Andy forced himself to his feet, his calves twitching as he broke into a shambling, stumbling jog. He burst back into the burning sun, forcing his legs of jelly into action.
He couldn’t miss this car. He just couldn’t.
* * *
The office chair’s rusted springs shrieked in protest as Lincoln threw himself back against the cracked seat back. The desk drawers sat upside down in front of him in an untidy pile, punishment for revealing nothing.
Except one. The bottom desk drawer sat defiantly in place, refusing to budge. It had to contain the key to get out.
Two hours, and he was no closer to getting that drawer open. He’d wracked his brain for any clues Eddie might have dangled. Any half-comment about a key or a throwaway line about escaping.
Lincoln leaped up to study the door. Again. It was painted shut, but the metal around the keyhole was shiny and worn, as if it could be opened. As if it had been opened. He dropped to his knees and peered into the keyhole, the light breeze brushing his face. A wind heating with the morning.
Lava bubbled within him. This was what they wanted him to do, and if they were watching, they’d take delight in his discomfort and his inability to solve what he would end up realizing was a simple problem. He stormed back to the desk and its recalcitrant drawer. He kicked at it and it didn’t even shudder. But the pains shooting up his leg did.
He paced up and back along the pin board. Letters from the Railway Department—pleading letters of request stamped with rejection. Announcements of the closure of the line, sad but unavoidable. Papers filled with tiny fading numbers lined up in neat columns—departures and arrivals. Lincoln traced a finger along the line of numbers on the same row as Curdimurka Crossing Station. A dash. Trains didn’t stop here. He glanced to the top of the timetable and found a number that slowed time. He traced a finger along the letters from the department.
They were dated fifteen years ago.
Lincoln’s head swung around at the faint blaring sound beyond the locked door. Was that a train horn? He ground his teeth, needing to focus on the task at hand. He stepped along the wall, and none of the other papers revealed anything. Nothing but a series of letters from the Railway Department stamped in an angry red with letters that screamed the request had been rejected. Whatever the stationmaster had requested, he’d been knocked back. Hard.
Lincoln’s frustration percolated, feeding the growing thoughts jostling for attention. Eliza’s rejection. Again. Andy putting the blame on him for his problems rather than owning them. Bree’s invasion of his privacy and ruining his chances with Eliza. He searched for answers—for meaning.
His stomach rumbled, and for a moment he drifted back to his regular table at The Daily Grill on Geary Street, a steaming lobster potpie under his nose. He hiked the steep incline to Nob Hill. A tiny part of him yearned to be home, even if it meant facing the army of divorce lawyers waiting for him, legal guns drawn.
The mere thought of Dianne’s letter stabbed him into action. He shot to his feet and wrapped both hands around the door handle—jimmying it, then jerking it harder and harder hoping to force it open. He threw his shoulder into the peeling wood. “Anybody?”
Lincoln charged back into the waiting room. He flung open the already-open locker doors, their metallic banging swamping the small room. He sank to his knees, the last of the echoes ringing in his ears.
There was another sound. Something soft.
Beyond the door.
Someone was here.
Lincoln strained to hear it. Definitely footsteps. He raced back to the window but saw nothing but the railway station sign, now casting shadows across the platform. The railway signal still showed red.
His ragged breath fogged the window as he pounded on it, and it shuddered under his attack. A way out presented itself. He rushed to the desk and lifted the office chair, the heavy steel cold in his hands. He ran with a scream and hurled the chair at the glass.
The chair bounced off the window with a sharp clang, and he scrambled to one side to avoid it on the rebound. He stood blinking as the glass shuddered and then stopped. Lincoln kicked against the door, and another piercing jolt shuddered up his leg. He slid to the floor, his will leaking from him.
The padding sounded again. Footsteps, light and—to an ear well-trained in the art of waiting for a woman to arrive—with the slightest hint of heels. Now he was hearing things.
A throat cleared from behind the door. A polite clearing, then a sigh.
Lincoln peered through the keyhole. No one was there, but the breeze delivered a heady waft of perfume—an exotic mix of cinnamon and rose, tree bark and rammed earth. He pressed his cheek to the window, trying to see as far down the platform as the glass would allow.
On the bench brown legs were uncrossed, then recrossed. Lincoln’s gaze started with the white sandal straps and roamed up shapely calves to a white-dotted-and-handprint-patterned dress.
The woman from the airport.
* * *
The light blurred halfway up the rock wall, in and out of focus as Bree blinked away jet lag and emotion. The light could only mean one thing. The ravine had another entrance. There was a way out. She wouldn’t have to climb the dizzying heights of the whole wall.
The voices raged inside her. The ones who always doubted her; the ones Sam had tangled with over the years. The stinging rebuke of fear, this time sneering with a reminder of her hatred of heights. The warmth of Sam’s voice encouraging her that she was good enough to overcome anything. The barman at The Second Fiddle on Broadway telling her she was nothing but another dime-a-dozen singer with a guitar. Her girls cheering at her impromptu kitchen table concert. The head of the recording studio in Nashville switching off her demo with a snarl that he was hearing nothing special.
In each of these exchanges she sat silent on the sidelines—like she always did—unable to speak, unable to defend herself. The voices continued, as she waited for the one voice that always came over the top. The one that had so shattered her self-confidence that it would never be any more than a loose collection of broken pieces.
The sobs came freely as she rocked back and forth on her swag, hugging her legs for comfort as much as warmth. She trailed her gaze up the wall, following a crack in the rock that led to a flat section, then another crack with places for her hands and feet. There was a definite path she could climb, but she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t make it.
Bree jammed her eyes shut to drown out the voices as a familiar voice came to her aid. Her beloved Sam. Knowing she could do this. Knowing she had it in her. Her fragile, fleeting courage sprouted with the watering of his encouragement. Then, as if sensing her confidence rising, the voices were back. She was no good at music. She would never be good enough to achieve her dream. There was no future in music and a girl like her would never survive in New York.
A strong voice flooded her with comfort. Sam.
“You can do this, Breezy. We need you to do this.”
She felt sure Sam was in the ravine with her. The fear took one last swing—pointing out the impossibility and the certainty of doom. But Sam’s voice wouldn’t be denied, and Bree now heard it on the outside as much as the inside.
“We believe in you, Bree. You can do this.”
She looked up the ravine wall and saw a ridge, about halfway to the light emanating from the cave. She could rest there. She didn’t have to go all the way, not at first.