Chapter 46 - The Ambush at the Crossing
We didn't use our truck. Mrs. Gable led us through an old timber culvert that emptied out half a mile down the riverbank, where an unassuming gray sedan sat parked in a hunter’s turnaround.
By noon, the flat, snow-dusted cornfields of northern Indiana blurred past the passenger window as Ellis drove with white-knuckled focus toward South Bend. Mrs. Gable sat in the rear, methodically burning forty years of ledger carbons in a small steel lockbox using a brass lighter.
"Harlan Cross will realize the study was a decoy within two hours," Ellis remarked, checking his rearview mirror every twenty seconds. "When his men find the severed relay in the cistern, he'll guess Chicago. The bank is his only move."
"Let him come," I said, clutching the brass key tightly in my palm. The metal had warmed against my skin, no longer a relic of a ghost, but an anchor to a living truth. "Cross doesn't know what Box 414 contains. He thinks it’s cash or timber deeds. He doesn't know it's a murder indictment."
"He knows enough to kill for it," Ellis replied soberly.
Just before the Indiana toll road entrance, a black commercial SUV swerved out from behind an abandoned grain silo, accelerating hard to match our speed. The tinted windshield reflected the gray winter sky, hiding the driver’s face, but the aggressive drift across the median line told us everything we needed to know.
"Hold on!" Ellis shouted, dropping the sedan into low gear and slamming his boot onto the accelerator.
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The engine screamed as our car surged forward onto the two-lane highway. Behind us, the SUV matched our pace, nudging our rear bumper with a violent, jarring metallic thud that sent Mrs. Gable’s steel box clattering across the floorboards.
"They aren't trying to intercept us," Ellis grunted, wrestling with the steering wheel as the car fishtailed over a patch of black ice. "They’re trying to run us into the drainage ditch!"
