticks for him since they were easy to handle with one hand.  He ate like someone who hadn’t eaten a good meal in thirty days, ripping through one leg—including most of the bone—in seconds.  He must have sensed her watching him, because he slowed down for the second one.

“So—” he began, but then lost momentum.

“So—?”

“Your mother said you wanted to be an Egyptologist when you grew up.  Is that what you still want to do?”

She thought about what she had at Dr. Johnson’s funeral.  “I think so.  I’ve already got my bachelor’s degree.  I just need to complete my PhD.”

“You going to work at the Thorne Museum?”

“I hope so.  If I can finish my doctorate fast enough I might be able to get hired before they replace Dr. Johnson.”

He grunted and took a heaping spoonful of potatoes and gravy, much of which landed on his jacket.  As he ate, he stared at her, raising an eyebrow.  “You look different.”

“There was a funeral today, so I put on some makeup—”

“It’s not that.  There’s a glow about you.  Your mother got it when she used to visit.”  He kept staring at her until she had to look away, feeling her face turning warm.  “There’s a boy, isn’t there?”

“Yes.  His name’s Tony.  He works in the gift shop with me.”

“What kind of boy is he?”

“He’s nice.  And considerate.  And handsome.”  She closed her eyes, thinking of him:  his eyes, his smile, his lips when they touched hers—“I like him.”

“It looks like more than that to me.”

“What would you know about it?”

“I’ve been around the block a time or two.  I wasn’t always living like this.”

“How many were there before Mom?”

He shrugged and reached for another piece of chicken.  He pondered the question while he gnawed on the drumstick.  “I was serious with three before I met your mother.  Two in high school and then one while I was on the force.”

“But you didn’t marry any of them?  You didn’t make any half-brothers or sisters for me to play with?”

“No.  Things always went wrong.  Mostly because of me.  I messed it up just like I did with you.  Pushed them away.”

“Why?”

“I’m not the lubby-dubby type.”

“Maybe you are and you don’t know it.”

“It’s a little late for that.”  He sighed, probably thinking of Mom in the hospital. Had he ever tried to sneak into intensive care to see her?  She imagined a scene like out of Romeo and Juliet, with Sam scaling the hospital walls to slip in through Mom’s window to kiss her.  “What about this Tony?  Is he the lubby-dubby type?”

She felt herself blushing again, thinking of the night she and Tony had met.  “Yes, he is.  He’s very hands-on.”

“You two already knock boots?”

She almost swallowed a chicken bone in shock.  “Yes, but that was before we really knew each other.  We were both kind of drunk at this bar and…things happened.”

“He doesn’t exactly sound like Prince Charming.”

“Well neither do you, but that didn’t stop Mom.”

“I guess it’s too late then for us to discuss the birds and the bees.”

“I learned about that when I was six.”  She had borrowed her mother’s copy of
Gray’s Anatomy
out of boredom one day and looked up the male and female reproductive systems.  It wasn’t later until she really understood how they went together.

He sighed, tossing a half-eaten drumstick to the tarp.  “You probably know everything I could teach you, except about busting heads.”

From the sadness written on Sam’s face, it was clear he was beginning to understand what he’d lost by staying out of her life.  He’d never gotten to take her to school or teach her to ride a bike or how to drive.  “There are still plenty of things we can do.  Maybe if Tony and I get married, you could walk me down the aisle.  You could wear the mask and everything.”

When he laughed it sounded as if he were coughing.  When was the last time he’d laughed with anyone, let alone his only daughter?  Maybe it wasn’t too late for him—

Percy chose that moment to appear over the tarp.  “Where have you been?” he asked.  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“There’s something happening down in the subways.  Someone’s taken a train.”

“Set,” she said.  She turned to her father and took his hand.  “Come on, Dad, it’s time to bust some heads.”

* * *

As befitting its name, Renaissance City was the first in the nation to adopt the subway system.  The vey first tunnel went the length of the main island and was still called the Number One train.  Even before Percival said it,
Lois knew that would be the one Set would hijack.  The simple reason was that it had the most track to cover, which meant it could get up the most speed to make a great projectile.

From what Percy said, the train was heading south, ignoring any stops along the way.  The ghost also reported Set had locked at least fifty people in the rear cars.  In the front car, just to make things extra deadly, was a large explosive device.  Though Percival didn’t mention it,
Lois figured the brakes had been tampered with so that she couldn’t hope to board it and trigger the brakes.  The emergency brakes would be out too.

The only solution would be to turn the power off.  The transit authority and the police should have already thought of that.  Set must have somehow tampered with the grid too to keep it from being switched off.  That or his bomb was rigged to go off once the train stopped.  There was one way to find out.

Finding a working pay phone in the city was difficult; she really needed to get a cell phone, if only a cheap prepaid one for emergencies like this.  She had to try five different phones before she found one still working in a Chinese restaurant.  She dropped two quarters in and then closed her eyes, trying to remember what had been written on Detective Murphy’s business card.  The office number would be useless at a time like this.  She concentrated for a moment until she could see the cell phone number in her head.  She punched the digits in and then waited.

“
Murphy here.”

Lois
looked around to make sure no one was watching her and then lowered her voice to a growl.  “This is the Silver Seraph.  I hear you have a runaway train.”

“We’ve got it under control.”

“I doubt that.  I can save those people, but I need your help.”

“I don’t help criminals.”

Lois resisted the urge to shout a few curse words into the receiver.  “Look, I want to help you save those people.  I know there’s a reason you haven’t cut the power yet.  What is it?”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it’s fucking obvious!”  This drew a few glances from the customers and wait staff.  She lowered her voice again to say, “Someone’s taken over the grid or they’ve got the bomb rigged to go when the train stops.  Which is it?”

There was a long pause, so long
Lois thought the detective had hung up.  Then her voice came back with one word, “Both.”

“Shit.”  She hung up the phone and then ran back to the motorcycle, where Sam waited.  “Think you can disarm a bomb one-handed?”

* * *

In school there had always been those story problems involving a train going in one direction and another train going in an opposite direction with the question of when they would meet.  While she’d never found such questions difficult like others in her classes, she never thought the day would come when she would need to use that math for something practical.  That day had finally come thanks to Set.

From her calculations, which were mostly estimates since she couldn’t be certain how fast the train was going, MacKenzie Station in Centerton would be the best place to intercept the train.  She would have to find a way to get Sam safely aboard and then speed ahead of the train on her motorcycle to disable the power to slow it down.  If everything worked right, Sam would disarm the bomb before it realized the power was cut and went off.  Then they would have to clean up Set’s mess to free the hostages.

First she stopped the bike in an alley across from the station.  The transit authority had stationed guards at the top of the stairs to keep everyone back. 
Lois crouched behind a dumpster to call for the armor.  Once it had appeared on her body, she turned to Sam.  “I’ll take those guys out.  You bring the bike in behind me.”

He nodded his understanding and then they went to work.  She kept the cape wrapped around her body to make herself invisible as she approached the transit cops.  “I hope that damned thing doesn’t go off when it gets here,” one of the guards said.