Cover Your Tracks Read online

  COVER

  YOUR

  TRACKS

  A NOVEL BY DACO S. AUFFENORDE

  TURNER

  Turner Publishing Company

  Nashville, Tennessee

  www.turnerpublishing.com

  Cover Your Tracks

  Copyright © 2020 Daco Auffenorde. All rights reserved.

  This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design: Emily Mahon

  Book design: Tim Holtz

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Upon Request

  9781684425501 Paperback

  9781684425518 Hardcover

  9781684425518 eBook

  Printed in the United States of America

  17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For my sister, Audrey Clark

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 1

  A violent gust of wind rocked the passenger train as it rolled down the tracks inside Glacier National Park. The cars yanked and pulled from one side of the track to the other, zigzagging like pinballs traveling through a narrow chute. Without any apparent reason, the brakes on the train squealed, and twenty-three cars and the powerful engine kangarooed into a hard deceleration.

  Margo Fletcher, who was seated toward the rear of the train inside a viewing car, tightened her seatbelt and grasped the arms of her seat. At eight and a half months pregnant, she couldn’t afford a fall. Her heart rate shot into overdrive, and her baby shifted as if turning a complete somersault. Her stomach clenched as if she were experiencing a contraction. Unable to mask the pain and the worry, she groaned. She hoped the baby hadn’t turned breech, prayed that she wasn’t going into labor.

  A sandy-haired man sitting a few seats away stood up, holding onto his seatback with only one hand for support. He was built like a pro linebacker, strong enough to keep himself upright. “Are you okay?” he asked her. “The baby?”

  She nodded and looked out the window. It would be dark soon. The higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains had been visible only a few minutes ago but were now obscured by a translucent veil of snow. Before she’d gotten on the train, the weather report had predicted light snow, not a blizzard.

  When her stomach cramped again, she grimaced. Her neck was moist with perspiration. Surprise deluges of sweat had become common with this pregnancy.

  The man continued to stare at her. She met his gaze. He’d been sitting in the passenger car for almost an hour, and as far as she knew, he hadn’t so much as looked her way. Not that she cared—she enjoyed the solitude.

  “Do you know why we’re stopping?” she asked. “It’s too early.”

  His hard stare made her uneasy, although she couldn’t say why. More disturbing, he didn’t answer her question, which meant either that he didn’t know any more than she did or that what he knew wasn’t good. When snow slapped the windows hard, Margo covered her face as if the wind and ice had penetrated the glass. The man looked out at the mountains and then across the aisle and down into the gulch. He was searching for something. Or assessing some risk he wanted to keep to himself.

  She glanced toward the back of the car. No one else looked unduly concerned. An older couple sat three rows back. The husband seemed to be reassuring his wife, but it was impossible to hear what they were saying. Across the aisle, a group of teenagers were laughing as if they were having the time of their lives on a rollercoaster in a Six Flags amusement park.

  Margo turned back around and tried to breathe, which wasn’t easy given the stress of the moment and her late term. Her throat constricted. She coughed and searched for her bottled water, which was gone.

  They were in the middle of nowhere, and trains didn’t make routine stops in the middle of nowhere. Something must’ve gone wrong, but what? Mechanical failure? Engineer error? Cattle blocking the tracks? That couldn’t be right; the train wouldn’t stop for an animal. My God, was another train heading toward them? Not possible, not in this age of automation.

  Lightning flashed across the sky. Another onslaught of snowfall slapped the windows, and again she recoiled. She hugged her belly and glanced up at the man, who was still standing and looking out the windows. His knuckles were white from gripping the seatback. Why was he still standing there? He should’ve sat down and fastened his seatbelt.

  He cupped a hand over his eyes, as if shielding them from a harsh glare, then sighed loudly.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked in a quavering voice.

  The shriek of the brakes intensified. The man fought to stay upright as the viewing car shook back and forth with hard jolts. In California, they’d call this an earthquake. My God, what if the train derailed?

  “Sit down, buddy!” the older gentleman behind them shouted to the man. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “My Lord!” The older woman screamed.

  “Sir, please tell me what’s wrong,” Margo implored. “I can’t see anything in front of us.”

  He met her eyes, then shouted to all the passengers, “People, we have a life-and-death situation. We have to get to the back of the train. Now!”

  What? Walk through a train that was about to careen off the track? He really was out of his mind. But he sounded so authoritative, like a cop.

  “What for?” one of the teenagers asked.

  “There’s no time for a debate,” he said. “Let’s move!” He looked at Margo. “We have to go now if you want to live!”

  CHAPTER 2

  Whatever was happening, Margo was not about to try to walk, not in her condition. If she fell, the baby could be harmed. That wasn’t a risk she was willing to take.

  Refusing to take no for an answer, the sandy-haired man held his hands out to her, bracing himself against the seat with his body. She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Listen up, everyone,” he said. “An avalanche is heading down that mountain. There’s no way the train can avoid it. It will bury us all alive.”

  Immobilized, she could only stare into his steely blue eyes. The sky lit up with bolts of electricity. The wind had become even more ferocious, and what seemed like boulders of snow bombarded their train car.

  The public-address system crackled on. “L
adies and gentlemen, this is your conductor. Everyone, please remain seated. Do not panic. We’re making an emergency stop. The train is riding rough because the engineer is applying the emergency brakes. Perfectly normal. Please stay calm and remain seated. Doing so is the best way to avoid injuries. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.”

  Don’t panic? Stay calm? The last thing anyone could be feeling was calm.

  “We have to get to the back of the train!” the man bellowed again.

  Why in the world would he tell them to get to the back of the train? It didn’t make sense. If they … Then she understood. Getting to the back would be logical only if the train couldn’t stop in time. If a snow slide hit them, the train could very well derail. Which meant that, depending on the timing of the avalanche, the back of the train was the safest place to be.

  Her fear level spiked a few notches higher. Blood rushed to her head, and her ears started to pound. She hugged her belly. How she wished the act of surrounding her child with her arms would be enough to protect the baby from a potentially fatal train crash.

  As an ER doctor, Margo Fletcher made a living staying calm in life-and-death situations. Some of her colleagues whispered that she was detached, a machine—she knew that. She was far from a machine, but had spent years trying to cultivate that image at work. Emotion interfered with efficiency. Now, for one of the few times in her adult life, she was paralyzed. She had no idea what to do.

  She tried to take the conductor’s advice—don’t panic. Panic resulted in bad decisions. Panic turned otherwise good doctors into quacks.

  “Everyone on this train sitting like stone figurines thinks I’m panicking, but it’s the other way around,” the insistent man said as if reading her mind. “Get up and follow me. Do it for the baby.”

  “The conductor said to stay seated. That’s the only logical thing to do. Look at me. I can’t afford to fall or be struck by a flying object.” But what if this guy was right? If so, they could die—her baby could die. She made an imperceptible movement to stand but sat back again. If a flight attendant on an airplane had told her to stay in her seat and hunker down, she wouldn’t have argued, not for a second, no matter what another passenger said. Why was she questioning the conductor?

  Fear continued to immobilize her. All she could do was stare up at the man as the brakes grabbed and squealed, as the train refused to stop. How long did it take for a goddamn train to stop?

  The man pointed toward the window and said, “Look up there if you don’t believe me.”

  He moved so that she could see out the window, and what she saw almost stopped her heart. Some distance ahead, massive mounds of snow were sliding down the sides of the mountain, like the earth’s tectonic plates shifting and crumbling. From their relative position, the avalanche appeared to be moving in slow motion, but logic said that was only an illusion. She flashed to the tsunami that had devastated so many countries surrounding the Indian Ocean back in, when was it, 2004, 2005?

  Why wouldn’t the train stop?

  CHAPTER 3

  The elderly woman sitting behind Margo whimpered. The husband patted the wife’s arm. Damn it all. There was no more time to analyze and debate the chance of survival. She had one solid fact—that avalanche wasn’t stopping; the snow wouldn’t slide back up the mountain. That left one variable—either the train would stop in time or it wouldn’t. Fifty-fifty in her mind. The worst possible odds, because her baby’s life depended on the flip of a coin.

  Often, in the ER, she had less time and fewer facts than she had now to make a decision that could determine whether another person lived or died. When treating a patient, she could call on objectivity and detachment to guide her. In a medical crisis, she never hesitated. Here, both she and her baby were the patients.

  The baby kicked hard, making the decision for them. Margo unclipped her seatbelt and offered her hands to the man. He pulled her upright and helped her face the rear of the train.

  The elderly couple sat frozen in their seats, gawping at Margo and the man. The teenagers had quieted but also remain seated. Everyone was petrified. Why were they just sitting there?

  The man guided Margo down the aisle, keeping her upright against the violent rocking of the train car. When they reached the elderly couple, he said, “Come with us. It’s your only chance.”

  The woman looked at her husband, who shook his head.

  The sandy-haired man turned to the teenagers. “You guys. Stand up and move!”

  They ignored him too, turning their heads away.

  “You’re crazy, buddy,” the old man stammered. “Sit back down. You’re putting all of us in danger.”

  “Listen to him,” Margo told the others. “I trust him.” She tried to sound self-assured, but the truth was, a part of her didn’t know why the hell she was listening to this stranger. Her statistician father would say she was making a snap decision without weighing all the factors. But those other factors weren’t accessible now, and she’d weighed what facts she had.

  No one moved.

  Margo was a doctor who knew how to take charge. She was also a mother risking the life of her unborn child. Maybe she could convince the others. She glanced out the viewing window. The train was closing in on the avalanche. The odds of the train stopping were far less than fifty-fifty. She saw the truth with her own eyes. The odds were ninety-ten against the train—no, against the passengers. Maybe worse than that.

  “Please, all of you,” she said. “Just look out that window. The mountain is crumbling. Please just look out there. We’re going to be buried under tons of snow. The back of the train is the safest place.”

  When the elderly woman looked out the window, her expression turned to horror. She tried to stand, but her husband grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. “We’re supposed to stay in our seats, Evelyn,” he scolded.

  Evelyn complied. The look of abject terror on her face turned to a look of resignation. Margo had seen that look before—on patients who’d accepted the fact that they would soon die.

  “Come with us,” the man said to the older man. “Don’t kill yourself and your wife. She wants to come. Just look at her. She has the right.”

  The older man shook his head and held onto his wife.

  “Listen to me, sir,” he said to the older gentleman. The older man looked away.

  The sandy-haired man shrugged. “We’re not going to convince them.”

  Margo struggled as she continued down the aisle. She steadied herself by grasping one seatback after another. She stumbled, but the man caught her and stopped her fall.

  “Take it slower,” he said and continued ushering Margo toward the back.

  Then Margo suddenly realized her purse was locked inside her sleeper cabin. But that wasn’t all she’d forgotten. “My coat!” She turned to head back to her seat.

  “Wait here, I’ll get it,” the man replied. He was surprisingly agile for a man his size.

  She continued her painstaking journey down the aisle, more slowly now that the man couldn’t help her. When he returned with her coat, she hurriedly put it on, and they moved faster, leaving the other passengers behind while also ignoring the conductor’s repeated announcements to stay seated. They navigated their way through another car, encountering more worried passengers. The sandy-haired man tried to warn them, but no one would listen.

  “We’re almost there,” he said.

  A passenger, a man, shouted, “Jesus Christ, sit down! You two are crazy.”

  Margo slowed and pointed to the white, sliding mass coming down the mountainside. No one paid any attention to her. She realized that they’d all seen the impending avalanche, knew what was happening, but were in mass denial—denial that the idiotic conductor fueled with his repetitive announcements.

  They reached the last pass-through compartment. A sign on the wall read No Admittance. The man tried the door, which didn’t give. Then, in a remarkable feat of strength, he forcibly opened the door. Cold wind swept inside, so
bone chilling that she gasped. A flurry of snow invaded the car. Angry passengers shouted for the man to shut the door and sit down.

  “Let’s go!” the man said to her.

  Margo stood immobile in the doorway. There were no protective walls shielding them from the elements. The only way to reach the last car was to cross an open-air metal platform. She couldn’t risk it. One hard jolt or a strong gust of wind, and she’d be thrown from the train.

  Across the platform, a sign on that door read Private. Do Not Enter. Silly, but the word private made her want to turn back.

  The other passengers continued to demand that they close the door. Some yelled out obscenities. Some even made threats to harm the man. Fortunately, no one attacked them—not that they would challenge her physically imposing protector.

  She blinked her eyes and brushed a hand across her belly. The chilling wind sent rivers of adrenaline flowing through her body. The man extended his arm. She accepted it and allowed him to guide her onto the platform. The back door to the train slammed shut. The wind smacked her in the face, and snowflakes landed in her eyes. God, it was cold. The platform shimmied and rattled. Following this man might very well have been the biggest miscalculation she’d ever made in her life.

  CHAPTER 4

  The man guided Margo across the platform to the back door of the private passenger car. He tried the door, but it wouldn’t open.

  “Hold on to the railing,” he said.

  She clung to the railing with both hands while he tinkered with the door. In the distance, the moaning and rumbling of the avalanche grew louder. Whatever she’d imagined that she might’ve heard before paled in comparison to this reality. Her insides churned, and she became nauseated.

  Miraculously, the door to the last car opened. Why didn’t he just break the door down? He certainly had the strength to do it. Leaving the door open, he led her inside and over to a chair. Not only was this private passenger car empty, it was unlike any other car on the train. The space resembled a small studio apartment. The walls were paneled in dark mahogany. The sitting area was furnished with a chenille sofa, leather club chairs, and side tables that matched the mahogany walls. There was a dining area that included a full bar. The luxury car looked brand new, untouched and elegant. How strange it seemed. Didn’t this kind of extravagance on railroad trains die out in the last century? Maybe even the century before that?