Page 103 of With a Vengeance

Reggie pats the side of his stomach. The wound still hurts. A lot. But at least he can move, thanks to Anna.

“The stitches are holding up nicely. You did a good job.”

“An unnecessary one,” Anna says. “When you stabbed yourself, you made sure the wound looked worse than it is.”

“What makes you think I’m the one who did it?”

“The location. It’s on the left side of your stomach. But Judd Dodge, the man you claimed to have stabbed you, was right-handed. If he had really snuck up from behind, as you said he did, the stab wound would have been on the right side of your abdomen.”

Reggie can’t help but be impressed. So far, he’s been unable to get much past her.

“I couldn’t risk the right side,” he says. “Too many vital organs.”

Anna cocks her head, curious. “Is that something they teach you in the FBI? The exact place to stab yourself that causes a lot of bleeding but not major injury?”

“It’s surprising how much you learn on the job.”

“Such as wounding yourself to make it appear like you’re not a murderer?” Anna asks. “Did you kill Edith, too? Or was that Judd?”

“He did the killing, but at my suggestion. The cord from your drapes was also my idea.”

“To make it look like I’d done it. It was the same with the open window and my father’s pin. When did you take it?”

“In the observation car,” Reggie says, recalling how easy it was to pluck from her dress as he pointed out Edith’s smeared lipstick.

“I couldn’t understand why I was being framed, even after I realized you were the killer.” Anna places a finger to her chin, as if putting it together on the spot. “But now it’s starting to make sense. By framing me, you were really framing Judd Dodge.”

“I thought it would look more plausible that way,” Reggie admits. “Judd fakes his death, kills those who could implicate him, then frames you for the crimes. He seemed to think it was a good idea.”

“But in reality, once you murdered the others, you planned to kill him, claiming self-defense. You’d have a scapegoat, no one would be any wiser, and you’d be hailed a hero.”

It was, Reggie thinks, a perfect plan. Practically foolproof. And it would have worked except for one key detail. Anna, of course, knows what it is.

“But then I figured out Judd wasn’t dead. It didn’t help matters that he left his room.” Anna’s voice gets quieter, distant. “And then Seamus killed him.”

“Not part of the plan. At no time did he know what I was up to.”

Sympathy compels Reggie to say it. He doesn’t want Anna to think less of Seamus than she already does. Despite everything, he still admires her. She’s plucky, determined. Very few of his fellow agents would have been able to pull off some of the things Anna accomplished during the night.

“Still, by then, your plan had fully unraveled,” she says.

Reggie steps deeper into the room. “I wouldn’t go that far. Itcould still work—if you don’t tell anyone. Think about it, Anna. All this time, you’ve been craving vengeance. So have I. Now’s our chance to get it.”

“And we have very different ideas about what that looks like,” Anna says.

“But we don’t have to. They’re bad people, Anna. They took everything from you. You deserve to do the same to them.”

Anna shifts in the chair, uneasy. “Not all of them. Kenneth Wentworth isn’t even on this train.”

“That’s the beauty of this. He’ll suffer exactly the way you want him to. Humiliation. Prison. The most hated man in America. And those who helped him will be dead, which is what I want. We both get our way.”

Anna wears a strange expression. A kind of hesitant doubt. Almost as if she wants to say yes but can’t bring herself to do it.

“But what if I refuse to go along with it? Are you going to kill me?”

“Yes,” Reggie says. “That is unfortunately the plan.”

“But what if I kill you first?”

---