Chapter 78 - The Race to LaSalle
We had three thousand dollars in an emergency checking account linked to a debit card Sterling’s attorneys hadn't flagged, forty dollars in cash, and an eighty-mile drive through a blinding Illinois blizzard between our diner booth and downtown Chicago.
"We can't take our car," Clara said, her tactical mind working with ruthless speed. "The Suburbans have our license plate logged into the state police automated reader system. The moment we hit the tollway, we’ll be pulled over for grand larceny."
"Then we take the freight line," I said, pointing out the diner window.
Across the truck stop parking lot, running parallel to the highway, lay the Union Pacific rail junction. A diesel engine was idling at the switch track, venting great plumes of white steam into the freezing morning sky, waiting for the southern express clearance.
We sprinted across the snow-choked lot, our boots plunging calf-deep into the drifts. The wind bit into our faces like broken glass. We slipped through a gap in the chain-link security fence and reached the maintenance ladder of a flatbed carrier loaded with industrial machinery. We hauled ourselves up into the narrow, sheltered crawl space beneath a shrink-wrapped generator unit just as the locomotive’s horn blared twice, vibrating through the steel deck beneath our chests.
The train lurched. The metal screeched against the frosted rails, slowly gaining momentum, carrying us east into the rising gray dawn.
For an hour and twenty minutes, we huddled together in the freezing darkness of the machinery bay, sharing our body heat, watching the rural Illinois fields blur into suburban strip malls, and finally into the towering concrete canyons of Chicago.
When the train slowed near the Clybourn rail yard, we jumped.
We hit the gravel embankment rolling, snow absorbing the brutal impact. We scrambled up the bank, hailed a yellow cab from the corner of Armitage and Cortland, and handed the driver the last fifty-dollar bill from my wallet.
"1414 North LaSalle," I told him, wiping blood from a scrape on my forehead. "Run every yellow light you see."
The cab tore through the slush of Lincoln Park. The skyline of Chicago rose above us like jagged iron teeth against an overcast pewter sky.
At 6:42 AM, the taxi screeched to a halt outside the art-deco limestone façade of 1414 North LaSalle.
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Parked directly in front of the building’s brass entrance doors was a familiar black Suburban.
Its engine was still running. Its exhaust pipes pumped steady white plumes into the sub-zero air.
