PROLOGUE
There was a hazard ahead, a potential danger lurking. Now, he had to search it out.
Carl Naylor narrowed his eyes, peering through the onslaught of icy rain at the tracks stretching out before him. There had been reports of vandalism from this section of rail, in this remote part of northern Ohio, one of the areas where a complexity of old and new rail lines connected. An incoming driver had called it in.
By the time the message had reached Carl, it had been garbled, and the driver’s phone was off. So, all he knew was that there was something wrong, somewhere, within this section of train track near the junction.
Carl had set out into a late fall rainstorm to do a safety inspection.
"Most likely just a loose jointbar," he muttered to himself through numb lips, as he trudged along the tracks, ducking his head to avoid a gust of the icy rain.
The new tracks in this section had all been joined together with the old, a few years back now, using the metal jointbars. It was his opinion that someone had done a shoddy job. There were a few of them that had worked loose in the past few months.
"Safety risks," he muttered, wishing someone else had been on duty this particular morning. This weather was vile. Carl had finally gotten around to having a haircut, two months overdue, and now he was regretting that his thick, dark hair was no longer curling over his neck and his ears, which felt exposed, and freezing, even under his waterproof hat.
But storm or no storm, long hair or short, he couldn't ignore any safety risk that might interfere with the running of the trains. And although vandalism was unlikely in this remote, rural part of the world, Carl’s favorite expression was never say never.
There were psychos out there who would take glee in destroying a section of track and watching as the train veered off it. That, he knew. Folks were strange. In his opinion, you should expect the worst from humanity.
Carl was in no mood to deal with anyone who might wish to cause trouble on the line. He'd just come off a long night shift, and he was cold and wet and tired. This inspection should have been done by the rail engineer working the day shift, but the rail engineer working the day shift had called in sick with bronchitis.
Since this was urgent, it was now into the overtime hours for him.
All he wanted to do was to get back to the warmth of the station, to dry out after his inspec
tion of the line, and then head home.
He walked along the tracks, bending down to inspect the jointbars, shining the light on them, testing them for any signs of a misalignment or looseness.
There!
He bent down, his gloved hand tugging at the metal bar. It was very loose, he could see it was askew and feel it move, and the movement of the train along the tracks would work it still looser. Luckily, it was a quick repair job, nothing more than the tightening of the bolts. Getting them really tight. As in, immovable.
He got the hammer and wrench out of his backpack and set to work, spraying the jointbar with oil before inserting that hammer and wrench into place, and then screwing the bolt as tight as it would go. He stamped down on the wrench with his booted foot, feeling the metal squeak in protest as he slammed it tighter still.
There. It had been a long walk for a small job.
He straightened up, shivering. His back was stiff, and his legs were aching as he squinted his eyes against the wind and the sleet. It occurred to Carl suddenly that maybe the walk wasn't over yet.
He had found a necessary repair, but now he was asking himself the uneasy question: how had anyone seen this? Unless you were walking along the actual track, that loose jointbar was almost invisible. A driver passing by on the parallel track would have had to have been very lucky to have spotted it. So, maybe this hadn't been the reason for the report, and there was something else. Farther on.
Carl sighed. Now that he'd had the thought, it wouldn't leave his mind. It couldn't hurt to look a little farther. After all, he was already freezing, even through his waterproof coat, because the wind was blowing the rain through the gaps in the collar and sleeves. It wasn't like he could get colder or wetter. So, he might as well push on.
Hunching his shoulders, feeling grumpy that he'd had the thought and earned himse
lf still more time out in the bad weather, he trudged along the track, keeping a lookout to the left and right for obstacles near the rails, as well as ahead.
Blinking water out of his eyes, he thought he saw something. A few steps later, he was sure of it. Someone had dumped a bundle of rags on the track. And of course, people being what they were, there was no guarantee there wasn't something wrapped up inside them—a metal bar, or maybe even worse.
People. He didn't trust them. Not after nearly twenty years of working on the railways.
Carl knew there was a good chance that someone had dropped the bundle of rags along the track, and they'd just been careless. But what if they weren't? What if this was a deliberate attempt to sabotage the train?
He walked up to the pile of rags, sodden and sad looking. Lifting his booted foot, he gave it an experimental push, to test what it might be.
Then his eyes widened as he felt the odd solidity of the bundle within, the strangely disturbing feel of it. As if he’d touched something he shouldn’t. Something that had a give to it, not a metallic jangle. But it wasn’t solid like a sandbag.
This was not what he'd expected. What on earth was inside here?
He reached out a gloved hand and tugged at a corner of the rags.
And then, Carl yelled aloud.
The ragged edge unfurled, and it exposed a tangle of dark hair that streamed out, wet and tumbled, like old, blackened weeds. And beyond that, the sheet white of a woman's face, with wide, staring eyes.
"No!" Dropping the sheet, Carl backed away.
This was a body. And, wrapped in those sheets, his frenzied mind told him that it couldn't have been killed by the train, there was no sign of that, this poor woman must have been killed elsewhere and dumped here.
He gasped in a breath, looking around him at the gray, rainy landscape that seemed suddenly full of threat. In this remote and isolated place, a murderer was at large.
CHAPTER ONE
Caitlin Dare stood outside the home’s freshly painted front door. She took a deep breath, lifted the brass knocker, and brought it down with a bang.
This felt like a pivotal moment in her life. Nerves surged in her as she waited for the door to be answered.
She might be a seasoned FBI agent, with ten years of law enforcement experience under her belt, but this confrontation felt scarier than any takedown she'd done with her SWAT team. For so long, she had wanted to gather the courage to do this. At last, after all the uncertainty and holding back, she was ready to demand answers.
She lifted a hand and smoothed back her auburn hair, which was whipping against her face in the afternoon breeze. Her fingers felt cold, and not just from the weather.
This was bringing all her old demons raging. Anger, fear, and the desire for payback roiled inside her.
She heard footsteps approaching and tensed. A moment later, the door opened. Caitlin found herself staring at Uncle Josh.
The liar. The abductor, as she had thought of him with fear and anger ever since her sister’s disappearance.
He'd lived well in the past decade since she'd last seen him. That was her first, shocked impression. His face was round, fleshy. His body heavier. He wore a shapeless, gray sweater and old jeans. Those ice blue eyes—the identical color to her own—were filled with surprise as he stared at her.
At least it made a change from that oddly intense, creepy expression that she remembered.
"Caitlin?" he said in a gravelly voice. "What are you doing here?"
She squared her shoulders, ready to take him on. "I'm here for answers," she said.
"Answers about what?" he shot back, although she was sure he knew.
"About Ella's disappearance. I want to know what happened, ten years ago, when she got on that train."
She saw his gaze slide sideways for just a moment before returning to her again. "Caitlin, I have no idea what happened to your younger sister! I was not working on that train. We discussed this. My shift ended four hours previously."
She'd expected him to dodge and dive. "You could have been there. Maybe not working as a conductor, but traveling as a staff member, as you were allowed to do."
"How many times do I have to tell you that I was nowhere near there?" He sounded smug, as if he was repeating a story that had already been belie
ved and would be again. "I was not on that train, neither for my conductor's shift nor for travel. Sure, the police asked me, as you know. And as you know, that’s what I said!"
"Why should I believe you?" Caitlin felt an odd kind of calm, as if she was somehow outside herself and watching this exchange. He might be answering reasonably now, but she felt as if by pressuring him, she was lighting a fuse, and soon she would see if it exploded.
"Are you saying you’re better than the police? Smarter than they are?” It felt as if he was taunting her now.
“Maybe I know you better than they do,” she said and saw his face darken.
“You have a completely false impression of me. Your accusations are so wild, I would even go so far as to say you’re delusional." Now, his tone was insulting.
He moved to close the door. Caitlin shot out a hand and pushed it back open again. "Just one more question, please. Where were you, then? Do you have an alibi? Can you account for your time?"
If she could force him to crack, if he revealed he had been on that train, then she was going to get the case reopened. And then, maybe, Caitlin could discover the truth.
"I was at home in San Francisco. And your sister's disappearance is long over and done with. Leave me be now. You can't make it right." He was glaring at her now, but his words were as smooth as ever.
“Can you prove where you were?" she pressured.
"I'm not telling you that. It's not your business."
"I think it is my business," she said, her voice rising. "Because I think you know something."
Caitlin stared at him. It looked as if he was trying to control himself, but the fury was boiling inside him, threatening to explode.
"You don't know what you're talking about," he insisted.
"I'm going to find out what happened to my sister," she said. "I'm going to find out the truth. ...
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