Page 109 of With a Vengeance

Behind her, Reggie enters the baggage car. Anna can hear his footsteps, slow but steady. There’s no need for him to hurry. After all, he has the gun.

She whirls to face him, her back against the door. The center of Reggie’s face is a bruised, bloody pulp. His nose bends at an unnatural angle, dripping blood. More blood oozes through the side of his shirt, where his stitches have no doubt come undone.

Fear closes around Anna like a fist, squeezing tight, holding her in place. Its grip is so tight that she’s barely aware of the sounds coming from the other side of the door.

A sigh.

A twist.

A creak.

Then the door suddenly drops away. What once supported her is now just a void that Anna would fall right through if not for someone else filling the space. Relief floods her body as she turns to the open door.

But it’s not Burt Chapman standing on the threshold, preparing to pull her to the safety of the locomotive. It’s someone else entirely. Someone who’s been on this train the whole night without her knowing it.

Kenneth Wentworth.

Fifty-Three

Anna seizes upat the sight of him. In the past year, not a day has gone by in which she didn’t think about everything Kenneth Wentworth took from her. He’s haunted her nightmares—and her waking hours, too. Now, standing right in front of her, is the man who instigated everything. Nothing any of the others had done would have happened without him, the puppeteer pulling all the strings.

He’s the reason her brother is dead, along with thirty-six others, including Seamus’s brother and Reggie’s father.

He’s the person most responsible for framing her own father.

He’s the man whose horrific actions drove her mother to suicide.

Anna’s both fantasized about and feared this moment, wondering how she’d react. Would she scream? Would she weep? Or would she simply kill him in a way that inflicted the most pain? Right now, Anna feels capable of all three. The sensation is overwhelming, all-encompassing, and, ultimately, crippling. In the end, all she can do is stare into the eyes of Kenneth Wentworth so he can see how much he’s destroyed her life.

He stares back, as if expecting her to flinch.

She doesn’t.

“You know who I am,” she says.

It’s not a question.

“I do, Miss Matheson,” Wentworth replies with disconcerting calmness. “I also know why you’re here.”

Anna takes in his clothes, a surreal combination of white shirt and necktie worn beneath gray engineer’s overalls. Despite driving a train all night, he retains a distinguished look accomplished only with lots of money. His silver hair is neatly combed, his face enviably tan. White teeth sparkle behind his Cary Grant smile.

“Where’s Burt Chapman?” Anna asks. “He’s supposed to be the engineer.”

“I fired him back in Philadelphia,” Wentworth says, his smile remaining even as his voice hardens. “Did you really think I wouldn’t be aware of what’s going on with my own train? Or that when someone pays my employees to skip work I wouldn’t be told about it? Most of all, when I get invited to ride a train I own, did you not think I’d find out who sent it?”

Anna had considered all of that when planning the trip with Seamus. She’d decided it was worth the risk.

“Why didn’t you stop the train earlier?” she says. “In fact, why did it leave at all?”

“Because it’s been a long time since I took the Phoenix out for a spin. It’s a hobby of mine, you know. I enjoy it very much. Also, I was curious to see where the journey took us. Care to enlighten me?”

Anna gets his meaning. He wants to know who’s dead. She’s not about to tell him.

“You thought I was going to kill them,” she says.

“I assumed you were entertaining the idea, yes.”

“Because youwantedme to kill them.”

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