Page 60

Fifty

Anna follows Reggie out the window, a decision made after only a second of thought.

With him on the roof and her inside the train, there would be no way for her to tell where he was headed.

He could appear anywhere, at any time. Even entering the train again through a window in the room where Dante, Sal, and Lapsford are barricaded.

But if she’s on the roof, Anna reasons, she’ll be able to see exactly where Reggie is going.

Taking a deep breath, she kicks off her shoes and stands on the chair. She then squeezes through the window and sits on the window frame, her legs still inside but her upper half now fully out of the train and buffeted by wind and snow.

The sheer force of the elements feels like a physical assault.

The cold is brutal and the snow smacking her face stinging.

After only seconds outside, Anna begins to ache from the chill, even while wearing Reggie’s jacket.

It’s enough to make her want to slide back into the room, which she almost does.

The only thing keeping her in place is the idea, however misguided, that what she intends to do has been done before.

Still unknown is if Anna herself is capable of it.

The train’s vibrations, while noticeable on the inside, feel amplified when outside.

The exterior of the car hums with movement—a constant shimmying that would bother Anna more if she wasn’t distracted by the oversize presence of everything the train passes.

Each tree and telephone pole feels terrifyingly close.

Every object zipping by contains a gravity, a weight.

Everything—from the wind to the snow to the objects running alongside the rails—feels like they’re grasping at Anna, threatening to rip her from the train.

With her arms spread wide, she hugs the side of the train and slowly starts to stand on the windowsill, moving first one foot, then the other.

While ditching her heels was the right move, Anna wishes she had an alternative to bare feet.

The cold edge of the windowsill presses like a razor blade against her soles.

She dreads finding out how the roof of the train will feel.

Speaking of the roof, it becomes eye level with Anna once she reaches a standing position.

Through a veil of falling snow, she takes in the expanse of the roof in front of her, noting its pros and cons.

On the plus side, it’s wide—a little more than ten feet—and not completely smooth.

A series of evenly placed ridges run the length of the roof, giving her something to grip when she attempts to climb onto the top of the train.

The downside is that the roof is far from flat. It bears a slight curve that, when combined with the scattered patches of ice and packed snow, might weaken her grip and make her movements unsteady once atop it.

If she even reaches the roof.

Anna has her doubts as she places her palms flat against it, finding it shockingly cold.

Like touching a sheet of ice. The pads of her fingers stick to the metal, requiring her to carefully pry each one off the frigid surface lest they freeze there.

Definitely not the kind of grip she wants or needs.

Not that she has a choice in the matter.

It’s either keep climbing or go back inside.

She can’t remain outside the train indefinitely.

The longer she’s out here, the more intense things become.

The air seems colder, the push of the wind stronger, the objects along the tracks ever closer.

When the train crosses a road, the warning signal—a fuming cacophony of red lights and a clanging alarm—gets so close that Anna swears she feels it brush her back even as she flattens herself against the train’s side.

Once it’s cleared, Anna takes a deep breath that she fears could be among her last. Then she begins her ascent.

Simultaneously pushing off the windowsill and pulling on the metal ridge along the roof’s edge, she clambers as fast as she can.

The snow is so thick she can hardly see.

Her bare feet slap against the freezing steel.

Her fingers claw at the equally cold roof.

Through some combination of miracle and might, she makes it to the top of the train in ten seconds flat.

After rolling to the center of the roof, Anna struggles to stand.

For as weird as it was to be clinging to the side of the train, it’s even stranger to be on top of it.

More dangerous, too. Up here, she’s exposed on all sides, surrounded by the cold and hammered by snow-specked wind that makes her feel like she’s pushing against a locked door.

In these conditions, Anna swears the only thing keeping her upright is the metal roof beneath her feet, the soles of which seem to be frozen to it.

Then there’s the ice, circles of which dot the roof’s surface like land mines. One wrong step could send her tumbling from the train.

She knows what will happen after that.

When she first reached the roof, Anna was more worried about staying upright than which direction she faced.

Which is why she now gazes upon the last two cars of the train, including the observation car with its window in the roof.

Unsticking her feet, she rotates slowly until she’s looking down the length of the train.

Through the snow, she spots the dark shape of Reggie two cars away, on the roof of the first-class lounge.

“Reggie!” she yells as she pulls the gun from her jacket pocket and thrusts it in front of her. “Stop!”

He turns around, looking dazed from the blow to his head, the climb to the roof, the wound at his stomach. Reggie clutches it as he shouts back, making sure she can hear him over the roar of the wind.

“You’re not going to shoot me, Anna!”

He’s right about that. Anna knows that even a superficial wound would likely send him toppling off the train to certain death.

Something she definitely doesn’t want. Reggie has now joined the ranks of Sal, Lapsford, and Kenneth Wentworth.

People she wants to see punished for as long as possible, in as many ways as possible.

Reggie’s death, quite simply, would be too unsatisfying for her.

Reggie knows this, because instead of scrambling away, he starts walking toward her.

Anna shuffles backward, unwilling to fire the gun. Reggie keeps moving, crossing onto the roof of Car 11 in broad steps. Anna continues to back up, cautious, her gaze constantly snapping from Reggie to her feet to the space behind her. By the time Reggie reaches Car 12, she’s still moving off it.

“Don’t come any closer,” Anna warns as she steps atop Car 13 and takes in their surroundings.

They’re approaching the outskirts of Chicago now, the scrubby, snow-covered fields ceding ground to brick-front factories, warehouses, row homes.

She imagines people inside them looking through grimy windows and seeing the two of them atop the Philadelphia Phoenix.

Reggie reaching the end of Car 12, Anna merely in the middle of Car 13, still carefully backing across the roof.

“We don’t need to do this, you know,” Reggie says, close enough now that he no longer has to raise his voice. So close that Anna can see fresh blood oozing from the wound at his side.

“We don’t,” she says. “So turn yourself in.”

“Or you can drop the gun.”

Anna shakes her head. “Not a chance.”

“There’s always the option of joining me,” Reggie says. “Did Seamus tell you how it felt to kill one of them?”

“He did.” Anna pauses, unsure if she should share it. “He said it was beautiful.”

“It was. You can experience it for yourself, you know.”

“I’d rather see you in prison along with the others.”

“You know as well as I do that they had it coming,” Reggie says. “Judd. Edith. Herb. As do Sally and Lapsford.”

“What about Dante?” Anna asks. “To get away with this, you’ll have to kill him, too. And he didn’t do anything.”

Reggie steps onto the roof of Car 13, forcing Anna to continue her backward shuffle.

“He’s a Wentworth,” he says. “His father caused all this. Think about that, Anna. Your brother and my father are dead, but the Wentworth men still have each other. That doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

Anna’s at the end of the car, quickening her pace as Reggie draws closer. Not that it will do her any good. When she crosses to the next car, she suddenly realizes what Reggie has known all along.

She’s reached the observation car.

The last one on the train.

There’s nowhere left for her to go.

“Stop!” Anna says, pointing the revolver at Reggie’s chest, her index finger dancing along the trigger.

Reggie keeps walking, joining her atop the last car, halting only when the barrel of the gun is pressed again his chest. “Just admit that you’re not going to shoot me,” he says. “Not up here.”

“No,” Anna says. “Down there.”

Pure panic shines in Reggie’s eyes as they flick from Anna’s face to the gun to their feet. Anna follows his gaze, making sure they’re standing exactly where she wants them to be.

Directly atop the observation car’s skylight.

Anna points the gun toward the glass and, without hesitation, pulls the trigger.