Page 55

Forty-Five

Anna screams.

A pointless act.

Seamus is gone. She knows that. She watched the rag-doll flailing of his limbs as he fell, noted the sickening bend of his body as he hit the icy water below.

Before she could see if he resurfaced unscathed, the train had reached the other side of the bridge and the river quickly slipped out of view.

Still, she screams, the rush of snowy air from the open doors ripping the sound from her lungs so she barely hears it. Even so, she doesn’t stop. Because she needs to scream.

At Seamus.

For Seamus.

Grieving him and hating him and missing him although it’s only been seconds.

The sheer act of screaming unleashes something in her. A startling, snarling pain she’s kept locked down for a dozen years. Now that it’s out, though, she has no idea how to stop it.

Nor does she know what to do next, despite what Seamus said.

You know what to do. You can end this.

The memory of those words finally makes Anna stop screaming.

When Seamus first said them, she’d been too stung by betrayal and despair for them to register.

They were like embers in a roaring fire, lost amid the blaze.

Now, though, with Seamus gone and the scream dying in her lungs, they’re all Anna thinks about.

He told her that for a reason, all while forcing the gun into her hand. At first, Anna thinks he wanted her to finish what he started. Kill Lapsford. Experience the beauty and sweet release of vengeance fulfilled.

But something else he’d said nudges into her thoughts.

When I got the opportunity to murder one of those bastards, I took it.

A single word in particular stands out from the rest.

One.

Anna slams the doors shut and collapses to the floor beside them. Pain tears through her now-silent throat, raw and throbbing. She gulps, winces, weeps, all the while trying to untangle her thoughts.

Of all the murders on this train, Seamus only admitted to one of them.

Anna gasps, the sudden intake of air making her wince a second time. Seamus never admitted to killing any of the others. Only Judd. And she can think of just one reason why he didn’t confess to the other murders.

They were committed by someone else.