Page 2 of Her Final Hours
“Maybe, but honestly, I can’t fault her. The long hours I pull and constantly being called into work. That’s no life for her. I’m surprised we lasted as long as we did.”
Don squinted out. He was looking for any potential hazards or obstacles. Hours of staring down the line could lull an engineer into an almost hypnotic state. It could make a person see things that weren’t there.
That was why he blinked hard when he saw it.
There was something strange up ahead on the tracks. It took him a moment to recognize that it was a figure, stumbling down the tracks, partially nude. In all his thirty years of working the rail, he considered himself lucky never to have been involved in a fatality on the tracks. What the hell was she doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Don’s heart raced, realizing this wasn’t just someone wandering across the tracks.
She was heading straight for them.
“You see what I’m seeing?” Don said as he quickly broughtthe rail grinder to a stop, throttling down and engaging the brake. If he’d been running a passenger train or freight, he could have engaged the emergency brake, but he still might have hit her, and there was a chance of derailing.
The rail grinder began to slow, the motion becoming jerky and uncertain as the brakes engaged and the grinding equipment stopped. There was a sudden and sharp grinding noise, accompanied by hissing and whistling from the brakes and hydraulic systems. The train settled into a state of relative stillness.
Don and Rodriguez jumped out of the train and hurried toward her.
As they got closer, stumbling over the uneven ground of rocks and wood, they realized it was a young teenager, maybe fourteen or sixteen, with bruises and cuts all over her body. Long, dirty chestnut hair cascaded down past her shoulders. Her wrists were bound with rope, her feet bare.
The teenager was in a daze and seemed barely conscious.
Within a few feet of them, her legs buckled, and she collapsed.
Don immediately returned to the cab and called for emergency services while Rodriguez tried to assess the situation. “Kid, hey, you can’t be in the tracks.”
As he placed a hand on her arm, she screamed, cowering back, lifting her bound, bloody wrists at him, squinting, tears streaming down her face.
“Hey. Hey. It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you. You’re safe.”
She looked like a wounded animal. Her hair was all matted, wet, and dirty.
Dry blood was on the left side of her face and at the corner of her swollen lips. The bruising painted a horrifying picture.
“I’m Frank. That back there is Don. A friend of mine. Do you have a name?”
“I…” she mumbled, but it was nothing but incoherent. “Don’t know.”
The two of them guided her back to the warmth of the cab to wrap her in an emergency blanket while they waited for an ambulance to arrive at the nearest crossing.
“Who did this to you, honey?” Don asked, feeling a lump form in his throat. He had a daughter almost her age. The thought that anyone would do this to a teen brought home the reality. “What happened to you?”
“I don’t know.”
2
Sunday, March 18, 7:15 p.m.
The nightmare began when Noah Sutherland was at the dining table in his waterfront rental. The hands on the grandfather clock ticked over. The only other sound was the scrape of cutlery as Ethan and Aunt Gretchen tucked into their food. His spaghetti was untouched. Seconds turned into minutes, and there was still no sign of her. He glanced at his phone expectantly. No text. No missed phone calls. He couldn’t shake off the unease gnawing at his gut for the past hour. He’d tried calling her cell phone multiple times, but it went straight to voicemail.
“Noah. Eat. It will go cold,” Gretchen muttered.
“She should have been home by now.”
Parental worry had already set in an hour ago.
“I’m sure she just got sidetracked.”
“Then she should have called.”
“You know how teens are.”
