Crossing the Line

by Meghan Rogers

  Travis knocked on the door. “Joss?”

  I tore my eyes away from the mirror. “Yeah.” I opened the door quickly. “We ready?”

  “They’ve got a team en route to China. We have to get across the border and meet them outside of Fushun,” Travis said. “They’ll swoop in and pick us up there.”

  “How are we getting out of the country?” I asked.

  “Freight train.” He leaned against the doorframe. “There’s one leaving the station in half an hour. Sam said the others are already on one of the loaded cars. We have to get there before it leaves.”

  I shook my head. “They’ll be searching the trains.”

  “I know,” he said. “We’re going to have to find a really good hiding spot. It’s the best and most direct way out of the country. They’ll never let you through an airport, and a bus or a car won’t give us enough of a place to hide.”

  I bit my tongue and nodded. I hated it, but he was right.

  “The train makes two stops on the way. One is before the border. My best guess is that they’ll have a military presence on the train looking for us at any point from the time we leave until we get to China.”

  I swallowed. “So we pretty much need to find a car that has a place to keep us hidden the entire time.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “And we have half an hour to avoid the police, the military, and KATO; get on a train; and get hidden without anyone noticing we’re there,” I said. My voice was even.

  He nodded. “That’s it in a nutshell.”

  “Then we should probably get going.” I tried to step out of the bathroom but he stopped me.

  “We need to hide you better,” he said, holding up a wig with bangs and straight shoulder-length black hair. “They don’t know me well enough to know what to look for, but they know you. And if they see the two of us together they’ll have no doubt who you are.” He made sure to tuck my hair tightly under the wig before tugging it down as far as he could. His fingers brushed the burn on my neck as he lowered his hands. It fell just below the length of the wig. “We’re going to have to find something to cover that. If KATO’s looking for distinguishing features, it’s a dead giveaway. Here’s your comm.”

  I grabbed it, not remembering anyone taking it out of my ear. He stepped away from me and went to the closet in the corner. The IDA seemed to stock their safe houses with essentials, including clothes and disguises. When Travis came back, he had a light scarf in his hand.

  I took it from him and wrapped it twice around my neck with my good arm, making sure my scar was covered. “Do we have everything we need from here?”

  Travis nodded. “We’re good to go.”

  I stepped past him, then picked up my gun and put it in the waistband of my pants. I grabbed the jacket I had worn in, which was still sitting on the bed. “They’ll be looking for someone with an injured arm,” I said, struggling with the jacket. Again, I got my good arm in, but I couldn’t get a good enough grip to pull it around me. I found myself more afraid now than I had been before this mission started. I flipped the jacket again, trying hopelessly to get it to land on my shoulder.

  Travis went behind me and put the jacket over me. Even though I knew he was there, I jumped. He came around to stand in front of me and zipped it up so I wouldn’t lose it if we had to run. He studied me intently. “Relax,” he said, gripping my shoulder. “I’ve never seen you like this. I knew you were worried before, because there was no way you couldn’t have been. But right now, it’s written all over your face.”

  I swallowed. “They weren’t looking for me before.”

  “They’re not going to get you again,” he said. His eyes met mine, and they weren’t letting me go until I believed him.

  “Okay.” I was still terrified, but I nodded anyway. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Travis grabbed the backpack and led me out the door.

  • • •

  Maneuvering through the city wasn’t easy. The train station was about twenty minutes away by foot, so we had cut it pretty close. And we still had to find a way to get to the train undetected. I bit my tongue as we weaved through the crowd in the station. Every time someone bumped me, a searing pain shot through my right arm. We had one close encounter when we passed some of the People’s Military. I ducked my head so the wig’s hair hid my face. Travis grabbed my hand and pulled me closer. I caught on quickly. We were less suspicious if we looked like a couple.

  Once we got outside onto the platform we worked our way to the edge of the crowd until we were standing next to a big yellow building. We had four minutes to get on the train. Travis pushed his comm. “Command, we’re in position.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “The cameras are down for two minutes.”

  I pulled Travis behind the building and dropped his hand. We jumped down off the platform so we were level with the tracks and ran between the trains, putting a train in between us and the platform.

  “Command, what train are we looking for?” I asked.

  “You’ve got to get to the other side of the tracks. That’s where they load the cargo-only trains. Once you’re there, you’re looking for train three-seven-four,” Sam said.

  Travis and I moved swiftly through the trains. We had a minute and a half before the cameras came back on. We ducked between the next row of cars and I stopped quickly, throwing my arm out to keep Travis from going any farther. There were voices coming from a few cars down. Travis shot me a grateful look and I peeked out around the edge of the train. The one we wanted was sitting on the tracks in front of us and three cars down.

  I took in the situation and stepped back. “Everything is being loaded from the other side of the train. If we avoid the cars that are open and actively being loaded, we can make it.”

  Travis glanced at his watch. “We have thirty seconds before the cameras come back on.”

  I nodded, and the two of us darted across the gravel ground and pressed ourselves against the cars next us. I edged down the row with Travis close behind me, stopping when we got to the end of the train. I took in the brown cars of our train, listening to the workers loading.

  I started to step across the small gap between the train we were hiding behind and the one we needed to get to, but Travis pulled me back. “Let me go first,” he whispered. I didn’t get it, but I nodded, trusting he had a reason.

  He stepped in front of me, his back inches from my face. He darted quickly across the gap, then motioned me to follow. Once I was next to him, he edged down the side of the train, stopping short of the open car.

  “Get this shit in the car,” a worker said in Korean. “She’s moving out.”

  Travis ducked down and slid under the opening.

  “The cameras are live in fifteen seconds,” Sam said.

  I hunched down and followed Travis. He was an entire compartment ahead of me, and had the small door open at the head of the car. I hurried over to him.

  “Ten seconds,” Sam said.

  Travis laced his fingers together and gestured for me to put my foot in his hands. Once I did, he lifted me up and I twisted so I landed on my good side.

  “Five seconds.”

  Travis hoisted himself up and into the train, then jumped up quickly to pull the door shut.

  “Cameras are live,” Sam said. “Please tell me you made it.”

  “We’re clear,” I said, breathless. I heard one of the big cargo doors slamming shut outside, and then a second one. We had just barely dodged two catastrophes.

  Travis grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the window. “Come on, we’ve got to find someplace to hide.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  LAST TRAIN OUT

  I’m going to patch you into the rest of the team,” Sam said.

  A few seconds later Cody’s voice was in our heads. “You guys safe?” he asked.
r />   “Yeah,” Travis said. “Let us get a place to hide, then we’ll check back in.”

  “Copy that.”

  Travis started shifting some cargo. The space was full of boxes, but they weren’t stacked like I would have expected. They were spread and weaved across the car in a way that didn’t make any sense. Some ran from the floor nearly up to the top of the ceiling, while the others came up to my waist. They were the perfect height for a seat even if I’d have to jump a little to get on one. Travis started in the back of the car, where the bigger boxes were, and I started at the front. I tried to shift the boxes around, but I couldn’t move them.

  “What’s in these things?” I pushed harder, trying to make them budge, but they barely slid across the floor. Travis struggled with the bigger floor-to-ceiling boxes in the back.

  “Come here for a second,” he said, motioning to me. I maneuvered my way back. Travis pointed to the Korean writing on the box. “Korean isn’t my strongest language, but I think that says it’s steel.”

  “Yeah, that says steel.” I sat down on top of one of the smaller boxes, and I yanked the scarf from around my neck, stuffing it in my jacket pocket. I was starting to feel like it was choking me. “How are we supposed to carve out a place to hide? We can barely make a path?”

  “I can move the boxes,” Travis said. The car jerked as the train started moving and I slid slightly on my steel block. The boxes themselves barely moved. The car we were in was completely cut off from the rest of the train, so no one could get to us while the train was in motion. We were given a reprieve until the next stop.

  “You can’t lift these.” I didn’t mean for my voice to hitch or for panic to creep in. “We wouldn’t even be strong enough to lift them together.”

  Travis’s eyebrows shot up. “Let’s just get one thing straight. No matter what plan we come up with, there is absolutely no way you are moving or lifting anything.”

  I glared at him. “I’m not some weak-ass girl.”

  He smirked. “Trust me, I know that. You’ve kicked my ass on more than one occasion, but there’s no point in finding a place to hide if you’re going to pull your wound open and bleed all over the car. Once we’re hidden, we need to stay that way, and I won’t be able to close that up again. I need you in one piece for this, okay?”

  I ripped off my wig and let out an irritated grunt, but nodded. “Then we need a different plan.”

  Travis turned around to lean next to me on the same block I was sitting on. I stared at the tall boxes waiting for an idea to pop out and announce itself to me. And then it did.

  I jumped up to stand on the block so suddenly that it startled Travis, who glared up at me. “What are you doing?”

  I stood on the tips of my toes and could just barely peek over the top of the tall boxes. But I saw exactly what I was hoping to see. There was a row of tall boxes along the back wall of the car, but right in front of that row, the boxes weren’t lined up so neatly. There was one hole that would be perfect. Three tall boxes made a U against the left wall.

  I looked back down at Travis, sizing him up.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “There’s an opening in the middle of these boxes.” I gestured toward the tower in front of us. “If we can swing the box at the back of the U out, we can slide this”—I tapped my toe on the shorter box I was standing on—“in the middle.”

  Travis’s eyes widened. “That way we can drop into it.”

  “The only problem we’re going to have is if someone stands on a short block like I just did to see if there are any holes,” I said. “They’ll find us in two seconds.”

  Now Travis was the one scanning the room, looking for some kind of answer. I sat back down on the box. He glanced down at the miniature square, then back up at me, wide-eyed. “I have a roll of medical tape. It’s a steel block. We can cut the cardboard top off the box we’re going to use and sit on the block itself, then tape the box top to the others so it’ll at least look like there’s another steel tower.”

  I tilted my head to the side, considering. “But if anyone touches it, they’re going to know there isn’t steel underneath the cardboard.”

  Travis shrugged. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything better.”

  I thought for a moment, weighing our options. Then Sam’s voice was in our heads. “They’re on to you. The Korean military combed through the security-camera footage at the station after they lost their feed. Raven, they found a shot of your face before the feed cut out. They’ve shut the train station down and ordered all trains to be searched at the nearest station.”

  I glanced at Travis. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  He approached the tall steel tower against the wall and I followed him. “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to make a bloody mess,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need to use my arm. I can use my good shoulder to push.” His eyebrows knitted together and he gave me an expression that said this wasn’t much better. I got defensive. “You can do most of the pushing, but this is a lot of steel. You’re going to need help.”

  He shot me a stern look. “If you feel even the slightest bit worse, you better stop.”

  “I will.” He knew it was the best he was going to get. I pulled a knife out of my pocket and handed it to Travis. He cut off the cardboard, exposing the steel, and put it on top of one of the other boxes.

  It took a lot of work, and the pain in my shoulder did get a little worse, but not enough to matter. Eventually we had the towers open enough to fit the smaller block inside. Travis insisted on moving that one by himself and I let him. Once we had the small block enclosed, we moved another one of the other small blocks closer. Just close enough so we could use it to climb onto the taller ones. Travis helped me up onto the boxes. I waited for him to climb up and slide into the small rectangle of space before preparing to drop down myself.

  “You’re going to have to sit,” I said. “You’re too tall to hold the top up.”

  He rolled his eyes but didn’t move. “And you’re supposed to do this one-handed?”

  I glared at him, annoyed, but I jumped down next to him. “Fine. You tape the first side so it’ll stay and then I’ll do the rest.”

  He debated for a moment, then ripped off pieces of medical tape and gave them to me to hold. He had cut the box so we had a little lip around the edges to work with. The box top popped up above the others slightly, but Travis was able to dip down and line the edges up perfectly.

  “Go ahead,” he said when he had finished. “It’s all you.”

  He sat down on the smaller block and stretched his legs diagonally across. There was barely enough room for him to extend completely. The box top sagged slightly, but my head pushed it back into place when I straightened up. Travis snorted.

  “What?” I asked, glancing down at him.

  “It would figure that you’re just stubborn enough to be the perfect height for your head to hold the box up.” A ray of light from the small opening in the center of the box fell across his face. He shook his head. “Anything to keep you from asking for help.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Will you please just rip the tape?”

  He laughed but did as I asked. A few minutes later I had us all taped in. I slid myself down onto the steel square, draping my legs over his so I could stretch out as much as possible. For a few moments, the only sound was me breathing harder than I intended. It wasn’t until then that I had time to think—time to really comprehend the situation we were in.

  It was only the two of us. We didn’t have any tactical information and we had an entire intelligence agency and military looking for us. An agency that would kill Travis and do God knows what to me.

  “All right, we’re hidden,” Travis said into the comms.

  “Good,” Cody said. “Raven, you holding up okay?”

&nbs
p; I smiled lightly, despite the situation. “I think I should be asking you that.”

  “Please,” he said. “I got a scratch. You got a bullet.”

  “I’m doing fine,” I said.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “We’re going dark until we get off the train,” Travis said. “Command, do you copy?”

  “Copy that,” Sam said. “We’ll be in touch when we’re close to the inspection.”

  He leaned casually against the wall of the car, then rolled his head in my direction. “How’s your shoulder?”

  Throbbing, but manageable. “It’s fine. I told Cody.” I sounded breathless and unconvincing.

  Travis shifted so he could get into the backpack next to my feet. He came back up with a flashlight, then leaned close to me and reached for the zipper of my jacket.

  I pulled away. “What are you doing?”

  He gave me a disgruntled look. “I’m trying to check your injury, since there’s a good chance you’re downplaying it.” I glared at him. He raised his eyebrows. “Are you telling me I’m wrong?” My glare intensified and Travis nodded once. “That’s what I thought.” He unzipped it enough so he could slide the jacket off my shoulder. He pushed the sleeve of my tank top aside and carefully peeled the tape off my skin.

  I studied his face as he examined my burned skin. He grimaced, but didn’t look shocked. “Yep,” he said. “The skin is pulled. Any harder and you’d have torn it open.” He pulled the bandage all the way off, then went back to the bag for a clean one and some disinfectant. He threw me a disapproving look as he rebandaged me.