Page 90 of With a Vengeance

Anna edges down the corridor, forcing Seamus to follow along. “That’s what he thought, but it might not have been Judd. And since you and Dante were back here, that leaves only two people. Sal and Lapsford.”

Even though Reggie Davis has nothing to do with whathappened twelve years ago, Seamus understands why someone would target him. He’s with the FBI. Of course they’d go after the person who plans to arrest them the moment they reach Chicago.

“Which one do you think did it?” Seamus says.

“Lapsford.”

That’s Seamus’s guess, too. Throughout the whole journey, he’s been the most vocal about getting off the train. He even faked having a heart attack to do it. Then there’s the fact that Lapsford was the only one seemingly uninterested in searching for Judd. While Seamus chalked it up to a selfish act from an equally selfish man, maybe the real reason Lapsford wasn’t concerned is that he already knew Judd was dead.

“Let’s say you’re right,” Seamus says. “What’s your plan? If he knows you’re on to him, he might do the same thing he did to Reggie.”

“I’ll pretend to check in on them. Ask a few questions, see if I can trip him up.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No,” Anna says. “That’ll make him suspicious. Let me do it alone. I’ll yell if I need you.”

“What if you can’t?”

Anna pats the pocket of the jacket she’s wearing. Reggie’s jacket, Seamus realizes. “I assume you also have his gun.”

“Of course,” she says.

Seamus says no more. He’s fully aware that Anna knows how to use one. He taught her himself.

“Be careful,” he says as she sets off for the preceding car. When she’s gone, he turns to Dante, still hovering on the edges of the room. “Roll up your sleeves. It’s time to move Judd’s corpse back to his room. Again.”

The second time proves easier than the first, if only because there’s less distance to travel. Instead of several cars, they only needto carry him to the next room. As they do, Seamus thinks about the first time they hauled Judd’s body to his room, wondering how he missed all the signs that he was still alive. Surely he should have noticed Judd breathing, felt a pulse, or seen some form of movement. But Judd dead feels as lifeless and heavy as he did when he was merely playing dead.

Seamus’s hands start to tremble as they lower the body onto the bed in Room C. The tremor is so bad that he’s forced to let go early, making the corpse land with an ungainly flop.

“Everything okay?” Dante says.

Seamus grabs the sheet and covers the body. “Yeah. Just a hand cramp.”

But it’s more than that. To keep Dante from seeing his shaking hands, he shoves them into his pockets and leaves the room. His destination is the observation car, where he can have a moment alone. After the past hour, he needs it.

Outside, the sky has lightened to a muddy gray. Not yet night, not yet morning, but still storming. Surrounded by the observation car’s windows, Seamus feels like he’s trapped inside a snow globe. An unappealing thought that nonetheless summons a long-forgotten memory of being lost in a blizzard on his way home from school.

He was six or so when it happened. The whiteout conditions made everything unrecognizable, turning familiar streets into strangers. One wrong turn led to another and soon he was stumbling through knee-high snow with no idea where he was. The whole time he only got colder and more panicked while the snow fell harder and faster. Just when he was about to give up and let the storm take him, a figure appeared through the wintry haze.

His brother, Sean.

Seamus, hungry, shivering, and borderline hypothermic, ran to him. “I thought I was going to be lost forever!” he cried.

“You’ll never be lost as long as I’m around,” Sean said.

It wasn’t a lie. When his brother was alive, Seamus always knew he’d be found. But now Sean’s gone and Seamus feels forever lost.

He yanks his hands from his pockets. The tremor’s gotten worse.

Seamus retrieves the pillbox, which he’s carried with him all night. Now it shakes in his hand so much that the remaining five pills inside rattle together. Seamus lifts the lid and stares at them. He didn’t plan on using another one. Not this soon. But his hands, moving as if they have minds of their own, insist on it.

As Seamus plucks a single pill from the box, he hears Anna calling his name. Faint and far away at first, it grows louder with each passing second. Seamus drops the pill back into the box, which is returned to his pocket. Then he’s out of the observation car and quickly moving through the train.

He meets Anna at the front of Car 13. She’s in a full-fledged panic, grabbing his arm and dragging him forward. “It’s Lapsford,” she says. “He’s having a heart attack.”

Seamus hesitates. “For real this time?”

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