Free Challenge by Ridley Pearson

Larson greeted the pair.
    “Hi.” A voice breaking between boy and man. Eyes that didn’t look up, didn’t make contact. A tween —stuck between his innocent past and a mysterious future.
    “Good trip?” Larson asked. “Enjoy the train?”
    “I guess,” the boy said.
    “Hello,” the mother said.
    Hampton asked for their tickets and ID. He added, “Tickets for both of you. ID only for you, ma’am. We don’t need ID for the boy.”
    “Agent Hampton spoke to you earlier,” Larson told the boy.
    The mother nudged the boy, who finally looked up.
    “To my mother. Yes, sir,” the boy answered.
    Spotting an identification tag on the suitcase, Larson asked him, “Are you Kyle?”
    “No. He’s my dad. He’s…” He looked to the mother.
    “He couldn’t make the trip,” the woman answered.
    The woman’s eyes suggested something was wrong. Larson didn’t push it.
    He described what they knew of Aaron Grym. “Did you happen to see such a man on the train?” Their answers were carried on their faces before they shook their heads.
    The woman said how there had been a lot of men on the train matching that description. “We took a sleeper from Toledo,” she explained, as if that excused them.
    Larson assumed the suspect had been on that train at some point. He could have jumped from the moving train, or left at an earlier station without detection.
    The boy’s face carried a troubled expression. Larson wondered if this stemmed from discussion of the dad—or something else.
    “What’s your name?” Larson asked the boy.
    Larson hadn’t asked any other kid for a name. Hearing the question put Hampton on alert; he stood taller and moved slightly to his right, putting himself between the terminal and the two.
    “Steel,” the boy answered. “Steven,” he corrected.
    “Steven, let me explain something: if a man matching this description said anything to you…if you observed…if you oversaw him doing something he wasn’t supposed to, but are now afraid to say anything—”
    “What exactly are you implying?” the mother asked, interrupting.
    Steel shook his head.
    Larson took a risk, deciding to push the boy; he fit the general look of the boy on the platform. “Tell me about the woman—the woman out on the platform.”
    “My son thought she’d left the briefcase on the train. He tried to return it to her, and she wouldn’t accept it. We turned it over to the conductor,” Judy answered. “That’s all there is to it.”
    Larson and Hampton exchanged looks.
    “Which conductor?” Hampton asked.
    “I couldn’t possibly tell you,” the mother said. “I’m sorry.”
    With a nod from Larson, Hampton took off toward the train.
    “Is Washington your final destination?” Larson asked Steel.
    The boy nodded. “The National Science Challenge.”
    Larson looked over at the mother. “Where will you be staying while in town?”
    “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she said. “But it’s the Grand Hyatt. My son and I are tired. It has been a long trip, and he has a great deal of preparation before the challenge. You are, what? Either FBI or Marshal Service. I’m not sure how to address you.”
    Larson cocked his head, impressed that she knew the difference. “Deputy United States Marshal Roland Larson.”
    “We’d like to get to our hotel now, if you don’t object, Deputy United States Marshal Roland Larson.”
    “Please,” he said, waving them through.
    The boy glanced up at him sheepishly. It was this one glance, more than anything else, that told Larson he wasn’t done with this boy. Guilt was written all over his face. They needed to talk.

24.
    “I need a minute,” Judy Trapp said to her son when passing the women’s restroom. “Stay right here!”
    “Actually, Mom, I’ll be over with Cairo,” Steel said, pointing to the oversize luggage area. Several signs hung over a long counter; one was for baggage storage, another for lost and found. The