Page 42 of With a Vengeance

Seamus climbs onto the bed and lies down next to Anna, their bodies inches apart yet comfortably close. Theirs is an unusual bond, forged through unimaginable grief and the strangest of circumstances. Lying beside Seamus now, Anna thinks about their first meeting. That cold, gray day in the cemetery after she had buried Aunt Retta. Few people showed up to pay their respects, which made Seamus easy to notice in the sparse crowd. He had the look of a brawler. Big, and clearly well-built, but with a lithe physicality to him. He was graceful for someone so large, moving toward her with catlike precision once the funeral was over and everyone else had dispersed.

“Your aunt sent me” was all he said.

“How did you know her?”

Seamus looked to the open grave and the coffin that had just recently been lowered into it. “I didn’t. We never met in person. But she wrote to me a few times.”

He didn’t explain the nature of the letters, nor did he need to. Anna knew that, in a quest to clear her father’s name, Aunt Retta wrote letters to all the families of the train explosion’s victims, trying to convince them someone other than Arthur Matheson was responsible. Anna had always assumed no one wrote back. Clearly, she was wrong. At least one person had.

“Who did you lose?”

“My brother. Sean Callahan.”

Anna knew the name. She’d made sure to memorize the identities of all the victims. They were, after all, the men who had died alongside her brother.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “It was kind of you to pay your respects.”

“That’s not why I’m here. There’s something I need to show you.”

They trudged to a black Buick parked at the edge of the cemetery. “A gift,” Seamus said, opening the trunk. “From your late aunt.”

Six boxes sat inside the trunk. When Anna saw them, she understood not only what they contained but that Aunt Retta was right. The proof had indeed found her.

Seamus followed Anna to the mansion that had once been Aunt Retta’s but now belonged to her. Together, they spent the next twenty-four hours sorting through all the information contained in those boxes—a painful, painstaking process.

The evidence left Anna feeling stunned, not just by the breadth of the plot but by the people involved. People she knew. People her father had trusted. People they both had loved. Sal and Edith, Herb Pulaski and Judd Dodge. Seeing their names, their deeds, and their outright treachery had left her so raw and betrayed and furious that there was no question in her mind that vengeance had to be enacted.

“Do you think we should kill them?” she said.

“Yes,” Seamus replied. “All of them need to die. And I want to be the one to do it.”

Anna ultimately decided that death wasn’t enough punishment for everyone involved. It was too easy, too quick. Short of kidnapping and torturing them over an extended period of time—an idea she and Seamus discussed at length—the only way to guarantee an adequate amount of suffering was to bring all of them to justice. Something that’s now impossible.

“Which one of those bastards do you think did it?” Anna says.

Beside her, Seamus shrugs. “Honestly? Any of them. Including Reggie Davis. You think he’s lying?”

“If so, he’s very good at it.”

Anna knows that from experience. When he told the others she wasn’t carrying a weapon, Reggie had sounded so convincing that even she almost believed him. Although grateful for thatparticular lie, Anna wonders if it’s not the only one he’s told them. While it’s certainly possible he boarded the wrong train, it’s also not very probable. Because of that, Anna can’t shake the feeling he’s here for a reason.

“Either he really is an insurance salesman who got on the wrong train—or he’s a plant sent by Kenneth Wentworth.”

“My money’s on insurance salesman,” Seamus says. “The plant sent by Wentworth is clearly his son.”

Anna sits up, surprised. “Dante? He’s here for a different reason. Or so he says.”

“And what’s that?”

“To see me.”

“You really believe that?” Seamus asks.

“Maybe. I get the feeling he’s trying to help us.”

A few hours ago, Anna thought she’d never see Dante Wentworth again, let alone trust him. But the fact that he didn’t stop the train when he had the chance tells Anna there’s more to Dante’s presence than he’s letting on.

“Or maybe he’s lying through his teeth,” Seamus says.

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