Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“Oh.” Now that I’d indebted myself to the charade of pretending I didn’t know who he was, I had no choice but to continue with it. “The sun was in my eyes a bit. Thanks for sitting through it.”

“I asked you a question during the Q and A. I’m sorry if I was a bit . . . well . . . direct.”

“Don’t worry about it. Are you enjoying the trip?”

“It’s fine enough. It’s strange actually being here. I’ve thought about this trip for a long time.” His voice faded and his eyes looked past mine, like he was hypnotized by the rolling countryside, then he refocused with a sip of his beer. “Free booze. Can’t complain.”

“Are you here with someone?” I asked.

He shook his head a little. “Just me.”

It felt overly nosy asking about his second glass of champagne that morning. So I let the conversation fizzle and we sat in silence for a moment.

“My question, though. It’s just—” he started.

I’d had a feeling this was coming, and I cut him off like I was stealing his parking space. “You’ll understand I can’t talk about it. Legally.”

“I know. I know. It’s just, well, it’s funny that you’re here. Is all.”

I frowned. “Is it?”

“Because I was just reading your book on the flight over. One of those coincidences that aren’t really allowed in mystery novels, right?”

“Right. Well, you had to fly to Australia for this and I assume they sell my book at the airport. It’s not the wildest coincidence.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “For me it is.”

“That’s a long way to come. Favorite author? McTavish?” I assumed, given he rarely toured, that McTavish never traveled stateside. It seemed quite extreme to fly to Australia just to see one person, but, then again, it was coupled with an internationally renowned holiday. Maybe McTavish was simply the cherry and not the cake.

“It’s a rare opportunity.”

I half stood, knees bent but not quite risen, which was the most apologetic body language I could come up with to escape the conversation. The condensation from my undrunk beer pooled accusingly under the glass.

“I know you can’t talk about it.”

I was stuck, thighs burning, in my hovering stance. “I really can’t.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Not even hyp—”

“That person took a lot from you. Loved ones. Friends. They caused you pain. If you did—”

“I didn’t.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Fine.” I decided to indulge him.

“What would it have felt like? Revenge on this person.”

“There was no revenge. It was just survival.” This was true, but I paused for a second. Perhaps the two beers helped me forget the cautions of my legal team, perhaps I was just so sick of the posturing surrounding me, or perhaps it was Douglas’s beard, shaking like a bird had just taken flight from a treetop, hiding a quivering lip. Whatever it was, I added some truth: “It would have made me feel sad.”

“Sad?”

“Powerless instead of powerful. Which is what you might assume you’d feel before something like that happens. Hands around someone’s neck is control, right? No. Revenge has no power or control in it. Think of all the things that would lead you to that moment, all the things that had to go right, all the things that had to go wrong. I imagine it would feel like being a victim all over again.” I spotted the buses lumbering up the side of the track and stood up fully. “Hypothetically.”

As I left the bar, I glanced back and saw Douglas staring thoughtfully into his glass. Then he clinked it against my full one, in a solitary cheers.

I had an uneasy rumbling in my stomach as I made my way back to my room. It wasn’t so much the nature of the questions—we live in a world where people listen to the grisliest crime podcasts you can imagine while cooking dinner—it was the tone. It almost felt like he’d been asking for, well, permission. I hoped my answer had been suitably glum so that it couldn’t be taken as an endorsement.

Admittedly, that’s quite an analysis to give someone I’d only shared a third of a beer with. And I normally would have accused myself of overthinking it if, of course, he hadn’t just lied to me.

He’d definitely had two glasses of champagne at Berrimah Terminal.

So why had he said he was traveling alone?

And who was he traveling with?

Chapter 9

Juliette had the decency to lie about how good a time she’d had exploring the gorge. It was particularly artificial when she attempted to describe the forty-thousand-year-old rock paintings as so-so, but I appreciated the effort all the same.