Chapter 31
JUDAH
Ikissed Amelia on the head and strolled back to the roomette as she went off to order something to eat, only to stop dead in my tracks at the sight of two familiar faces.
Jeremiah and Al stood at the end of the car, looking around like they were completely and utterly lost.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I turned, dipped back into the bathroom, and locked the door behind me as they started my way. They might not recognize Amelia, but they’d sure as hell recognize me.
I knew leaving from Chicago would be a risk, but the train was the best option for getting to Vegas with as little of a trail as possible. Hopefully, since the train didn’t actually go to Nevada, they’d lose our trail once we disembarked.
That was, if we didn’t get made before then.
We had twenty-eight hours left in the trip to Arizona. Twenty-eight hours trapped on a train with killers.
I started working through all the possibilities.
The next stop was Kansas City. Renting a car was out of the question.
For one, I didn’t have a credit card. Two, rental cars were easily trackable, thanks to the recovery software that the companies installed to be able to find their vehicles in a pinch.
That meant anyone else could track the cars if they were savvy enough.
I could hot-wire a car, but that would put local police on our tail. I didn’t want this to turn into a chase. We could lay low until Cole could get resources out to us, but if he was on a job for the firm he worked for, there was no telling how long that could be.
I pressed my ear to the door, listening for their voices.
“Ay—” Al said, though I couldn’t tell who he was talking to. “We’re looking for a buddy of ours—Jude Graham. We—uh—wanna sit together.” He must have been talking to one of the staff members.
The problem was, if they checked the passenger manifest, there would be no Jude Graham.
“He’s a—uh—big guy,” Jeremiah said. “Real tall. Long hair. Lots’a tattoos.”
The staff member huffed in annoyance. “Gentlemen, we have a full train today. Please take the seats that are listed on your tickets.” And, with that, she walked away.
Jeremiah and Al lowered their voices, discussing their plan at a decibel I couldn’t make out. Their footsteps faded as they headed deeper into the train.
I said a silent prayer that Amelia was staying alert to her surroundings as I slipped out of the bathroom. If I could get us into our room and lock the door, we’d be fine. We’d just have to stay out of sight for the rest of the trip.
Familiar footsteps echoed behind me. Then two more sets joined in. I glanced behind me just long enough to see Amelia wearing a terrified look as Jeremiah and Al did a double take and turned to follow her back toward me.
I made a split-second decision and dipped into a narrow closet where passengers had stored things like strollers and guitars. The moment Amelia passed close enough, I grabbed her hand, yanked her in, and pulled the bifold door closed.
I clapped my hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming and pressed a finger to my lips. “Shhhhh.”
The moment she realized it was me, Amelia nodded and I pulled my hand away.
“What are you doing?” she mouthed.
I tipped my head toward the door. “I know them.”
Her eyes went wide. “Were they the guys who searched the cabin?”
“No.” What I didn’t say was that if John Valentine had sent his inner circle to hunt me down, this was no longer simply about getting Amelia back and tying up the loose ends of her and her brother.
It was about taking us out.
All of us.
“We need to go back to the room. We’ll be locked in.”
I shook my head. “We need to draw them off.” I found her hand in the darkness and squeezed three times. “Do you trust me?”
“Implicitly.”
“Take your shirt off. Right now. Stay here until the train leaves the station, and then go back to our room. If I don’t make it back, stick to the plan. Get off in Arizona and take the bus to the Strip. I’ll meet you there.”
“What?” she shrieked in a whisper.
“Do. You. Trust. Me?”
She paused and stammered, then nodded and stripped off her shirt, leaving her in a modest sports bra.
There was no time to waste. I took the shirt from her, fisted the back of her hair, and kissed her hard.
I kissed her like I should have been kissing her this whole time. Desperate and insatiable. I kissed her like it was the last time I ever would.
I kissed her like I loved her, then slipped out of the closet, grabbed my coat from our room, slid it on, and put my hood up.
Timing was everything.
I needed to lure them off the train. I needed to find a new mark. Two, if I was lucky.
And I needed to make it back on the train.
Pent-up energy raced through my veins as I lingered by the exit, waiting for Jeremiah and Al to turn around and do another sweep this way.
The moment I saw the side of Jeremiah’s head, I locked eyes with him, smiled like a motherfucker, and jumped off the train.
An announcement blared overhead, reminding passengers that the train would be departing soon. I ducked through crowds of people milling about on the platform.
Shouts rose up as Al and Jeremiah bolted off the train and hustled through the people waiting to board, shoving them aside.
I pulled my arms out of the coat sleeves and kept my pace quick. That’s when I spotted my first mark.
A guy about my height with long, dark blond hair. “Hey,” I said as I shirked off my coat and held it out to him. “I’ll give you fifty bucks if you give me your hat, put this on, and walk that way.” I pointed in the direction that Al and Jeremiah would approach from.
He just stared at me like I had lost my goddamn mind.
“Forty, then. Longer you wait, the lower it’ll get.”
His eyes narrowed. “Make it seventy-five.”
“Sold.” We quickly made the swap, me taking his hat and him putting on my coat. “Hood up, head down. Money’s in the pocket.” I donned his Chiefs cap without a second thought and walked away. Finding someone to be Amelia would be slightly more difficult.
Blonde hair was all I really needed. They didn’t know much about her appearance apart from what was most noticeable.
They didn’t know the way her eyes went from crisp sky blue to stormy slate when she was angry. They didn’t know about the little mole she had behind her ear. They didn’t know that her nose wrinkled when she laughed or that she was wickedly funny.
They didn’t know how big she loved and how much she cared, even when the people she cared for didn’t deserve it.
I was at the top of that list.
They didn’t know that she loved baseball or that she thought poetry was stupid because it could follow the rules or defy them in free verse. Math didn’t have that option. Math had to follow the rules.
They didn’t know how cranky she was when she first woke up or how quickly she could transform into the put-together, well-spoken version of herself that she let everyone else see. The version that I got was crass, irreverent, and one hell of a clever girl.
There was a reason “little fox” had popped into my head the moment she outwitted me to get into the Four Horsemen. She was clever, sly, shrewd, mesmerizing, and so fucking adorable that I was never mad when she got the best of me.
The PA system played the final warning that the train would be departing. I swore under my breath as I stopped and scanned the crowd. Jeremiah and Al were nowhere in sight. Did they get back onto the train?
I spotted Al on the platform, weaving his way through the crowd as he tried to catch up to the guy who was wearing my coat.
That left Jeremiah unaccounted for.
I spotted a trio of ladies waiting on the platform, taking selfies. If there was anything I knew about women, it’s that they protected their own.
I rehearsed the story in my mind as I quickly approached the blonde of the group. “Excuse me.”
They looked up, eyes going wide as they took me in. I knew the effect that I had on women, and in this instance, I was more than okay with using it to my advantage.
“See that guy right there?” I said, pointing to where Jeremiah was meeting up with Al.
The two of them were frantic as they searched the platform.
“That’s my sister’s ex. I’m trying to get her out of here safely, and he’s looking for her.
” I showed them the shirt and addressed the blonde directly.
“You look like her. Do you think you could put this on and get him to follow you? He’ll leave you be when he realizes you aren’t her. ”
“What a piece of shit,” the brunette with sleeves of tattoos sneered as she studied Jeremiah.
“Total limp dick energy,” the girl with pink hair chimed in before giving me an up-and-down assessment. “You, on the other hand . . . Have you ever thought about being a romance book model?”
The woman with dirty blonde hair snatched the shirt out of my hand. “I have plenty of rage for this. Tell your sister we’ve got her. Willow, Wander, let’s go.”
Women were the best.
“Thank you, ladies. Safe travels.”
The blonde immediately pulled on the shirt, fluffed her hair, and waltzed right in Jeremiah’s direction just as the train horn bellowed.
Shit.
I broke out in a sprint, pushing myself as fast as I could possibly go as the engine began to chug.
I didn’t even know what car I was aiming for. I just jumped.