Page 85 of Surge

Delaney couldn’t just sit here and pet her maligator, and she couldn’t jump out and risk bumping into security. Wait. Hadn’t she seen a door at the end of the train car? Yep. She walked over and pressed a button on the wall next to it. It slid open for her. Open sesame, right? She stepped through to the caboose, Surge right behind her, and found herself in a kind of foyer. The caboose, apparently, was only lit by the last rays of falling sun shining through the window in an outside door.

She could jump out with Surge, find someplace the SAT phone would work. Refusing to think how that jump would hurt, she looked through the window. Trees and buildings blurred by so fast it almost made her dizzy.

This had to be a bullet train. She couldn’t survive a jump out of a speeding train.

“With me, Surge,” she said, heading back to the LD3 stacks. Tension tightened the muscles in her shoulders, so she stretched her neck from side to side. Her hip brushed up against a piece of paper taped to the middle Sachaai container. She shone her SAT phone light onto the page with the flashlight app. A shipping document.

Wait . . .coffee? Seriously? What’d happened to the shoes and plastic butterflies? She glanced around the interior, trying to make sense of why these containers were headed to Cantika Coffee Farm, near Surabaya.

An uneasy thought churned through her—what if she’d somehow followed the wrong containers?

No. She hadn’t. She’d never taken eyes off the semi from the time it left the market. So why on earth were these headed to a coffee farm? Not that she was mad—she loved Choca Cantika coffee, the coffee she and all her friends paid extra for at every opportunity. Her friends had posted about the new Choca Cantika Barbecue Sauce on their socials last week. She recalled once reading the “About” paragraph on the back of one of their coffee packages. The owners grew it and roasted it here in Surabaya, Indonesia . . .

Wait. Wait-wait-wait. She turned a circle, as if the wheels grinding in her brain were moving her body. But it all suddenly made sense. Crazy, stupid, evil sense.

Or was she the one with the evil mind? After all, at this point it was just a theory, but what if the shoe factory loaded cute plastic children’s shoes with the chemicals, then shipped them to said coffee farm . . . then sliced open the butterflies and laced the coffee beans, shipped them across the Pacific . . . to where they were selling like wildfire across America?

She paled. That was the coffee she’d stopped for at Coffeeshop Nation on her way to the plane to Singapore. That was the coffee in the monthly coffee club she subscribed her dad to.

Terrorist Coffee.

She pulled the sandal out of her pocket, jiggled the vial in the right side of the butterfly body. It clicked and easily popped out. Knowing it was filled with either sulfamic acid or potassium cyanide, she didn’t dare open the twist lid. She eased the vial back into the butterfly body, shoved it into her pocket.

Delaney had to hand it to the Sachaai—this was pretty genius. Terrifyingly so. After all, who’d ever think to look at cute kids’ shoes? Then who would ever think that coffee, which Americans drank by the billions of cups each year, would be laced with a toxin?

An explosion could kill hundreds or thousands, depending on where it was set off, but if terrorists wanted to kill possibly millions of Americans, Sachaai just needed to put hydrogen cyanide in the number one favorite coffee brand in the US.

Merciful burnt beans! This was awful.

Garrett needed to know—now!

Again, she eyed her SAT phone. No signal at all. At least she’d told him there were six LD3 containers before she’d jumped onto this train. She scratched Surge between the shoulders. Garrett had the MWD tracking app. And without a doubt, even if he wasn’t coming for her, she knew he and the others would be coming for the chemicals.

As long ashisSAT phone had a signal. If the signal made it out of the freight car.

Oh no. She hadn’t thought about that. Maybe she needed to get Surge into the open, onto the platform, but that . . . that seemed too dangerous.Please, please, God!

She sighed. Having no clue where the train was headed or how long it would be, she turned off and pocketed her phone. Surge’s nose nudged her cheek again.

Was she foolish, or had she fearlessly—thanks to the peace and strength of God—leapt into action by jumping onto this train with Surge? She hadn’t frozen but had been spurred into action by a deep conviction that losing sight of this shipment meant terrible things. That deep-down voice of Garrett’s stayed with her . . . he had trusted her to follow these containers.When you trust a man, you jump on a train.She chuckled.

Since they’d started the mission, they had a few moments to review the Krav Maga self-defense, the shoulder grab from the front and the choke hold. Realization spread through her—God trusted him, had put him in charge of this mission, and it was God she ultimately trusted. And she’d learned to trust Garretttoo . . .

What she knew because of that was that Garrettwascoming after her and Surge. And of course the chemicals, but somehow accepting that he’d come for her spurred and inspired her. It didn’t matter anymore how she was going to get off this train. What mattered was how she was going to destroy the Sachaai’s plan and prevent the butterfly shoes bearing tubes of toxic chems from reaching Cantika Coffee Farm.

How exactly, genius?

Yeah, she wasn’t a Navy SEAL. But the team wasn’t here. She was. The weight of the mission’s success was on her shoulders—no wonder they were balled tight. Subconsciously, she’d known the responsibility she bore. But worse . . . what was the price if she failed?

Surge gave a low-throated growl. Looking up, she saw a flashlight bobbing around the front of the car as the sound of steps reached her. Could be help.

The beam bounced off a silver container and lit the face of a man as he looked around. Three-day beard, longish black hair, power in his every move.

A tremor went up and down her spine.

Hakim.

Surge’s hackles rose.

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