in which she had a bloody knife secured in one of the sleeves. The woman wasn’t shuffling anymore, and her back was no longer hunched. She moved through the crowd with deadly intent. As Bourne watched, she disappeared through glass doors that led into the funicular connecting the upper and lower towns of Quebec City.
She was following Abbey.
He used a gap in the crowd to bolt for the green-and-white building with the huge sign overhead: Funiculaire. When he got there, he wrenched open the glass door and shoved past the people in front of him to get down the stairs. Half a dozen people were already waiting for the next car to take them down the sharp slope to the Basse-Ville. He saw the back of Abbey’s head; she was at the front, ready to board as the doors opened. Four people back, eyes focused like a laser on Abbey Laurent, was the panhandler, with her hands invisible inside the long arms of her sweater.
One couple was ahead of Jason in the ticket queue. An American in a Chicago Cubs jacket hunted for coins to pay the fare for him and his wife. Jason saw one of the funicular cars rising into view, approaching the station. He was running out of time. When the doors opened, Abbey and the others would board, and the funicular car would descend the cliffside. By the time it got to the bottom, she would have a knife wound in her heart, and her lungs would be filling with blood.
“Non, monsieur, sept, sept,” the ticket clerk told the American. “Seven. It is seven dollars for the two of you.”
“Seven dollars? That’s outrageous!” The man turned to his wife. “I think we should walk. For seven bucks? Let’s take the stairs.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Chuck, just pay the man, will you? My feet are tired as it is.”
Grumbling, the man in the Cubs jacket handed over a twenty-dollar Canadian bill.
While the clerk dug in the drawer for change, the doors of the funicular opened. The people inside disembarked. When the car was empty, Jason saw Abbey Laurent walk through the open doors to the far side and stand in front of the windows. The car was small. People squeezed in behind her. Bourne saw the panhandler nudging toward the front, positioning herself for the kill.
Finally, the couple in front of him finished paying. Jason threw a five-dollar bill down without waiting for change. He headed for the turnstile that led to the funicular, but the American couple blocked his way.
“It’s crowded,” the man told his wife, pointing at the car. “Look at how many people are on there. Let’s just wait for the next one.”
“There’s plenty of room.”
“But if we’re not at the front, we can’t take pictures.”
Bourne veered around them, ignoring the couple’s protests. He slammed through the turnstile and threw himself onto the funicular just as the doors closed behind him. No one noticed his arrival. They were all staring at the panorama of the old town spread out below them and the deep blue water of the St. Lawrence River beyond the port. The people stood shoulder to shoulder in the tight warm space, which felt like an oversized phone booth.
He saw Abbey in front of the glass. The panhandler was immediately behind her. The woman’s black sleeves covered her hands, except for a glimpse of her fingertips. Jason could see that her fingernails were stained with blood.
The car started down the cliff.
Two hundred feet below them, pedestrians dotted the streets of the old town, and boats traversed the river. The ride wouldn’t take long. One minute, no more. Jason knew when the attack would come. At the exact moment when the doors opened at the bottom and the people shoved against each other to get out, there would be one quick thrust of the knife. No one would see it happen. The panhandler would maneuver calmly around her and escape as Abbey stood frozen in place. Abbey wouldn’t even know what had happened; she’d take a few steps and feel only the odd, sharp pain in her back and find herself struggling to breathe. By the time she collapsed, by the time she died, the woman who’d killed her would have vanished into the streets of the Basse-Ville.
Jason squeezed to the side of the car. He muscled past a woman and her child, using his shoulder to force them away. The mother shot him an angry look and murmured, “Très impoli.” The