by A J Rivers
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sometimes someone says something to you, and you don't understand it because it's confusing or strangely worded. Sometimes it's because they mumble, or you're not sure you heard exactly what you thought. And sometimes it's because the words are so clear, so unquestionable, they can't possibly be real.
This is one of those moments.
“What the hell do you mean there's a bomb?” I ask. “How do you know that?”
“It's in the note, Emma. Think about the words. It tells you there's another body, but it's not just saying you need to find that one before another dies. Time is ticking. That's what the note says. Time is ticking,” Sam points out.
“If the train stops or police show up, you blow it,” I mutter. “Christ.”
"He's going to blow up the train," Sam says.
"But which one?" I ask. "It says 'your train, your responsibility'."
"Right. So, the train you're on."
"No. The first note says I should have gotten on my train, meaning the one you are on," I point out.
"So, it could be either. Or both."
"How are we supposed to find it? This guy wants to play games, but he's not telling us how."
I let out an exasperated growl.
"Emma, calm down," Sam says.
"Don't tell me to calm down, Sam! A man is dead three feet from me because of a choice I made!"
"It's not your fault."
"Of course it's my fault. I knew there was something going on, that this was dangerous. Not only did I do it anyway, but I changed it. Rather than just following through, I tried to be smart, and a man lost his life," I say.
"And if you hadn't?" Sam asks. "Yes, you knew this was dangerous, but that has never scared you away before. Why should it now? You walk into battle because it's what you were born to do. You know as well as I do if you had gotten on this train, something else would have happened. And if you hadn’t gotten on the train at all, he probably had a plan for that too. He could have hurt a lot of other people getting to you."
The words settle in, but they don't sit right with me. I shake my head.
"No." I glance back at the body, then at the screen. "No. That's not what's happening. He could have gotten to me. He obviously knew I was on this train. He knew when I first got on. This man was supposed to get off the train before I got on, so whoever's doing this realized I changed my plans in advance. He killed this man and hid him. Wrote the notes. Everything. When he could have far more easily just come and found me. It's just like he said. He's playing games. He wants to see if I can figure it out."
"Where do we start?"
"The note says we're playing hide and seek. That I have to find one before there's another. Obviously, he's not talking about this man. In order to get the note, I would have already had to find him. So, there's another body. We have to find that in order to stop him from killing somebody else. And maybe it'll lead us to the bomb," I say.
“How are we supposed to know when the bomb is going to go off? He says time's ticking. Obviously, that means there's a planned detonation,” Sam points out.
I think about it for a second, shifting my weight back and forth on my feet as I pick through each piece of the note.
“Maybe he already told us. Right there in his warnings. ‘If you let the train stop’. We are assuming that means not to call the police and not to call security because they would stop at the next station. But what if it's more than that? What if he means if the train stops for any reason, it’ll trigger the explosion?” I suggest.
“Meaning, we can't let the train get to its stop without figuring this out?” Sam completes my thought.
“Exactly. That gives us less than two hours.”
“Then we need to get started. Where do we search first?” he asks.
“We need to be careful. We can't alert anyone to something unusual going on. It's enough that Thomas knows about it. If other people find out, somebody is going to contact train security, and they're going to divert the train to the next station. One of the trains will end up getting stopped, and that will put a pretty quick end to us trying to figure out where the bomb is. So, we need to be careful in how we approach this. I don't think he just wants us to search. That's not interesting enough for him. He left me the message on the door that led me to the tablet. He's going to want us to follow his breadcrumbs,” I say. “And I don't think it's going to be here.”
“What do you mean?”
"The note specifically asks if I can keep a secret, then mentions you. Both trains are involved in this. We already know the bomb could be on either one. The notes could be, too. Are there any empty passenger cars on your train?"
"I doubt it," Sam tells me. "It's pretty full. Most of the seats in my car and all of them between me and the snack car are taken. I don't think they'd have things this packed and leave other cars empty. That's another thing. He has to be on my train."
"Why?" I ask.
"How could he have planted things on both and then be on yours? Your train left the station before mine even got there."
“Do we know he planted things on both cars, though? Have you found anything?”
“Not yet, but I’ll start a sweep as soon as we hang up.”
I whip around toward the sound of the door opening and see Thomas climbing gingerly over the body. He has my suitcase gripped to his stomach, pressed against him as if to protect it. When he's inside, he carries it over to me and sets it at my feet.
"Did anyone see you?" I ask.
The conductor shakes his head. "No. There weren't any attendants in the sleeper cars, and the baggage car was empty when I got to it."
"Perfect," I say, kneeling down and flipping the suitcase over so I can open it.
The tiny metal discs on the padlock click into place as I align my code.
7 - 22 - 91.
The top flips over onto the floor, and I move the layer of clothes I put on top of my gun case. Thomas's breath catches in his throat as he watches me put my gun back together and load it. My harness on my hip and my gun tucked securely into it; I pull my sweatshirt down over it.
"Thomas, you told me these cars are empty because they were where the people who got off in Castleville were sitting, right?" I ask.
"Yes. The leg of the journey from Castleville through to the last stop in Virginia wasn't going to have many passengers, so we closed off these cars. It doesn't make much sense to have several cars with just one or two people, especially when we're expecting a large influx of passengers carrying on to the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida."
"So, everyone who is in the cars up toward the front of the train got on in Castleville?" I ask.
"No,” he shakes his head. “There are a few passengers who have been with us since New York. They were sent into those passenger cars in preparation for emptying these. It just makes it easier to have empty cars when there’s going to be a large number of passengers boarding so that they can be arranged.”
“Arranged?” I raise an eyebrow, remembering my conversation with Eric. “So, at the next stop, the passengers who get on there will have assigned seats?”
“Yes,” Thomas says. “It can get extremely complicated when there are several groups as well as individuals. People very rarely position themselves in the most logical ways, and it can create complications and wasted space.”
“They like the control,” I say. “They want to be able to choose something for themselves.”
“Yes. One of the things we see most frequently is actually what you did when you boarded. You sat down in the window seat and put your bag in the seat beside you. You moved it under your seat, but the first thing you did was put it beside you. That took up that whole aisle. That's fine in situations like the car you're in because there aren't so many passengers that taking up that extra seat creates a problem. But when the cars will be mostly full, and there are groups to accommodate, that creates a hassle.”
"It's like a game of Tetris," Sam a
dds.
"In a way," the conductor agrees, seemingly thankful to focus on the minutia of his job rather than the dead body behind him. "We have to look at the different groups and families, and ensure they are able to sit together first. We arrange them in the most effective ways to spread them out, so we don't end up with several large groups right on top of each other, but also so the seats can be used effectively. Once we have that arranged, we put couples in, then fill in with singles."
"And people aren't allowed to move seats?" I ask.
"They're discouraged from it. Moving their seat can throw off the entire seating arrangement. Sometimes we have plans for a group coming on at the next stop, and if someone moves seats, it can disrupt that. When that’s a potential issue, we do additional sweeps to check and make sure everyone is still seated where they are supposed to be."
My eyes widen.
"My seat," I say.
"What?" both men ask.
"My seat. My original seat on the other train. I didn't switch my ticket. I bought a new one for this train. That means my old seat should have been assigned. Would the conductor fill in my seat with someone else once they went through and noticed I wasn't there?"
"Unlikely. It would probably just remain open just in case you missed the train but boarded at another stop. Or were somewhere else in the train and had to be moved back to where you were supposed to be sitting," he tells me.
"Sam, you need to try to find my seat. The one that was assigned to me," I tell him.
"Alright. I'll call you back."
I hang up and look at Thomas.
"You need to tell me about Mr. Jones."
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Mr. Jones?” Thomas asks, confused. “Why would you want to know about him?”
“He hasn't been seen since before the train started,” I say. “And he looked nervous as hell when he was getting on.”
“He always looks like that,” the conductor explains. “That's just how he is.”
“So, he does ride frequently?”
“Frequently enough. Every couple of weeks.”
“And he goes all the way to Georgia? Isn't that kind of a far way to go that often?” I ask. “What's he going there for?”
“I've never gotten that in-depth in my conversations with him. I know his name because I look at his ticket. He sits in the same seat every time,” he offers.
“And he sits there and reads? Like he was doing while we were waiting for the train to start?” I ask.
“He always has a book. I've never seen him on a tablet or even his phone. He comes in and sits, takes out his book. He always looks just slightly uncomfortable. I don't know if it's because he doesn't like to travel or because he doesn't like whatever’s waiting for him in Georgia,” Thomas says.
“Don't you find it odd that he's missing?”
“I told you before; he's not missing.”
“Do you want me to believe he's been doing laps of the train for more than two hours, and I just happened to not have noticed him? He wasn't in the snack car, or in any of the cars leading to it. He wasn't in any of the other cars. There's a body here, Thomas.”
“And he doesn't have anything to do with it,” the conductor says quickly.
"You know that? Somehow you are absolutely positive about it?" I ask.
"Yes."
"How? First, you barely even know the man, but now you're so fast to defend him?"
"You can't possibly think he murdered this man," Thomas says, his voice lower and more controlled now. "He rides this train all the time. I have seen him over and over. There was nothing different about him today than there has been any other time he's boarded."
"Except that he disappeared."
My phone rings for a video chat, and I swipe my finger across it to open it.
"Sam?"
"I found it," he whispers.
He's moving down the aisle with the phone held close to his face.
"The seat I was supposed to be sitting in?" I ask.
"Yes. Give me just a second," he says. I wait while he continues through the car, then see him pass through the sliding door into the snack car. "I wanted to get somewhere without so many people to hear what I'm saying," he explains.
"The snack car? Really?”
"It’s just the guy behind the counter, and he is far more invested in his phone right now than he is in anything around him. I don't even know if he realizes I came in here," Sam whispers.
"Good. Keep it that way. What did you find?"
"The conductors wouldn't tell me where you were assigned to sit. They said it was a privacy and security issue. So, I remembered what you said about finding the green note inside your computer, and I started looking at the tags above people's seats."
"Green note?" Thomas asks.
I fish the paper out of my pocket and show it to him.
"When I went to the snack car, I put my computer in my bag, under the seat. Just like you saw. But when I came back, my bag was still under the seat, but my computer was sitting on the tray table. I opened it and found this stuck to the screen."
"It must have been his," he surmises.
"Exactly," Sam nods. "So, I looked at the tags for the different destinations. I figured with the train as busy as it is, it's unlikely there are going to be a lot of people going to the same place scattered across all the cars. You said, for the most part, you like to keep people fairly well contained. So, I started in my car, but there weren't any empty seats. I went to the next one and saw an empty seat, but the person sitting beside it told me there was someone there, just in the bathroom. It took a little while of wandering up and down the train, but I realized someone moved. Her tag didn't fit in with the ones around her. When I asked her about it, she thought it was my seat and admitted moving. She was willing to go back to her original seat if I wanted to sit there; she just wanted to be somewhere quieter."
"Did you make her move?" I ask.
"Of course I did. There was no one in the seat beside her, which is precisely why she moved into that spot."
"There was going to be an empty seat beside me?" I frown. "That's odd."
"See, that's the thing. I noticed the conductor coming by right as she was leaving, so I sat down. He made a comment about telling that girl she needed to move, and that I was going to have to, too. He needed me in my correct seat. I asked if the seat next to your assigned one was available, and he said no. That both seats were assigned," Sam says.
"Both of them were assigned, and both of them were empty?" Thomas asks. "That is odd."
"Not if they were bought together," I point out. "You said yourself groups are seated together as much as possible when there's assigned seating. If the tickets were purchased together, the conductor would assign them seats together. The ticket I got in the mail was a hard ticket, like one bought directly from the train station rather than online. If you buy them online, you get the confirmation email, and it says how many passengers are traveling together. But not if you get the hard ticket. Just looking at my ticket wouldn't show that another ticket was purchased at the same time."
"So, whoever sent you the ticket bought themselves one, too. Either they just wanted to make sure you would be on the same train so they could find you. Or they knew enough about the routes to know the later train is the busier one and more likely to have assigned seats," Sam points out.
"That doesn't explain how he knew I wasn't on that train. If he waited until he got on the train and saw I wasn't there, it would be long after this train left. He murdered a man well before that train even got to the station. There was some other way he knew I wasn't getting on that train."
I let out a breath, then remember why Sam went looking for my seat. "Did you find anything at the seat?"
"Yes. After the conductor left, I went back to the seat and looked around. I sat down to try to be at your perspective. It took me a minute, but then I saw them."
"Them?" I ask.
Sam nods and sets his h
and palm-down on the table in front of him, turning the camera so I can see. He moves his hand away, and I see two tiny sparkling silver balls on posts.
"They were embedded in the back of the seat in front of you," Sam explains, “right at your eye level. You couldn’t have missed them.”
"Earrings?" I ask.
"That's what they look like."
"Why would there be earrings in the back of the seat?" Thomas asks. "How did no one notice someone putting them there?"
"They blended in with the seat really well. And since no one was sitting there, they must not have stood out. Whoever put them there must have gotten into the car before the other passengers, or when there were only a few. They put them in and then left without calling attention to themselves," Sam explains.
"Was there anything else?" I ask.
"I didn't see anything."
"Did you check the pocket on the back of the seat? Or the overhead compartment?"
"Not the overhead compartment."
His hand swipes the earrings from the surface of the table as he stands and heads out of the snack car back toward the passenger car. The angle he carries the phone lets me see the faces of the passengers as he passes their seats. Several glance up, registering him, then go back to what they are doing. A few pay closer attention, watching him until he's several rows away. I watch each carefully, seeing if any seem to have a particular interest in him. One woman tilts her head to watch him for longer, but I don't notice anyone who immediately strikes me as suspicious.
When he gets back to the row of seats, Sam turns the camera around so I can see what he sees. Bags press in on either side of the overhead compartment from the space on either side, but the center portion seems empty. He holds up the phone a little higher, and I catch a glimpse of something bright pink.
"What is that?" I ask. "In the back?"
Sam reaches inside and pulls the object forward. He brings it down and holds it in front of the camera. The bright pink envelope has my name written across it in the same handwriting dripping blood on the door behind me. Turning the camera around again, he heads back to the snack car.