The Domino Pattern

disconcerting into the spooky. Bayta and I had spent so much time in places like this that I hardly noticed. “Third car, you said?” I confirmed as we made our way through the second car and into the vestibule connecting it with the third.

“Yes, near the back.” She shivered. “I don’t like looking at dead bodies.”

“They tell me you get used to it,” I said.

“Have you gotten used to it?”

“Not really.”

We were halfway down the car when I caught a subtle shift in lighting and shadow somewhere ahead. “Hold it,” I murmured, catching Bayta’s arm and bringing us both to a halt.

“What is it?” she murmured back.

For a moment I didn’t answer, wondering if I’d imagined it. I stood motionlessly, staring at the stacks of crates and the meandering aisles between them.

And then, I saw it again.

So did Bayta. “Frank?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I said grimly.

We’d come way back here to examine the victims’ bodies. Apparently, someone else had beaten us to it.

TWELVE

“What do we do?” Bayta whispered tensely.

I watched the shifting shadows, thinking hard. Chances were good that our intruder was unaware of our presence—the fact that he was still moving around argued that assumption. If we kept it quiet, we might be able to sneak the rest of the way to the bodies and catch him in the act. Whatever that act turned out to be.

On the other hand, sneaking up on a murderer carried its own set of risks. But standing here in nervous indecision would be to lose by default. “Let’s take a look,” I said, slipping the kwi out of my pocket. It was tingling with Bayta’s activation command as I settled it into place around the knuckles of my right hand. Tucking Bayta close in behind my left side, where she’d be partially protected and out of my line of fire, I started forward.

We were nearly to the gap where I’d estimated the earlier movement had come from when I realized that the motion had ceased. In fact, as I thought about it, I realized it might have stopped up to a minute or even a minute and a half earlier.

I stopped, turning to put our backs against the nearest stack of crates as I searched for some clue as to where he might have gone. Nothing. Whoever this guy was, he was quick and smart.

But then, I was quick and smart, too. And I had a huge advantage he didn’t know about: I had a weapon. Resting my thumb on the kwi‘s activation button, I gestured Bayta to follow and headed in.

No one jumped us before we reached the gap. Pressing my shoulder against the side of the last stack, I eased a cautious eye around the corner.

Wedged into the narrow space between crate stacks were four coffin-sized tanks. The lid of the nearest was cracked open, while the other three appeared to still be sealed. The intruder himself was nowhere to be seen. Touching Bayta’s arm, I slipped around the corner into the impromptu mortuary.

“What do you think he wanted?” Bayta asked quietly as I stopped beside the partially-open tank.

“For starters, not to be caught,” I said, getting a grip on the lid and experimentally pushing it closed.

It latched with a loud click that could probably have been heard fifteen meters away. “Which is why he left it open instead of closing it and trying to pretend no one had been here,” I went on, popping the lid open again. It made the same loud click as it had when I’d closed it.

And then, from somewhere near the front of the car, I heard an answering sound. Not another click, but the thud of someone bumping into one of the crate stacks. Our intruder, it appeared, was making a run for it.

“Stay close,” I murmured to Bayta, and headed at a dead run back toward the vestibule.

Or at least, I tried to make it look and sound like a dead run. But I knew this trick, and I wasn’t about to be taken in so easily. The suspicious-noise ploy was a classic way to get the hunter charging off in the wrong direction while the prey slipped away through the dark of night to freedom.

Here, with only a single exit from the baggage car, slipping away for more hide-and-seek was pretty much a waste of effort. Hence, the prey had opted for suspicious-noise variant number two: lure the hunter into ambush range and clobber him.

Which was why my dead run wasn’t nearly as reckless as it looked. I was in fact carefully checking every side aisle as I ran toward and past it, my kwi ready to fire in whichever direction it was needed. Between aisles I kept a careful watch on the tops of the stacks in case the intruder had scaled one of them in hopes of pulling a Douglas Fairbanks on me.

And with my full attention shifting between right, left, and up, I completely missed the low trip wire that had been stretched out across the aisle in front of me.

I hit it hard, catching my right foot and launching myself into an unintended dive across the dim landscape. I barely managed to get my hands under me before I slammed chest-first into the floor. Even with my arms absorbing some of the impact I hit hard enough to see stars.

For a long, horrible second I couldn’t move, my brain spinning, my lungs fighting to recover the air that had just been knocked out of them. Then, through the haze, I felt someone grab my upper arms. I tried to bring the kwi around to bear, but my arms weren’t responding and my wrists burned with pain. The hands gripping me pulled me up and half over, and I saw to my relief that it was Bayta. “Where is he?” I wheezed at her.

“He’s gone,” she said, fighting to drag me over toward the nearest crates. I got my legs working enough to help push, and a moment later was sitting more or less upright with her crouching beside me. It was, I reflected grimly, the perfect time for an ambusher to attack.

Only no one did. Apparently, he really was gone. “Are you all right?” I asked Bayta, still working on getting my wind back.

“I’m fine,” she assured me, eyeing me warily. “The question is, are you all right?”

“Aside from feeling like an idiot, sure,” I said sourly, experimentally flexing my wrists. They still hurt, but they were starting to recover. “No chance of catching him now, I guess.”

“Do we need to actually catch him?” Bayta asked. “Or do we just need to know who he is?”

I peered up at her. “You have a plan, don’t you?”

She nodded toward the front of the car. “I’ve moved a conductor into the last passenger car,” she said. “He’s watching to see who comes out of the baggage section.”

“Nice,” I complimented her. “I don’t suppose you and the Spiders have figured out yet how to relay images back and forth.”

“Our communication doesn’t work that way,” she said. “But he doesn’t have to send me an image or even a description. The conductors know who’s assigned to which seat. All we have to do is see where he lands, and we’ll have him.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. “But warn him not to get too close. We don’t want our friend to know he’s being followed.”

“He won’t be followed,” Bayta said. “The conductor in the rear car will stay there and merely pass him off to a Spider who’s already in place ahead. In the two cars after that, if they’re needed, there will be some mites working inside the ceiling systems who will watch his movements. The next car after that has another conductor, and so on.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “All those dit rec mysteries I’ve been pushing on you have obviously done you a world of good.” I nodded toward the trip wire behind her. “Let’s have a look at our friend’s handiwork.”

Successful booby traps, in my fortunately limited personal experience, tended toward one of three main flavors: simple, elegant, or opportunistic. This one managed to be all three.