Chapter 13 - The Night Train East
Samira aimed at Leon’s chest. “One wrong movement.”
Leon kept his hands raised. “I know.”
Maria stood beside Adam. “You escaped custody.”
“I was released.”
“By whom?”
“The person who hired me.”
Adam’s voice turned cold. “My father?”
“No. Daniel Carter.”
Leon reached slowly into his coat and removed a small recorder. “Your father hired me twelve years ago, before the Blue Gate collapse. He paid me to protect Elena and Maria if the project went bad.”
Maria stared at him. “I was sixteen.”
“Your father believed danger might reach you eventually.”
“Then why did you attack Adam?”
“I did not intend to kill him. The blade was theatrical. I needed to be arrested and placed in a secure room where I could deliver the key.”
Samira’s expression hardened. “That is an absurd plan.”
“It worked.”
“People were injured.”
“I miscalculated Maria’s speed.”
Maria wanted to be furious, but the memory of his words in the restaurant returned: Your father would be proud. “Why did you tell everyone Rashad hired you?”
“Because Rashad did hire me. He wanted Adam dead. I accepted his contract so I could get close enough to learn what he knew.”
“You worked both sides.”
“I worked for the dead man who paid me first.”
Leon pressed the recorder’s button. Daniel’s voice emerged beneath the train’s thunder.
“If Leon reaches you, it means the first plan failed. Do not trust his methods, but trust his purpose. He knows how to find people who believe they are invisible.”
The recording ended.
“Where is Elena?” Maria asked.
“Alive, if Nadia Vale has kept her promise.”
Adam’s gaze sharpened. “What promise?”
“Nadia helped Elena escape the palace clinic. She hid her under another name in a private medical center near the northern border.”
“Then why did Farid say Kareem signed the transfer?”
“Because Kareem arranged the paperwork to make Elena disappear. Nadia arranged the escape.”
Maria felt the story shift again. “Was Kareem protecting her or holding her?”
“Both, at different times.”
Leon sat on a crate. “Kareem believed Elena possessed proof that Hassan’s secretary had betrayed him. He wanted to use that proof against Rashad. Nadia wanted Elena alive but hidden. Daniel trusted neither plan.”
“What happened to my father?”
Leon looked at her directly. “He went back into the pressure station to retrieve the ledger. Grant Bell had triggered the collapse early. Daniel saved three workers, but he did not make it out.”
“You saw him?”
“I arrived after the collapse.”
Maria turned away. The truth did not make the death gentler. It made it sharper, because her father had not been careless or foolish. He had chosen people over escape, just as he had taught her to choose direction over strength.
Adam moved toward her. “Maria.”
“Do not tell me he was a hero.”
“I was going to say he loved you.”
She faced him. “That is worse.”
“Why?”
“Because love did not save him.”
Adam took her hand. This time she did not pull away. “No,” he said. “But it saved the people he reached.”
The train began to slow. Leon looked through the narrow window.
“We are approaching a transfer station. Someone has boarded the roof.”
Samira moved to the door. “How many?”
Leon listened.
May you like
“At least six.”
A blade punched through the metal above them.
