The Warning Sign

by Mia Marlowe

  She hadn’t always been claustrophobic. It was just since her impairment. Somehow, not being able to hear made close contact with strangers more threatening. She dreaded making eye contact in case they spoke and she wouldn’t be able to understand them. And in the event of an emergency, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to understand an official announcement.

  Maybe that accounted for the way her nape prickled.

  “Outbound train approaching on the Orange Line,” a garbled voice mumbled over the loudspeaker. “All trains terminate at Oak Grove Station.”

  She only knew what the voice said because the same message was displayed in lights. That and the stale air in the station swirled in anticipation of the oncoming train.

  A tingle of apprehension ripped down her spine. Like the doe who raises her head to eye her hunter, Sara suddenly felt the weight of eyes on her.

  She scanned the crowd. A few people were leaning over the orange caution line, peering into the blackness, looking for the light of the train, but she didn’t catch anyone looking at her.

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  Matthew had her imagining things.

  Then she looked up into the large security mirror. Slightly distorted in the convex silver disc, the rest of the commuters were still standing in place, but there was one man making his way through the crowd, much as she had. He was wearing a nondescript black trench coat, the collar turned up and a gray fedora pulled forward to obscure his eyes. But she could see the bottom half of his face.

  She knew him. The man in the white van.

  He was heading straight for her.

  The ground trembled under her feet, shuddering up her calves, her thighs, to roil in her belly. The train was getting closer.

  Suddenly there was no oxygen in the station. She could barely draw breath.

  The man lifted his head for a moment and met her gaze. His eyes were pale gray, just thin rings of ice around the black holes of his pupils. He smiled.

  A wicked cold smile.

  Sara suddenly knew his intention. He was planning to shove her in front of the Orange Line train. She’d boxed herself into this little spot with no way to escape. If she screamed now, everyone would assume she was crazy and in the ensuing confusion, he’d still shove her and people would believe she’d jumped.

  The tunnel’s darkness was split with the twin beams of the train’s headlights.

  Oh, God. It’ll never be able to stop in time.

  The man was still about ten feet from her. He wasn’t a very big man, not more than a couple inches taller than Sara herself. But his shoulders were broad and his hat gave him the illusion of more height. The menace she read in his eyes made him seem much more formidable.

  She turned and looked down the tunnel. She could see the train, but she couldn’t see any other way to escape.

  The man was closer now. His lips moved.

  “Hello, Sara,” she read on them.

  There was only one chance of escape. Sara turned and jumped in front of the oncoming train.

  Chapter 15

  The engineer laid on his horn and the collective shriek from the nearby waiting commuters was loud enough and shrill enough for even Sara to hear it. The sound made her chest constrict. The oncoming train’s lights trapped her between their beams.

  She understood in that surreal moment the terror of a deer in the headlights.

  Move!

  She leaped over the tracks, narrowly missing the electrified third rail, and scrambled into the man-sized cut out in the wall separating the outbound from the inbound lines. The train barreled past her, whipping her coat around her form and sending her hair flying.

  Sara gasped for breath. She caught startled looks from passengers on the incoming train who were shocked to see someone standing in the forbidden zone—that no man’s land between one platform and the next.

  Move! she ordered herself again, but she couldn’t bring herself to release her hold on the concrete arch. She’d escaped the killer, but if she stayed where she was, all he’d have to do is wait for the train to leave the station and there she’d be, stranded between points of safety.

  A voice rumbled unintelligibly on the loudspeaker again. Another train was coming.

  If she was caught between the blur of two trains, all it would take was one corner of her coat or a purse strap or—she realized hazily that she’d already lost her briefcase, but couldn’t remember it slipping from her shoulder. If any part of her should catch on the speeding subway, she’d be dragged beneath the grinding wheels. The thought nearly sent her into a dead faint.

  “Oh, God! Oh, God!” she chanted.

  The loudspeaker squawked again. She turned and darted from the relative safety of the cut-out, picking her way over the set of inbound tracks toward the central platform. The ground beneath her feet trembled with the approach of the next train going the opposite direction.

  Jumping down onto the track was one thing. Climbing back up on the chest-high central platform was quite another. Mindful of the deadly third rail, she planted her palms on the platform and heaved.

  She managed to hoist herself up as far as her waist, but her legs still dangled down. She bent her nails back trying to dig in, but her hand slipped. She splayed her fingers on the rough concrete, trying to maintain her position. She had nothing to grab, no way to pull herself up.

  The light of the second train was approaching.

  The horn sounded three times in quick succession, the blasts communicating the engineer’s terror at seeing her in his path. She couldn’t haul herself up and going back down without being able to see where her feet were headed might mean electrocution on the third rail even before the train crushed her.

  “Help me!” she screamed.

  Most of the commuters looked on in stunned silence, frozen in inaction, but a couple of Latino teens grabbed her arms and yanked her up.

  “Oh, God! Thank you,” she said, panting. The kids said something back to her, but she couldn’t understand them.

  She spun around and scanned the station. The outbound Orange train hadn’t left the station, so she couldn’t tell if the man was on the platform she’d just fled or if he’d boarded the train to whisk away from the station since his plan had failed.

  That was just wishful thinking. Sara still sensed his eyes on her.

  She looked up to the second level catwalk. Her worst nightmare was looking back at her. The man had climbed the stairs to the upper level. He was glaring down at her as he strode toward the escalator that would take him safely down to the central platform she’d just risked her life to reach.

  A pair of uniformed employees appeared, looking frantically down on the tracks. Evidently the engineers had reported seeing her. If Sara could reach them, she might be in trouble for jumping in front of the train, but she’d be safe.

  But the man was half-way down the escalator already, between Sara and the T officials. On the far side of the platform, an inbound Green Line train rattled into the station. Sara turned and bolted toward it.

  She shoved through the crowds, not caring where the train went. Any place was better than here.

  She glanced back to see the man pushing his way past the other commuters on the escalator. Once he hit the platform, he ran after her.

  Sara squeezed through the press, but there were so many bodies.

  People ahead of her surged onto the train. She elbowed through the crowd and finally managed to wedge herself in, pressing tight against a fellow wearing a New England Patriot’s windbreaker to force her way onto the train.

  She looked over her shoulder.

  The doors on the Green Line train whirred closed behind her just as the man bounded up to them. With a lurch, the computerized train voice announced something about Boston College. Sara decided that was her destination as the train pulled away.

  The man pounded the door with his fist, but the train left the station without him.

  Her knees buckled.

>   “You ok?” the guy in the Pats windbreaker said.

  She shook her head.

  He talked a spiky-haired kid out of the seat by the door. Sara sank into it gratefully and cast the Patriot fan a tremulous smile. Her hands clenched on her lap to keep them from shaking uncontrollably. If her bladder hadn’t been empty, she was sure she’d have wet herself.

  She took a deep breath and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. She’d lost her purse and shoulder-strapped briefcase with the last of her students’ papers in it somewhere on the tracks. She’d worry about it later. It was a small matter.

  She punched in Matt’s number.

  ~

  “Son of a bitch,” Neville growled as the train pulled away from him. Twice, Sara Kelley had eluded him. Worse, now she knew he was coming for her. And unlike his previous victims, she’d seen his face.

  And lived.

  Behind him, passengers were being disengorged from the Orange Line inbound train. The Green Line, the train Sara was on, was the slowest, least reliable of the T trains. If he took the Orange train to Haymarket, there was a chance he might catch up to Sara Kelley there.

  Neville bounded across the platform and muscled his way onto the crowded train. He clung to the pole nearest the door, ready to leap out as soon as the train reached Haymarket.

  Stupid, careless… he mentally castigated himself. It had been a mistake to look at her, to speak to her. He could almost hear his mentor’s mocking laughter over this monumental error.

  “It is the height of hubris to celebrate a kill when the subject is still breathing,” he’d always say.

  But Neville needed to savor her terror, to have that ‘God Almighty’ moment.

  Now he wished he’d just sidled up to her without warning, without telegraphing his intent, without the slightest contact, until the moment his hand cradled the small of her back and shoved.

  He hadn’t expected her to recognize him until that last inevitable moment. Hadn’t the paper said she couldn’t identify him?

  Who’d have guessed Sara Kelley was gutsy enough to jump in front of a train?

  His subway car slowed and Haymarket Station slid into view.

  “Come on, come on,” he muttered to the closed door.

  When it shuddered open, Neville was the first one out. He hit the concrete at a run, taking the stairs up to the Green Line platform two at a time.

  The inbound train Sara Kelley was on was still taking on passengers. He bullied his way onto the last car.

  ~

  “Sorry, Brittany,” the desk sergeant said. “Matthew’s in a meeting with the captain right now. Judging from the shouting, I’d say it’ll be a while before he gets out.”

  “I’ll wait in his office and surprise him. OK, Louie?” She shot the old desk jockey a dazzling smile and swayed back toward Matthew’s office without waiting for permission.

  Things were so strained between her and Matthew lately. She was getting desperate for a way to make it right. She’d tried everything, but he was so damn fixated on his sniveling little ex-wife and her imaginary murder.

  It was as if Brittany wasn’t even there.

  One night, she actually caught him texting Sara before he came to bed. She’d have rather caught beating off to some cyber-porn.

  Not that Matthew would. He’d gone all ‘Dudley Do-right’ on her lately.

  But the texting thing sent her over the top. They’d had a screaming, swearing, ‘wake-the-neighbors’ fight.

  He slept on the couch by his own choice. He didn’t apologize and he didn’t quit texting Sara. And Brittany hadn’t been able to tempt him back into her bed.

  She honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d banged her.

  For the first time in their relationship, she was scared.

  Something bold. Just on the edge of kinky. That’s what she needed. A slam-bam quickie, spiced with the danger of discovery.

  Like the first time.

  She’d conveniently forgotten to wear her thong again.

  When she closed the door to Matthew’s office behind her, she wondered what he’d think if he came back, sat down at his desk and found her under it, ready to give him the mother- of-all-blow-jobs.

  The old Matthew would have been in heaven. She wasn’t sure what this new Matthew would do. Brittany had almost screwed her courage to try it, when Matthew’s cell phone sounded an incoming text.

  He’d left it in the pocket of his jacket hanging on the back of the desk chair. Brittany glanced over her shoulder to make sure Matthew wasn’t in sight and then reached for it.

  “Well, if it isn’t Mother Theresa checking in,” she said with a scowl. She flipped open the phone and read:

  ‘ATTACKED ON T…HEADED S ON GR LINE…LOST PURSE…CAN U PICK ME UP?’

  “Like hell he can,” Brittany said. She punched in a message back.

  ‘NO…STOP TEXTING—’

  “Brittany, what are you doing here?”

  “Nothing,” she lied and dropped his phone back in his jacket pocket.

  But not before she hit send.

  ~

  There she is.

  Neville gave a satisfied nod when he spotted Sara’s red hair. She was slumped in one of the single seats midway down the length of the subway car near an exit door. Every few seconds, her shoulders shook.

  Well, whatever else this will be, it’ll be creative, he decided as he eased toward her, working his way through the standing passengers. He’d had time to settle himself between North Station and Haymarket.

  Neville was the consummate planner, anal about it. Now he was forced to think on his feet, devising new strategies on the fly.

  Sara Kelley had changed the rules on him.

  Very well. He’d change a few right back.

  He’d given up on the idea of restricting himself to an accidental death for her. An unsolved murder would be just as honorable on his record as a hidden one.

  He fingered the handle of the five inch long shank in his pocket. It was filed to a pinpoint on the end, razor-like thinness on each side. He’d never really intended to use it, but it always made him feel powerful to know it was there, sheathed death waiting for him to summon it.

  Still, knife kills were tricky, especially in such a public place. There was always the danger of slicing himself a bit and leaving a miniscule DNA trail.

  But a quick thrust between her ribs and Sara Kelley would die sitting in her seat.

  Of course, he now knew she wasn’t the type to go quietly. In the few minutes she had before she bled out, Sara Kelley would be shrieking her little deaf head off and pointing a finger at him.

  So he had to force her to accompany him to someplace private. Someplace where he could take his time.

  Or he could time his thrust perfectly, say just as the subway doors were opening and everyone was streaming out of the train.

  If there was one law governing herds of people, it was that they tended to move away from screams as fast as their cowardly little legs could take them.

  He edged closer to her. He could almost smell her fear. It gave him a weird thrill, not quite sexual, but damn close to it.

  Maybe the serial pervs were on to something, after all. The game of cat and mouse was immensely satisfying if the mouse knew the cat was after it.

  Sara trembled again.

  And this little mousie definitely knew that the cat was out and about.

  Chapter 16

  Sara stared at her cell phone.

  Matthew blew her off.

  It made no sense. He was the one person who believed her about this whole macabre Valenti murder. Enough to bully the coroner into taking another look. Enough to stick by her while she was interrogated by the FBI. Enough to hang around her building and text her each night.

  Why would he ignore her plea for help?

  She covered her eyes with both hands. She was going the wrong way, toward downtown. She was afraid to get off this train and head back north in case she ran into that m
an again. She had no money for a cab. She could use her T pass on a bus, she supposed, but she didn’t know which one would take her home. Besides, she suddenly remembered her pass was in her purse and God alone knew where that was.

  Who knew if her home was safe anyway?

  If the killer knew she’d be on that particular train, he probably knew where she lived.

  How did he know so much?

  She turned her cell phone over in her hands. Did she imagine it or was there a new little scratch by the battery compartment? She picked at the sliding opening, but it seemed to be jammed.

  She turned the phone sideways and tried again. This time the compartment sprang open. Along with the normal rechargeable battery, a thin, almost transparent disk dropped into her lap. She picked it up and examined the tiny nest of flat wires.

  The engineer announced something, but she couldn’t catch the words. They must be nearing another station.

  The people standing beside her jostled to make room for someone moving closer to the door. A man in a trench coat stopped next to her seat. A weird mix of turpentine and an oily smell seemed to emanate from him. She looked up.

  It was him.

  Her vision tunneled. She forced herself to draw a deep breath.

  His gaze fell on her dismantled phone. His lips moved.

  “Clever girl,” she read on them.

  The doors opened on the station at Government Center. People filed off. Sara sat frozen in her seat. The guy in the New England Patriot’s windbreaker shot her a quick smile as he stepped down. The man in the trench moved to block her view, lest she speak to anyone.

  Sara’s heart pounded like a jack-hammer. More commuters surged onto the train, sheep oblivious to the wolf in their midst.

  The train jerked forward, the slack running out between the cars. Then the subway car tremored as they plunged once again into the dark. The walls of the subway tunnel streamed past in Sara’s peripheral vision, a nightmarish dreamscape of wires, pipes and intermittent lights.