Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“And you don’t think it’s her. I can tell. So maybe she needs you.” She floored the accelerator and the engine whined. “That’s why I’m going to get you back on the train.”

I’d been so focused on her I was almost surprised when I looked up and saw the back of the Ghan filling my view. Lisa was nudging eighty, and she pulled up alongside it, dropping to seventy and holding close. From the outside, the calm meditative clack-clack was gone: the train kicked up an absolute clattering roar as it moved.

“You came after me not because you cared that I’d taken the manuscript,” Lisa shouted over the noise. “And not because you thought I was a murderer. You came to ask me something. And you haven’t asked me yet. You’ve just been telling me what you already know. Train’s coming up. So you’d better ask.”

“Majors. Is she telling the truth?”

“Seriously? Is that it?”

“You were there that night. I think she told McTavish a version of the story that wasn’t the true story from the papers. That’s the version he stole for Off the Rails. Right?”

“You jumped off a moving train to ask me that?”

“I had to know for sure.”

“You already do. Have you learned nothing about Henry McTavish? What he does?” She was nodding. “This is a man who takes from women. He took my body. And he took her mind.”

Chapter 31

It is much more difficult hanging out of a car window than they make it look in the movies, let alone jumping from one.

I had one hand on the side mirror and one hand on the roof as I maneuvered my way out of the car. The window didn’t wind all the way into the sill, so the glass dug into my thighs. The wind roared in my ears, the tires kicked dust into my eyes and my cheeks stung with the peppering of bugs. I squinted against the wind at the Ghan. Lisa was aiming for the smoking deck; she had the Land Cruiser as close to the tracks as she could go without hitting them. The deck was too high to jump onto easily, but I was pretty sure I could grab on to the fence and climb over.

We edged forward, now side by side. The fencing was just past my fingertips. I levered one foot up on the windowsill, found purchase, and tensed my legs.

“I’m going to jump!” I yelled to Lisa. “Keep it steady.”

Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear her reply above the wind and the train. I hoped she’d heard me. I reached an arm out toward the railing, took a deep breath and . . .

. . . the car jerked wildly underneath me, braking and swerving at the same time. I tilted dizzyingly sideways, face down to the blur of red dirt underneath me, before snapping back the other way, crunching a rib into the door frame. And then the back of the Ghan was rapidly approaching. We were going faster than it was, and I whipped my head inside just in time for the whoosh of the carriage to rattle past the window, shearing off the side mirror in an explosion of glass.

“Sorry. Telegraph pole,” Lisa said.

I looked out the back window to see a large column, shrinking behind us, by the tracks: she’d had to swerve around it. “Bit of a heads-up next time?”

“I did say not to jump.”

I looked at the train beside us. Lisa eased off the gas and drew back to the smoking deck again, this time a little behind it. I snuck a look at the speedometer. Fifty now. The train had slowed down slightly. “We might need a new plan. These heroics are a bit beyond me.”

Lisa thought for a second and then wrenched the wheel hard toward the tracks. We bounced over the rails, a shower of sparks flew out behind us, and then just as quickly she pulled the steering back, settling us exactly in the middle. The tracks ran between the wheels; we were now directly tailing the train.

I nodded, impressed. “That’s a better plan. Keep an eye on the speed. It seems to be slowing down slightly.”

“Thirty-eight,” she said.

I levered my way out of the window again, except this time instead of trying to jump sideways, I grappled my way around to the front until I was crouched on the bonnet. It’s not exactly the high-speed stuff of action films, given that we would have been able to perform this stunt in a school zone. My legs were jellied all the same. If I fell, the fall might not kill me. But if I went underneath the Land Cruiser, or if I got jammed between the car and the train, or if I went under the train itself, I figured I’d be a goner no matter the speed.

Lisa nudged forward. I heard a satisfying crunch of metal on metal; this was as close as we were going to get. It wouldn’t be as simple as walking across: it was hard for Lisa to match the speed, so the gap varied from nonexistent to terrifying as the Land Cruiser wavered forward and back. I adjusted myself to a runner’s starting position, keeping one hand in touch with the windscreen.

That was when my phone rang.

More specifically, I felt it buzzing in my pocket. We must have hit a sliver of reception. I dug the phone out and answered without looking. “Juliette?” I yelled.

“No, mate. Andy. You busy?”