I reached the bottom of the escalator and sprinted into the baggage service office behind Carousel Four. A lone baggage handler in grease-stained coveralls was wheeling my heavy black Pelican case onto the pickup counter. The heavy-duty padlock on the case was intact, but a bright orange Empire Rail corporate courier tag had already been slapped across the handle.
"That's my equipment," I said, tossing my baggage claim check onto his clipboard.
The clerk looked down at the claim slip, then back at the orange tag. "Corporate desk flagged this unit three minutes ago, buddy. Said it belongs to an executive travel hold."
"Look at the name on the claim ticket," I commanded, pointing my finger at the paper. "Marcus Cole. Personal credit card payment. Does that orange sticker have a court order attached to it?"
The clerk looked at my badge, looked at the claim slip, and shrugged, sliding the ninety-pound case across the rubber counter before Empire’s local supervisor could walk through the back office door. "Take it and get out of here. I don't get paid enough to referee corporate turf wars."
I gripped the case’s reinforced steel handle, the weight pulling hard against my shoulder tendons, and hauled it through the sliding glass doors into the biting Chicago night. Sleet stung my cheeks like thrown buckshot. The cab line stretched fifty people deep under the exhaust fumes of the arrivals lane, but across the service loop, the bright yellow sign for the national car rental agency was still lit.
I ran across the slush-covered lanes, dragging the case on its heavy roller wheels. Inside the rental lobby, I slid my personal driver's license and my personal credit card across the counter to the night agent.
"Give me the fastest all-wheel-drive sedan on the lot with a full tank of fuel," I said, my chest heaving. "Unlimited mileage. One-way drop-off in Des Moines."
The agent glanced at my mud-spattered work boots and my soaking jacket, but my card cleared the reader with six hundred dollars to spare before hitting my personal limit. She handed me the keys to a silver Subaru Outback parked in Stall 44.
I dragged the Pelican case out to the stall, hoisted it into the rear cargo bed, and dropped onto the driver's seat. Before I turned the ignition, I dialed the Polk County Sheriff's dispatch office on speakerphone, pulling the blue Apex manifest from my pocket.
"Polk County Emergency, what is your location?" the dispatcher answered.
"My name is Marcus Cole. I live at 1440 Bluestem Road in rural Dallas County. My sixteen-year-old son Toby is in the house alone, and two trespassers have just forced the basement utility door with bolt cutters."
There was a five-second typing pause on the line. Then the dispatcher’s voice returned, flat, professional, and chillingly indifferent. "Mr. Cole, we show an administrative notification logged for that address at 5:30 PM this evening. Empire Rail Corporate Security submitted an authorized welfare and company-property recovery notice through Deputy Kallen's desk. The report indicates an off-duty keyholder is on site securing company assets."
"It's a lie," I shouted against the dashboard, my knuckles turning white against the steering wheel. "There is no company asset! They are breaking into a private home while my son is hiding in the woods! Send an active patrol car right now!"
"Mr. Cole, Deputy Kallen cleared the scene as an administrative matter twenty minutes ago. If you wish to file a property dispute, you must report to the precinct during regular business hours tomorrow morning."
The line went dead.
I sat in the dark cabin of the car, the engine rumbling to life beneath my boots as the dashboard lights cast a pale green glow over my hands. They hadn't just planned the break-in; they had locked down the local law enforcement channel so no siren would ever roll down Bluestem Road. Toby was out in the freezing sleet in a track jacket, hiding in Miller’s fields, and if Apex found the hard drives in my basement work locker, they would burn the drives, scrub the switches, and claim I had fabricated the whole inspection.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the brass key to the Pelican case, and popped the latches.
Underneath the thick layers of high-density foam lay my portable laser spectrometer, its digital display unpowered. And tucked into the waterproof battery compartment beneath the casing was a twin pair of high-speed micro-SD cards containing every duplicate raw file, every crystalline fracture photograph, and every signed inspection ledger I had compiled over six months. Vance thought the only copies were sitting in the basement tower in Iowa.
He didn't know I had carried the entire case with me to Chicago.
I snapped the latches shut, slammed the gearshift into reverse, and threw the car backward out of the rental stall. Waiting for morning or pleading with a compromised county dispatcher would not keep my son alive or stop the mainline from cracking wide open. I hit the ramp for Interstate 80 West, accelerating hard into the driving snow, with three hundred and eighty miles of frozen blacktop between my headlights and the men tearing through my home.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I jabbed the speaker button before the second ring finished. "Arnie?"