Chapter 7 - The Boxcar Sanctuary
The freight train was an ancient consist of boxcars and rusted flatbeds carrying scrap iron south toward the foundries of New Jersey.
Julian hoisted Katherine through the open wooden door of an empty boxcar, followed by Bruno, who scrambled up the wet iron threshold with a low grunt of effort. Frank scrambled in behind them, sliding the heavy timber door shut until only a four-inch crack of rainy twilight remained.
The train jolted with a violent, concussive bang of iron couplers, then slowly began to roll southward along the Hudson River, its wheels screaming against the cold, wet rails.
Inside the dark boxcar, the air smelled of cedar shavings, rust, and damp earth.
Katherine collapsed against the ribbed wooden wall, her chest heaving, her hands clamped over her knees. Julian fell beside her, pulling her entire body into his lap, wrapping his heavy cashmere coat around both of them. Bruno curled himself around their shins, his massive head resting on Julian’s knee, his tail giving three slow, exhausted thumps against the floorboards.
"You're bleeding," Katherine whispered, her fingertips touching Julian’s collar.
Julian looked down. A shard of window glass had opened a three-inch gash along his neck, staining his black dress shirt with dark crimson. He hadn't felt it. He didn't care.
"It's nothing," he said, pressing his forehead against hers. "It’s just red water, Katherine. You’re breathing. You’re here."
"Julian... Vincent won't stop with Beacon," she said, her voice shaking as the train gathered speed, the rhythm of the ties clicking beneath them like a counting clock. "He has the board meeting tomorrow morning at nine. He filed an emergency motion to declare your executive powers suspended on grounds of psychological instability following my death. He’s liquidating the terminal to the Canadian syndicate at noon."
"He won't make the meeting," Julian said, his voice flat, steady, and terrifyingly cold.
Frank Vance leaned against the opposite wall, bandaging a graze on his forearm with a strip of linen from his handkerchief. He looked up, his weathered face illuminated by the gray light slicing through the door gap.
"The Beacon Trust box," Frank said. "Can we get the records before the banks open?"
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"I have the key sewn into the lining of my boot," Katherine said. "The manager is an old classmate of my father's. He won't talk to Vincent. But he’ll open the vault for me."
"Then we don't go to the police," Julian decided, his arms tightening around his wife until she gasped against his shoulder. "We don't go to the district attorney. We take the six o'clock ferry across to Manhattan. We walk into that boardroom with the living witness and the dead dog."
