Ace on the Run Read online

  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 publisher. 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 school 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 warning 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.

  Scott’s entire body was tense, the muscles in his neck rigid, his jaw clenched. The thought that he might be too late made him turn the handle even harder, sending more gas into the engine to make the Ducati go even faster. If the police caught him now, it wouldn’t matter. In a few seconds he’d be at the railroad crossing, and once they saw what was happening, they wouldn’t stop him.

  “Come on,” he ground out and saw the yellow vehicle in the distance now as he cleared a slight hump in the road.

  The street was almost deserted. No other cars waited at this side of the railroad crossing, the gates of which had already lowered. The bus blocked his view of the street on the other side of the crossing, making it impossible to see if there was anybody else on whose help he could count.

  Just before the gates, Scott skidded to a halt, jumped off the bike, killed the engine and with the same movement, pulled the kickstand up. He didn’t bother taking his helmet off. There was no time for it.

  Running between the middle of the gates, he charged toward the bus, pulling the wrench from the inside of his leather jacket and gripping it tightly with his gloved hand. When he reached the passenger door of the bus, he saw several kids kicking against the glass from the inside. Screams accompanied their fruitless efforts. Safety glass didn’t break that easily.

  “Get away from the door!” he screamed, but realized they didn’t hear him.

  He lifted his visor and tried again. “Away from the door!” He slapped his hand against the door and lifted the arm holding the wrench.

  The kids finally looked at him and seemed to understand.

  “Step back! Cover your eyes!”

  The moment the kids had backed away from the door, he lowered his visor again and hit the glass panel with his wrench. The glass of the left panel shattered. Then he did the same with the right panel, until it too shattered. He gripped the frame and pulled it toward him to open at least one side of the door. He jerked it open with sheer force and willpower. He tried to do the same with the right side, but it was stuck and didn’t move an inch. The opening he’d created was narrow, but it would have to do. The kids would be able to squeeze through.

  “Now all out!” he commanded, throwing a glance over his shoulder. In the distance there was a movement: the train.

  “Quickly!” he screamed and reached for the first child, lifting the girl down.
“Run to the side of the gates! Run!”

  One child after the next he helped out of the train, while he continued to urge them to hurry. “Quickly! Faster! Get to the other side! Run, damn it!”

  The kids were crying and screaming. He couldn’t avoid them cutting themselves on the glass shards as they tried to brace themselves while exiting the bus, but a few cuts and bruises were better than the alternative getting closer with each passing second.

  In the distance he heard sirens approaching. Somebody had called 9-1-1. But they wouldn’t be here in time to help with the evacuation. Despite his helmet, he heard the radio from the bus. Stevie Nicks was still singing, but he was familiar with the song, and knew it was coming to an end. And once the radio announcers were speaking, Scott knew he only had a few more seconds until the train would smash into the bus.

  “How many more?” he yelled.

  “Three!” came the panicked voice of an adult. The teacher.

  “Quickly!” Scott dragged the next child out of the train and shoved the girl in the direction of the gate. The next boy almost fell out of the bus, stumbling over his own feet. He righted him, making sure he had found his feet again, before reaching for the last one.

  “Run!” he commanded, his voice hoarse now, his heart beating like the locomotive that was fast approaching.

  Scott recognized the song reaching its last chords. “Shit!”

  A young woman appeared on the top step, hurrying down. She turned sideways to squeeze through the narrow opening, and he reached for her and pulled, but met with resistance. His gaze flew to her face. Her eyes went wide in horror as she tried to pull free of the bus, but failed.