Page 76 of With a Vengeance

Her father’s pin.

Anna looks down at her dress, where the pin had been at the start of the night—and should be right now. That it’s not hits her with a sense of loss. A hole in her heart that’s quickly being filled with confusion. When, how, and why did it go missing?

“I found it on the floor,” Seamus says, making no effort to return the pin. “While you were at the window.”

“Clearly it fell off on my way there. Or earlier while we were interviewing Herb.”

“You were still wearing it then,” Reggie says. “Can you remember the last time you noticed it was still pinned to your dress?”

Anna can. It was right next door, in the observation car, while she was confronting Edith. “A few hours ago,” she says. “The pin could have fallen off anytime between then and now.”

“That still doesn’t explain how it ended up on the floor of a room where a man was just murdered.”

Seamus says it, speaking with a gentle weariness. Even though his tone is more disappointed than accusatory, Anna knows that’s what he’s doing. Accusing her. Or at least considering the possibility that she’s a killer. Ironic, seeing how thirty minutes ago Anna did the same with him. That both of them are doubting each other shows how much their plan has unraveled.

“There are a hundred ways it could have gotten there,” she says, even though it’s a struggle to think of a single one. Anna’s mind spins, searching for logical reasons. “Herb could have stepped on it, and it stuck to his shoe. Or maybe it stuck to one of our shoes.”

She stops, realizing how desperate she sounds. Filling the silence is Lapsford, who says, “More likely it fell off as you were sneaking out of the room.”

“If I killed Herb, do you honestly think I would have told you how I did it?”

“Yes,” Lapsford says. “To make you appear innocent. Even though we all know you’re carrying a knife under your dress.”

The hallway seems to close in around Anna. Her heart jumps back to life, thundering in her chest. “I’ve spent the past hour talking to all of you, with only minutes in between. If I had killed Mr. Pulaski, climbed out of the train, and crawled along the roof to my own room, it would have been so fast that I wouldn’t have had time to close my own window, let alone the one in his room.”

The words spark an idea in Lapsford’s head. Anna sees it happen—a brightening of his eyes as the connection is made—and immediately regrets saying anything at all. Even though she has no idea what he’s thinking, it can’t be good.

“Then we’ll just have to check your room and see,” he says as he turns to leave the car.

“Be my guest,” Anna says. “In fact, I’ll lead the way.”

She squeezes past him and all the others, starting off a parade of people marching to her room. One by one they go, moving into Car 12 and then Car 11.

As they move, another train going the opposite direction rumbles past. Because of the late hour, most of its windows are dark. A long row of oil-black mirrors reflecting the Phoenix itself. Behind them are regular passengers on a regular journey long ago lulled to sleep by the train’s gentle rocking.

That’s what this train is. A dream on wheels.

While that might be true of most trains, Anna knows it’s not the case with the Philadelphia Phoenix. There’s no dreaming on this journey. Only nightmares. A fitting sentiment, for Annafeels like she’s in a nightmare when she opens the door to her room.

Inside, one of the windows sits wide open.

A window that had been closed the last time Anna was there.

Now it gapes open, letting in blasts of snow and frigid wind that jostles the drapes. One in particular flaps furiously. Anna reaches for it, realizing immediately why it’s so loose.

The cord that had once been attached to it is now gone.

The same type of cord that had been wrapped around Edith’s neck.

Anna has no idea who opened the window and removed the cord. Nor does she know when it happened. All she understands as the wind blows and the drape flaps is that she was wrong about the motive behind the murders. It wasn’t to keep the others from talking. Nor was it a way to ruin her plan of seeking justice for all of them.

No, there’s an entirely different reason for the killings—and Anna knows exactly what it is.

Thirty-Three

“He’s trying toframe me,” Anna says as she shuts the window with an angry slam. It’s just her and Reggie in the room now, Seamus having left to shoo the others back to their own quarters. “Just like they framed my father.”

She thinks about not just who’s been murdered and when, but how. Judd, poisoned because he was the first person to admit a role in the scheme that killed Anna’s family, not to mention the first person to suggest she’d gathered everyone there to kill them. Edith, actually suffocated but made to look like she was strangled because that was what Anna had almost done when she lost control in the lounge. Herb, his throat slit after everyone onboard learned that she’s carrying a knife—and after predicting he’d be the next victim.

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