He checked the picture to be sure. The number was stenciled on the wall behind his two battered friends. Lou looked carefully at the cars as he drove past. Each one was numbered, although in no particular sequence that he could discern. Some of them were standard boxcars and some were grain cars. They represented several different rail lines, and were probably rentals. But a majority of them, particularly the boxcars, belonged to CHESTER RAIL SYSTEMS and had stenciled black numbers at the center of their side, similar to the numbers inside the car holding Cap and George.

Lou had planned simply to walk up to Chester’s storage facility, turn himself over to William, and negotiate—essentially winging it from moment one. Now, he increased his speed, searching for car number fifty-eight, and just as important, a way to get onto it. To his left, the train lurched forward again. Another load.

Lou drove a quarter mile. No fifty-eight.

Chester’s silos were approaching in the distance. The massive structure was composed of four cylinders, maybe twenty stories high, rising up like medieval turrets. Toward the base of each silo, he could now see long metal chutes—half pipes extending out for loading the corn through hatches in the roofs of the cars. At that moment, the train stopped again and in the distance he could actually see and hear the death kernels, rumbling like golden hail down a chute into an empty car.

Where was this corn headed? Lou asked himself. Who would be eating it? How many more lives would be ruined or lost because of it?

He accelerated slightly. Seven fifty. Time was running out. The towering grain silos drew closer. It was then Lou saw something ahead in the distance—the starlike headlight of an oncoming eastbound train. From what he could tell, it appeared to be moving slowly. The way to get onto Chester’s train may have just arrived.

But only if he could find car fifty-eight.

Without hesitating, he floored the accelerator, still searching to his left as the headlights of Renee’s BMW played across the sides of the corn cars. The approaching train, a totally black phantom from what Lou could tell, seemed to be crawling ahead, perhaps trying not to disrupt the loading process by sending kernels flying everywhere.

He sped past Chester’s silos without slowing. The corn train seemed unending. Still no fifty-eight. Perhaps he had missed it. No matter. If his plan worked, and if fifty-eight was part of the train, he would find it. Finally, he passed the engines—three in all. The head of the dragon. He kept on driving. The black phantom was now a slow-moving eastbound snake with a yellow CSX insignia painted on its two ebony engines.

Ahead, the horizon glowed like the remnants of a settling fire, its red orange hues being nudged into oblivion by the descending night sky.

Seven fifty-five.