Voracious - Alice Henderson [117]
The woman rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. My Reginald is the same way.”
When they pressed the door button and entered the space between the cars, Madeline suddenly cried out in alarm, “Oh, no! George, I left your wallet with all our money sitting on the seat! I have to go get it!” She turned to the kind woman. “Will you see that he gets to the clinic?”
The woman nodded. “Of course.”
“Thanks!” Madeline let go of George’s waist and returned to the previous car. She’d wait there for a few minutes, long enough for the couple to escort him down to the clinic, and then she’d move forward to the observation car.
When she’d waited another five minutes, she passed between the cars and entered the observation lounge. About ten people sat around in the molded plastic white seats, most staring out at the sunset beyond. A businessman read a newspaper, a teenage boy relaxed with an MP3 player. Two kids about five years old pounded each other with their fists while their dad told them in an annoyed voice to cut it out. No sign of “George.” He’d have to play along with the couple till he got rid of them. He wouldn’t risk killing them out of annoyance in such a public place.
Madeline slumped down next to an older man in hunting coveralls reading a newspaper in the bright overhead fluorescent lights. She exhaled. Tried to work out some tension in her shoulders with her fingers. She shut her eyes briefly, then opened them, taking in the tremendous black peaks silhouetted against the golden sky.
The older man next to her lowered his newspaper and turned his head to stare at her. Unsettled, she tried to ignore him, but he watched her so pointedly that at last she turned and met his gaze. Terror swept over her. The sad eyes. The kind, fatherly face that had deceived so many. The wicked mouth turned up in a grin, revealing crooked, chipped teeth.
Sam MacCready, the Sickle Moon Killer.
He looked at her with interest, then pivoted to fully face her. “You look surprised,” he said, his voice trembling with anger. “You didn’t buy that killed-in-a-prison-fight story, did you?”
“How did you … ?” she said, her mouth gone dry.
“Find you? With the right … persuasion … men can give away even their deepest secrets. It cost your dad a lot of skin, but eventually he caved.”
Madeline stared. The terror she’d known since losing Ellie gripped her, freezing her to the spot. It was him. The Sickle Moon Killer. Same worry-creased brow, but the hair gray now, the physique muscular from years of prison weightlifting. From his hairy arms to his glowering expression, he was exactly as she’d seen him in nightmares haunting her since that day by the river.
She stood up silently and backed away, her movement in slow motion as in a dream. But this was no dream. Everything was too harsh. The reek of cigarette smoke, the vibration of the train, the echoing voices of chattering train passengers.
She backed up to the car’s door, mind numb. She should stay where she was, she thought. By all these people. He wouldn’t try to kill her by all these witnesses. And he was human. She could hurt him. She could kill him, if necessary, to save her own life.
He stood up, walked over to where she stood by the door. She moved off to the side, keeping an escape route open. Several people climbed up the stairs from the small snack bar below, talking animatedly and pointing out the mountains to each other while crunching on nachos. They sat down where she and the Sickle Moon Killer had rested moments before. She didn’t take her eyes off MacCready, making note of the other passengers in her peripheral vision. Even still, the flash of the knife darted out so quickly she barely had time to leap away. The blade tore through her sleeve, nicking her.
“What the hell?” cried a familiar voice. George’s head appeared in the stairwell from the snack bar, and he bounded up