Chapter 70 - The Midnight Courier
Before Arthur could answer, the heavy steel door of Car 49 rattled with three distinct, rhythmic thuds.
Jonah was on his feet in an instant, his right hand slipping instinctively beneath his waistband toward his service pistol. "Mack? Is that you?"
"It's Mack, Boss," the old foreman’s gravelly voice came through the hatch. "Got a situation on the platform. Somebody slipped past the perimeter gate. Woman. Says she carries a diplomatic seal from the Canadian Department of Transport, but she ain't showing ID to nobody except Nina."
Jonah traded a sharp, guarded glance with me before nodding toward the door. "Bring her in. Keep your iron drawn."
The hatch swung open. A tall woman stepped into the warm light of the salon. She wore an immaculate, ankle-length black cashmere overcoat, leather driving gloves, and a silk scarf partially concealing her sharp, aristocratic features. She was in her late forties, with striking silver-streaked hair swept back in a severe chignon and piercing gray eyes that swept the interior of Car 49 with cold, calculating familiarity.
She looked at Jonah’s drawn weapon, unimpressed, before turning her gaze directly onto me.
"You have your father’s posture, Nina," she said, her voice smooth, low, and laced with an untraceable European accent. "Richard Croft stood the exact same way when he was cornered."
"Who are you?" I demanded, keeping my voice steady while Jonah shifted half a step in front of me, his massive frame shielding my flank. "And how do you know my father?"
The woman reached slowly into her coat pocket. Jonah’s thumb pulled back the hammer of his Colt with a crisp, lethal snap.
"Easy, Mr. Ross," the woman said calmly, producing not a weapon, but a heavy silver pocket watch engraved with the double-headed eagle of the historic Grand Trunk Railway. She laid it gently on the table.
My breath caught in my throat. I recognized that watch. It was the twin to the gold locomotive pin pinned over my heart—a piece of rail history my father said had been lost during the mysterious boundary disputes of the late 1980s.
"My name is Victoria Sterling," she said plainly. "Sterling Vance was my elder brother. But unlike Sterling, I have no desire to see the American rail network reduced to ash for the sake of Wall Street speculation."
"Vance's sister?" Jonah growled, his dark eyes narrowing like flint. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't throw you off this train into the river."
"Because your train is the only thing standing between North America and a catastrophic energy collapse," Victoria replied, her gaze hardening. "Sterling was never the master of this conspiracy. He was merely the domestic broker. The real puppet masters are a shadow consortium operating out of Quebec—the Orion Syndicate. And forty-eight hours ago, Sterling hijacked an unmanifested train carrying seventy metric tons of specialized nuclear-grade graphite and thorium fuel cells."
"The Sovereign Cargo," Arthur breathed, his fingers flying across his keyboard as he searched federal freight logs. "It vanished from the Detroit railyards two nights ago under an encrypted Department of Defense bill of lading!"
"It isn't vanishing," Victoria said, looking directly into my eyes. "It's being moved north tonight on the old abandoned Great Lakes wilderness spur. At Milepost 400, the track crosses a remote international trestle. If that train crosses the border into private syndicate territory, they will have the raw material to hold the continental power grid hostage for the next fifty years."
"Why come to us?" I asked, my instincts screaming that this was another trap. "You're a Vance."
Victoria gave a faint, bitter smile. "Sterling murdered our father thirty years ago to take control of Vance Global. He framed Richard Croft for corporate espionage to cover his tracks. Your father died trying to expose the Orion Syndicate, Nina. I have spent two decades waiting for someone strong enough to bring the Vance empire down. Today, you proved you have the iron to do it."
May you like
She stepped back toward the hatch, pulling her collar up against the night draft. "The ghost train left Duluth two hours ago. It is running dark, without signals, clearing switches by force. If you want to stop it, you have to leave now. Once it clears the high bridge at Milepost 400, no law on earth can touch it."
***
