Chapter Twelve The Cab with No Doors
In which a lame horse becomes a lame truck, and a getaway becomes a trap
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An hour before, back in Milton, as dusk settled thin and a slim new moon hung low over the rooftops, Joe's truck finally rattled its way into the village square and coasted to a reluctant stop beside the station — having taken, by any honest measure, the longest possible route through half the county to get there.
The afternoon sun had been merciless, the back roads rougher still, and the thick-set man in the passenger seat had spent the better part of the ride bruised, sunburned, and increasingly desperate.
Joe, for his part, had proven an inexhaustible conversationalist — holding forth at length on the buckwheat harvest, the blight likely to hit the cherry orchards this year, a stretch of pasture he claimed was thick with copperheads, and a story about a black bear that had supposedly wandered clean through the maple grove they were currently passing.
By the third telling, his passenger was craning nervously over his shoulder and urging Joe, with growing agitation, to please drive a little faster.
Joe, watching this with quiet satisfaction, only made his stories bigger. A man could be bold as anything on his own city streets and still turn thoroughly yellow the moment the pavement ran out.
When his passenger finally checked his watch and demanded to know how many miles remained, Joe let the truck drift, with careful precision, into a deep pothole that made the whole frame shudder.
He climbed out with grave deliberation, circled the vehicle twice, and knelt to inspect the front tire with the solemnity of a surgeon.
"Jest as I figured," he said mournfully. "Radiator's runnin' hot. Ought not to push her much further, not without lettin' her cool a spell. You in a particular hurry, I hope not?"
The passenger, in a fever of impatience, promised double the fare if Joe would simply get them moving again.
Joe allowed, after a suitably long show of reluctance, that he supposed they could try — but they'd have to take it slow, easy on the old engine, no pushing her.
It wasn't really his truck to abuse, after all; he'd borrowed it from his best friend and meant to hand it back in one piece.
And so the fuming passenger was dragged, mile after interminable mile, through a glorious spring afternoon he saw nothing of at all beyond the dust rising off the road ahead, while Joe stopped every few miles to fuss theatrically over the engine, the truck idling contentedly at the roadside each time as though it hadn't a single thing wrong with it.
By the time they finally rolled into Milton, the last train of the evening had pulled out ten minutes before.
The telegraph office, mercifully, was still open.
The passenger paid Joe his thirty dollars without further argument — the longest, strangest ride of his entire disagreeable life — and disappeared into the station, while Joe pocketed the bills, whistled something cheerful under his breath, and drove the shortcut home at a startling clip for a truck that had supposedly been overheating all afternoon.
He was eating supper within the hour, already turning over in his mind how his girl might look in a hat with purple plumes.
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It was remarkable, all things considered, how efficiently the thick-set man moved once he finally reached a working telegraph line.
Within three minutes of arriving he'd learned from the station agent — a man who'd noticed the purple-plumed lady rather more closely than his ticket-selling duties strictly required — that a couple matching his description had bought tickets for Pittsburgh and caught the afternoon train.
Within ten minutes, three wires were speeding off in three directions: one to a contact in Pittsburgh, well accustomed to this kind of work; one to Halifax himself, laying out the essential facts; and a third to a man stationed thirty miles north, with instructions to board the evening express, locate the couple by description, and shadow them into the city.
He ate a ham sandwich and something considerably stronger while he waited on replies, then hired a car to carry him cross-country to catch the midnight express himself, entirely satisfied that matters were now well in hand.
He had given orders that the pair be held in Pittsburgh until his arrival, and he had no serious doubt those orders would be followed to the letter.
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Pittsburgh's station was thick with the noise and press of some excursion crowd, trainmen calling out special routes, waves of travelers pouring through the doors only to be replaced by fresh waves close behind.
Calie, worn thin by the day's events, longed only for somewhere quiet to lie down, but the bench was hard and narrow and people pressed close on every side — including, uncomfortably close, a rough-looking man in a slouch hat who seemed entirely unaware of her presence, though something about him made her skin crawl regardless.
Graham had been gone some time securing a stateroom on the sleeper when a face surfaced in the crowd that stopped him cold — a private investigator he recognized on sight, a man whose reputation around Washington was not a flattering one, though his usual territory was New York.
Until that instant it hadn't occurred to Graham that Halifax's reach might extend as far as Pittsburgh.
But here was proof of it, standing not fifty feet away, plainly hunting for someone, and Graham had no illusions about who that someone was.
Whether the man had spotted him yet, he couldn't say for certain — but something in the deliberate way the fellow avoided looking directly his way suggested recognition already made.
There was no time to waste. The stateroom would have to go unclaimed. He swept up the bags, bent low as if absorbed in his luggage to disguise his height in the crowd, and murmured to Calie, "Can you move quickly? We need to catch a car right away."
She kept pace at his side, and in a moment they were out in the wet-lit dark of the street, one backward glance showing the detective craning above the crowd, working his way toward the very doorway they'd just cleared.
What Graham didn't see was the man in the slouch hat, still trailing them, giving a small, practiced signal to a second man loitering in the shadows outside — who returned the signal at once, and a cab rolled smoothly up to the curb as if summoned.
Graham, relieved beyond words to be clear of the station, handed Calie in and called out the address for East Liberty, where he knew a later train might still be caught.
He never noticed the shabby figure who climbed up beside the driver, murmuring low instructions, nor the man in the slouch hat who watched them pull away from the shelter of a nearby doorway before catching the next trolley himself.
All Graham felt, settling into the seat beside her, was the enormous relief of finally being alone together, free to talk without a hundred strangers pressing in on every side.
Conversation proved difficult all the same.
The cab picked up speed almost immediately — an alarming clip for city streets — rattling and lurching hard enough over the uneven pavement that shouting was the only way to be heard, and even that didn't carry well.
After a few useless attempts, they gave up trying, and Graham, half shy of the gesture, reached over and laid his hand gently over Calie's where it rested, clenched, in her lap.
He meant only a moment's reassurance — but she didn't pull away, and he found he hadn't the will to withdraw his hand either.
The cab jolted hard around a corner, throwing Calie against him, and she gripped his arm to steady herself.
"Are we — are we running away?" she breathed, close to his ear.
"I don't think so, dear," he answered, the endearment slipping out before he'd quite noticed saying it. "The driver seems to think we're in more of a hurry than we are. I'll have a word with him."
He rapped on the glass partition. The driver gave no sign of hearing at all — if anything, the cab picked up speed.
Graham knocked again, harder, calling out this time, with no better result.
And then, in the dim passing light of a streetlamp, he made out a second silhouette on the front seat beside the driver, and a cold thread of alarm ran straight through him.
What if that detective wasn't just watching. What if he was warning.
He tried the door beside him. It held fast, jammed tight in its frame. He put his full weight against the latch and it didn't so much as shift.
A cold sweat broke over him. His commission — the message, the whole weight of what he carried — hung suddenly in real jeopardy, and his own life along with it.
But it was Calie's danger that struck him hardest, sharp and immediate.
Whatever came in the next hour, he would need every ounce of nerve he had to keep her safe.
His hand found the revolver he'd carried, loaded and ready, every mile since Washington.
I could be wrong, he reminded himself, forcing his breathing steady.
This could simply be an unfamiliar driver taking an unfamiliar route.
The door could simply be stuck. He could not let Calie see his fear, whatever the truth turned out to be.
He needed, first, some idea of where they actually were — but the street outside offered nothing useful, only long unbroken stretches of dark, windowless walls that might have been warehouses, streetlights spaced too far apart to be of any real help.
He tried the window next, and found the crank wouldn't turn at all — jammed, he realized on closer inspection, with something wedged deliberately into the track. He checked the far window with the same result.
Deliberate. This is deliberate.
Psalm 91:11 rose in him, steady and clear despite the fear thudding in his chest: "For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." He held onto it like a rail in the dark, and set to work quietly prying the jammed window free rather than alarming Calie with the effort.
Cool night air finally rushed in as the window gave, and Calie let out a small, unguarded breath of relief — though Graham would never know how close she'd actually come, in that stretch of silence, to fainting outright.
She sat rigid in her corner, watching him work, her own fear carefully hidden, convinced only that the horse — she still thought of it as a horse, in her fright — had somehow bolted out of control.
Graham leaned toward the open window and caught, immediately, the dull gleam of a revolver held loose and ready in a hand hanging at the edge of the front seat, pointed down and out, prepared for exactly the kind of escape attempt he'd been about to make.
The man holding it wasn't looking his way — deep in some low, muttered exchange with the driver — but the readiness of that weapon told Graham everything he needed to know.
He drew his head back in, considering, coldly and quickly, whether he could disarm the man from where he sat.
He thought he probably could. But if this truly was a trap, the driver was almost certainly armed as well, and a fight now, at speed, with Calie beside him, was a gamble he had no right to take alone.
If it had been only himself in danger, he'd have made the attempt already.
With her here, every calculation changed.
He settled back, lowered the window glass carefully into place, and took her hand again in the dark.
"I'm afraid something's wrong with our driver," he said, low and steady against her ear. "Can you be brave for me — just a little longer, dear?"
The endearment landed somewhere warm and unexpected in her chest, though she didn't examine why. "Yes," she breathed back. "Do you think he's — had too much to drink?"
"Perhaps," Graham said, grateful for the easier explanation and letting her keep it a moment longer. "Stay calm. I think we'll come out of this fine. Would you trade seats with me? I want to try that other door — we may need to move quickly if he slows down at all."
She slipped across without hesitation, and Graham threw his weight, carefully and quietly, against the opposite door, working the stubborn latch by feel until it finally gave — gently enough not to fling him out into the street and alert the men up front.
He was entirely certain now that this was no drunken driver, no simple misunderstanding, and every sense in him had sharpened to match the danger.
With the door cracked open, he risked a look out that side.
No weapon here — only the driver himself, grim-faced, foot hard on the accelerator, muttering something under his breath as the cab hurtled recklessly on through empty, dark streets.
Far off, Graham caught the low rumble of an approaching train.
The road offered nothing — no other cars, no pedestrians, no help of any kind in sight, and their speed made any attempt to jump close to suicidal.
He pulled back, drew Calie toward the still-open door on the far side so she'd have the first chance at it if any real opportunity came, and reached for her hand again in the dark. She curled her fingers into his without hesitation, as if his grip alone were something solid enough to hold onto.
Then, with no warning at all, the sound of the oncoming train swelled to a roar almost on top of them, and the cab lurched into a hard, sudden stop, the driver hauling back with everything he had.
The force of it nearly threw Calie from her seat, but Graham's arm caught her fast, and every nerve in him came instantly, fully alert.