Notes
Soundtrack suggestions
The assassins' ambush:
- Flies and Spiders - Howard Shore, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (extended edition) (From 02:05 to 04:29).
- The Games and Escape - James Horner, Apocalypto.
- Lost in Emyn Muil - Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (complete recordings) (starting from 02:51).
- The Departure of Boromir - Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (complete recordings) (From 02:01 to 02:46).
The couple's discussion after the fight and the arrival of a second group of gangsters:
- Shelob the Great - Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (starting from 03:35).
The couple guess Rankin's plan:
- Godfrey - Marc Streitenfeld, Robin Hood (from 02:00 to 02:29).
The trio decide to prevent the train's crash:
- Rom's Plan - Rupert Gregson-Williams, The Legend of Tarzan.
-o-
About five hundred meters from Site D's western gate, Claire and Franklin arrived at an intersection, where they turned left, driving down a winding road for a kilometre or two. While it led them towards the railway line, the young man turned around and noticed that no vehicle was behind them.
"No one is following us for now," he informed Claire.
She nodded and asked Franklin to call Owen to let him know that they were coming for him and tell him about the last events. When they were relatively close to the railway, they stumble upon an intersection where they turned left, and two to three minutes later they reached the next one and turned right, heading for the village of Zapotal, which they crossed. Shortly after, they found Owen and Stan the mercenary on the roadside.
"You have no idea how I'm glad to see you," Claire said to her boyfriend, relieved to see that he was unharmed.
The two men climbed in the vehicle. The latter turned around and headed for Zapotal. Behind them, a jeep pulled up the road to follow it, leaving a dirt road half hidden behind a line of trees. On its body, it sported a logo depicting an armadillo with multi-coloured bands.
While the couple, Franklin and Stan drove north, skirting the railroad in a more or less parallel manner, the jeep passed them, sped up and disappeared further. When they reached the second intersection the fallen park director and the IT technician took on the way, Claire turned left, not right, continuing north instead of heading up to the slope east to reach Site D. This did not fail to question Stan, who had taken care to spot geographical landmarks when he and his colleagues as well as Austin and Zia had reached the site of Blue's attack by road.
"Hey, that's not the way to the facility," he pointed out to Claire.
"I know. We're heading to town," she replied frankly.
As few words had been uttered since they were picked up, an expression of surprise appeared on the mercenary's face. He took his phone.
"I need to contact Wheatley. I'm not sure if I can let you do that. You know how it is. Orders are orders..."
Claire and Owen looked at each other, wondering if it wouldn't have been better if he walked away from him and left him in the middle of the countryside. And in his haste, the keeper had sat in the front passenger seat when he could have sit next to Stan, in order to be able to bring him under control if necessary. Franklin, meanwhile, stared at the pistol in the mercenary's belt and the rifle he held between his legs. On either side of the road, thick jungle surrounded them, and to their right the terrain formed a steep slope. On their left, by an exit, they could guess the presence of another vehicle behind the thickets.
"Yes, it's me," the mercenary said to his boss. "We just got picked up by Dearing. They intend to…"
The phone fell from Stan's hands when a violent shock pushed the four of them to the right. Owen's and Franklin's seatbelts barely prevented them from slamming into their doors.
"Hey, what was that?!" The keeper yelled, greatly surprised.
When they straightened up, they saw that the rainbow armadillo jeep had just rammed them from the side with force and was pushing them into the embankment with its bull bars. The eyes of the two young men who occupied it were imbued with anything but guilt.
Claire restarted the engine and tried to get away from the ambush, but they were pushed out of the road and began to slide down the slope before they could do anything.
"Hang on!" Owen shouted.
He, Franklin, and Stan clung to anything they could while Claire tried to slow their descent and avoid the larger trees and rocks in their path. But despite her best efforts, they hurtled too quickly through the undergrowth, tearing up vines and smashing many bushes and shrubs in their path, breaking the silence which prevailed a few seconds earlier in the jungle. Losing its balance after rolling over an outcrop, the car began to barrel-roll. While Franklin let out a howl of panic, Claire closed her eyes and tried to shield her skull with her hands, but lost consciousness when her forehead hit the steering wheel hard.
More than two hundred meters from the road, the car finally stopped rolling when it arrived on a more or less flat ground but ended up on the roof, with its four passengers hanging upside down. Still conscious, Owen, Franklin and Stan unfasted their seatbelts and let themselves fall. Still panicking, the IT technician threw himself on his door and, to his relief, managed to open it and get out. Unable to open his, Stan followed him out of the vehicle. At the same time, Claire was slowly regaining consciousness. Owen, who had just kicked down his door, shook her.
"Claire!"
She moaned but struggled to keep her eyes open for long. He shook her even more vigorously.
"Claire! We have to move!"
She finally kept her eyes open and realizing the precariousness of their situation, she immediately unbuckled her belt and let herself fall into the outstretched arms of her boyfriend. He then helped her leave the car and once they were outside, they saw Franklin straight as a ramrod a few metres away. In front of the car, Stan had drawn his pistol and was watching the slope. There was a smell of gasoline in the air. Faintly, they heard male voices debating in Spanish.
"Show yourselves, cowards!" Stan shouted.
But suddenly the couple and Franklin, who had moved a respectable distance from the wrecked car, saw an object being catapulted from behind a bush to their right. When he saw that the object was a bottle with a flaming piece of cloth sticking out of it, they widened their eyes in horror.
"Stan!" Owen shouted.
But it was too late. Before Stan could move away, the Molotov cocktail slammed into the car, right next to the leaking tank. The next moment, it exploded in a great ball of fire among which the mercenary disappeared with a scream.
Terrorized, Franklin immediately ran for his life with a cry and, unable to do anything more for Stan, the couple fled too soon after. They tried to follow Franklin, but he ran so fast that they lost him as they went deeper into the jungle. Not wanting to lose sight of his girlfriend, Owen let her pass in front of him. They hoped to outrun their mysterious attackers, but when they heard the sound of running over the fallen leaves and twigs, the couple knew they would not give up easily. When they had left a few hundred meters between them and the vehicle, one of them emerged from a thicket to throw himself on Owen, pinning him to the ground.
Alerted by the grunts of her boyfriend, Claire turned around and saw that a burly twentysomething with very short hair was on top of him, trying to put a chain around his neck to strangle him. Grabbing a thick branch, the fallen park director rushed towards them to help the Raptor Whisperer defeat the thug but suddenly, the latter's sidekick jumped across her path, machete in hand. He was a young man of the same age as the first but much leaner and slender, with medium-length hair and a narrow face on which a perverse smile had sketched. The Jesse called out by Torres was that one while Mateo was the one struggling with Owen. On their shoulder, both sported a tattoo depicting a rattlesnake. The skinny assassin lunged at Claire, who parried the first machete blow with her branch, before raising it again to parry the next attack, using it like a sword.
With a sideways roll, Owen managed to throw Mateo off balance. He elbowed him in the face, grabbed his chain and threw it away where it slid amidst a bush, robbing the assassin of his weapon. Mateo being still a little stunned, Owen took the opportunity to get up and he wanted to attack Jesse from behind but Mateo grabbed his leg, tripping him before approaching him. The keeper turned around and the two men fought hard on the ground. During the struggle, the tablet which had helped Owen track Blue slipped out of his pocket, but the keeper didn't care, his attention being required elsewhere.
As the blade of his machete was stuck in the branch, Jesse punched Claire in the abdomen, making her drop the branch. He pulled the blade out of the wood and slashed with a sweeping gesture accompanied by an intimidating shout. The blade only grazed Claire's arm and, scared, she began to move backwards quickly, straight into a root. When she tripped over it, her panic grew and she sought to kick and throw dirt in the face of the approaching assassin. The latter, satisfied with the success of his tactic, avoided the feet and the thrown dirt. He punched her in the face and brandished his machete, preparing to slit her throat.
"No!" Owen screamed, powerless.
It was then that the keeper and the assassin saw a person emerge from the vegetation. When he saw what they were holding in their hand and who they wanted to throw it at, Mateo wanted to shout to warn his sidekick but he couldn't because of Owen's hand clasped in front of his mouth.
Receiving a stone on his head, Jesse let out a scream of surprise and tilted his head, struggling to focus on Claire because of the pain. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw Franklin, who had frozen after throwing the stone at him. The assassin growled.
"You bastard!"
Before the IT technician could react, Jesse ducked down, picked up the stone, and threw it back at him. Franklin was hit on the forehead and collapsed to the ground. Meanwhile, Owen and Mateo were still struggling. Suddenly, Jesse felt a pain in his chest. Thanks to the distraction Franklin had provided, Claire was able to kick him, making move back a step or two. She immediately tried to crawl away, but he grabbed her leg firmly, pulled her towards him, then leaned over her, pressing his forearm against her throat. Seeing this, Owen then knew he had no choice regarding Mateo.
"Too bad I have to kill you now, I would have liked to have fun with you ...," Jesse said to Claire. "Oh, you don't have to be alive. And I could hide your scar…."
Suppressing a scream, Owen placed one hand on the top of Mateo's head, the other on his jaw, and twisted his head around. He heard a snap and Mateo stopped moving. As Jesse was about to thrust his machete into Claire's stomach, Owen rushed forward, roaring in his advance, and forcefully grabbed the arm that held the machete. Jesse's eyes widened in surprise, but before he could react, Owen stretched his arm and elbowed it in the middle. Jesse's bones broke under the shock, the assassin let out a howl of pain and he dropped the machete. Claire backed up on her elbows then kicked the assassin's neck hard with one of her feet, repelling him. He ended up on his back and Owen immediately picked him up, grabbing him by the collar. Then he punched his face. Once, twice, thrice... Claire, struggling to her feet, realized that Owen wasn't going to stop until Jesse's face would be reduced to bloody pulp by his blows. She looked at the other assassin, who laid lifeless, his neck twisted.
"Owen!"
But he didn't answer and continued beating Jesse.
"Owen! Stop!"
He stopped his fist right in front of Jesse's already broken nose and bloody lips. He listened to his girlfriend.
"Don't kill him! He must talk."
Finishing to straighten up, Claire noticed that Franklin was stirring while moaning and was reassured to see that Jesse's blow had not killed him. She then grabbed the machete and approached Jesse, whom Owen kept kneeling.
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this…" the assassin whined. "Mateo!"
He raised his head and looked at the couple
"Release me! Release me!" He shouted, spitting blood.
Claire put the tip of the blade on the assassin's neck.
"If you answer my question, we'll let you go. Who sent you?"
"I don't answer to gringa bitches like you!"
She gave him a kick in his privates so powerful that she thought she had castrated him.
"Who... Sent... You?"
"I won't tell you. My boss will kill me if I do."
She then thrust the machete's blade into his thigh, making him moan.
"Your boss must be far from here. If you don't answer, I'm going to kill you!" She retorted, twisting the blade in the flesh. "I repeat my question: Who sent you?!"
"I don't know his name! Bo... Our boss told us to go to Burgo Nuevo and wait for the contact's instructions. We attacked you as soon as we got the green light. We've never seen him in person, all we have is a phone number."
Owen then searched his pockets, pulled out a cell phone, and handed it to Claire, who turned it on. As it required its owner's fingerprint to unlock, the fallen park director grabbed the assassin's index finger and placed it on the screen. The phone unlocked and Jesse's wallpaper appeared. It was a picture of him at a party. He was bare-chested and a gold necklace hung around his neck, his face was raised up in a smug air and a hand was placed in front of his chest with the index and middle fingers spread. Judging by the half-vacant look he had, he was drunk or had taken drugs. Against that display of vulgarity, Claire grunted in contempt and searched through the latest communications. She found a recent series of exchanges with an unknown number and looked at the text messages associated with it. She quickly saw that it was about them and the mysterious sender had even sent a photo of them, taken without their knowledge at Site D.
"Please take me to the hospital after. It hurts…," Jesse moaned.
"Don't worry, the pain will soon stop...," Claire told him, barely taking her eyes off the cell phone.
She called the unknown number and motioned for the others to be quiet. Owen put his hand over Jesse's mouth to prevent him from speaking. Someone picked up soon after.
"Hello? Hello?"
The couple remained silent, recognizing the voice.
"Hey, answer! I've got other fish to fry... Is it done? Did you eliminate them?" Torres' voice asked.
"But it's…" Franklin began, shocked that the one behind the attack was the director of InGen Security, a man he had met a few times when he was still working in InGen's IT department in Palo Alto.
Having the information she wanted, Claire hung up and put the phone in one of her pants' pockets. Owen moved his hand away from the assassin's mouth and exchanged a look with his girlfriend. They both knew that this assassination attempt must have had something to do with their discovery of the abandoned house's clandestine laboratory. The fact that a man such as Torres sought to eliminate them surprised them little. He, and probably the rest of InGen's management, saw them as a threat to their plans for the Indoraptor and even for the company's future. The couple wouldn't have been surprised if it turned out that Susan Lynton, who had after all started a war with the Grey Guards, had encouraged Torres to use the services of these thugs to get rid once and for all of the thorn in their foot they had become.
"I knew it!" Owen exclaimed. "Blue's escape was a set-up! He wanted to lure us into the jungle so we could be eliminated there with a minimum of witnesses around. Had Wheatley not left Stan with me, Torres would have ordered them to kill me while I was alone with the farmer's body. And then he would have probably sent you into a trap..."
In the hands of the Raptor Whisperer, the assassin fidgeted.
"You know who it is! Now honor your word, you scarred whore!" He said looking Claire in the eyes.
Insulted, she growled and her grip closed around the machete.
"Release me…" he added. "I swear I'll find you one day, finish the job and avenge Mateo. Know that I will make you..."
Claire's growl turned into a scream of fury which silenced the surrounding jungle. Seeing her wielding the machete, Owen barely had time to back away before she struck Jesse's face with it, cleaving his face. Behind the fallen park director, Franklin suppressed a cry of surprise and horror. Unfortunately for the assassin, the blow was not enough to kill him and he screamed. Claire withdrew the blade and no longer supporting his screams, she slit his throat with a sweeping move. The blade striking the carotid artery, a spurt of blood spattered the fallen park director' tank top, and Jesse put his hands on his throat, trying in vain to stop the blood from flowing out.
The assassin's body having already been put to the test by the couple's blows, his last strength abandoned him almost immediately and under Claire's contemptuous gaze, he collapsed face down on the ground, where his body stirred a little more. Then she put her boot on the back of his neck, raised it and stomped as if it was a large bug she wanted to smash. She heard a crack and the dying body stopped moving. Then she took a step or two back and bent over, letting out a heavy sigh while her body twitched nervously and that some muscles of her face were tensed, like if she wanted to cry and laugh at the same time.
"You…you said you would let him go," Franklin muttered, shocked by what he had just witnessed.
Claire raised her still ruddy face to look at him. At that moment, the IT technician thought that her gash helped make her more terrifying than the assassins, even as much as some predatory dinosaurs.
"I let him go...to Hell! Where he belongs!" She hissed before turning her head to spit in Jesse's face.
She had already taken a human life, that of Katashi Hamada, but it had been a completely different context, although the experience had proven to be traumatic. She wouldn't have called Hamada a friend, as he had many arguments with her, but during his lifetime, he had been a noble and respected man, and his death had not left her indifferent. Although he was the one who asked her to end his suffering and even guided the blade to his heart, Claire still felt like a murderer when he took his last breath while she held the hilt of the dagger. A few people explained to her afterwards that there was nothing criminal or shameful about her action, but she couldn't help feeling remorseful when she thought of the Japanese captain of Nublar's Grey Guard garrison. Thus, this Jesse was the first person she had willingly killed and aside from the stress and anguish of the life or death situation they had just experienced, she felt no other negative feelings. She was even satisfied that the two assassins were dead. She was glad to have killed the little son of a bitch who laid next to her, drowned in his own blood.
No, don't feel guilty! She thought. That filthy scum deserved death! You did well!
Catching her breath, Claire cleared her head and was surprised by the relative ease with which her mind was beginning to put this ordeal behind her and that calm was returning. Then she remembered that having faced, defeated and survived the Indominus, certainly not without a heavy price, had been some sort of baptism of fire, that it must have shaped her, both in a bad and a good way, and that this experience, horrible as it had been, was now helping her in this one. She came to think that the Claire from before the Fall would not have survived this assassination attempt or that she would have naively made a mistake that would have cost her dearly later.
Nietzsche might have been right. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Knowing that she would need Jesse's fingerprint to unlock his phone and show the messages and the associated number to the authorities, she crouched down, grabbed his right hand and sliced off his index finger with the machete, not without arousing an expression of disgust from Franklin who looked away to instead observe the surrounding jungle. She then ripped off part of the assassin's tank top and wrapped his index finger around it before stuffing the whole thing into a closable pocket in her pants once she stood up.
She then saw Owen staring at Mateo's body and noticed that his limbs were shaking and his complexion was livid, nauseous almost. He placed his clenched fist in front of his mouth as he suppressed a retching.
Owen hadn't killed anyone to this day and he had never even opened fire or faced enemy combatants in hand-to-hand combat while in the Navy. As he sometimes liked to recall, he more often handled fish and training equipment than firearms and said that he had not been a particularly remarkable soldier, only shining within Navy's Marine Mammal Program. In the fight that had just occurred, the wrestling contests with friends, various brawls in which he had been involved, and especially the accident with Andromeda the Neoraptor, were experiences that had helped him more than his time in the Navy.
They escaped by the skin of their teeth, and the situation would have been hopeless if the Slayers were still alive and Torres had sent them and not these two scum from San José's suburbs. He and Claire wouldn't have stood a chance against what used to be InGen Security's elite troop and whereas some of its members were decent, at least as good as the members of a team carrying out black operations from time to time could be, others were part of the dregs of humanity. Oath-breakers, raiders, arsonists, murderers, and rapists featured among their ranks… They would have killed him first or worse, would have forced him to watch them do unspeakable things to his girlfriend and put an end to her suffering once they would have been tired of her. Imagining such horrors filled him with great rage, and he greatly felt the urge to hit something, no matter if it was a tree trunk or a rock.
He had always supported the Grey Guard, but now he couldn't help thinking that it was a good thing that the insurrection of its Nublar garrison had taken place and that its leader, Gilbert Brunet, the terrible Black Lion, decided to slaughter the Slayers to the last man or almost, as only one of its members managed to flee and disappear to not be seen again. In his head, Owen thanked the Black Lion posthumously. His impulsiveness and fury had saved them that day.
Claire's voice pulled him out of his thoughts:
"Owen. Look at me," she said softly.
But still in shock, he couldn't look away from Mateo. She moved closer and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Hey, look at me," she repeated, shaking him slightly.
She stepped between him and the body, placed her bloodstained hands on his temples and made him look into her eyes.
"You did the right thing," she told him. "You had no choice, they were going to kill us. Defending your own life and that of your wife is not a crime. Those bastards deserved death. They will no longer harm."
"I know. I just didn't imagine it would be that hard," he replied in a choked voice. "Yet, I know people who told me about that sort of things."
As she nodded, he saw her eyes watering and he took her in his arms, letting her cry silently against his chest. He himself felt the tears welling up in his eyes but he held them back. She saw him as her rock in the middle of the storm, he had to hold on.
"Hey. We're alive. It's over," he whispered.
"No, it's not over. First Isla Nublar, now Site D... Are we cursed, Owen? How many corpses are we going to leave behind us? And Torres… InGen put a bounty on our heads… I just want to go home and see our son again. Nothing else... Screw the operation and screw Lockwood's promise..."
"We'll see Sigurd again, we'll be fine, you'll be fine... I promise you. We're going to go to the police and explain what happened… Torres is not going to get away with this. Let's leave this place."
"How? They wrecked the car."
"Let's take their jeep."
"Yeah. Let's loot them. Take anything that could be useful. Car keys, money, weapons…"
Franklin, too disgusted by the sight of the bodies and still too dazed to do anything, let the couple search them but all they found on them were the keys to their vehicle. Claire and Owen hoped they would find more in the latter. It was then that the keeper heard footsteps coming from the north.
"Someone is coming…" he said quietly.
Then he motioned for them to follow him behind a large rock to the south, where they hid as the footsteps grew louder and louder. They became silent and discreetly spy on the newcomers. About half a dozen of them emerged from the thickets, weapons in hand, and inspected the scene. Like the two assassins, they were Costa Rican but unlike them, they were dressed in pants and T-shirts, although one or two wore tank tops, and their weapons were more impressive than the Molotov cocktail, the chain and the machete used by Jesse and Mateo, consisting of pistols, shotguns and even machine guns, weapons that had nothing to envy to those of the local police. On their neck they had a tattoo depicting the head of a bird of prey. The trio assumed that these men were also gangsters. One of them, a rather short middle-aged man with a gaunt face, stared at the lifeless assassins.
"What's this? It looks like some mayhem just occurred," he noted, speaking in Spanish with a hoarse voice.
Fearing that those men were other assassins sent after them, Owen grabbed his girlfriend's hand and looked into her eyes before glancing at the vegetation in front of them. Realizing that he was asking her to flee if they were flushed out and not to wait for him, she shook her head, looked at the machete, then looked back at her boyfriend. She would not abandon him and be ready to die by his side. He shook his head again, but before she could insist with any gesture, the newcomers indicated them that they had not come for them:
"Cascabels? What are they doing so far from San José?" The gaunt wondered as he cocked his head sideways to look at the tattoo on Mateo's arm. "Did they get lost?"
"They were probably sent on a commission…" another replied, looking at the bodies. "It looks like they met someone tougher than them."
"That one bled like a stuck pig…" a third observed, leaning over Jesse's body.
A fourth spat on Mateo's.
"I say it served them right!" He exclaimed. "Those damn snakes should have never crawled out of their suburbs."
"They got looted and the ruckus just happened a few minutes ago," the gaunt pointed out. "Whoever did this to them can't be far. If we catch him, we might get some benefit."
"Him? I think it's a her actually", corrected one of his companions, a long-haired man built like a tank and who spoke in a deep voice.
"Are you referring to the woman's scream you heard? We told you it was your imagination!" The gaunt retorted.
"But I have good hearing! More than you anyway. By dint of staying too long by the amps, you became deaf as posts!"
The gaunt thug began to scan the clearing, searching for traces of whoever had killed the two Cascabels. He then spotted the rock and walked towards it, intending to walk around it to see if there was anything behind it.
"Let her run, we've got other fish to fry," the long-haired hulk said after picking up the ACU tablet Owen had dropped. "The Englishman gave us orders. Back to our positions! The train is leaving soon!"
After sighing in frustration, the gaunt turned away from the rock and returned to his companions.
"There's going to be one hell of a fireworks display by the viaduct!" One of them said in a high-pitched voice full of excitement.
"We'll have to act quickly before the cops arrive," another added.
Claire, Owen and Franklin waited in silence a little longer, until that gang of thugs was far enough.
"What were those guys talking about?" Franklin asked, as he only understood a few words.
"They were talking about the train," Claire replied.
"Let's return to the road and take the jeep," Owen suggested.
They left their hiding place but remained in the shade of the undergrowth as a precaution. They found Benito's Toyota and as they ran around it, they avoided looking too much at the horrible state of Stan's body, ravaged by the assassins' cowardice. Then the trio set out to follow the trail of flattened vegetation the car had left behind when it hurtled down the slope.
"The train...the viaduct..." Claire listed, trying to guess the plan of the Englishman mentioned by one of the gangsters.
Remembering where they were in Burgo Nuevo's area, she suddenly turned in the middle of their ascent, searching for geographical landmarks.
The next moment, she froze as she spotted something in the distance. Owen, and then Franklin, followed her gaze, to the northeast and the forested slopes. A few hundred meters away, above a valley, tall pillars stood, supporting a collapsed deck at its centre. It was the railway viaduct and the couple guessed the plan of that Englishman mentioned by the gangsters:
They want to divert the train so it can jump from the top of the broken viaduct, in order to kill those on board: Animals, keepers and veterinarians, InGen guards and Wheatley's mercenaries alike. The gangsters would then kill the survivors and loot the wreckage. The Englishman mentioned by these men must be an agent of an InGen rival. If he succeeds, InGen will never recover from this attack disguised as an accident.
"We must warn the others!" Owen said urgently.
But as he was about to rush forward to reach the vehicle as quickly as possible, he saw that Claire was hesitant. He knew that she felt so much hatred towards InGen that she might be considering letting the Englishman carry out his plan in order to get revenge on those who had dishonoured her and tried to eliminate them.
"Claire…" he said softly. "This changes everything. InGen may have tried to kill us, but the animals and innocent people are on this train."
A troubled expression appeared on his girlfriend's face but she didn't answer.
"What do we do?" Franklin asked.
Claire exhaled, clenched her fists, bent her head, and then looked at them:
"We've got a train to catch," she replied before rushing forward, passing in front of her two companions.
They finished their ascent and found the assassins' jeep parked on the side of the road near where Benito's car had exited it. Claire opened it, sat behind the wheel, and while Owen and Franklin were still getting settled in, she put the key in the ignition and sped off, racing to the train station.