Page 40

Thirty-One

Seamus isn’t the killer.

Anna knows this deep in her bones, just as she knows that Sal could be pointing the blame at Seamus to cast doubt away from herself.

She could have killed Judd and Edith just as easily as Seamus.

After all, she was one of three people to choose a martini before Judd, giving her an opportunity to slip poison into his glass unnoticed.

And she had just as much access to Edith in the observation car as Seamus did.

What Sal didn’t have, though, was good reason to kill Judd or Edith.

Seamus did.

And now that a thin ribbon of doubt has curled into her thoughts, Anna can’t resist giving it a tug to test its strength.

For instance, she knows Sal was right about Seamus not being fully searched.

Only the coat of his uniform had been examined before the presence of the gun ended things.

Maybe Seamus had poison waiting in a trouser pocket, still unknown to the rest of them.

As for Edith, it’s clear she was murdered immediately after Anna left the observation car. As she searched the train, looking for the man she saw roaming the corridors, Seamus had just enough time to smother Edith to death before returning to his room.

Anna knows she shouldn’t be thinking such things. She and Seamus are in this together. He’d never do something without first discussing it with her.

Would he?

She enters Car 13, finding it unnervingly quiet.

Yes, the sound of the wheels rumbling over the tracks continues.

It’s the noises on top of it that are missing.

Signs of life that indicate others are onboard.

Coughs and conversations and footfalls on hallways carpets.

Without those, the car seems as quiet as a tomb.

Standing in that strange silence is Seamus, still posted outside Herb Pulaski’s room. He leans against the window across from the door, staring into the middle distance, stoic as always.

“Is Mr. Pulaski behaving himself?” Anna says.

“Haven’t heard a peep out of him for fifteen minutes. What have you been up to?”

“I had a chat with Sal that was a long time coming.”

“How’d that go?” Seamus says.

“It was enlightening.” Anna pauses. “She said she thinks you’re the killer.”

Seamus gives her a questioning look. “And what do you think?”

“Was it you?” Anna says, her voice barely a whisper, as if that will make it any less of a betrayal. “Did you do it, Seamus?”

He’s hurt by the question. Anna sees it in his big brown eyes, which reveal his every emotion. She’s long wondered if Seamus knows how expressive his eyes can be. How she can look into them and know exactly what he’s feeling.

“It’s okay if you did,” she says. “Well, it’s not. Clearly. But I’d understand. You, of all people, have a right to vengeance.”

“Where’s this coming from?” Seamus asks. “It’s got to be more than just something Sally Lawrence said.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I didn’t kill Judd Dodge or Edith Gerhardt,” Seamus says, clearly annoyed that it needs to be said. “I wanted to. I’ll admit that. I want to kill the whole lot of them with my bare hands. But I haven’t—and I won’t. Because I know that isn’t what you want.”

Anna searches for the faintest hint that he’s lying, but all she sees is the same grief-stricken expression that greets her every time she looks in a mirror.

“You believe me, right?” Seamus says.

“Yes,” Anna says, because she does believe him. More than that, she trusts him. She has no choice. They’re on an empty train with the same sworn enemies, one of whom is a killer. Seamus is the only person she can trust.

“Who do you think is the killer?” she says.

“My money’s still on Dante Wentworth.”

“I already told you, it’s not him.”

“You have something to back that up? Or are you just saying that because you’re in love with him?”

“Was,” Anna says. “I was in love with him.”

Seamus swats away her comment with a skeptical “Whatever you say.”

“I just don’t think Dante’s capable of something like that. Especially because he has no reason to do it. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He broke your heart,” Seamus says.

Anna gazes out the window, barely able to see black sky peeking through white snow. “He did. But he’s making up for it now. He’s the one who gathered the proof and sent it to Aunt Retta. He admitted it to me. Apparently, he hates his father as much as we do.”

“I highly doubt that,” Seamus says.

Anna considers telling him what else she learned from Dante.

That her mother and Kenneth Wentworth had once been engaged.

That the main reason all of this happened is a longtime grudge held by a bitter, heartbroken man.

She ultimately decides not to. Since it makes her feel worse, she can only imagine what it will be like for Seamus to learn that his brother was just an innocent bystander in all of it.

“Dante is on our side,” she says. “Without him, we wouldn’t be here.”

Seamus rolls his eyes. “I’ll be sure to thank him next time I see him. If we live to see Chicago, that is.”

“You’re worried that we won’t?”

“Yes,” Seamus says. “And if we do make it, I’m worried about what comes after.”

Anna understands, for she feels the same.

They’ve spent years grieving and raging, seething and plotting.

All of it leading to this night, this train, this moment.

And in a few hours—five, by Anna’s schedule—it will all be over.

Justice will be served, the guilty will pay, and they’ll no longer have any need to rage, seethe, or plot.

It will be a life that Anna has no idea how to live. For so long, her entire existence has revolved around retribution. She can’t imagine a future in which that isn’t the case. How sad that is, she realizes. How utterly pathetic that this has been her only focus in life.

“What are you going to do when it’s all over?” she asks Seamus, hoping that he’s not like her, that he has at least one other thing to build a life around.

“No clue,” Seamus says. “Whenever I think about the future, all I see is a black nothingness. No matter how much I try to envision one, that’s all I can picture. Nothing. Just a void.”

“You’ll figure it out. We both will.”

For Anna, that involves getting a job. This trip has cost her everything.

There’s nothing left of her aunt’s inheritance.

And while Anna likes the thought of working, she also knows she has zero marketable skills.

Unless someone wants to hire a full-time revenge-trip coordinator, she’s going to have to start at the bottom.

“ You will,” Seamus says. “Me? Not so much. I mean, will we even see each other again after this?”

“Of course,” Anna says, even though she has her doubts.

She can’t think of a single reason why she and Seamus would continue to interact once the night is over.

They have nothing in common. Only this. And while it’s been enough to get them through the past year, she’s uncertain it can sustain any form of friendship beyond it.

“Right,” Seamus says, pretending to believe her.

A silence settles between them, but it’s not the companionable kind that Anna has grown accustomed to.

Those evenings when, after a long day of plotting, they shared a hushed dinner or a quiet hour of reading in the vast expanse of Aunt Retta’s library.

This silence brings with it a tension born of emotions unexpressed and words unspoken.

“Anna,” Seamus says, shattering the quiet.

He points to the floor, where a thin line of red has started to roll beneath the door to Room A.

Blood.

A single rivulet oozing along the carpet.

Anna rushes to the door and knocks, the sound echoing through the car. “Mr. Pulaski? Are you okay in there?”

When no response comes, she tries again. “Herb?”

Anna twists the doorknob. It doesn’t budge. The door is still locked.

“I’m getting Agent Davis,” Seamus says before sprinting from the car.

Anna remains at the door, pounding on it, shouting Herb’s name, pleading for a response even though deep down she already understands that one won’t arrive.

When knocking doesn’t work, she tries the handle again, panic making her think that this time it will open, that she’d just done it wrong on her prior attempt.

By then, Seamus has returned with Reggie. He’s removed his tie since Anna last saw him, the top button of his white shirt undone.

“He’s locked in,” she says in a panic. “I think he’s hurt.”

Reggie pushes her out of the way before throwing his full weight against the door, using his shoulder as a battering ram.

The door rattles but doesn’t open, forcing him to make a second attempt.

When that one also fails, Seamus joins in.

Together they crash against the door, to no avail.

The only door that opens is the one to their direct left, which leads to the previous car.

Peering through it are Dante, Sally, and Lapsford, lured there by the commotion.

“Go back to your rooms,” Anna barks at them.

“What the hell is going on?” Lapsford says.

Behind him, Sally’s face goes pale. “What’s happened to Herb?”

Anna doesn’t yet know, but whatever it is, it’s not good. If it were, they’d be inside the room by now and there wouldn’t be blood on the carpet, now smeared by Seamus’s and Reggie’s shoes as they stumble away from the door.

With twin grunts, both throw themselves at it one last time. The door finally gives way, splintering at the frame with a deafening crack. Anna pushes between them, peering into the newly opened room.

The first thing she sees is more blood.

A dark pool of it sits just inside the door, spinning off additional rivulets that threaten to join the one in the hallway. The motion of the train makes the blood shudder sickeningly, like a puddle in an earthquake.

Anna wills herself to look beyond it, moving her gaze deeper into the room.

Past the pool of blood.

To the stream of it that runs to the chair by the window.

Then to the chair itself, where Herb Pulaski sits, obviously dead. Somehow, his corpse remains upright, as if it has been waiting for them. There’s an air of calm patience to the way his head tilts against the back of the chair and how his hands lightly grip the armrests.

The relaxed state of Herb’s body stands in stark counterpoint to the look of utter horror on his face.

A terror that transfers from him to Anna.

Deep down, she knew Herb was dead before the door had been smashed open.

Only it’s worse than she ever could have imagined.

Because Herb wasn’t murdered in the same hands-free way that Judd was.

Nor was his death as clean as Edith’s. This was a different kind of end. A violent one.

Beneath his chin, a gash runs across his neck. It’s slightly curved, like a second mouth that’s spitting blood. Herb’s eyes are wide with fear and his mouth remains open, as if emitting a silent scream.

And Anna, woozy from the horror of it all, can’t keep from screaming along with it.