Page 34 of With a Vengeance
Then ten.
Then fifteen.
As they near twenty minutes of unbearable silence, Anna finally hears something. But the sound doesn’t come from inside the lounge. It’s on the outside, just beyond the door at the front of the car.
Footsteps, followed by a single, desperate “Hello?”
Hearing it, Anna swings her gaze to the door, watching in astonishment as it opens.
A man stands on the other side, peering into the car. His gray flannel suit and light blue shirt make it clear he’s not an engineer, and the shocked look on his face suggests he wasn’t expecting to find anyone in the lounge. Those inside it stare right back, equally stunned.
Because it turns out there aren’t only eight passengers aboard the Philadelphia Phoenix.
In truth, the number isnine.
11 p.m.
Nine Hours toChicago
Fourteen
“Thank goodness,” thesurprise ninth person says as he surveys the crowd in the lounge. “I was starting to worry I was the only one on this train.”
He flashes a cautious half smile that vanishes when he spots the cloth-covered corpse of Judd Dodge.
“I—” He says nothing more after that, his body language speaking volumes as he starts to back through the door.
Anna, until now frozen in shock by the presence of another person on the train, suddenly springs from her chair before the stranger can escape. “Wait!”
Blocking the closing door with an elbow, she latches onto the man’s sleeve and pulls him through the door, steering him to the nearest chair. The stranger drops willingly into it, allowing Anna to get a good look at him. He appears to be in his late twenties and plain in every regard. Sandy hair, brown eyes, a face that would likely pass for handsome in different lighting and under more relaxed circumstances. Everything about him, from his suit to his wingtips, seems to strive for a conventionality that borders on the invisible.
“Why are you on this train?” Anna demands.
The stranger shoots another quick glance at the corpse on the floor. “That man. Is he—”
“Dead?” Anna says. “Yes.”
The man lurches forward, and for a moment Anna thinks he’s going to throw up. Or faint. Or both. Feeling very much the same way, Anna nudges him upright again and says, “Were you working with him?”
Confused ripples form across the man’s forehead. “What? No, I—”
“Then who are you with?”
“Myself.”
Anna gestures to the others in the car. “None of them brought you?”
“No,” the man says, defensive now. “I brought myself.”
“You couldn’t have,” Anna tells him. “There’s no room on this train.”
The stranger looks around the half-full lounge, no doubt thinking about the rest of the train and trying to make sense of it all. “But it’s empty.”
“That doesn’t matter. So I’m going to ask you again, and this time you’re going to tell me the truth. Why are you on this train?”
“Because I made a mistake.” The man sighs and stares at the spot of floor between his well-polished shoes. “I got mixed up on the platform and boarded the wrong train.”
Anna blinks in agitation. Having an innocent bystander onboard is the last thing she needs right now. “The wrong train?”
