Lawman on the Hunt

by Cindi Myers

  The train appeared around a bend up ahead, the engine a black monster, wheels churning, white steam pouring from the smokestack and shooting out from the brakes as the engineer negotiated the curve. Sunlight glinted off the engine’s windows, making it impossible to see the engineer. The whistle sounded again, much louder now and more urgent.

  Both hands raised over his head, Travis waved the makeshift flag. The train’s brakes squealed, shooting out steam, and gradually the engine slowed. Travis joined Leah beside the tracks. Behind the coal car, passengers leaned out of the window to gape at the man and woman beside the tracks. “We must look like a couple of derelicts,” Leah said, aware of her unwashed body, messy hair, and torn and dirty clothing. Travis sported a four-day growth of beard and equally ragged clothing.

  “They’ll just think we’re a couple of backpackers.” He took the pack from her and slung it onto his back. “Nothing that unusual out here.”

  “What do we do when it stops?” she asked, as the train rolled slowly toward them.

  “I’ll show them my credentials.” He dug the folder with his badge and identification from his pants pocket.

  She slid her hand into his. Now that they were so close to safety—to food and hot water and an end to the physical and mental exhaustion of being pursued by killers—her whole body vibrated with anticipation. She focused on the engine’s wheels churning slowly down the track. The engineer leaned out of the window toward them, checking them out. Travis held up his credentials, though Leah doubted the engineer could make out anything about the wallet from this distance.

  The engine drew alongside them, the sound of the whistle deafening. Leah covered her ears and moved closer to the tracks, ready to climb on board as soon as the engine stopped. She couldn’t see into the cab anymore, though she could hear some of the passengers shouting questions about the reason for the delay. Any second now, they would be on board. Safe.

  Then, instead of stopping, the train began moving faster. Fast enough that instead of walking, they had to trot to keep up with it. “Hey!” Travis shouted. “Stop! We need help!”

  A stern-faced man in the blue suit and billed cap of a conductor appeared on the steps of the platform leading to the first car behind the coal tender. “You have to board at the station,” he shouted above the hiss of steam and the churn of the engine’s wheels.

  “We need help!” Travis protested.

  The conductor shook his head and pointed downstream, in the direction the train had come, toward the Needleton Station. Where Duane and his men were no doubt waiting for them.

  * * *

  TRAVIS AND LEAH STOPPED. Frustration and rage boiled inside him. After all they had been through, this was too much. He grabbed Leah’s arm. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to have to jump on board.”

  “What?” But she kept pace with him as he ran toward the cars at the rear of the train. Though the engine had picked up speed, it still wasn’t moving more than a few miles an hour. He watched the cars as he passed, trying to judge the distance between the track and the bottom step leading up to the platform at the rear of each car. It was a big leap, but if he could make it, he could help Leah up after him.

  Catcalls and abuse assailed them as they ran. An empty plastic cup bounced off his shoulder. “They’re not going to let us on!” Leah called.

  Travis stopped and held up his credentials. “FBI!” he shouted. “Let us board.”

  “Hazel, I think that badge might be real,” one man said to the wide-eyed woman beside him.

  A few hands reached out to Travis from the platform. He leaped, his toe just catching the step, and they hauled him on board, then he turned to help Leah. Two other men leaned out to assist, and together they pulled her up onto the platform.

  The other passengers bombarded them with questions. Who were they and what were they doing flagging down the train? Was he really an FBI agent? Why was the FBI all the way out here? They pressed forward to examine the badge and identification Travis displayed, and stared at the disheveled, dirty pair as if they were from another planet.

  “Maybe it’s a movie,” someone farther back in the car said. “Or a television show.”

  A conductor—maybe the same one who had glared at them from behind the coal tender—pushed his way through the crowd at the back of the car. “Let me see those credentials,” he demanded, extending his hand.

  Travis handed over the wallet. The conductor studied the picture, then Travis’s face. “This doesn’t look much like you,” he said.

  “It looks like me when I haven’t spent four days in the wilderness.” He took back the wallet and returned it to his pocket. “I’ve been pursuing a fugitive.”

  The conductor nodded to Leah, who stood at Travis’s elbow. “What about her? Is she an agent, too?”

  “She’s a key witness in my case,” he said.

  “What I am is half starved,” she said. “Does this train have a dining car?”

  “The refreshment car is through here.” The conductor turned and they followed him up the aisle. The other passengers gaped at them with open curiosity, the spectacular scenery outside the windows momentarily forgotten.

  At the end of the car, Leah stopped before a door marked Ladies. “I’m just going to go in here for a minute,” she said. She held out her hand. “May I have my sweater, please?”

  “The refreshment car is next,” the conductor said. “You can meet us there.”

  She nodded. “Are you sure?” Travis asked as he handed over the sweater, which was still attached to the tree branch.

  Her smile burned through him. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to let you get too far away from me again. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. Go ahead and order me a cheeseburger.”

  Travis followed the conductor across the platforms into the next car, which contained a snack bar manned by two young women in bib overalls. The aroma of coffee and grilled food made him feel a little faint, and it took all his willpower to wait for the couple in front of him to finish before he placed his order.

  “You must be really hungry,” the young woman said after he had asked for three burgers, two orders of fries, two milks, two coffees and a package of cookies.

  “You have no idea,” he said, and took out his wallet.

  “What’s this all about?” A third man joined Travis and the conductor at the snack bar. “Russell Waddell,” he said. “Railroad security.”

  “Special Agent Travis Steadman.” Travis displayed his creds, then accepted his change from the snack bar cashier.

  “I’ll have to ask you to surrender your gun until we get to Silverton,” Waddell said. “The young lady, too, if she’s armed. We don’t allow weapons on the train.”

  “As a law officer, I’m licensed to carry a duty weapon,” Travis said. He didn’t bother mentioning the Glock Leah no doubt still carried tucked under the oversize fleece jacket.

  “He says he’s after a fugitive,” the conductor volunteered.

  “Here on this train?” Waddell’s eyebrows rose.

  “I’ve been tracking him through the Weminuche Wilderness,” Travis said. He tore open one of the cartons of milk the young woman handed him and drank it down in a gulp. “As soon as we get into cell phone range, I’ll call for backup.”

  “You won’t have cell service until we reach Silverton in a little over an hour,” Waddell said. Apparently he’d decided to drop the argument about Travis’s gun. “But we have a radio you can use to relay a message to our headquarters in Durango.”

  “Great. As soon as Leah and I have a chance to eat we’ll do that.” He glanced toward the back of the car. What was taking her so long?

  “She’s probably in there cleaning up,” the conductor said.

  He nodded.

  “Your order’s ready, sir.”

 
; He turned to accept the tray of food.

  “Here she comes,” the conductor said.

  Relief flooded him when he glanced back and saw Leah making her way toward him. But instead of returning his smile, she sent him a tense, worried look. He set down the tray and started toward her. “Leah, is something wrong?”

  “Nothing wrong at all.”

  Travis’s mouth went dry when he recognized the man who spoke. Walking very close to Leah, his arm around her, Duane Braeswood offered a smile with no mirth. Instinctively, Travis reached for the gun at his waistband.

  “Good to see you again, Agent Steadman,” Braeswood said. “Leah and I were just discussing what a coincidence it is that we should all end up on this train.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Leah’s eyes pleaded with Travis for help. He eased his hand away from his weapon. The way Braeswood held Leah, he probably had a gun or knife pressed against her. So much for the rule about no weapons on the train.

  “Friend of yours?” Waddell asked. He had probably picked up on Travis’s hostility.

  Travis forced himself to relax. “We’ve known each other a long time,” he said, trying to sound casual.

  “You might say we were once rivals for the affections of a certain beautiful woman.” The smile Braeswood gave Leah made Travis’s skin crawl.

  Leah licked her lips, her eyes glassy with terror. “Duane says he has a private car we can wait in until we reach Durango,” she said, her voice strained with tension.

  “That’s right,” Duane said. “Bring your food with you and we’ll catch up on old times.”

  “What about the call you needed to make?” Waddell asked. “The radio is in the engine compartment.”

  “Making a call like that through a third party could jeopardize national security,” Duane said. “Not to mention compromise Ms. Carlisle’s safety.”

  Leah’s expression grew more pained. Travis wanted to punch the smirk off Braeswood’s face. Waddell wasn’t likely to buy a phony excuse like “national security,” but for Leah’s sake, Travis was going to have to sell the idea. “The guy I’m after isn’t going anywhere in a hurry,” he said to Waddell. “Rather than try to relay what I want through the people at railroad headquarters, it’s probably a better idea to make the call myself when we get nearer Silverton.”

  Waddell frowned. “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.” He picked up the tray and wondered if shoving the food in Duane’s face would distract him enough to make him release Leah. But if Braeswood did have a gun in his hand, he might fire it, and gunfire in the crowded confines of the train was bound to result in innocent people getting hurt.

  They made their way forward to a car marked Private—Reserved. “Hello, Mr. B.” An attendant greeted them at the door.

  “Marcie, these are my friends Leah and Travis,” Braeswood said. “They’re going to be riding with me the rest of the way.”

  “Yes, sir.” The dark-haired young woman flashed a friendly smile. “Welcome aboard. Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “Water would be good.” Travis followed Braeswood to a small dining table covered with an old-fashioned lace cloth.

  “And you, ma’am?” Marcie asked.

  “Water is fine.” Leah slumped into a chair next to Travis. Braeswood withdrew the gun he had held pressed into her side, though he kept hold of it, resting it on his thigh beneath the table.

  “As long as you cooperate, no one gets hurt,” he said in a low voice. “Try anything and I’ll kill her. And you, too.”

  Travis ignored the threat, his focus on Leah. He pushed the tray toward her. “We might as well eat,” he said.

  He thought at first she might refuse, but after a moment, she reached for a now-cold French fry. It didn’t matter that the food was cold and not all that appetizing. He was so hungry he could have eaten almost anything. Braeswood said nothing while they finished the meal.

  When they were done, Marcie cleared their trays, then returned to stand by the door. Travis leaned across the table and spoke in a low voice. “Whatever you’re planning, you won’t get away with it,” he said.

  “I was planning to return to Durango to gather more forces and equipment to hunt down the two of you,” Braeswood said. “You’ve saved me that trouble and expense.” He turned to Leah, frowning. “I must say, I’m very disappointed in you. I warned you what would happen if you tried to run away, and now you leave me no choice but to follow through on that promise of punishment.”

  She glared at him, saying nothing. The smile he gave her sent a fog of red through Travis’s brain. It took every bit of his willpower and training not to leap across the table and attempt to rip that sneer from Braeswood’s face. “You’ve wasted a lot of my time and cost me a great deal of money,” Braeswood said. “So before I kill you I should try to recoup at least part of my losses. I have a friend who owns a brothel down near the Mexican border where a young woman like you would be in high demand.”

  Still Leah said nothing, but her face paled and her breathing grew more shallow. Travis sensed her retreating into herself, returning to that pale, frightened woman he had pulled from the car in the driveway of that rented mountain home only three days ago. “You’ll never get away with it, Duane,” he said, his voice as menacing as he could make it. “Even if you kill both of us, the rest of my team knows you’re in this area and they will stop at nothing to hunt you down.”

  “The Feds are nothing but a bunch of half-trained foot soldiers strangling in red tape and government oversight.” Braeswood met Travis’s glare with a cool look. “I’ll admit, you impressed me a little bit, the way you managed to evade my team back there in the wilderness. But they would have found you eventually, and then your exalted government agency would have pretended you didn’t exist, or blamed your demise on your own clumsy efforts. If you’re really so interested in seeing justice done in your lifetime, you’d join my organization. We could use a man with your skills.”

  “Your organization is a bunch of murderers and thieves.”

  A muscle at the corner of Braeswood’s eye twitched, the only indication of any emotion on his part. “Change is difficult,” he said. “Watch a butterfly emerging from a cocoon sometime and you’ll see how much work and pain is involved. But those who persevere through the brutality will, like the butterfly, soar.”

  “What a pretty speech,” Travis said. “Is that your favorite pep talk for the troops?”

  “I do more than talk about change,” Braeswood said. “I work to make it happen. Something you government types don’t understand.” He checked his watch, an ornate gold Rolex. “We should reach Silverton about one p.m,” he said. “I’ll have a car and driver waiting there. The town is very remote, and the countryside around there is filled with old mines and Jeep trails. I shouldn’t have too much difficulty finding a place to dispose of your bodies.”

  * * *

  AS IF ALL HIS talk about exiling her to a Mexican brothel hadn’t been enough to frighten Leah, Duane’s boast about disposing of their bodies should have been enough to send her into a faint from sheer terror. When she had stepped out of the ladies’ room and almost collided with him, she was sure she was hallucinating, mistaking some stranger for the man who had haunted her nightmares for months. Then she had felt the hard jab of a gun barrel biting into her side and heard his voice, his words chilling her more deeply than the river water ever could have. “Hello, Leah. It’s so good to see you again.”

  The shock of seeing him on the train, when she was so sure they were finally safe, had left her momentarily catatonic, but all his boasts of working toward a better world, familiar as they were, had shaken her awake again. The past few days of struggling to survive in the wilderness had shocked her out of the paralyzing stupor she had been in ever since her sister’s death. Duane counted on people
fearing him. Their fear gave him most of his power, so almost everything he said and did was calculated to make them more afraid. Now that she could see so clearly what he was doing, she wouldn’t let him manipulate her with his threats anymore. She had to fight back with everything she had.

  The door at the end of the car opened and the conductor entered. “We’ll be arriving in Silverton in about half an hour, folks,” he said. “Make sure you have all your belongings with you when you depart the train. If you’re making the return trip to Durango, listen for the train whistle around three o’clock. That’s your signal to head back this way.”

  “My friends and I have decided to return to Durango by road,” Duane said. “I have a driver waiting for us.”

  “Then thank you again for riding the Durango & Silverton Railway,” the conductor said, his face bland. “I hope you enjoyed the trip.”

  “Yes, it was very enjoyable.” Duane took Leah’s hand. “Especially since it allowed me to reconnect with my dear friends.”

  Leah pulled her hand away and glared at him. He was so evil—how else to account for the fact that the prospect of murdering her and Travis didn’t upset him in the least. He spoke of his plans to dispose of them in the same tone he might use to describe an afternoon picnic. The conductor appeared not to notice her hostility. “There’s still some great scenery between here and the Silverton station,” he said. “We’ll be passing through Elk Park, then directly after that we’ll come to Deadwood Gulch. Quite the view there. The train will slow so you can take pictures if you want.”

  She waited until the conductor had moved on to the next car before she turned on Duane. “You can’t think you’ll get away with murdering us,” she said. “Too many people will know we were with you.”

  “They’ll know a man named David Beaverton, a successful plastics manufacturer from Ohio, was with you,” he said, his demeanor as calm as ever. “If they try to find such a person, they’ll learn he died last year.”