## CHAPTER 15 — THE EMPTY STATION
Logan ignored the command to come alone.
Detective Hale followed with a tactical team, keeping several minutes behind him.
The Fairmont station had closed decades earlier.
Its windows were boarded.
The tracks disappeared beneath weeds.
Logan entered through the waiting-room doors.
“Noah?”
A light turned on near the platform.
Noah stood beneath it.
Alone.
Logan ran to him.
The boy wrapped both arms around his waist.
“Where’s Elena?”
“They took her.”
“Who?”
“The lady who looks like Mommy Claire.”
A train whistle sounded in the distance.
That was impossible.
No trains used the line.
A black locomotive emerged from the darkness.
It slowed but did not stop completely.
One of its doors opened.
A woman stood inside wearing Claire’s blue coat.
Her face was hidden by a scarf.
Beside her, two men held Elena by the arms.
“Let her go!” Logan shouted.
The woman removed the scarf.
Logan’s heart stopped.
She had Claire’s face.
The same eyes.
The same mouth.
But something was wrong.
A pale scar ran along her jaw.
Claire had never had that scar.
“Who are you?” Logan asked.
The woman smiled.
“You really don’t remember me.”
The train began moving faster.
Elena struggled against the men.
“Logan, she was at the lake!”
The woman turned toward Elena and struck her.
Logan started running beside the train.
“No!”
The woman looked down at him.
“Ask Edmund why he needed two daughters.”
The train disappeared beyond the station.
Hale’s team arrived seconds later.
There was no record of the locomotive entering the rail system.
No company markings.
No electronic signal.
Only one object had been dropped on the platform.
A silver lion ring.
Inside the band was an engraved name.
EVELYN.
Logan recognized it.
Evelyn Mercer had been his father’s first child.
She had died before Logan was born.
Or so the family history claimed.
Noah stared down the tracks.
“She isn’t bad,” he whispered.
Logan looked at him.
“She took Elena.”
“She said she’s trying to wake you up.”
“Wake me up from what?”
Noah pressed both hands against his ears.
May you like
“From the night you pushed Mommy into the lake.”
---
