Page 105 of With a Vengeance

Anna can only trust them so far.

With that in mind, she sprints back into the corridor, on the way to Dante’s room. One of the trip’s other unlikely allies. She gets as far as the door when he opens it and peers outside. “Here to accuse me of murder again?”

“I’m sorry,” Anna says. “I know you didn’t do anything wrong. It was part of my plan to catch the real killer.”

“You could have at least warned me,” Dante says with a sniff.

“I’ll explain everything later. Right now, I desperately need your help.”

“What’s happening?” he asks.

“Nothing good.”

Dante slips out the door and follows her down the hall. At the door to Lapsford’s room, he spots Reggie unconscious on the floor.

“You should tie him up.”

“That’s my next order of business,” Anna says.

“Where’s Seamus?”

“Gone.”

Anna says nothing more than that. One, there’s no time, and two, saying what happened out loud will make it real. And she’s not ready for that. Certainly not now. Likely not ever. So she keeps moving, pulling Dante into the room with Lapsford and Sal.

“The three of you stay in this room, no matter what. Lock the door behind me. Open it only when this train comes to a stop in Chicago.” Anna turns to Dante. “Can I trust you?”

Dante doesn’t so much as blink. “Yes.”

Anna presses Seamus’s gun into his hands. “Guard them with your life.”

She leaves the room, pausing in the corridor just long enough to see Dante close the door behind her and to hear the lock being turned. Then she’s off again, racing to Reggie’s room in the next car. Inside, she spots his overnight case and flips it upside down, spilling its contents onto the bed. A tie. A shirt flecked with Herb’s blood. A list of names with three crossed out.

And bullets.

A whole box of them.

Anna grabs it and with shaking hands loads six bullets into Reggie’s gun. Seamus was right. She can end this.

She’s out the door a second later, bursting into the next car. Halfway down the corridor, she skids to a stop and looks into Lapsford’s room.

The patch of floor where Reggie had been sprawled only two minutes earlier is now empty.

The window on the other side of the room is wide open.

And Agent Reggie Davis is gone.

Fifty

Anna follows Reggieout 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, feelamplified 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.

---