by Ted Kosmatka
And with that he continued walking. She turned and climbed the steps.
He took the sidewalk all the way around the museum and eventually made his way back to the parking lot, occasionally glancing behind himself to see if anyone was following. No one was.
Once in his car, he pulled out of the lot and eased into traffic, continually checking his rearview.
It was a five-minute drive to the parking lot.
He waited for her at the far end of the Lakefront Trail, the broad cement walkway that hugged the shoreline between the museum and the yacht club. He watched the boats rock and sway on the undulating waves. Out over the water, the sun rose higher in the sky. Behind him, seagulls pinwheeled against the backdrop of skyscrapers.
It was almost ten when she joined him. By then he was sitting on the cement ledge, his feet dangling over the water. She sat. Her elbow touched his.
“As far as kiss-offs go,” she said, “this was pretty creative.”
“That’s what you think?”
“No.” She looked at him. “I see your face … and no, I don’t think that.”
“Did you bring the bone?”
“I brought it.” She shifted her hand, showing him the small plastic bag. “What happened?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“You’re in some kind of trouble?”
“Some kind, yeah.”
“I don’t understand this,” she said.
“That’s probably good. The less you know, the better. I’ve told you way too much already.”
“So that whole ‘forget I ever contacted you’ thing?”
“For your safety.”
“So you meant it.”
“Not because it’s what I want.”
“This is bullshit.”
He shook his head. “I’m not worth the risk. I’m really not.”
“This is ridiculous. So you stole bone samples. What are you worried about, making me an accessory or something? Fine, I get that, but let’s not be overdramatic about the whole thing.”
“I wish that were all this was.”
Her brow furrowed again. “If that’s not it, then what is it?”
“Much worse.”
“Maybe not as bad as you think. What are the chances that this just blows over?”
Paul smiled. He watched the boats. “Zero.”
“There must be something that I can do. My uncle’s a lawyer.”
“No, it’s not like that. You don’t understand how much danger I’ve put you in.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“The last guy who helped me is dead.”
For a moment there was no change in her expression; she looked at him as if trying to decide if he was serious. Finally, she said, “What?”
He nodded.
“What do you mean, dead?”
“Does it have another meaning?”
“Because of this?” She handed him the bone.
He took it and slid it into his pocket. “Not specifically this, no.” He pulled the Tylenol bottle from his pocket and dumped the lozenge into his hand. “This, too. It’s a DNA sample from bones found on Flores. I did an analysis, and there are people who don’t want the results exposed.” He scanned the passersby, the walkers along the shoreline, looking for anyone who might be watching too closely. He slipped the lozenge back into the Tylenol bottle and put the bottle back into his pocket.
Up ahead, along the walkway, two men stepped into view. They were dressed in khakis and polo shirts. There was nothing unusual about them. Nothing to catch the eye. Other than the fact that they were there.
“I don’t want you involved,” Paul said.
“It seems like I already am.”
“Not if I can help it.”
She shook her head. “I already tested it.”
“What?”
“The bone, just now, today. It’s why I’m late. I tested the bone collagen in the lab at work before I came here.”
Paul glanced at the khakied men. They were closer now, moving quietly. They weren’t talking, weren’t looking out over the water. “Walk with me,” he told her.
He put his arm around her, and they walked in the direction of his car. He looked over his shoulder; the two men had picked up their pace and were thirty yards away now.
“I never would have involved you if I’d known this would happen. You believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “Because now there’s no other choice. It’s time to run.”
“What?”
“Run,” he said. “Now.”
He grabbed her hand and took off toward his car.
She ran. “What the hell?”
“Come on!”
He glanced over his shoulder; the two men were sprinting toward them.
She turned and looked. “Shit,” she said.
Paul fished his car keys out of his pocket as they ran, crossing the small parking lot. He hit the unlock button as he approached his faded old Matrix. The car beeped. From behind another vehicle, a man stepped into his path. He’d been waiting there, hidden between the cars. Paul lowered his shoulder into him.
Lillivati screamed.
The man flew backward, clutching at Paul’s arm, jerking him off balance.
“Get in the car!” Paul shouted. Paul was taller and outweighed the guy by forty pounds, but still it was a close thing. Paul spun the guy over the hood of the car, managing to yank himself free. A moment later, Lilli was in the passenger seat, opening the driver’s door from the inside. Paul jumped in. He slammed the door and hit the locks just as the other two men showed up. They pulled on the door handles on both sides of the car as Paul started the engine.
“Get out of the car,” the first one said. He was mid-thirties and built like a marine.
Paul shifted the car into gear and backed out of the parking space.
“You’re just making this harder,” the marine said.
On the opposite side of the car, the other guy screamed at Lilli, “Open the door!”
Paul put the transmission in drive just as the passenger window smashed in, glass exploding everywhere. Lilli screamed and punched at the hand that reached through. The hand found the inside door handle and pulled. The door came open. Paul gunned the engine, and the man hung on.
“Get out!” Lilli screamed, punching at the hand.
Up ahead a black sport ute backed out of its parking spot, trying to block their way. Paul had to slow, and the man reaching in grabbed Lilli’s shoulder, trying to pull her from the moving car.
“No!” Lilli screamed, clutching now at Paul’s arm.
The car’s seat-belt warning beeped wildly.
Instead of stopping, Paul jerked the wheel to the right—but only a little. He sideswiped the reversing vehicle. There came a loud thud as the open passenger door slammed against the SUV’s rear quarter panel, and the man at the door was suddenly gone. The door was closed again.
Paul gunned the engine, taking the curve at the parking lot entrance at twenty miles per hour. The Matrix burst out onto the city streets, crossing the intersection at Lakeshore Drive. Horns blared.
Beside him, Lilli sat shaking, saying nothing. She gripped the door handle hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
A quick glance in the rearview told him they weren’t out of the woods yet. The black sport ute he’d sideswiped in the parking lot was now following.
Paul pushed the little Matrix as fast as it would go, swerving in and out of traffic. On a straightaway, he’d be no match for the V-8. But in this kind of congestion, the tiny Matrix actually had the advantage.
Paul took the turn onto Michigan Avenue at ten miles per hour, earning more blaring horns.
“Those guys were sent by your lab?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“It goes a lot higher up than that.”
Paul took a left, then a right. They were downtown, skyscrapers looming above them, deep in a can
yon of buildings. He checked the rearview every five seconds. For a minute, he thought he’d lost them, but then he saw the black SUV behind them again, half a block back. Up ahead, a red light. Traffic stopped.
“This isn’t good,” he said. They were in the right-hand lane, but the street ahead was a one-way, no right turn.
From somewhere behind them in traffic, the sound of screeching tires. Car doors. Shouting voices.
Paul saw them in his side mirror then. Two suited men running between the stopped lanes of traffic. The men closed the distance. A moment later, they were there. The left rear window exploded inward as the butt of a gun connected. Paul hit the gas, cutting the wheel to the right.
Tires squealed again, more blaring horns, and he was suddenly going the wrong way down Randolph. Into a wall of oncoming vehicles.
A truck swerved out of the way—and then the car behind it, with no time to react. Paul clipped mirrors with an oncoming BMW.
Paul laid on his horn, hoping to catch the attention of oncoming traffic. He took the first right, driving under the L train, and merged back into the flow of traffic. The city shadows deepened. An urban canyon.
“That was too close,” Paul said.
Beside him, Lilli was still silent. Still gripping the door handle. Broken glass glittered in her hair.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded stiffly but didn’t look at him.
Paul took Wabash through the stoplight and continued on.
“What are we doing?” Lilli asked finally.
“We’re hoping to get lucky,” Paul said, checking his mirror again.
At that moment, they came to a green light, and Paul saw a black SUV stopped at the intersection. It was a different truck: no sideswipe damage to the rear, but the same make and model.
“I should have known that wasn’t gonna happen,” Paul said.
He yanked the wheel to the left, turning against another one-way—this one less crowded. The truck gunned its way across the intersection behind them, giving chase. Paul floored the accelerator again.
“If you’ve got any ideas,” Paul said. “Now is the time.”
“Ideas for what?”
“On how to get out of here.”
In the rearview, the black truck was gaining on them.
“Turn here,” she said.
“Up there?”
“No, right here. Here!”
Paul jerked the wheel and stomped on the accelerator again, hurtling down a narrow access road. Here the buildings were closed in; no traffic, but parked box trucks crowded along the walls of the buildings.
“There’s an underground station up ahead,” Lilli said.
“Where?”
They bounced across an intersection without slowing, going momentarily airborne as the car’s suspension lifted the tires from the roadway. They struck with a loud scrape, and Paul fought with the wheel as they flew down the access road. Ahead, the roadway became even narrower, reduced to little more than an alley between buildings. Dumpsters bulged out from either side, and Paul had to swerve to avoid striking them. The speedometer climbed to forty. Behind them, the larger vehicle lost ground, half a block back now as it slowed to avoid a dumpster.
“Look out!”
Paul jerked his gaze forward again and dodged another trash container.
Ahead, the road ended in a T. Cross-traffic sat in gridlock. Paul skidded to a stop.
They sat breathing for a moment.
They looked at each other.
Paul glanced in the rearview mirror again. They were out of time.
“Out,” Paul said. “Now.”
They flung the car doors open and sprinted up the street, abandoning the car where it sat. Lilli ran to the right, and Paul followed. Somewhere behind them, a car horn started blaring, but Paul didn’t look back. He followed Lilli up the block, weaving through the foot traffic toward the tunnel entrance. They were near Millennium Park—the Bean, he knew, would be shining in the sun up ahead. He looked toward the stairwell. The sign above the opening read MILLENNIUM STATION. Lilli never hesitated.
He followed her down the stairs and into the underground station, the great maw of the city swallowing them whole.
* * *
They kept moving, that was the important thing, following the stripes on the floor as they tunneled deeper into the station. Shops molded themselves to the walkway perimeter, becoming part of the circulinear passageway that wound its way forward.
A minute later, Paul and Lilli were at the commuter trains. Paul saw that the far train was boarding, so he and Lilli wormed themselves into the shuffling crowd. They stepped onto the train, among the last to board. The doors closed behind them.
Paul was drenched in sweat, his heart pulsing in his ears. He tried to control his breathing, imagining that every eye was on them. He moved forward through the train, trying to pick the most crowded car.
“Here,” he said finally.
They sat, taking the last open seats.
A moment later the South Shore announcer spoke: “Now leaving. Next stop Van Buren.”
Out on the platform, Paul saw a suited man walk by. The man was craning his neck, looking into the train cars. He continued on, disappearing from sight, moving toward the front of the train. Just then, the train lurched forward.
A few moments later, the man came into view again. He was standing in place, staring into the train cars as they slowly lumbered past.
Paul sank as low into the seat as he could go. There was no place to hide.
The car rolled slowly forward and the man’s eyes found Paul. Recognition. The man’s expression went angry.
Paul saw that it was the guy he’d scraped off against the sport ute. The side of his face was red and raw.
The man lunged for the doors, running alongside, trying to open them, but the train quickly pulled ahead.
The man continued to follow, sliding farther and farther back as he ran, his eyes finding Paul again, until he ran out of platform and stopped. Paul put his face to the glass and watched him disappear.
* * *
The train rocked beneath them, a gentle lull. The sound of the tracks.
The train emerged into open air. Buildings flew by.
“They won’t have enough men to check every stop,” Paul said. “The farther we go, the wider the net they’d have to cast in order to catch us.”
“So you think we got away?”
“We’ll know at the first stop. If one of them boards the train, then no.”
Lilli put her head on his shoulder. They passed beneath a broad overpass, the world going dark for a moment before they came out the other side.
The conductor worked his way up the line.
“Tickets?”
“We don’t have any. Can we buy them now?”
“Sure, where to?”
“Where’s the train going?”
“After Van Buren, the next stop is Fifty-seventh Street.”
“No, farther up.”
“Hegewisch, Hammond, East Chicago, Ogden Dunes, Michigan City.”
“Two tickets to Ogden Dunes.”
“Sixteen dollars.”
Paul paid in cash. The conductor handed over the change and the stubs and moved on.
“What about your car back there?” she asked.
“It’s the least of my worries.”
“Van Buren,” announced a catenated male voice.
The train slowed to a stop. Paul and Lilli stared out the windows. No black trucks. No athletic men in dark suits.
The train doors opened. People got on, but nobody suspicious. After a minute, the doors closed again.
Paul felt Lilli release a long breath. The train started moving again.
“They didn’t get here in time,” Paul said. “Now they won’t know if we’ve gotten off already or not. After this, it gets harder for them.”
They took the train through two more stops.
They watched the buildings through the window
s. Tall beige skyscrapers, fire escapes zigzagging up the side. Lake Michigan visible in stolen glimpses through the buildings, until the tracks veered and the neighborhood changed. The tall buildings gave way to smaller structures, brick apartment buildings and houses. The train rolled past a landfill, parklike, covered in green grass, but rising steeply as no park would.
Paul saw liquor stores and gas stations and, later, on the north side of the tracks, power lines and the rise of industrial buildings. The train passed a church, its twin steeples piercing the sky to the south—a huge dark structure with stained-glass windows, beautiful in the slant of the sun.
“Next stop Hegewisch,” a voice called out over the intercom.
Paul and Lilli stayed in their seats.
Sometime after that, the train passed into Indiana, making stops in Hammond and Gary. Through the window, Paul saw enormous pipes and white smoke—huge metal structures that dwarfed all the buildings he’d seen outside of Chicago, like rusting metal skyscrapers laid on their sides. On the roof of one were the words USS GARY WORKS. The great sprawl of the mill rolled by for miles.
Paul looked around at the other travelers. The South Shore was a commuter train. People coming from and going to work. Men and women going about their daily lives.
“Who died?” Lilli asked.
Paul looked at her. Her face was somber. “What?”
“You said the last guy who helped you is dead.” Her voice went low, almost a whisper, so the other passengers couldn’t hear her. “Who was he?”
“His name was Charles. A coworker of mine.”
“How did it happen?”
“Badly.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough you wouldn’t want to hear about it.”
Outside the window, the landscape was changing from urban to rural. Like a line had been drawn. Paul watched the brown cattails flash by, a small wetland hugging the tracks. On the other side of the wetlands, woods spread away in the distance.
“You said you tested the bone,” Paul said.
“Yeah,” Lilli said.
“What did you find?”
“They had a ten percent fish diet. Twenty percent small rodents. Thirty percent large mammal.”
“They were hunters?”
“Hunter-gatherers. Same profile you see everywhere. Their remaining percentages were plants. Nothing out of the ordinary for ancient bones. Just the typical human pattern.”