Page 52 of With a Vengeance

“Isn’t this a disservice to your country?”

Kenneth Wentworth smiled again, this one more sinister than reassuring. “The only allegiance I have is to myself. But you, on the other hand, strike me as a person devoted to her homeland. Think about how this might help them.”

“Then I’ll do it,” Edith told him. “For Germany.”

What she hadn’t known at the time was the personal toll it would take. She didn’t know that the plan involved a train exploding and Tommy Matheson torn to pieces and Arthur Matheson’s arrest, public shaming, murder. But there was no backing out. Edith, by that point rich beyond her wildest dreams, had no choice but to keep up the ruse.

Now she stares up at the falling snow, slightly dizzy when she realizes that Anna was right. Nothing she’d done has helped anyone but her and her co-conspirators. Soldiers died and lives were destroyed for absolutely no reason. Germany still lost the war, becoming a shell of its former self. And Edith has never gone backthere, which is more telling than she cares to think about. If she loves her homeland so much, shouldn’t she be there and not on this train, being inexorably pulled to her ruin?

Yes, she realizes. She should. Yet she never considered going back. And now she understands it’s because, deep down, she knew that returning to Germany and seeing how much it had changed would have made the futility of her actions clear.

The realization hits her like a lightning bolt. A single, sizzling thought exploding in her brain as the rest of her seizes up.

It was a mistake.

All of it.

Betraying her employer, destroying his family, and covering it up had been a complete waste.

And now she regrets everything.

Edith tears her gaze from the observation car roof. As she looks at the snow-swept landscape outside, she becomes aware of someone approaching her from behind.

Slowly.

Silently.

Edith spots them in the observation car’s windows, which distorts the person’s reflection like a fun-house mirror. It takes her a moment to recognize the figure in the glass. When she does, Edith whirls around with a shocked gasp.

“Grauer Geist,” she says.

Twenty-One

Anna doesn’t immediatelyfollow Tommy.

Because it’s not him. It can’t be. He’s dead and ghosts don’t exist. Come to think of it, she’s starting to doubt she saw anyone at all. It’s late, she’s exhausted, and she’s spent hours subsisting only on adrenaline and rage. It wouldn’t be a surprise if she started to see things and sense people who aren’t there.

Or maybe it’s just memories that Anna senses, swirling like the snow outside. She and her family spent so much time aboard the Phoenix that every car has them. Giggling with Tommy in an upper berth of the sleeper car. Playing penny poker with a group of traveling salesmen in the club car. The dining room is especially full of them, Anna realizes as she moves through it on her way to the rear of the train. She’d sat at every table and likely eaten off every plate. Looking at one spot, she remembers being there with her parents and Tommy on the Phoenix’s maiden voyage, when her overjoyed father offered her a sip of champagne. Its bubbling fizz tickled her nose.

At the table next to it sits the memory of playing Go Fish with Tommy and her mother. Then there’s the booth in the corner, where they all ate dinner on what was to be their final trip aboardthe Phoenix as a family. The whole time, Anna had tried to muster the courage to tell them about Dante. That they’d been dating in secret. That she loved him. That nothing they could say would make her feel differently.

She never could bring herself to do it. A few weeks later, there was no need.

Anna shakes her head, pushing away the memories. They didn’t cause her to see things. Nor was it her imagination or a trick of the light or anything else people use to explain things away.

Someone is moving around this train.

And she’s going to find out who it is.

Walking with renewed purpose, she passes through the lounge and into Car 11. At Room B, she knocks on the door until Seamus answers. Peering at her in confusion, he says, “What’s wrong?”

Everything, Anna thinks. “Nothing,” she says. “Just making the hourly rounds.”

“I can do it, if you want.”

“No. I’ve got it.”

Anna continues down the car, rapping on Reggie’s door until he answers. “Making sure everything is okay,” she says.

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