Page 21 of With a Vengeance

He’d underestimated her, that much was certain. Honestly, Judd hadn’t given Art Matheson’s daughter much thought at all over the years. Whenever the guilt did weigh on him, it usually was reserved for Tommy Matheson, the men killed with him, or even Art himself. But Anna rarely crossed his mind. A mistake, Judd now knows. For the girl he used to call Candy Cane turned out to have many tricks up her sleeve.

“I will,” Lapsford says, still oblivious.

He storms out of the first-class lounge, followed quickly by Herb and Sally. Even Edith Gerhardt, the calmest and quietest of the group, joins them. Together, they rush out of the car like a herd of caged animals just set free.

Judd leaves, too, although not because he thinks they’ll succeed. He just wants to get away from Anna and her thug. Which, he soon understands, isn’t going to happen. Because as they move from the lounge to the dining car, Judd hears Anna say, “Seamus, you know what to do if they get out of hand.”

“I certainly do,” Seamus says, which gives Judd another nervous twinge. He has no idea what Seamus will do if one of them—likely Lapsford—becomes unruly. All he knows is that he doesn’t want to find out.

Although Judd is tall himself, it feels like Seamus looms over him as they join the others midway through the dining car. At the front of the pack, Lapsford continues to lead the charge, taking them single file through the galley, then the club car, then the lounge in coach. Their progress slows in increments with each car they pass. By the time they reach the sleeper car, Judd realizes the others are just now learning what he already knows—that the rest of the train is completely empty.

“Where is everyone?” Sally says.

“Gone,” says Seamus, who’d been silent for so long that the sudden sound of his voice startles Judd.

Herb Pulaski, directly ahead of Judd, says, “Where?”

“Does it matter?” Seamus says.

No, Judd thinks. It doesn’t. Right now, what matters is that they’re the only people on a train that will bring them right into the hands of the FBI. He looks down at the scrap of blueprint still in his hand. It sticks to his clammy palm. A mark of his guilt. Even if Anna’s lying and doesn’t have a single other piece of proof,he knows that this bit of paper is enough to send him to prison for the rest of his life.

How Anna got her hands on it, Judd has no idea. He’d been assured by Kenneth Wentworth that it was destroyed along with everything else that linked them to the train explosion. Clearly a lie. Judd suspects Wentworth kept everything, just in case he needed to use it against them. He should have known better than to trust him. Then again, Judd hadn’t been thinking clearly when Wentworth sidled up next to him at the annual Matheson Christmas party.

“Art Matheson sure knows how to show off,” he said casually between sips of his scotch.

Judd turned to him. “What do you mean?”

“This party,” Wentworth said. “It’s all for show. Art wants everyone to see his beautiful house and his beautiful wife and his perfect children. Why don’t you have any of that, Judd? From what I hear, you’re the one who does all the work.”

Wentworth was spot on, especially in regard to the Philadelphia Phoenix. On paper, the train looked like a collaboration between two equals. The natural culmination of a meeting of the minds. Arthur Matheson imagined it and Judd made it a reality. In truth, Judd had done most of the imagining and designing. But during the Phoenix’s much-heralded debut, it was only Art who spoke to the press, who was photographed wearing an engineer’s cap in the cab of the locomotive, who acted like the whole damn train had been built with his two bare hands.

Even years after the train’s debut, nothing had changed. The only man anyone associated with the Phoenix was Arthur Matheson, a Philly blue blood who had inherited the Union Atlantic Railroad from his father. No one knew about Judd, the dirt-poor boy who grew up to be a genius capable of building the greatest train in the country.

That’s the reason he continued listening to Kenneth Wentworth that night at the party. And it’s why Judd ultimately agreed to take part in the nefarious plot Wentworth proposed to him the following Monday. He didn’t give any thought to the collateral damage. The lives that would be lost and the families left devastated. He only focused on what he wanted.

No, what hedeserved.

Judd was owed all the things Art Matheson had. The big house and beautiful wife and plucky kids who would inevitably glide through life as if they were on rails. Most of all, he deserved Art’s reputation. Since he was the brains behind it all, then the credit should be his as well.

He’s about to get credit, all right. Anna has seen to that. Soon everyone will know exactly what he did.

Judd follows the others into the baggage car, where the bulk of passengers’ luggage is usually stored. What should be packed from floor to ceiling with trunks, suitcases, and boxes now sits empty. The car has become nothing more than a stainless-steel echo chamber they must pass through on the way to the locomotive.

Standing between them and the locomotive proper is a door reinforced with steel. Beyond it, Judd knows, is the engine. Beyond that, at the very front of the train, is the cab where the engineers sit. While one could technically man the controls all by himself, two is the standard number for an overnight trip of this duration. Despite being romanticized in novels and movies, toiling on a train is often boring work, especially in the locomotive. All one sees is a pair of rails stretching to the horizon, with hundreds of miles more ahead. Men falling asleep at the controls is not unheard of.

On most streamliners, there is no access to the cab from within the train. The engine blocks the way, forcing engineers to board directly into the cab using a ladder. That’s not the case with thePhoenix. Because it was built to be an express train going nonstop for long distances, Judd added a narrow passage that skirted around the engine to allow engineers to enter and exit the cab during shift changes without stopping the train.

A passage that starts just on the other side of the locomotive door.

The five of them gather around it as Jack Lapsford grasps the handle. The door doesn’t budge. That it’s always locked for security reasons is another thing Judd could have told them if only they bothered to listen.

Lapsford knocks on the door, the sound so loud in the empty car that Judd can feel it in his chest. Back in the lounge, he’d all but accepted defeat. Anna had bested them, and he was prepared to face the terrible repercussions of his actions. But now that he’s mere inches from the engine, Judd realizes he’s not ready for that yet. He’ll never be ready. He doesn’t want to be arrested. He doesn’t want to go to prison. And he certainly doesn’t want to die there.

Judd’s panic ticks higher, prompting him to shove Lapsford away from the door. Rather than knock, Judd pounds on it. More than the rest of them, he needs to stop the train, even if it means breaking into the locomotive and shutting down the engine himself. He can do it, too. The Phoenix is his baby, and he knows how to stop it. He’d even destroy it if necessary.

But first, he has to get the attention of the engineers. What happens next depends on them. Steeling himself for confrontation, Judd continues to pound on the door, waiting for whoever’s on the other side to open it and decide his fate.

Eleven

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