Chapter 67 - The Train to the Citadel
Consciousness returned in waves of agonizing rhythm: the heavy, mechanical clatter of steel wheels on iron tracks, the smell of creosote and diesel exhaust, and the bitter cold of a refrigerated freight car.
Elena opened her eyes.
Her wrists were bound with heavy zip-ties to an iron stanchion bolted to the wall of the swaying boxcar. Her head throbbed violently where the rifle butt had struck her, and her clothes were stiff with dried seawater and dried blood.
Across the dim interior of the car, Julian was slumped against a wooden crate, his hands cuffed behind him. His face was nearly unrecognizable from swelling, but his chest was rising and falling in shallow, painful heaves.
"Julian," Elena whispered, her throat dry as sand.
Julian stirred, letting out a weak groan. He opened one swollen eye, blinking through the darkness. "Elena... the baby..."
"They took her," Elena said, her voice shaking with an uncontainable, volcanic rage. "Your father has her. Where are they taking us?"
"The Citadel," Julian muttered, leaning his head back against the wood. "The old family estate in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. It’s built on a granite cliff overlooking the deep Atlantic trench. It was constructed during the Cold War... submarine docks beneath the rock, radar-shielded bunker network. If Alistair gets her behind those blast doors, an entire army couldn't breach it."
Elena tested the nylon zip-ties around her wrists. The plastic bit deep into her skin, drawing fresh blood, but she didn't stop pulling. Pain was nothing now. Pain was just fuel.
"Why didn't he kill you?" Elena demanded, glaring at him through the gloom. "He ordered them to leave you for dead. Why are you on this train?"
"Because Victoria wants me to watch," Julian said bitterly. "She never forgave me for taking your side. She wants me to witness the final consolidation of the trust before she puts a bullet in my head."
"And your father?"
"Alistair doesn't care about Victoria either," Julian said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "You heard him. He views human beings as biological code. He’s going to use the child’s DNA to authenticate the master offshore accounts in Zurich and Singapore. Once the funds transfer to the new trust entity... he’ll discard Victoria just like he discarded me."
Elena stopped pulling against the ties. She looked down at her right boot.
Concealed inside the lining of her heavy leather heel—a trick her dockworker father had taught her when she was twelve years old—was a two-inch ceramic utility blade. The contractors had stripped her of her sidearm and belt, but they hadn't checked the interior seam of her work boots.
Elena bent her leg upward, gritting her teeth as the movement pulled against her battered abdominal muscles. She hooked the heel against the iron stanchion and wrenched her foot sideways until the hidden seam split with a dull *pop*.
The ceramic blade dropped into the straw on the floor.
"Julian," Elena whispered, her eyes burning with lethal focus. "Distract the guard when the train slows down."
"Elena, there are six armed contractors in the next car—"
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"I don't care if there are sixty," Elena hissed, slicing the edge of the blade against the tough plastic around her wrists. "They took my daughter. And tonight, I’m wiping the Montgomery name off the face of this earth."
***
