Page 17

Twelve

Dante whirls around to face the others and, with a clap of his hands, says, “Now, who’s up for a drink?”

He makes it two steps before the others swarm him, furious.

“Are you crazy?” Judd yells while, at the exact same time, Sal says, “Why did you do that?”

“You’ve just doomed us all!” Lapsford then bellows, his face crimson. “Including your father.”

“Maybe he deserves it,” Dante says. “In fact, I’m starting to think all of you do.”

Lapsford glowers at him. “This isn’t over. There’s plenty of time between here and Chicago.”

“More than ten hours,” Judd adds as he pulls a pocket watch from inside his jacket. Too flustered to open it, he puts it away without checking to see if he’s right.

“And I will find a way off this train, even if it means killing you and her.” Lapsford jerks a thumb in Anna’s direction. “In fact, there’s nothing to prevent us from doing just that and ending this whole charade.”

Anna nods to Seamus, who takes a step forward while simultaneously removing a revolver from his pocket. Someone—either Sal or Edith, Anna isn’t sure—lets out a shocked cry. A few of the men gasp. Even Dante gives Anna a wide-eyed look, as if he suddenly thinks she’s crazy.

He’s wrong there. In that moment, Anna is absolutely, utterly sane.

Next to her, Seamus aims the revolver not at Lapsford but at the car in general, his meaning clear. He can shoot any one of them if he wants to, a realization that makes Lapsford back away with his hands raised.

Seamus glares at the group, and for a second Anna, too, fears he might abandon their plan and shoot them all dead. There are enough bullets in his six-shooter. One for each person.

“I told you she planned to kill us,” Judd says.

Anna steps in front of Seamus, blocking everyone’s view of the revolver. She’d been reluctant to let him bring it, knowing the situation was fraught enough without adding a gun to the mix. But, just like with the knife strapped to her thigh, she ultimately deemed it a necessary precaution.

“No one is going to kill anyone,” Anna says. “I meant it when I said I want you all alive. Seamus has the gun to ensure that all of you remain calm.”

“And what if we don’t?” Lapsford says.

Seamus pokes his head out from behind Anna. “Then you get a bullet in you. That’ll calm you down. You want to wait a little bit, Lieutenant Colonel? Or should I just shoot you now?”

Herb Pulaski breaks away from the group and heads for the set of double doors in the center of the car. “The rest of you can stay here. But I’m not waiting around to get arrested or shot.”

He unlatches the doors and yanks them open.

Wide enough for large trunks and pieces of luggage to fit through, their opening creates a gaping hole in the side of the train.

Cold air blasts through the car, bringing with it a scattering of thick snowflakes that spiral to the floor.

Riding the air with them is the noise of the train itself.

A loud clattering of steel wheels on iron rails that echoes off the car’s barren walls.

Buffeted by the wind and noise, Herb moves closer to the opening.

“What are you doing?” Judd says, shouting to be heard over the racket.

“What do you think? I’m gonna jump off this goddamn train. I suggest the rest of you do the same.”

Herb stands in the doorway and grips both sides of the frame, preparing to leap.

Anna sweeps up behind him, panicked he’ll go through with it.

Over his shoulder, she sees that the train is still following the path of the river.

There are no longer any houses on the opposite shore, however.

Just a dark, rugged expanse of water and woods dusted with falling snow.

“The average speed of this train is sixty-five miles an hour,” she tells Herb. “If you jump, there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’ll be killed instantly. Especially if you get pulled under the wheels. They’ll slice you faster than a knife through butter.”

Herb leans into the empty space beyond the doorway. “I’ll risk it.”

“Suit yourself,” Anna says, changing tactics.

“But even if you are lucky enough to survive the jump, you won’t emerge unscathed.

There will be injuries. Broken bones. Cuts and abrasions.

You certainly won’t be able to run. You probably won’t even be able to walk.

And if, by some miracle you can, there’s nowhere for you to go. Not much of an escape plan, is it?”

Herb turns away from the opening to look at her. Anna searches his face, pleased to notice that hesitation has begun to settle over his features.

“I’m waiting, Mr. Pulaski,” she says. “Do you intend to jump or not?”

Herb looks back outside and Anna can tell he’s doing the calculations in his head, deciding if it’s ultimately worth the risk.

“Would you like me to push you?” she says.

“No!”

Herb leaps away from the door, not stopping until his back is flattened against the opposite wall. Anna takes his place at the doors, slamming them shut. The wind instantly ceases as the noise of the train quiets to a steady clickety-clack.

“Now that you’ve come to your senses and realized there’s no getting off this train until Chicago, I recommend all of you make your way back to the first-class lounge,” she says.

No one disagrees with her. Not even Jack Lapsford, the most contentious of the bunch. All five of them shuffle out of the baggage car, overseen by Seamus. Anna and Dante follow a short distance behind.

“Why didn’t you try to stop the train?” Anna says softly once they reach the second coach car and are filing down the aisle.

“I have my reasons,” Dante replies. “Ones that have nothing to do with you.”

He says nothing after that. No one does. Passing row upon row of empty seats, the group becomes a grim parade, struck silent by the lack of people. When they return to the first-class lounge, Judd Dodge says, “I think I could use that drink now.”

Dante steps behind the bar. “Pick your poison.”

“Gin,” Judd says.

“Works for me,” Sal announces as she drops her handbag onto the bar and pulls out a tube of lipstick.

“I’ll take one, too,” Herb says. “Seeing how this might be my last chance for a stiff drink.”

Lapsford chimes in with “Make mine a double.”

Dante gathers the necessities with the same dexterity he applied to the piano. Within seconds the bar top is crowded with martini glasses, a cocktail shaker, and a bottle of Tanqueray.

“Anything for you, Edith?”

Edith, sitting primly at a distance, shakes her head. “Alcohol dulls the senses.”

“Yeah,” Sal says while applying the lipstick, outlining her mouth in a shade of red as bright as blood. “That’s the point.”

Dante fills the cocktail shaker with ice, gin, and two splashes of vermouth.

After giving it a good stir, he lines up four glasses and runs the upturned shaker back and forth over the row until each one has the same amount.

He then spreads his arms wide above the finished cocktails and says, “Come and get ’em. ”

Already at the bar, Sal hovers a hand over the glasses before choosing one on the end of the row.

Herb is next, snagging the one now in the center without thought.

After him comes Lapsford, who reaches for one glass, changes his mind, takes the other.

Turning away from the bar, he brushes against Judd, who picks up the remaining glass with his right hand and carries it to the center of the car, where he stands alone.

For a moment, they drink in silence, letting the gravity of the situation sink in.

Herb takes the tiniest of sips, grimacing at the martini’s strength.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Sal, who tips the glass back, her fresh lipstick leaving a crimson stain on its rim.

Lapsford keeps his glass at his lips, glaring over the drink at Anna, while Judd, in no hurry to take a sip, checks his pocket watch and stifles a yawn.

Another horn toot rises from the front of the train, long and languid in the dark night. It’s followed by a similar one from farther away. Another train is in the vicinity, roaring in the opposite direction on the set of tracks running parallel to their own.

Within seconds, the train is beside them, rattling by with a car-rocking whoosh.

The lit windows of the other train pass their own in flashbulb bursts.

Bright. Fleeting. Blinding in their intensity.

The blink-quick glimpses of people on the other train filling coach seats, mingling in the club car, and eating in the dining car make those trapped on the Phoenix lean closer to watch with palpable envy.

Then the other train is gone, leaving them with nothing but a view of the snow-studded landscape. Anna hopes all of them are thinking about how this is their last moment of comfort before it’s taken away from them forever—and that this knowledge makes it all the more painful.

She looks to Seamus, who’d noticed the same thing and flashes her a half smile. Rare for him. A sign that, despite a few hiccups and Dante’s presence, their plan is working.

But then someone in the car coughs.

Then moans.

Then emits a sickly combination of the two.

All eyes turn to the afflicted party—Lt. Col. Jack Lapsford, who at that moment is collapsing into the nearest chair, martini sloshing. He sets it down and uses that now-free hand to clutch his chest.

“Help,” he gasps. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

Those nearest him—Sal and Herb—are by his side in an instant, uncertain how to help. By the time Anna pushes herself between them, Lapsford’s face has turned bright red.

“Can you breathe?” she asks as she kneels before him.

Lapsford’s head lolls back, neither shake nor nod. Anna grasps his free hand in both of her own. She places two fingers against his wrist, feeling his pulse. While Anna is certainly no doctor, it seems normal to her. She suspects her own heart is beating twice as fast.

“I don’t think it’s his heart,” she says. “Maybe a stroke?”

Anna stands and steadies Lapsford’s head between her hands.

His eyes are open, and she stares into them, searching for signs of stroke, of seizure, of brain hemorrhage.

Not that she knows what those signs are.

Anna assumes something will reveal itself.

But as she gazes into Lapsford’s eyes, there’s nothing obviously wrong with them.

“We need a doctor!” someone shouts.

“What we need is to stop this damn train!” someone else yells even louder.

“No!” Anna whirls around to face them, the tone of her voice and the ferocity of her words silencing the rest of the car. “This train stops for no one.”

“But this is an emergency,” Herb says.

Anna is no longer so sure of that. There are no signs that anything is wrong with Lapsford other than his dramatic appearance. Which, now that Anna thinks about it, seems too dramatic, especially for someone with a normal pulse and no obvious affliction.

She turns back to Lapsford, whose breathing instantly calms. His expression, too, changes from panic to one of defiance, with a touch of amusement thrown in for good measure. In that moment, Anna knows her suspicion is correct.

Nothing is wrong with Jack Lapsford. He had simply faked a heart attack to get her to stop the train.

“I had to give it a shot,” he says when it’s clear he’s been caught once again trying to stop the train.

Anna can only shake her head in disgust. What a weak, cowardly man.

“You’re probably the worst person on this train,” she tells him. “Considering your fellow passengers, that’s—”

She’s cut off by the sound of a martini glass being slammed against a cocktail table.

Pivoting toward the sound, she sees Judd Dodge, now empty-handed, staring into the middle distance.

Mouth open and eyes wide, he looks like a man currently glimpsing some indescribable horror at the end of the car.

But there’s nothing there. Just the bar with Dante still behind it and the mirrored shelves in back of him reflecting the scene unfolding in the center of the car.

Anna, having just been duped by Lapsford, makes no move to help. No one does.

Judd lists to the right, grasping the tablecloth of the cocktail table as if that alone can keep him upright.

The cloth instead slithers across the table, toppling the martini glass and causing Judd to lose his balance entirely.

He hits the floor with a sickening thud, the sound muting the single, agonized moan escaping his lips.

In a flash, Anna is at his side, kneeling over him, trying to steady him the same way she’d done with Lapsford moments earlier.

As Judd writhes on his back, a slick of foam bubbles out of his mouth.

Like someone afflicted. Someone rabid. Flecks of red stain the foam.

A bloody, viscous mess gurgles past his lips and oozes down his chin.

Anna gapes at it, helpless and horrified. “Judd, can you talk? Tell me what’s wrong.”

Speechless, Judd only shudders.

Then, with a groan and a rattle, he goes still.

Anna slaps his face, lightly at first, then with increased force. She continues slapping, panic underscoring every strike, until Seamus gently pulls her away.

“No,” Anna whimpers. “He can’t be.”

With a trembling hand, Seamus places two fingers against Judd’s neck. He looks at Anna and shakes his head. After quickly crossing himself in silent prayer, Seamus removes Judd’s glasses, places the same fingers he’d just used to seek out a pulse atop his eyelids, and gently slides them closed.

To the others in the lounge, that’s the moment it becomes real. When all of them understand that this isn’t a blatant attempt to stop the train or another part of Anna’s plan.

Judd Dodge is dead.