The Challenge

by Ridley Pearson

  He considered returning the case to the shelf, and letting it be found. But that woman was in trouble—serious trouble—and how could he help her if he surrendered the briefcase? The police knew how to handle such things.

  He determined to hide it. He searched out and found a spot behind a large suitcase. He slipped the briefcase between the suitcase and the wall, and stepped back to admire his work.

  “It’ll never work.”

  He jumped, barked out a cry, and felt a wave of heat prickle through him. A girl’s voice from directly behind him. He spun around.

  She was sitting on a crate, wearing a pair of shorts, running shoes, a white T-shirt, and a gray Nutrier High School Athletic Department sweatshirt. She had a long face with pink lips and inquisitive green eyes set off by a circle of black on the edge of the iris.

  He tried to speak, but his voice got caught in his dry throat.

  “They’ll find it back there,” she said.

  “Where…the…heck…?”

  “I was hiding over there.” She pointed over her shoulder without taking her eyes off Steel, as if she didn’t trust him. “Kaileigh.”

  “Steel.”

  “What kind of name is that?” she said.

  “The kind I’m stuck with,” he said. “My real name is Steven.”

  “What’s with the bag?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “It’s a long train ride.”

  “What’s with hiding in the baggage car?” he asked.

  “You might say I’m kind of a fugitive. But if you do say that—to anyone—then, believe me, I’m going to make you pay. I’m going to tell about you trying to open it—the case. About taking the feet off. What was all that about, anyway?”

  “None of your business,” he said.

  “It is now.”

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “That is lame,” she said.

  “I’m serious: you look familiar.”

  “First state, then regional. Not that I noticed you. I didn’t. But I can read,” she said, pointing to the science challenge logo on his sweatshirt.

  “Are you serious? You were at the challenges?”

  “I was in the challenges. I’m the balloon girl.”

  “No way.”

  “Way,” she said.

  “You won,” he said.

  “In my category. Sure. But I was up against mostly lame-os trying to reinvent the model airplane. Not the best idea.”

  “I watched you in the finals. You used a cell phone to make a balloon rise or fall. It was way cool.”

  “Microchip technology,” she said. “Simple enough.”

  “So we’re both heading to the nationals,” he stated. His initial flash of fear subsided, and he felt more human.

  “Duh. You might say that, yeah. Although, I’m kind of only sort of going. Right now, that is; as of this moment. In a way. Just not exactly sure how it’s going to work out.”

  “You either are or you aren’t going,” he said. “It’s an invitational.”

  “I’m going to Washington providing I make it.”

  “Are you trying to be mysterious, or what?”

  “I’m not exactly supposed to be here. Technically.”

  “Technically, where are you supposed to be?” he asked.

  “At home. It’s a long story.”

  “It’s a long train ride,” he said back to her. She smiled, and to him it seemed like someone had turned up the lights.

  She said, “Some dufus stole my balloon gear from school. My project was written up in our community paper. You know: ’Look! A girl can actually do science!’ Right after that someone broke into the school and stole everything. Trouble is, it’s a pretty simple technology—the cell phone places a call, and a chip in the balloon basically answers the phone. It warms when it turns on. The gas in the balloon warms—the balloon rises. Basic stuff. Easy to rip off once you see how simple it is. But the frequencies and powering the chips was complicated to pull off, and that was the only gear I had. Meaning I can’t exactly compete without them. My parents”—she paused and looked at her feet—“they travel a lot. My mom got this trip all set up for me and Miss Kay—she’s my nanny—governess,” she said with a fake haughty accent. “—Whatever. And then when my stuff got stolen, Miss Kay called off the trip. But I still wanted to go, of course, because I’m convinced my stuff was stolen so that somebody else could win the nationals. Miss Kay and I don’t exactly see eye to eye. But hey, the train tickets were already paid for. So’s the hotel room. So I figured, why not?”

  “But if the ticket’s paid for, why are you back here?” he asked.

  “Because we’re coming into a stop. I have a seat. I have a sleeper,” she said. “But I’m thinking Miss Kay’s going to try to get me off the train, and that’s not right.”

  “You ran away?” he said loudly.

  “My parents are never home, so you can’t exactly say I ran away from them. Besides, there’s no way Miss Kay’s ever going to report me missing, or tell my parents, because it’ll get her way fired. First she’ll try to get me back, and I’ve got to avoid that. I want my project back. I want to compete.”

  “A sleeper? All to yourself? You gotta be rich.”

  “My parents. Yeah. Really rich.” She looked at her toes again. “You?”

  “No. Not so much. My father’s a salesman.”

  “What’s he sell?”

  “I don’t even know. Technology, though he never explains it.”

  “My dad’s a private art dealer. He and my mom, they travel all the time. Did I mention that?”

  “You may have,” he said. “You ran away?” This time with great admiration.

  “I’m sure Miss Kay is majorly pissed off at me by now. There is no way I can afford to get caught. I am like in serious trouble if she catches me.”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  “So what’s with the briefcase?”

  “I’ve got to get back,” he said. “My mother’s going to freak any minute.”

  “The back of the crate,” she said. “That was pretty good thinking.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Nice dog.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “So why not put the briefcase in the crate with the dog? They didn’t see you when you were in there.”

  “Good point.” He wondered why he hadn’t thought of that.

  He opened the crate and placed the briefcase in the back. With Cairo up near the wire door, and cream-colored plastic covering up the rest of the crate, the briefcase was basically impossible to see, even when looking through the gate.

  “If I come back and it’s missing…” he said.

  “No worries. I’m a runaway, not a thief.” She smiled, and again the train car felt different to him. “Cabin ninety-six,” she said. “You could bring me food, if you think about it.”

  “I might just do that.”

  “Good, because I get kinda hungry.”

  “I thought you said you only hide when we’re heading into a stop.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. But I avoid cruising the train as much as possible. I’m thinking it’s not such a great idea to risk being seen, on account of Miss Kay could have put the word out. She’s smarter than she looks. And the dining car—that’s a pretty obvious place to look for people. We need to eat.”

  “Yeah, well I gotta take off,” he said hesitantly.

  “So take off.”

  On the way to the end of the baggage car, Steel tried to prepare himself for any questions Charlie might throw at him. Steel believed that saving the woman in the photo could excuse a few white lies. He’d sneaked a peek at the face of the man looking for him through one of the crate’s ventilation slats. The guy looked pretty normal, but he could easily be the woman’s kidnapper, or a murderer, or something like that. Lying to a guy like that would be no trouble at all.

  He turned. “How long are you going to stay in here?” he asked.

 
; “Just until we’re under way again. I was lucky to sneak in here when they were loading.”

  “I’m going to give it to the cops at the next stop,” he said. “The case.”

  “Toledo,” she said.

  “That’s the one. Me and my mom are sharing a sleeper car from Toledo the rest of the way.”

  “So maybe we’ll be in the same car or something.”

  “So…see you later, maybe.”

  “You’re going to have to explain that case to me at some point.”

  “Promise,” he said.

  But for now he just wanted out of the baggage car. His mother had been right: he never should have come back here.

  8.

  The chartered jet touched down at Metcalf Field, eight miles outside downtown Toledo, Ohio, a city that Larson had never visited. He and Deputy Hampton reached the bottom of the jet’s stairs, where a rental car awaited.

  Larson’s quick movements and the tightness of his voice were partially the result of something he and Hampton had seen on the Union Station security surveillance tapes they’d viewed during the flight: a young boy.

  The woman on the platform had been approached by a boy. There had been words between them. The boy seemed to be trying to return a briefcase to her, but it couldn’t be ruled out that he was some kind of courier. Larson couldn’t afford to overlook any possibility.

  “At least we’re ahead of the train,” Larson said, proud to have beaten its arrival. “We’ll monitor the platform. Anyone matching our suspect, or the boy, gets grabbed. If possible, we’ll board the train and root him out.”

  “TPD is meeting us there,” said Hampton, who’d made a call to the Toledo Police Department from the plane.

  “We’ll squeeze the train like a tube of toothpaste. If our guy makes a run for it, TPD will collar him.”

  “We could have used a better look at the boy,” Hampton said. “We don’t have squat to go on.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And this time of year, summer break and all, there are going to be a lot of kids on that train.”

  “I know that.”

  “Just trying to cheer you up.”

  “You’re doing a great job of it,” Larson snapped sarcastically.

  They had the boy’s general size, but that was about it. The distance of the camera and the graininess of the tape had failed to provide a good look at him.

  Larson said, “Top priority: we don’t want a hostage situation. This has to be handled carefully.”

  “Grym has a reputation for being good with disguises,” Hampton said.

  “I know that,” Larson said irritably. “If you’re trying to tell me the odds are against us, I’m well aware of that.” He didn’t like reviewing what had already been discussed.

  Larson’s cell phone rang and he took the call, driving one-handed. A moment later he hung up and said to Hampton, “The woman from the platform may have reboarded the train.”

  “No way!”

  “Our friend at Terminal Security apparently spotted her.”

  “Righteous.”

  “We keep an eye out for her, as well,” Larson said.

  “This is getting interesting,” said Hampton.

  9.

  Needing a drink, Grym headed to the dining car in the center of the train. At one end of the car stood a service bar, where an African American woman with a deep, kind voice sold him a Diet Coke.

  Following the trip to the baggage car, he’d taken the precaution of changing his looks. He didn’t want the conductor picking him out of the crowd and complicating things. Better to blend in with the rest of the passengers. He could always remove the disguise if he wanted to be recognized. He’d also taken a seat in a different car. With the train under way, no one was going anywhere—he had time to find the boy and the briefcase.

  His personal ID was more of a problem—he didn’t carry a driver’s license for his current face. But if pressed, he could return to the restroom and change himself back in a matter of minutes.

  He had to complete this mission. The equipment had been sent ahead. By now it had been tested and was ready to be put into place. A simple story in the newspaper had put this plan into action. Reworking the technology to their favor had been his brother’s idea. Time was of the essence: the lottery’s jackpot had crossed the forty-million-dollar mark.

  The plan at hand was going to make them rich, and they were going to make some very powerful friends in the process.

  Halfway through his Diet Coke, Grym glanced out the window at the passing countryside and, in the reflection off the glass, spotted a man staring at him. He allowed the man a few seconds to look away—and he did—but Grym’s concern lingered. Who was the guy, and why had he been staring?

  A minute or two passed. Grym checked the reflection again. The man wasn’t looking his way, so he took the opportunity to observe the stranger: the man had shaved earlier in the day, nicking his face; he dressed well and wore expensive Italian shoes, but they’d recently been resoled. The Italian shoes didn’t fit with Grym’s stereotype of a federal agent or cop, and this relieved him. Maybe the guy had just been looking out the window, same as Grym.

  He reviewed his options if things got tricky: it was possible to jump from a moving train, though he had no desire to try it. There were few if any places to hide on the train. He was glad he’d had a look inside the baggage car, because, as it turned out, that would be a good place to hide. Aaron Grym could pick almost any lock in a matter of minutes. If he wanted in to the baggage car, it wouldn’t be a problem.

  One thing was certain: he wasn’t going anywhere without that briefcase. Above all, he had to find the briefcase.

  Once again he shifted focus on the glass, and instead of watching the farmland, he saw that the seat behind him was empty, the man gone. He turned his head and looked all around the car. Gone.

  Grym felt relief. He must have been wrong. But he couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  10.

  A few minutes ahead of Amtrak’s scheduled arrival in Toledo, Larson stood on the platform with Hampton. Twelve special-operations officers from the Toledo Police Department—dressed in black and wearing body armor vests—were dispatched to take their positions, and quickly disappeared.

  Their commanding officer, a colonel named Bridge Knightly, addressed Larson with a firm handshake and a face void of all expression. Two German shepherds, handled by armor-clad female police officers—the K-9 teams—occupied positions on the platform itself. The backs of the officers’ black windbreakers were marked TPD SPECIAL OPS in bold yellow letters.

  Larson explained to Knightly, “Hampton and I, each with one of your K-9 teams, will conduct a search that will meet in the middle of the train. No passengers will be allowed to disembark during the search. You’ll detain anyone leaving prior to the conclusion of the search. Sound okay?” He offered the man the description they had of Grym.

  “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good luck, pal.”

  “I know.”

  Knightly said gravely, “If your guy is dumb enough to try to run, my guys are going to stop him. Enough said.”

  Larson said, “We need him alive. We want him alive. He has information vital to national security.”

  Knightly said, “Then you’d better hope he doesn’t run.”

  11.

  “All passengers are asked to return to, and to remain in, their seats and compartments,” a male voice calmly announced over the train’s public-address system. “We’re to undergo a random security check in the Toledo station that will last no more than ten minutes. This will not delay our schedule as long as we gain the full cooperation of all passengers. Thank you for your patience.”

  Discontent rippled through the car. Grym tensed and considered the situation. The police certainly had nothing matching his current disguise. His only real risk came if they demanded identification. He doubted authorities would ask for ID from each and every pas
senger; such an action would take far more than the ten minutes that had been mentioned. But he also knew this was no random check.

  They were looking for him.

  Did they know he was on the train, or were they just guessing?

  To leave his seat now was unthinkable. They’d be looking for that kind of reaction. So, with his heart pounding, he put his nose down into a magazine and waited it out.

  He blamed the kid for this. He blamed the kid for everything.

  12.

  Steel and his mother had just transferred to the sleeper car when the announcement came over the public-address system. Their compartment, number ninety, was only a few doors down from Kaileigh’s, he noted. This would be their home from Toledo to Washington. A conductor had been nice enough to allow them in a few minutes ahead of arrival into the station, but now with the announcement of a search, Steel was fretting.

  The room was small and narrow, but brightly lit. An upper bunk folded out from the wall. The bench seats converted into a narrow bed at knee height. There was a lot of plastic and stainless steel: a sink, a mirror, a small closet with a chemical toilet.

  Steel had assumed that the security announcement meant they were after him. The man had made a big enough stink about the missing briefcase, and now they were going to search the train. But it wasn’t here in their compartment—so what was the worst that could happen? Was hiding the briefcase the same as stealing?

  This felt like the perfect opportunity to tell the authorities about the kidnapped woman—the horrific photo in the briefcase. He tried to build up the courage to tell someone, but in reality he was terrified. He’d never said more than hello to a policeman before. How was he supposed to start a conversation? “Excuse me, sir, but I found this briefcase, took it off the train, then gave it to a conductor, then found it again, and now I’ve hidden it.”

  “Why did you take it in the first place, young man?”