The Train Ticket to Nowhere
Chapter 06 - The Train Ticket to Nowhere
The bathroom window was painted shut.
I discovered this in the most useless thirty seconds of my life while Lucia dragged the mattress away from the wall with a strength that made no sense for a woman in pearls.
“Fire escape,” she said.
“There is no fire escape.”
“There is always a fire escape in a building that old men renovated cheaply.”
She yanked the curtain aside. Behind it, half-hidden by peeling paint and a dead roach, was a small metal latch.
The knock came again.
“Hotel security.”
“That is not hotel security,” Lucia said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I own unpleasant amounts of this hotel.”
I stared at her.
“Later,” she snapped.
The window lifted three inches, then stuck. Lucia removed one shoe and hit the frame with the heel. It shrieked upward. Cold air slapped my face.
Outside, a narrow iron platform clung to the brick. Four stories down, the alley waited like a dare.
“I cannot climb that with a duffel.”
“Then leave it.”
Inside that bag were the last ordinary pieces of me.
I left it anyway.
That hurt more than made sense.
Lucia went first. I followed, my coat catching on the frame, my palm scraping against rust. The wind cut through my sweater. The alley below smelled of garbage and wet concrete.
The hotel door burst open as my foot found the second rung.
A man swore.
Lucia looked up at me. “Do not look at him. Look at the ladder.”
I looked at the ladder.
Three floors down, a black SUV pulled into the alley.
Not Nico’s. I knew his cars the way a prisoner knows guard shifts. This one was older, dirty at the wheel wells, plates half-obscured by mud.
A rear window lowered.
A woman inside looked up.
Mia.
My hand slipped.
I would have fallen if Lucia had not seized my ankle with both hands.
“Move,” she hissed.
Below us, Mia turned her head sharply, as if someone inside the car had spoken to her. Then the window went up.
The SUV rolled away.
I climbed like grief had hands around my ribs.
By the time we reached the alley, the vehicle was gone.
Lucia leaned against the brick wall, breathing hard. I looked up at Room 409. A man’s face appeared at the window for one second, then vanished.
“He wanted me to see her,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So you would stop thinking.”
Too late.
I was already running.
Lucia caught up near the corner and grabbed my sleeve. “Claire, no.”
“She was there.”
“That is why you cannot chase the car. He wants you alone and stupid with love.”
“She is my sister.”
“I know. That is the weapon.”
A horn sounded once at the curb.
A black sedan sat beneath the hotel awning, immaculate and out of place. Arthur stepped out, opened the rear door, and looked at me.
Behind him, Nico sat inside.
He did not get out.
That restraint nearly undid me.
Lucia watched my face. “Your choice.”
I hated that she gave me one.
I walked to the open door, leaned down, and saw Nico clearly for the first time since I had left. He looked terrible. Not poetically. Honestly. His eyes were red, his jaw unshaven, his hand wrapped so tightly around the memory card that the edges had marked his skin.
He held it out.
“I brought it.”
I took it without touching his fingers.
“Good.”
Arthur closed the door after Lucia and me climbed in. The sedan pulled away.
For several blocks, no one spoke.
Then Nico said, “I am sorry.”
I looked out the window. “That is a beginning, not a solution.”
“I know.”
“I do not forgive you because I need your help.”
“I know that too.”
“You do not know much today.”
“No,” he said. “Today I am learning.”
The city slid past, gray and cold.
Arthur handed me a tablet from the front seat. “The card has twelve recordings. The final file is damaged, but we recovered a partial transcript.”
I looked at the screen.
At first the words meant nothing.
Then I saw Mia’s name.
Beside it was another name I knew.
Not Rafe.
Not Lucia.
Arthur Pierce.
May you like
My head lifted slowly toward the man in the front seat.
And Arthur’s reflection in the window looked back at me with eyes that no longer seemed tired.
