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What really mattered, however, was not the engine but what came down in its wake.

Coupled to the engine was a long trail of tanker cars. At least twenty of them. Detailed replicas of the freight cars that carried hazardous chemicals from one side of the country to another, often passing through the heart of Lucknow.

One car hit the floor and practically disintegrated. Then another, and another, and another, and before Nabler could catch even one of them, they had all landed on the concrete and shattered into hundreds of pieces.

Nabler worked his way through the jungle of tracks to the controlpanel that powered everything and shut it down. For the first time, the room went eerily quiet.

“What a fucking mess,” he said, looking at Harry’s body, the blood on the floor, the busted trains scattered helter-skelter.

He took a long breath, dreading the tasks ahead. Sure, the chief’s remains would make an excellent addition to the layout, but slitting open his torso and limbs to retrieve what he could best make use of was not something he felt up to at the moment. And he was going to have to repair that broken stretch of track if he—

Nabler heard something.

A distant rumbling. Minor at first, but then it began to build. Nabler could sense it coming up through the walls and the floor, and if he didn’t know better, he would have thought Lucknow was in the throes of an earthquake.

But Nabler did know better, and had a strong suspicion that this was not an earthquake, which were not common to this area of Vermont, anyway. What he believed he was hearing was, potentially, something far more serious.

He left the back room, made his way through his shop, turned back the front door lock, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The rumbling persisted, and it was coming from the direction of the rail line that ran straight through the center of town.

Nabler thought about all those mangled toy tanker cars on the floor, and the fact that this was often the time in the evening when a large chemical train made its way through town.

Some of his trains had more chaotic agency than others. The tanker cars that hit the floor clearly packed a punch.

Nabler said, “Oh shit.”

Forty-Seven

“Dad promised we’d go out for pancakes Saturday,” Dylan said.

He was in his bedroom, doing math homework, when his mother checked in on him. She rested a hand on each of his shoulders, looking at the exercises he was doing in his notebook.

“That’ll be fun,” Janice said. “We haven’t done that in a while. The diner?”

Dylan nodded. “You like their coffee.”

“Oh yes, I do.”

She took her hands off his shoulders and sat on the bed. “Put your pencil down. I want to talk to you.”

Dylan did as he was told and turned in his chair so he could face his mother.

“I hope you’re not mad at your father.”

Dylan shrugged. “I guess not.”

“It was my fault, what happened. I should have discussed it with him first, buying that train set. If I had, we wouldn’t have had that scene this morning.”

“It was just a train set. Aren’t you allowed to do things without asking Dad?”

“Well, yes, of course. But some decisions we should make together, and that turned out to be one of them. It’s hard to explain, but your father had a good reason for us not keeping it.”

“He said the man who runs that store is a bad person.”

“He doesn’t know that for a fact, but he thinks he might be, so we don’t want to give our business to someone like that, do we?”

“I guess not.”

“Your father’s a good man, you know.”