The Challenge

by Ridley Pearson

  “Who is it?” A girl’s high voice. Kaileigh.

  “It’s me! Hurry up!”

  She pulled back the privacy curtain on the compartment door, and he glimpsed her face. Then he heard the lock turn. She opened the door, and Steel pushed his way through.

  “What the…?” she said.

  “A woman. Following me,” he whispered.

  “Why?”

  “The briefcase.”

  “What is it with this briefcase, anyway?” She spoke a little too loudly.

  Steel hushed her.

  “Don’t shush me,” she complained. “This is my cabin!”

  At that moment, with his eye to the edge of the privacy curtain, Steel saw the blur of the woman’s profile as she passed by. He raised his hand to silence Kaileigh. The woman stopped, as if sensing him. Then she turned around, and he could see her clearly; it was the woman from the platform!

  He released the curtain and spun around with his back to the compartment’s wall. His face was ashen. He waited a long time before daring to take another look. The passageway was empty; the woman had moved on.

  He looked around. “Whoa!” he said softly, admiring the oversize compartment. “You must be rich. You have this all to yourself? It’s huge.”

  “It feels small to me.”

  “Small? You should see ours,” he said.

  “Did the cops question you?” she asked.

  “My mom handled it. You should have seen her.” He paused. “What about you? I thought for sure they’d get you. It was you they were after, right?”

  “Not. They stopped here, and I told them my mother was on the train somewhere, and that she hadn’t come back when the announcement had been made. The cop didn’t seem too surprised. He was tight with it.”

  “Your nanny never boarded?”

  “She’s not my nanny.” She paused. “No. Not that I know of, no,” Kaileigh said. She sounded almost disappointed. “Maybe she went straight to Washington. Maybe she’s waiting for me there.”

  “I thought you didn’t want her to find you,” he said.

  “I don’t.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “You’re safe now. You can go.” She indicated the door.

  “Please, could I maybe stay a little longer?” He raised his voice hopefully.

  “I guess.”

  “Do you regret running away? Coming on the train?”

  “No way!” she said. For a moment she sounded almost convincing.

  “We need a plan,” he said.

  “What kind of plan?”

  “One for you. One for me.”

  “I don’t need your help,” she complained.

  “Sure you do. How are you going to get to the hotel?”

  “Take a cab.”

  “You have money?”

  “Of course I do. My parents left Miss Kay a whole bunch of cash for groceries and stuff.” She paused and looked away. “I kinda borrowed it.”

  “You stole her money?”

  “It isn’t her money. It’s my parents’ money. It was meant for me.”

  “This is not good.”

  “Trust me: it won’t stop her. Slow her down a little, maybe. And there’s no way she’s going to tell my parents about it. She likes her job.”

  “Maybe not after this, she doesn’t,” Steel said.

  “Good point.” Kaileigh smiled. Then the smile faded and she turned to Steel intently. “So what’s in the briefcase?”

  He considered lying to her, or just not telling her at all, but it seemed to him they’d formed a team of sorts. “A photograph.”

  “A picture? So what’s so important about a picture?”

  “It’s of a woman. She’s tied up. She looks scared. Her mouth is taped. I think someone kidnapped her.”

  “What? Seriously? Then you have got to tell the police.”

  “I know.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I just didn’t.”

  “Do you know how moronic that sounds?” she asked.

  “You want to make it to the science challenge, right? Well, so do I. I’m going to be in a lot of trouble for taking that briefcase. What was I supposed to do, let the guy get the briefcase back? What if he’s the kidnapper? I don’t think so.”

  “You have got to tell someone,” she repeated.

  “It’s better if I just get the briefcase to the cops and let them handle it. It’s locked. There’s no way they’re going to think I saw what’s inside.”

  “So do it.”

  “I’m going to.”

  “Like, when?”

  “Soon. I’ve got to figure out how to do it so I don’t get in trouble.”

  “Telling them what happened might help.”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “What if that’s why they boarded the train: your briefcase? Do you know how stupid you were not to tell them this?”

  “A lady—the lady just chasing me out there—brought that briefcase on board. I saw her. Obviously she was supposed to leave it for someone—the guy in the baggage car, remember?”

  “Of course I remember!”

  “So who is he?” he asked. “I messed everything up. Now they’re both on this train looking for me. What if they’ve paid off the conductors to help them? Who am I supposed to tell? How am I supposed to get the bag without them getting me first?”

  “You were supposed to tell the cops when they were on board.”

  “A little late for that, don’t you think?” he snapped at her.

  “So, I could get it for you and turn it over to the cops,” she proposed.

  “No way.”

  “Way,” she said.

  “And when they ask who you are? When they ask to talk to your mother?”

  She bit her lower lip. “Good point.”

  “There’s no way this is going to happen before Washington. I can just leave it in the baggage room for someone to find, or turn it over to someone then, or something.”

  “Not if one of those two finds it first.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It gets worse,” he said.

  “You’ve got two people searching the train for you, and a briefcase you can’t show to anyone, and it gets worse?” she asked.

  “There was something written on the photo of the woman. The one tied up.”

  “A message?”

  “Some kind of code maybe,” Steel said. He squinted his eyes shut. “G, twenty-three, colon, three dash four. Handwritten. Black marker.”

  “Say it again,” Kaileigh said. This time she wrote it out on an Amtrak notepad as Steel recited it.

  G23: 3–4

  She studied what she’d written. “Some kind of stadium seating or something? You know how the rows are always lettered and numbered?”

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  “A meeting time: three to four o’clock on the twenty-third?”

  “There’s no month that starts with the letter G,” he pointed out.

  “A gate number,” she said. “A serial number. Maybe some kind of code for a phone number. Maybe she’s a patient in a research hospital. Maybe the woman in the photograph is G twenty-three.”

  “Get a life,” he said.

  “Have you Googled it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he snapped sarcastically. “I’ve spent a lot of time on my computer on this trip.”

  “I have a laptop with Wi-Fi,” she said, pointing to the counter, where in fact a laptop was open and running.

  “There’s no Wi-Fi on a train,” he said.

  “It’s a broadband wireless card. Very fast. Pretty cool.”

  “Pretty cool?” he questioned. He pushed past her, which required some contact—it wasn’t all that big a compartment. He studied the laptop. Sure enough, it was connected to the Internet. “This is tight.”

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  He worked t
he keyboard, typing in the cryptic code he’d seen on the bottom of the photo. “I’ve got two entries for hypodermic needles,” he said.

  “See,” she said. “Maybe it is some kind of test hospital.”

  “Some lighting companies. Something to do with hockey.”

  “Stadium seats!” she reminded him.

  He flashed her a disapproving look.

  He read down the list on Google. “Something to do with physics…A business journal…More lights. The National Weather Service Web site.”

  “So, nothing,” she said.

  “Yeah. Or more accurately, too much of everything.”

  “I like puzzles,” she said.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Sudoku?”

  “I’m totally there,” he said.

  “So we need to solve this before we reach Washington,” she said.

  “If possible, though I don’t see how. We need more data: who she is, why she’s been tied up. Something more than we’ve got. And we need to avoid being caught,” he pointed out.

  “Tell your mother you’re nervous about the competition and you don’t feel good. Stay in your room. Or you can hang out here, if you want.”

  “Or maybe a little of both,” he said, agreeing with her.

  “Just don’t get caught,” she said.

  “If I go missing or something, it’s your job to get the briefcase to someone.”

  “You’re not going missing.”

  “But if I”—he interrupted himself with an astonished pause—“…do.”

  “What’s up, Steel? You should see your face. You’re pale as a ghost.”

  “My father,” he mumbled. “He was supposed to take me on this trip. Not just my mom. Totally unlike him to miss this. But you should see my mother…. She said it was business—that something to do with business kept him from making it. But she’s been acting real strange. Getting phone calls at all sorts of hours. Says she talks to him, but never when I’m around, never when I can talk to him, so how do I know she’s telling the truth? What if he’s gone missing?”

  “More likely they’ve separated or something, and your mother isn’t telling you about it. I have so many friends whose parents are separated or divorced, you wouldn’t believe it. And the first thing they do is lie to the kids about what’s going on. Every time.” She paused. “Sorry about that,” she said when she saw the effect it had on him. “Maybe that’s not what happened with your dad at all.”

  “I’ve been thinking basically the same thing,” he said, still considering her remark. “But the thing is, my mom would be a basket case, and she’s keeping it together.” He didn’t like thinking about it.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she said. But she didn’t sound convinced.

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  22.

  FRIDAY, MAY 30,

  ONE DAY BEFORE

  THE CHALLENGE

  Platform eleven at Washington, D.C.'s Union Station was crowded with passengers moving tightly in a herd from the train to the station. Burdened by carry-on luggage and weary from days of travel, the passengers moved along quietly and with little regard to one another.

  Steel and Judy Trapp were among the last to leave the train, partly because Steel—who had rarely left their sleeper compartment over the past twelve hours—took his time getting packed and ready. Also because they had to finalize arrangements to pick up Cairo once they were inside the terminal. Judy Trapp pestered her son with disapproving clicks of the tongue and exaggerated sighs, waiting for him to join her. “Hurry up, Steel!”

  “I am hurrying,” Steel said.

  “You’re usually the first out the door. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. Steel had spent most of his time preparing his description of the invention—to him the most difficult part of the science challenge. He would have to speak—all by himself—to a panel of five judges, explaining both the technology behind his project and its possible practical application. He wished his father were here to drill him—his father understood his project way better than his mother did—and nearly asked his mother what was going on with his dad’s absence, but couldn’t bring himself to raise the issue.

  His mother had chosen to get as many images in front of him as possible, because of Steel’s photographic memory. Steel had “invented” an electronic sniffer, combining some existing technologies into a roving, space age–looking device the size of a large dinner plate and shaped like a lentil. The interior electronics and mechanics were all his own invention, and his mother repeatedly quizzed him on its engineering and operation the way she believed the judging panel might.

  Now, as they walked together through an empty train car, Steel struggled with a roller bag that belonged to his dad, bumping it against armrests and seats. Inside the bag was his science project protected by tightly packed clothes. He didn’t like bumping it against anything. He caught sight out a window of the baggage trolley—a line of carts pulled by a small tractor—on which he spotted Cairo’s crate. “Mom!” he said, pointing.

  But by the time she looked, the baggage had passed, and she’d missed it. But she wouldn’t admit to that. “Yes, dear,” she said, pretending to have seen whatever it was.

  As they rode an escalator up toward the terminal, Steel felt a rush of excitement: Washington, D.C., the National Science Challenge. For a moment he forgot the briefcase in the back of the crate—and the three people out there looking for him.

  “Wait for me at the top,” his mother instructed, correctly anticipating he’d want to hurry off to find Cairo.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said.

  As the escalator carried him to the top, it was like a screen had been pulled down, and with it a view of the terminal appeared. But it wasn’t what Steel had expected. Instead he saw several policemen, a pair of tables, and black restrainers strung between posts, funneling passengers to a central checkpoint. Beyond the checkpoint were restaurants and shops—part train station, part mall.

  Steel instinctively took a step backward and down a step, now alongside his mother on the escalator.

  “Steel?” she said.

  “Police,” he said, wishing he hadn’t.

  “It’s just security. They’re only trying to keep us safe. Nothing wrong with that.”

  But to Steel there was plenty wrong. The checkpoint was attended by a pair of uniformed policemen, but it was the two guys in suits that bothered Steel—one of whom he recognized immediately as being the federal agent who had looked into their sleeping compartment and asked questions. That had been in Toledo, a day earlier. What was the same man doing here?

  “What’s the matter, Steel?” his mother asked as he slowed. “You’re as white as a sheet. Don’t be afraid of them. They’re on our side.”

  Steel kept quiet, unable to get a word out. He looked around for Kaileigh and wondered if they were after her.

  23.

  Larson asked Hampton, “How about this one?”

  “The woman looks familiar. Yeah, I spoke with them.”

  Larson watched the way the kid struggled with a roller bag. Kids could make even the simplest task look difficult. He had a stepdaughter who was in a hurry to grow up, and this boy and his clumsiness reminded him of her.

  “Hello,” Larson greeted the pair.

  “Hi.” A voice breaking between boy and man. Eyes that didn’t look up, didn’t make contact. A tween—stuck between his innocent past and a mysterious future.

  “Good trip?” Larson asked. “Enjoy the train?”

  “I guess,” the boy said.

  “Hello,” the mother said.

  Hampton asked for their tickets and ID. He added, “Tickets for both of you. ID only for you, ma’am. We don’t need ID for the boy.”

  “Agent Hampton spoke to you earlier,” Larson told the boy.

  The mother nudged the boy, who finally looked up.

  “To my mother. Yes, sir,” the boy answered.

  Spotting an
identification tag on the suitcase, Larson asked him, “Are you Kyle?”

  “No. He’s my dad. He’s…” He looked to the mother.

  “He couldn’t make the trip,” the woman answered.

  The woman’s eyes suggested something was wrong. Larson didn’t push it.

  He described what they knew of Aaron Grym. “Did you happen to see such a man on the train?” Their answers were carried on their faces before they shook their heads.

  The woman said how there had been a lot of men on the train matching that description. “We took a sleeper from Toledo,” she explained, as if that excused them.

  Larson assumed the suspect had been on that train at some point. He could have jumped from the moving train, or left at an earlier station without detection.

  The boy’s face carried a troubled expression. Larson wondered if this stemmed from discussion of the dad—or something else.

  “What’s your name?” Larson asked the boy.

  Larson hadn’t asked any other kid for a name. Hearing the question put Hampton on alert; he stood taller and moved slightly to his right, putting himself between the terminal and the two.

  “Steel,” the boy answered. “Steven,” he corrected.

  “Steven, let me explain something: if a man matching this description said anything to you…if you observed…if you oversaw him doing something he wasn’t supposed to, but are now afraid to say anything—”

  “What exactly are you implying?” the mother asked, interrupting.

  Steel shook his head.

  Larson took a risk, deciding to push the boy; he fit the general look of the boy on the platform. “Tell me about the woman—the woman out on the platform.”

  “My son thought she’d left the briefcase on the train. He tried to return it to her, and she wouldn’t accept it. We turned it over to the conductor,” Judy answered. “That’s all there is to it.”

  Larson and Hampton exchanged looks.

  “Which conductor?” Hampton asked.

  “I couldn’t possibly tell you,” the mother said. “I’m sorry.”

  With a nod from Larson, Hampton took off toward the train.

  “Is Washington your final destination?” Larson asked Steel.

  The boy nodded. “The National Science Challenge.”