house payment. Laura won’t even know I lost the money. I couldn’t just pass up two grand.
Someone had paid him two thousand dollars? For what?
They were passing the front of their own train.
The night air by the first car seemed to move, and she saw the glint.
“Robert!” she called in warning.
He was directly ahead of her, and she shoved him. The blade slashed down, catching the back of her hand and the top of Robert’s shoulder in the same swing. He cried out as he fell sideways. Eleisha fell to the ground on the momentum of her push.
She rolled, looking up in disbelief and shock to see Julian standing over her in a long black coat with a sword in his hand.
A wall of fear hit her with full force.
Wade looked down at his watch and shifted uncomfortably.
“They’ve been gone almost ten minutes” he said. “We’re going to miss the Express.” Where were they?
Philip lifted the sliding shutter over the window and peered out. “Something’s wrong.”
“Maybe she’s still arguing with the porter,” Rose said. “She looked so angry about that mix-up.”
Philip looked back at Wade. “Maybe we should just go?”
“No,” Wade said, opening his bag, strapping on his gun, and pulling on his jacket. “You stay with Rose. I’ll just take a look. They must be on their way back. It’s better if we can make the switch all together.”
He slipped out into the hallway, closed the door, and made his way down the train. A few cars down, he came to an empty car with an open doorway.
Moving to the steps, he peered outside. Looking to the right, toward the end of the train, he was surprised to see how far the cars reached behind him, all the way into the large train station, which appeared to be a good four-minute walk away. He couldn’t even see the end cars. Would Eleisha have gone that far? He didn’t think so. Tracks stretched in both directions. He wasn’t sure where to look.
His growing discomfort turned to anxiety.
Where had the porter taken Eleisha and Robert?
* * *
Jasper walked into a bathroom stall of the men’s room inside the train station. He wasn’t crazy about the trench coat, but he liked the new sword hidden beneath. It was a lot lighter than Julian’s.
He only waited a few seconds, and then Mary appeared.
He was relieved to see her.
“Julian says only two of them came out,” she said, tilting her magenta-tinted head, “but one is that Robert guy he’s after, and the other one’s Eleisha, so it’s okay. He’s waiting up ahead now—found a good hiding spot. The other three are still on the train from San Francisco, and it’s about to pull out, so they’re going to get stuck if they’re too scared to get off by themselves. He says you should get on and look for a chance to kill one or two of them alone if you can break ’em up. He said that train is heading east toward someplace called Bend. They’ll panic when they figure out Eleisha and Robert aren’t coming back to get them . . . and that they’re going the wrong way.”
Jasper blinked a few times.
Julian wanted him to get on the train and start hunting on his own?
He thought about this. He knew he’d screwed up badly back at the station, and he was still pretty shaken by Julian’s reaction, but the payoff was worth it. He just had to prove himself.
“Which train?”
They all looked the same, and the station reader board was confusing.
“When you go out of the men’s room, just turn left. You’ll step right on.”
“I don’t have a ticket.”
“It’s all right. You just have to hide someplace and avoid the ticket collectors.”
The thought was kind of exciting. “Okay.”
“I’m going to check in with Julian, and then I’ll come find you again.”
He nodded, slipped out of the men’s room, turned left, and got on the train. Once again, he was starting to feel like someone right out of a movie. It was his first time on a train.
Pretty cool.
Eleisha fought the overwhelming fear, knowing she could resist it as she had once before.
She had to press her thoughts into his, get control of him, but the waves kept coming until she felt sick, and she couldn’t focus.
Almost the instant Julian completed his first swing, he swung upward again and took off the porter’s head. The sight of the body falling and blood spurting from the stump shocked her. Too many events were occurring