When Carol unlocked the door, he slipped back inside.
"Are they gone?" She put the dagger she'd held in her hand back into its scabbard.
"For now." He sat beside her, pulling her close. "We need to get off at the next station. Once they don't find us in any of the othercompartments, they will be back, and I will have to repeat the thrall." He kissed her forehead. "I bought us a little time, nothing more."
They spent the twenty minutes or so until the next station in tense silence, Lokan extending his senses for signs of his father's minions returning.
The train slowed as they approached a small town, which was little more than a cluster of buildings around the rail line.
"Let's go." He gathered both their bags.
They disembarked with a crowd of locals, Lokan steering them immediately away from the platform. The town was small enough that strangers would be noticed, but hopefully, they could find transportation before the fighters realized their targets were no longer on the train.
A battered van sat outside the town's only store, its owner loading supplies into the back. Lokan approached him, pulling out a stack of bills.
"Excuse me," he said. "Is your van for sale?"
The man, grizzled and weather-beaten, looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "No."
Lokan showed the man the wad of bills, which represented more money than the van had been worth new. "I need it now, and you can buy a better one with this."
He could thrall the man to agree to sell them the van, but whenever money could do the talking, he preferred to let it do so.
The man's eyes widened. He looked at the money, then at Lokan, then at Carol standing with their bags. He must have realizedthat they were in trouble and were desperate for a vehicle because his expression softened,
"It runs," he said. "Mostly. The heater doesn't work, and it pulls to the left."
"Perfect," Lokan said, pressing the money into his hands. "Keys?"
Still stunned, the man handed them over. Lokan helped him unload his supplies, then turned back to place a mental suggestion.
You sold the van to a local family,he implanted. A couple with three children, moving to Ulaanbaatar.They paid a fair price, and you were happy to help them.
The man nodded slowly, the false memory taking root. "Good luck in the city," he said, addressing the fictional family his mind tricked him into seeing.
Lokan and Carol climbed into the van, which smelled strongly of motor oil and rotting vegetables. Carol wrinkled her nose but said nothing as Lokan started the engine. It coughed, sputtered, then caught with a roar.
"Well," she said as they pulled away from the town, "this is certainly a step down from your Mercedes."
"Beggars and choosers and all that. Besides, it's perfect for this area. No one is going to pay attention to it." Lokan wrestled with the steering wheel as the van pulled strongly to the left, just like its previous owner had warned.
"Are we going to sleep in this thing?" Carol asked, eyeing the filthy interior.
"Hopefully not. I'll call Turner's contact once we're clear of the town. I hope he will be able to arrange lodging for us."
"Preferably with a shower," Carol said. "And clean sheets."
He laughed. "In this area, that's like asking for a five-star hotel, but maybe we'll get lucky." He pulled out his clan phone with one hand while fighting the van's steering with the other.
"Are you calling Turner's contact?" Carol asked.
He shook his head. "I want to give Kalugal an update. He asked me to keep him posted."
His brother answered right away. "Are you okay?"
"Yes. We're on the move. Father sent warriors after us, and two were searching the train we were on. I redirected them, we got off and bought a van from a random guy."
"Be careful," Kalugal said. "Navuh has chemically enhanced warriors, and the ones the clan captured were somewhat resistant to compulsion. Toven had to push to break through, at least with one of them."
