Cut and Run (Phoenix Code 1 & 2) Page 12

  But he also knew one other thing for certain: if he interfered in this looming tragedy, he could expose himself and lead his enemies right into his arms. If they found him, they would kill him.

  His heart beat into his throat. Could he let all these kids die to protect his own life? Could he live with the guilt of knowing he’d done nothing to save these young lives?

  2

  “Crap!” Phoebe Chadwick cursed under her breath and put the receiver back on the cradle.

  Her colleague Kathleen, who occupied the desk across from hers, looked up and cast her a quizzical look. “Something wrong?”

  Phoebe was already rising from her chair. She motioned to the glass-enclosed office at the other end of the large open-plan area which housed more than two dozen cubicles. “He wants to see me in his office. Now.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “Yep.”

  With trepidation, she made her way to the office on whose door the words Bruno Novak, Editor were stenciled. During the last few weeks, several of her colleagues who’d entered Novak’s office had cleared out their desks shortly afterward. Her heart beat into her throat.

  She needed this job to support herself. She didn’t have a family or a husband who could help her. She was on her own. Her parents were divorced and had their own financial problems, and she’d broken up with her last boyfriend over six months earlier because he was only mooching off her instead of paying his own way.

  Though she hoped she was wrong, Phoebe knew the paper was in a dire situation. Budget cuts had to be made, and since personnel costs were the largest line item, staff had to be let go.

  She felt everybody’s eyes on her as she stopped in front of the door. Her palms were sweaty when she knocked and entered after a grunt from inside. She shut the door behind her quickly, not wanting her colleagues to overhear the conversation.

  “Bruno, you wanted to see me?” she asked as casually as possible, willing her voice to sound calm when she was anything but.

  Novak didn’t lift his head, but grunted once more and motioned her to sit in the old chair in front of his desk.

  She swallowed away the bile that was rising and followed his unspoken command.

  “You probably heard,” he started, finally lifting his head from the stack of papers in front of him.

  Her heart sank into her stomach. “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll make this short, then. You haven’t been with us for very long.”

  “It’s been over a year,” she protested quickly, but he stopped her by lifting his hand.

  “I’ve been here for over thirty years. Trust me, one year isn’t very long. I had to put you on the list. There are three people on that list, and one more will have to go.”

  Phoebe shot up from her chair. “I need this job, Bruno. Please.”

  “I’m not the one making the decisions here. The editor-in-chief will pick who’s going to be axed and who stays.”

  Her heart plummeted into her knees, making them wobbly.

  “Who else is on the list?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.” Novak sighed. “But let’s just say the other two never spilled any coffee on his expensive Italian shoes.”

  Phoebe cringed. She’d only once met the editor-in-chief in person, and the exchange had not only been awkward, but also embarrassing. She knew already now who would get the axe.

  “Eriksson doesn’t like me.”

  “Then you’ll have to make him like you.”

  Phoebe felt her face scrunch up in disgust. “You must be kidding. I’m not going to—”

  “Christ, Phoebe!” Novak rolled his eyes. “What the hell do you think I was talking about?”

  “Uh, well, I thought you…” she mumbled, feeling heat rise into her cheeks.

  “What I’m suggesting is that you’ll have to prove to him that you’re an excellent journalist and that he can’t afford to lose you.”

  “I can do that!” she said with more confidence than she possessed. She would do anything to convince her editor-in-chief that she was the best reporter this paper ever had. The newspaper business was in her blood. Her father had been a journalist and her mother an editor. Both had switched to different careers after the divorce. Her father was now back in Nashville, where Phoebe had grown up, and was working as a PR and media consultant for the police department, while her mother lived in Los Angeles and had married a struggling writer, whom she supported by working as a secretary. But none of that was of any consequence. “I’ll get you a good story. Something you can be proud of.”

  Novak nodded slowly. “And you’d better make it quick. I have to hand this list to him in one week. And once he’s got the list, you know what’ll happen. He’s gonna take one look at it and make his decision. So find something good.”

  “One week? That’s insane! How am I gonna find a great story in such a short time?” It was practically impossible. Any exposé, whether it concerned a politician or a business, would take time to research.

  “Then you’ve gotta buy yourself some time.”

  “But how? How am I gonna do that? You said yourself that he’ll pick me once he sees the list.”

  “Then do something that makes him hesitate.” Novak motioned to the door. “Now get out of here and get to work.” He dropped his head back to his papers.

  Phoebe left his office and exhaled. At least she had another chance, though she didn’t know how realistic it was to come up with a killer story in one week. As for making Eriksson hesitate, as Novak had called it, she had no idea how she would manage that. She never saw the editor-in-chief. He worked two floors above her and the few times she’d seen him in the distance, he’d always been surrounded by other people. There was no way she’d ever catch him on his own. And even if she did, how would she change his opinion of her? She had nothing with which to impress him.

  Phoebe ignored the clandestine stares of her colleagues and slumped down in her seat. “I’m so screwed.”

  “Did he fire you?” Kathleen whispered back, leaning over her desk, her eyes darting to the side.

  Phoebe dropped her head into her hands. “He might as well have.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She lifted her face to look at Kathleen. “He gave me a week to come up with a killer story to impress Eriksson so he won’t fire me.”

  “A week? What a prick!” The soft pinging of Kathleen’s computer indicated an email had landed in her inbox. She glanced at the screen. “Speaking of the prick, here’s another one of his mass emails.” She huffed. “Urgent! Yeah, right!”

  Phoebe sighed and signed onto her computer. She might as well start scouring the internet for anything that could be turned into a story. When her screen came up, her email inbox pinged too, and she looked at the list of new emails. Eriksson’s was the latest.

  Subject: Substitute needed—urgent

  The email was marked with a priority flag, as if that was anything new. All of Eriksson’s emails were marked priority.

  Phoebe’s eyes flew over the message.

  Need somebody to ride on an outing of my son’s class today. School bus leaves in two hours.

  Kathleen groaned. “Like I wanna be stuck with a bunch of eleven-year-olds asking questions about my job.”

  “What?”

  “Are you the only one who hasn’t heard about this?” Kathleen asked. “Eriksson has been telling everybody and his dog that he’s doing this school outreach program, getting kids interested in journalism by taking them on research trips.” She made air quotes around her last two words. “And now he’s chickening out and dumping it on one of the staff. I sure ain’t volunteering.”

  Phoebe reached for the phone and dialed a four-digit extension. She’d just found the perfect thing to buy herself some time.

  “Mr. Eriksson’s office,” the secretary answered.

  Kathleen whispered, “What are you doing?”

  But Phoebe waved her off. “It’s Phoebe Chadwick. I’m calling about the scho
ol outing with Mr. Eriksson’s son.”

  “Hallelujah,” the woman on the other end of the line responded, overly dramatic.

  There was a click. Then a male bellow. “Yes?”

  Phoebe swallowed. There was no way out now.

  3

  Phoebe forced a smile and patiently tried to answer the same question again though one of the other kids had asked the very same thing only ten minutes earlier.

  The old school bus jostled along the city streets on the way to a warehouse on the outskirts of Chicago the newspaper used as its archives, and where it stored old printing presses which the publisher of the paper kept for sentimental reasons.

  Phoebe sat near the rear of the bus, surrounded by at least two dozen eleven-year-old boys and girls who were all talking over each other. Several were fighting over the small notepads with the emblem of the newspaper she’d handed out earlier. Clearly, she hadn’t brought enough for everybody. Above all the noise, the bus driver was listening to the radio, which alternately played music and news.

  Several kids were standing on the seats, trying to look over kids who were blocking their view of Phoebe, thus obscuring Phoebe’s view out the window. She sighed. What had she been thinking, volunteering for this? Dealing with a bunch of kids who talked a mile a minute was more exhausting than chasing down a politician unwilling to answer her probing questions.

  You can get through this, she coached herself. Eriksson will owe you one. It will make him hesitate when it comes to firing you. And she hoped it would buy her enough time to find a juicy story with which to save her job. It was all for a good cause.

  “No, if a story is important enough, then we’ll stop the printing press and reset the front page. It’s been done many times before. And it’s a lot easier these days. It’s all done by computer,” she now answered the question the girl with the red hair and freckles had asked.

  “I have a computer,” a boy in a blue T-shirt piped up. “It’s brand new.”

  Another boy used his elbow to get past him. “And I have an iPad. I got it for my birthday.”

  “Me too,” a girl in the crowd replied.

  “Yeah, but mine is newer,” the second boy replied.

  “Hold it, kids,” Phoebe said, trying to get the bragging under control. “It doesn’t matter whose tablet is newer.”

  “Does too!” somebody protested.

  More voices chimed in and all the kids were suddenly talking all at once, trying to establish who had the newest iPad or computer. Within seconds Phoebe felt as if her head wanted to explode from the din of their combined voices. She was definitely not meant to be a teacher. Already now, her patience was wearing thin.

  “Miss Chadwick, Miss Chadwick!”

  Phoebe turned her head to the girl who was calling out to her, but couldn’t see her.

  “Miss Chadwick!” the same girl insisted, her voice tinged with not impatience, but anxiety.

  “What’s wrong?” Phoebe shot up from her seat, worried now that the girl might have hurt herself. She saw her standing toward the front of the bus, pointing out the window.

  “Miss Chadwick, why did we stop in the middle of a railroad crossing?”

  Phoebe spun her head to the side and stared out through the windows. The girl was right; the bus stood in the middle of the railroad crossing.

  “Driver!” she called out, turning her head to the front while shoving her way through the kids.

  When she saw the empty driver’s seat, she froze.

  “What the—” She stopped herself from using profanity in front of the children.

  “Why’s the driver gone?” a boy asked behind her.

  Phoebe took several steps forward while she tried to be as level-headed as possible. “Maybe the motor stopped and he’s checking something under the hood.”

  She reached the driver’s seat, her eyes instinctively scanning the area. There was no key in the ignition. She looked outside, first to the front, then the left and right, but the driver was nowhere to be seen.

  “Maybe the driver is in the back,” another boy claimed.

  Phoebe twisted her head and saw several of the kids crowding toward the rear of the bus and peering out the window.

  “He’s not there,” a girl said.

  “Shit!” Phoebe cursed.

  Why had the bus driver left? And right in the middle of a railroad crossing, of all places? Without the keys to the bus she couldn’t move it off the rails. Her heart beat faster, but she tried to keep a cool head. She was the only adult here. The teacher who was supposed to be accompanying them had had a flat tire on the way to the school, and Phoebe had therefore arranged with her to reroute the bus, so they could pick her up on the way. However, in the meantime, Phoebe was responsible for these kids. If she showed that she was panicking, then the kids would surely panic too.

  “Get all your belongings, your bags and things, and we’ll get off the bus until we can find out where the driver is. And no pushing and shoving, okay?”

  She might as well have saved her breath with her last instruction, because the kids suddenly all tried to be the first to reach the front of the bus, all talking over each other.

  Phoebe leaned over the dashboard and scanned it. There were several switches. She tried the first and looked to her right, but the door didn’t open. Then the second. Nothing.

  “Open the door, Miss Chadwick!” a girl started to whine.

  “I’m trying,” she answered tersely and touched the next switch. When she flipped it, it broke off. Her heart stopped as she looked at her fingers holding the black switch.

  “You broke it!” the girl cried out. “Miss Chadwick broke the switch!”

  Phoebe felt the smooth area where the switch had broken off the console, while several kids started to scream. “He cut it through,” she murmured to herself. “The bastard sabotaged the bus.”

  Dread filled her stomach. This was no accident. This was deliberate. The bus driver was trying to get the kids killed.

  “Somebody call 9-1-1 and tell them where we are.” She rushed to the door and looked up. There had to be a manual release somewhere above the door. Her eyes searched every inch, but the spot where the manual release for the door was normally located was covered with a piece of metal that had been screwed over it. “Fuck!”

  In the background she heard several kids crying, while others were already talking on their cell phones. But Phoebe knew she couldn’t rely on the police to get here soon enough. At any moment, a train could approach.

  Her eyes flew back to the back of the bus where the emergency exit was located. “Let me through to the emergency exit!”

  She paved her way through the kids and reached for the lever to open the back exit. She pulled in the direction indicated on the door, but nothing moved.

  “Why is it not opening?” a girl whined.

  Phoebe yanked at it again, but the thing didn’t move. Shit!

  She turned back to the kids. “It’s jammed. The windows! Push the windows out! Lift the latches and push on the bottom until the window opens.” She had no idea whether the windows would simply fall out or be locking at a ninety degree angle. In either case, the kids would be able to get out, though they’d have to jump.

  “What latch, Miss Chadwick?” a boy asked.

  She rushed in his direction. “The red latch on the bottom of—” Her eyes fell on the window the boy was pointing to.

  “There’s no latch,” the boy said, his eyes now filling with tears. Phoebe focused her eyes on the red contraption at the bottom edge of the window, but the latch that was supposed to be there had been sawed off.

  “There’s no latch on this one either!” a girl screamed from the back of the bus.

  The kids rushed to the windows and Phoebe watched helplessly as they hit their fists against the glass. Before she could stop them in their futile attempts to break the windows, a sound from outside made her snap her head around.

  The crossing gates were lowering and the warni
ng lights started to flash.

  Her mouth went dry, while the horrified screams of the children filled her ears.

  4

  Scott let a vile curse roll over his lips.

  It had taken him longer than expected to find the correct railroad crossing on Google Maps. Figuring out that the train would collide with the school bus today at about two p.m.—the same day he’d had the premonition—had been easy. It had only taken him a minute to check the schedule of the White Sox to realize they’d be playing Kansas City the next day and that Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac was supposed to sing God Bless America at the seventh-inning stretch.

  Kicking his Ducati into a higher gear, Scott raced down the street. He knew this part of the Chicago suburbs well. Well enough to avoid any known speed traps, where the police lay in wait. He couldn’t afford to get held up by a cop. Every second counted. All he’d had time for, once he’d figured out the location of the impending accident, was to shove the largest wrench he could find in the garage into his leather jacket and jump on his bike. An axe or a steel cutter would have been better tools, but he’d had no time to look for them. He could only hope that what he’d brought would be strong enough.

  Scott slowed at the next intersection, cursing at the red light. When it switched to green, he was already in the middle of it, turning left, leaning almost forty-five degrees to the side with his bike, before the oncoming traffic had moved even an inch. Honking sounds chased him, but he ignored them and gained speed again.

  “Three more blocks,” he ground out as he drove past a bank. He caught a glimpse of the display on the outside, which announced the temperature as well as the time: two p.m. The driver would have already left the bus and locked the kids and their teacher inside.

  Another intersection, but this time he didn’t have to slow down. The side streets had stop signs.

  “Two more blocks.” It was almost like a chant, a prayer he sent to the powers that be, the powers that had given him this gift of foresight. A gift he’d at first cursed because it had made him different. But one he’d learned to appreciate with the help of his adoptive father, the man with whom he had so much in common, including this gift.