Chapter 9 - The Trestle Drop
The wind howled through the iron girders of the trestle bridge like a chorus of screaming specters. Far below, the river churned black and furious, frothing with white foam over jagged boulders. The train rumbled forward, wheels shrieking against the freezing steel rails.
"We jump on the gravel slope past the third pillar," Richard shouted over the roar of the rushing wind, his grip tightening around Ava’s ribs. "It’s a thirty-foot slide into the brush. I’ll take the brunt of the impact."
Ava looked down into the abyss, her heart hammering frantically against her ribs. Every instinct screamed that Richard was lying. If Karen was truly working with him, why would she have pressed the detonator in the hospital? Why would she have looked at Ava with that devastating, final gaze of apology?
*Pain is the only thing keeping you alert,* her mother’s voice echoed in her memory.
Ava’s right hand drifted silently into the pocket of her plastic raincoat. Her fingers brushed against the cold, unbent medical scalpel that Cole had dropped during the scuffle on the crate. She had palmed it when she dragged herself backward.
"Get ready!" Richard yelled, stepping out onto the narrow exterior ledge of the cargo car, his boots balancing precariously on the brake housing. "On three! One... two—"
With every ounce of strength remaining in her shattered body, Ava drove the surgical blade straight into the soft flesh of Richard's burned neck.
Richard let out a strangled, bubbling gasp. His eyes bulged in shock. His grip loosened just enough for Ava to wrench herself violently backward into the freight car.
Losing his balance on the wet steel lip, Richard flailed, his boots slipping on the slick metal edge. He caught the corner frame with one hand, dangling over the churning river below, blood pouring down his collar from the puncture wound.
"Ava!" he roared, coughing crimson against the howling wind. "You won't survive an hour out there! They will dissect you!"
Ava crawled backward across the floorboards on her elbows, dragging her broken leg behind her, her eyes fixed on his slipping fingers. "You aren't my father."
Richard's bloody fingers lost their purchase on the cold steel. With a final, silent curse etched into his face, he fell backward into the dark, his body vanishing into the roaring spray of the river below.
Ava collapsed against the floorboards, gasping for breath, surrounded by the bodies of Cole and the masked operative.
The train roared off the bridge and plunged back into the dark tunnel of the mountain pass.
Suddenly, from the chest rig of the dead operative lying two feet away, a radio crackled to life with a static-heavy hiss.
"Strike Team Alpha, report," a calm, feminine voice commanded over the speaker.
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Ava froze. The voice was unmistakably clear.
It was Dr. Harrison.
