Chapter 1
Louisiana
“And I win!” Kyle Marks cried, placing his cards on the table in the dining car.
“Again?” Charlie asked. He was a traveling salesman who had joined the poker game for some fun, he said. For a man looking to relax and have a good time, though, he was terribly uptight. He gritted his teeth, his face turning dark red.
“Yes,” Kyle said. “Sorry?” He almost turned the statement into a question.
“And you’re really not a card sharp?” Lionel asked. He was a stubby little man with a bald patch on the top of his head.
Kyle kept running his hand through his dark hair in sympathy for the gleaming hairless pate in front of him. “No, nothing like that.” He tried a chuckle, but was becoming very uncomfortable. Why were they so angry? It was just a friendly game. The stakes hadn’t even been that high.
Their other companion was a man with dark eyes and very white teeth named Alfonso. He pulled a face as though he could smell something distressing in the air and shook his head. “It’s a strange thing, this luck you have. Almost … unnatural.”
“Oh no,” Kyle said, shaking his head and purposely leaving the money in the center of the table.
He didn’t want to touch it if everyone was going to be upset.
“It’s just dumb luck. Nothing otherworldly about it, I assure you.
” He wondered how Felix, who had taught him to play properly, would feel about that particular accusation.
The old man had been called a name or two in his time, but Kyle wasn’t sure supernatural forces had ever been blamed for Felix’s unusual adeptness with the cards.
For all his faults, the old man was a devout Christian and would likely be highly offended by the insinuation.
They were playing in the dining car of the train. The trip back east had been long and dull so far, especially for someone used to being busy from dawn till dusk. Playing cards was helping to alleviate at least some of Kyle’s growing boredom.
“I have a friend back home named Felix,” Kyle tried to explain.
“He’s a card sharp, and he might have given me a couple of tips on how to play better.
He’s a kind fellow who is always happy to show a curious soul a thing or two.
” That was putting it mildly. Felix was eager to show anyone how to play cards if it would guarantee him some new people he could eventually fleece of their money.
He looked at the men hopefully. “Should we have another round? I could impart some of Felix’s wisdom to you too.”
Lionel scoffed, looking very unhappy. “How can we keep playing when you keep winning all of our money?”
“That is a problem,” Kyle said. “What do you say we split the pot four ways? Then no one goes home with nothing.” Felix would have a fit if he saw this, Kyle knew, but what harm could it do?
The other three men stared at him.
“Are you serious?” Charlie asked. “Don’t you want the money?”
Kyle shrugged. “Not really. I just wanted something to do,” he said. “Don’t you want to learn to play better?”
Alfonso shook his head, making his black curls bob on his head. “We should play another game and see if we can’t win at least something back.”
This sparked a heated discussion between the three men.
Kyle waited patiently. Time seemed to be something he had a lot of on this trip.
Time to do nothing. Back home in Unity, he would be feeding the horses, helping around the dairy farm, doing his laundry, or cleaning his cabin.
He would be doing something. On this train, where everything was done for him, there was nothing that needed his attention.
He was losing his mind and had already considered going up the engine and offering to shovel the coal into the furnace. He might just do that shortly.
“I can’t play another round,” Charlie said with a shake of his head, pulling Kyle from his thoughts. “My missus would have my hide if I lost more money. So, are we doing this or not?”
“What?” Kyle asked.
“Sharing the money?”
Kyle smiled. Then he reached out and took the money. He split the pile into four equal piles, one for each of them. Inside his head, he could hear Felix scolding him. The old man would never do this in a million years, which was how Kyle knew without a doubt that he was doing the right thing.
“You know, you’re okay,” Lionel said with a smile, taking his pile and putting the coins into his purse.
Charlie and Alfonso shook their heads but took their money too. Then Kyle got up, slipped his money into his purse, and went to rejoin his companions from Unity.
“You did it again,” Warren guessed with a smile as Kyle sat down with them. “You have the most uncanny luck. You’re not counting the cards, are you?”
“I would never be able to do something that complicated,” Kyle retorted. “Far too many numbers for my taste. Anyway, I got what I wanted from the whole thing.”
“Which was?” Michael asked, looking over the top of his newspaper.
“Entertainment,” Kyle said. “Being cooped up here on the train day in and day out is sucking the life right out of me. It’s so dull.”
Warren repositioned his spectacles on his nose and sighed. “You’re like a child. You can’t seem to sit still. What did your mother do with you when you were little and this unsettled?”
Kyle shrugged. “She would send me outside. I’d go and rub the horses down or muck out the stable.”
“Pity there isn’t a stable here,” Warren teased. Since he was the Unity mine’s accountant, he was along for the ride to New York to help Michael negotiate with Mr. MacGregor.
What Kyle was on this train for was a mystery to him. Warren and Michael had insisted he come along but had provided few concrete details about his role on this journey. He hoped that someone would tell him what he was supposed to do at some point. Preferably before they reached New York.
Michael shook out his newspaper and disappeared behind it again. Warren pulled a pencil from behind his ear and began to do sums in a little notebook he carried. This left Kyle with nothing to do. Again.
He got up.
“I think I’m going to head to the engine,” he said, peering out of the window at the rain streaking the glass.
It had been raining constantly since they entered Louisiana.
After days of water cascading from the sky in an endless waterfall, Kyle was sick of it.
He wondered if it ever stopped raining in this state, or if they had just entered a patch of bad weather.
He longed to see Texas’s sunshine and endless blue skies.
Having been raised in Massachusetts, he was used to cloudy, gray days, but since he had moved to Texas, he had become so used to sunshine that he actually could feel his mood dip as the days passed and all he saw was rain.
It was disconcerting. Kyle had always thought of himself as a positive, upbeat person.
But there really was nothing to do on the train but walk from one end to the other or read and play cards. A man could only do any of those things for so long.
Walking toward the engine, Kyle noticed that he was garnering a few looks from some of the men on the way. Two of them in particular. He wondered what that was about.
As he approached, the taller of the two started walking just in front of him, down the narrow corridor. His friend, a red-haired man, followed.
They looked familiar. Now why was that? Had they played cards before?
Or perhaps more likely the train was just so small they kept running into each other.
Constantly looking at the same faces over and over could make them all start to seem to belong to folks that Kyle felt he should know but didn’t.
Before moving to Texas, Kyle would never have picked up on the men watching them.
He would have assumed that they were just there, minding their own business like he was.
However, after a year or so of being attacked, shot at, chased, blackmailed, and almost blown up, his sixth sense had heightened considerably.
And so, when the redhead made his move, Kyle was prepared. The easiest thing he could do was wait until the last possible moment and then step to the side. The man careened into his friend in front of Kyle and they both sprawled on the carpeted floor.
A woman walking in the opposite direction squealed as the men fell at her feet and then genteelly hopped over them when Kyle offered his hand to help her.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling at him.
“My pleasure.”
He got distracted watching her walk down the corridor. That, of course, was a mistake. The next thing Kyle knew, the two men were on their feet again and had him in a headlock.
“Hand over the cash!” Redhead said. He had a knife in his hand all of a sudden.
Kyle watched the knife weaving this way and that in front of him.
“What cash?” Kyle asked.
“Don’t play dumb,” Tall said, squeezing Kyle’s throat.
Kyle coughed and pulled at the arm holding him. It was like pulling at an ironwood vise. “Oh, right,” he choked. “That money. You can have it.” He dug into his pocket and pulled his money out. “Here you go.”
He smiled at Redhead, holding out the bag.
The man’s little piggy eyes grew wide, and he reached for the bag, but not before Kyle threw it down the corridor. Well, he meant to do so, but just at the last moment, Tall pulled him off balance and the bag flew in a high arc, landing with a smack between Redhead’s eyes.
It couldn’t have gone better if Kyle had planned it.
When Redhead began to scream and carry on about his face being ruined, Tall lessened his grip on Kyle. At that point, with a well-placed kick, Kyle was able to bring his assailant to his knees.
“What’s going on here?” a commanding voice demanded.
Kyle turned to find the conductor and a couple of the train’s security guards standing behind him. He beamed.
“You’re just in time. These fellows were trying to—” Kyle began, but was cut off by Redhead and Tall speaking over him.
“He attacked us,” Tall moaned.
“Hit me in the eyes,” Redhead wailed.
The conductor narrowed his eyes. “Is that so?”