Chapter 11 - The Steel Artery
By nightfall, Elena had prepared her preparations. Lily would remain at the cottage under Sarah’s fierce protection. It had torn Elena’s soul to part with her daughter even for forty-eight hours, but the cove was safe, completely off the grid, and Sarah Hawthorne had defended the harbor against worse predators than Julian’s private security firm.
"I'll be back with your brother," Elena had promised, kneeling before Lily and kissing her forehead. "And then we will never have to run again."
At midnight, Elena boarded an empty grain carriage on the southbound freight train twenty miles inland, sliding the heavy steel door nearly shut to shield herself from the freezing wind. The journey took six hours of bone-jarring vibration through the mountain tunnels, the rhythmic clack of the rails hammering an anthem of defiance into her mind. She wore dark work denim, a heavy canvas coat, and a knit cap pulled low over her face. In her inner pocket rested Arthur’s brass key, a notebook of encrypted audit numbers, and a compact digital flash drive Marcus had managed to send via Sarah’s network.
The freight train slowed to a crawl as it crossed the perimeter gates of the city’s central freight yard at dawn. Steam hissed from the hydraulic lines as Elena dropped from the iron ladder into the shadow of the switching yard, rolling smoothly into the gravel drainage ditch.
The city was waking under a blanket of industrial smog. Billboards along the highway still flashed ticker notices about the corporate scandal, but Elena paid them no heed. She made her way to a public phone terminal near the rail sheds and dialled a number she had memorized years ago—not a lawyer, not a journalist, but the private line of Mrs. Higgins, the elderly housekeeper who had served the Vance estate since Julian was an infant, the only person in that cold house who had ever shown genuine kindness to both Elena and young Leo.
May you like
The phone rang four times before the trembling, familiar voice answered. "Vance residence."
"Martha," Elena whispered. "It's me. Don't speak my name. Just listen."
