Page 92 of With a Vengeance

This time, Seamus waits for an answer. He watches, breathless himself, as Lapsford nods almost imperceptibly. The faint motion releases an anger that Seamus tries hard to keep hidden. Lapsford helped plan the murder of his brother. And Sal, standing in a corner of the room wringing her hands, then helped to cover it up. In that moment, Seamus would kill them both if he knew he could get away with it.

Since he can’t, Anna’s plan is the next best option.

Making them suffer.

For the rest of their days.

But Lapsford’s suffering might be at an end. He can no longer seem to move his head. His breath, if it exists at all, is undetectable. The only reason Seamus knows he remains alive is that his pupils continue to zero in on the pill still pinched between Anna’s fingers.

“I bet you try hard not to think about them,” she tells Lapsford. “But they force their way into your mind. All those boys you decided to sacrifice. I think they haunt your nightmares. Just likeyou’re haunted by the fear that everyone is going to find out what horrible things you’ve done. And, trust me, everyonewillfind out. Even if you die a minute from now, I’ll make sure they know.”

It might be less than a minute, Seamus thinks. Sensing there’s no time left, he reaches out and snatches the pill from Anna’s fingers. He then shoves it into Lapsford’s gaping mouth, his fingers sliding over his tongue as it’s pushed to the back of his throat. There’s a glass of water by the bed, which Seamus brings to Lapsford’s lips and tips back.

A violent, choking cough rattles through Lapsford. For a moment, Seamus thinks it’s too late and that the man is in the throes of death. He braces himself for that sad, final breath. But soon the coughing and rattling cease. They’re followed by a disquieting pause in which Seamus is visited by warring emotions. He wants Lapsford to live and he wants him to die and he hates himself for feeling both of those things.

Lapsford begins to breathe again, the sound ending the fraught silence. When Lapsford looks at Seamus, he sees a light in the other man’s eyes that hadn’t been present mere seconds before. Seamus checks Lapsford’s pulse again, feeling it greatly calmed. The pill seems to be working. Whether that’s a good or bad thing remains unclear. Especially once Lapsford finds his voice again.

“You should have let me die,” he murmurs.

Forty-One

When it becomesclear that Lapsford will live for at least another hour, Anna backs away from the bed. She feels the others watching as she stands. Sal and Dante and Seamus, whose gaze is particularly unreadable.

In Car 11, Anna takes a quick look inside Reggie’s room, finding him fast asleep. The lucky bastard. Anna’s been awake so long her whole body aches, including her head.

Inside her own room, she collapses on the bed and stares up at the ceiling. Even if she did try to sleep, she knows it won’t happen. She remains too upset by the stress of stitching up Reggie, Judd’s murder, and the situation with Lapsford.

“Do you want to talk about what just happened back there?” Seamus says as he enters her room and drops into the chair by the window.

Anna keeps her eyes on the ceiling. “I needed answers.”

“No, you needed to save him. The answers you could have gotten later.”

“Not if he was dead,” Anna says.

“I just wish you had talked to me about it first. We can’t keep things from each other.”

Anna props herself up on her elbows. “Like why you’re carrying around a stash of muscle relaxants?”

“That’s different,” Seamus says.

“Is it? A man was poisoned—”

“He faked being poisoned.”

“We didn’t know that at the time,” Anna says. “Yet you didn’t think to mention how you were carrying around a box of mysterious pills.”

“Because it doesn’t concern you.”

Anna scoots forward until she’s sitting on the edge of the bed. “But it does. If it’s on this train, it concerns me. Now tell me, why do you have them?”

“They were prescribed to me,” Seamus says, the usual boom of his voice replaced by something so vulnerable, so small.

“Why?”

“Because I have an affliction.” Seamus lets out a bitter chuckle, as if he finds the word ridiculous.

“What kind of affliction?”

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