Page 108 of With a Vengeance

Beneath her feet, the train starts to lurch. Anna moves with it. Reggie, too. Both tilt forward, unsteady, tugged by forward momentum as their surroundings suddenly slow down.

Anna locks eyes with Reggie as both realize what just happened.

After twelve hours of constant motion, the Philadelphia Phoenix has come to a stop.

Fifty-Two

A moment passesin which nothing moves.

Not Anna.

Not Reggie.

Not even the train itself, which sits motionless on the tracks even as its engine continues to hum.

Then Reggie breaks into a limping jog, heading out of the observation car. Anna gives chase, hobbled by pain and panic and the bite of glass shards beneath her bare feet. She sways, her train legs useless now that the Phoenix has stopped. By the time she enters Car 13, Reggie is already gone, moving slowly but surely toward the front of the train.

Anna goes after him, limping as fast as she can through the first-class passenger cars, the gun still in her grip. She slows down when she reaches the lounge, where there are more places to hide. She learned that the hard way with Herb Pulaski. Now she cautiously checks the car, expecting Reggie to attack at any second.

But he’s not in the lounge, crouched behind the bar.

Nor is he in the dining car, huddled beneath a table.

Instead, Anna finds Reggie in the galley, leaning against the counter to catch his breath. When Anna pushes through the doorat the back of the car, Reggie ducks through the one at the front of the galley, into the club car.

Anna runs after him, leaping over the puddle of his blood still in the middle of the floor before crashing into the club car.

She doesn’t see Reggie just inside the car, pressed against the wall.

It’s only when he grabs Anna’s arm as she’s streaking past that she realizes he’s there at all. Reggie wrenches her arm behind her back and shoves her against the club car’s counter.

The surprise of it all sends Anna into fighting mode as Reggie tries to wrest the gun from her grip. She cocks her leg and lifts her foot, preparing to do what she did to Herb and go for Reggie’s groin. He leaps away before she can do it, her foot missing him entirely. As she readies another attempt, he swoops in and steals the gun.

Anna kicks again. Hard. This time, she makes contact. The blow sends Reggie staggering backward against the window, rattling the blinds and creating undulating bars of shadow on the opposite wall.

He thrusts the gun in front of him, pointing it at Anna. Staring down the barrel, she runs her arm across the counter, searching for something she can use to defend herself. The only thing within reach is a stack of empty coffee cups.

She grabs one and flings it at Reggie’s head. It sails past his ear, into the window behind him, spiderwebbing the glass with cracks.

Anna keeps throwing them. One cup. Two. Three.

The first misses entirely.

The second hits Reggie’s chest.

The third lands square in his face, his nose crunching beneath it in a spray of blood.

Reggie howls in pain, one hand covering his crushed nose while the other continues to hold the gun.

Now it’s Anna’s turn to run.

She sprints to the front of the car before streaking into the adjoining coach lounge, not pausing to see if Reggie is after her. She’s certain he is. If not now, then soon. So she keeps running, through the sleeper car and the coach cars, pain screaming through every inch of her body.

In the baggage car, Anna’s footfalls echo loudly in the emptiness all around her. There’s no place left to run, nowhere left to hide. Her final option is to somehow get into the locomotive. Only there will she be safe.

Anna runs to the steel-reinforced door that leads to the locomotive. She pounds on it, praying that Burt Chapman, the train’s sole engineer for the entire journey, will ultimately ignore her earlier instructions.

“Open up!” she yells. “Please!”

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