The Night Shift(24)

Lights wink ahead. Ella stops at the edge of the forest, finally catching up with Jesse. They’re at a gravel road. A tall, chain-link fence spans the distance on either side of them. On the other side of the fence, railroad tracks. A platform, a gray concrete slab, borders the tracks. It’s not for passengers, a storage or work area for rail employees. Ella hears a train in the distance.

She watches as Jesse steps to the fence and grasps a section at the bottom near a support pole, and yanks upward. Someone has cut this piece of fence so it opens like a hatch. Jesse lifts the fence and crawls under.

“I don’t think this is a good—”

Before Ella finishes the sentence, Jesse is running toward the platform. “Hurry! It’s coming.”

The rumble is louder. Fuck. A train. Ella’s concern about breaking into a rail yard turns to terror as she watches Jesse standing on the ledge of the platform, facing the tracks. The ground is trembling now. Ella yanks at the fence and climbs through the opening, then sprints toward Jesse, who is lit by the approaching train’s headlamp, her shadow stretching across the platform.

“Jesse!” Ella screams as she pumps her legs over the grass and weeds. Her heart is pounding.

Jesse stands precariously close to the platform ledge. The roar of the train buries Ella’s pleas.

The train is speeding toward the platform. The scene is surreal, Ella struggling to process it. She has to reach Jesse before …

The teen stands at the platform’s lip, her arms raised and spread, head raised to the sky like she’s on the prow of the Titanic.

Ella makes it to the platform with little time to spare and finds Jesse still in the same position. Jesse turns as the train approaches and gives Ella a look. A faraway smile.

It’s the first time Ella has seen Jesse smile.

“No!” Ella screams.





CHAPTER 20


CHRIS





Chris lies in the dark, the city lights twinkling through the thin sheers covering the window in Clare’s bedroom.

Her voice breaks the quiet. “Is something wrong?”

Chris waits for the briefest of moments. “No, why do you ask?”

“You’ve just seemed quiet since the party,” she says. “My friends weren’t giving you a hard time about your job, were they?”

“No. Not that I’d care if they did.”

That is met with a long silence. Then: “They’re good guys, if you get to know them.”

“If you say so.”

“I do, actually,” Clare says. It isn’t biting, it’s earnest. That’s the thing with Clare, you can’t get her ire up. How can she be so good? The better question is how can someone so good be with him? And why is he sporting for a fight?

“Maybe I should get going,” he says.

She faces him on the bed now. “Get going? It’s late. What’s going on, Chris? Are you mad at me? Did I do something—what’s going on?”

He examines this lovely woman in the faint light. Her strong jaw and perfectly sculpted eyebrows. Beauty inside and out. What’s next isn’t an epiphany, since he’s experienced it before, but more of a piercing revelation: Clare doesn’t deserve his shit. And he should quit pushing her away out of fear that she’ll leave when she understands who he really is.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

The look in her eyes nearly causes him to chicken out.

“What is it?” She swallows audibly.

Chris takes in a deep breath. And he tells her. About grisly murders on New Year’s Eve 1999. About his brother’s arrest. About Vince’s release for insufficient evidence. About his disappearance. About the adoption, his name change.

While Clare absorbs it all, he reaches for his phone and pulls up an app. It displays a map with small blue dots with dates next to them. When enlarged, the map reveals dots spanning from Ukraine to Paris to India.

“These are all the sightings of Vince over the years.”

Early on, Chris speculated that his brother had somehow managed to change his appearance. Cut the long hair, got plastic surgery, perhaps. Taken a job as a trucker or drug mule, something that kept him on the road abroad. Given Mr. Nirvana’s arrival in the U.S. today, Chris believes that his chance to find Vince has finally arrived, but he doesn’t tell Clare that.

Her first question surprises him. “You want to find him?”

“He’s my brother,” he says. “He couldn’t have done it. I was with him that night. And you don’t understand what he did for me. Who he is.”

“Then why did he run?”

Chris makes no reply. He knows she’ll find the answer; it’s only a quick Google search away: someone seen arguing with one of the victims outside the video store; his car in the lot after closing; the fingerprint; the knife in his locker at school. Vince disappearing the same day that the public defender somehow got him sprung.

Clare opens her mouth to speak but stops. She doesn’t ask the questions he’d always anticipated and had rehearsed answers for: Why didn’t you tell me? Chris Ford isn’t your real last name? Don’t you trust me? Did I ever really know you?

Instead, she releases a cynical laugh and says, more to herself than to Chris, “I thought you were going to say there’s another woman.”