Page 52

Forty-Two

Anna runs through the car, although to her the pace feels glacial. A long, slow slog to the other end in which she becomes aware of everything around her. The rocking of the train. The hum-rattle of the wheels. The world outside the window, passing in a blur.

At the last room of the car, she peers through the open door and spots Reggie on his feet, clutching his side. When their eyes meet, Anna shakes her head, silently answering the question in Reggie’s gaze.

No, I don’t know what’s happening.

He takes an unsteady step toward the door and Anna offers another head shake, its message clear. Stay here. Stay safe.

She continues into Car 12, almost colliding with Seamus as he hovers just beyond the door. “Stay back,” he says.

Anna doesn’t.

She can’t.

Not when she sees Dante at the other end of the car. Another person still present and accounted for.

“Lapsford?” Anna says.

Slowly, nervously, Dante slips through the open door of Lapsford’s room. He returns a second later, visibly shaken. “He’s alive.”

A knot of fear forms in the pit of Anna’s stomach, getting tighter when she looks to the door of Sal’s room. It sits ajar, creaking in time to the rocking of the train.

Anna surges to the door, even as Seamus yells for her to stop. “Anna, wait!”

She ignores him and gives the door a push. It swings open, agonizingly slow, revealing a sliver of room that widens into a full view. The first thing Anna sees is Seamus’s revolver. It sits in the middle of the floor, bathed in muted light coming through the window.

That’s where Anna’s eye is drawn next, seeing that the glass has been blown out, likely by the first bullet.

She heard the shatter that accompanied the initial gunshot.

Now only a few shards cling to the window frame, sharp and glinting.

Wind howls through the empty space, whipping the curtains as snow gusts across the room.

Sitting in the swivel chair in front of the blown-out window is Sal.

Silhouetted by the gray light of dawn, she looks like a shadow.

One somehow discarded by its owner, so it now sits limp and motionless.

Because of the way Sal’s situated in the chair—head thrown back, closed eyes aimed at the ceiling—Anna is forced to take a step into the room to fully make out her face.

It’s expressionless. A blank.

The last thing Anna sees is the red-black hole in the center of Sal’s forehead. A single rivulet of crimson rolls down the bridge of her nose.

Looking down at Sal, Anna feels nothing.

A surprise. She thought some kind of emotion would roar forth.

It turns out she’s too numb for that now.

Instead, she stands there, speechless, only vaguely aware of Seamus swooping into the room behind her.

He picks his gun up off the floor, shoves it into his jacket pocket, then takes a sheet from the bed.

“No,” Anna says, her voice hard as steel. “I’ll do it.”

Seamus hands her the sheet and Anna, quietly and reverently, drapes it over Sal’s body. She leaves the room without another word, waiting until Seamus closes the door behind them before whirling around to face Dante.

“You,” she says, the word a rasp that scrapes the back of her throat. “It was you.”

“Me? I didn’t do anything.”

Anna approaches him, trembling and rage filled. “Quit lying to me! You’re the only person here who could have done it. Reggie’s got a stab wound in his stomach and Lapsford’s heart is barely beating.”

“What about him?” Dante says, pointing to Seamus at the other end of the corridor.

“He was with me.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong, Annie. I swear.”

“You were working with Judd,” Anna says. “You knew he wasn’t dead. The two of you planned this whole thing out. I should’ve seen it the moment you asked him to pick his poison.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just an innocent phrase.”

“Normally, yes. But in this instance, it was a signal to Judd to get ready to fake his own death. Then you started to kill the others one by one.”

Dante takes a stumbling backward step, its awkwardness standing in stark contrast to the easy walk Anna witnessed earlier in the night. That swift glide through the corridors had made her think it was Tommy. A ridiculous notion in hindsight, but one Anna longed to believe.

“You were roaming the train,” she tells Dante now, hurling the accusation at him. “Right before Edith died. You’re the one who killed her. You’re the one who snuck into my room and cut the cord to the drapes.”

Anna touches the bodice of her dress, absently seeking comfort in the silver locomotive pin that had once belonged to her father. It takes a second for her to remember it’s no longer there. Seamus now has the pin, after it was found on the floor of Herb Pulaski’s room.

“You’re also the one who took my pin,” she says.

“When we were in the lounge after Herb attacked me. You took it and planted it in Herb’s room.

You and Judd were trying to frame me. But then Judd left his room, proving he wasn’t dead.

So you decided to kill him. Did you do that before or after you stabbed Reggie? ”

Dante stands in the middle of the corridor, swaying from shock. “How could I have done that? Sal and Lapsford were in the middle cars. They would have seen me pass.”

“Not if you used a window,” Anna says. “Which we know you can. It’s how you escaped Herb’s room after you slit his throat.”

“Annie, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I thought you were helping me,” Anna says. “I thought you were different from your father.”

“I am!” Dante stares at her, a dark, desperate look in his eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I think we all need to calm down and just talk about it.”

“We’re done talking. I was so stupid to trust you.”

“Please, Annie. Please just hear me out.”

Dante tries to come toward her but is blocked by Seamus.

“She doesn’t want that,” he says, shoving Dante toward the open door to his room. Dante pushes back, but it’s not an even match. Seamus is clearly the stronger of the two. The best Dante can manage is to nudge him back a step.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Dante shouts from the other end of the car before ramming into Seamus again. All it takes is a few grunting shoves for Seamus to get Dante to the door of his room.

“You’re going to get inside and stay there until we reach Chicago.”

“What if I refuse?” Dante says.

“Then I’ll shoot you.”

Dante raises his hands and allows Seamus to back him across the threshold to his room. Anna follows them inside, visibly furious.

“Did your father send you?” she says. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No! Of course not.” Dante, still moving backward deeper into the room, reaches the chair by the window. When it hits the backs of his legs, he drops into it. “I have nothing to do with this and I have nothing to do with him.”

“You still work for him.”

“Only because I have no other choice,” Dante says. “Believe me, if I could get out from under his thumb, I would.”

Anna sighs. “I wish I could believe you. It would make this betrayal hurt less.”

“What should we do with him?” Seamus asks.

“Tie him to the chair,” Anna says. “Then we close the door and stand guard outside until we reach Chicago.”

With trembling hands, Seamus undoes his necktie, sliding it free of his collar. He then leans forward and removes Dante’s tie in a few rough, shaky tugs. Holding it out to Anna, he says, “Help me with this.”

Anna takes the tie and approaches the chair. As Seamus lashes Dante’s left wrist to the arm of the chair, Anna does the same with his right, avoiding eye contact.

“Annie, you don’t need to do this,” Dante whispers in her ear. “This is all a huge misunderstanding. You know me. You know I would never kill anyone.”

Anna makes one more loop of the tie, topping it off with the tightest knot she can muster.

“That’s the thing, Dante,” she says. “I don’t think I ever really knew you at all.”

She turns and exits the room, refusing to look back, even as Dante continues to shout.

“Annie, please! Don’t leave me like this!”

In the hallway, Anna looks to the window, surveying the snow-covered landscape passing outside the train. The fields, forests, and small towns in the distance look peaceful in the brightening dawn. A far cry from the chaos of the Philadelphia Phoenix.

Behind her, Seamus exits Dante’s room and closes the door before joining her at the window.

“Here to say I told you so?” Anna says.

“No. I’m here to say I’m sorry. I know how hard this must be for you.”

“You have no idea.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Seamus says.

“Yes. Leave me alone. Just for a little bit.”

Anna walks away, hurrying toward the back of the train, glancing over her shoulder to make sure certain Seamus isn’t following her.

In the observation car, she drops into the nearest seat.

Only then do all the emotions she’s kept at bay for the past hour rise to the surface.

The grief. The fear. The guilt. All of them swirl around her in a churning flood.

And Anna—too tired to fight them—allows herself to drown.