“Sure,” the woman said quickly. Her husband gave her a withering look. “We’d be glad to help.”
George shook his head. “Really-I don’t need-”
“Nonsense,” Madeline said quickly. Then to the couple: “I really appreciate it. He’s so stubborn. And I don’t think his balance is too great with that bump on his head.”
“No problem,” the husband grumbled, giving in to his wife’s good nature.
Madeline slid her arm around George’s waist, and the husband did the same on the other side. They began slowly walking him toward the rear of the train, where the medical attendant’s area lay. The wife walked ahead of them. “Are you okay?” she asked George.
He exhaled in exasperation. “This is totally unnecessary!”
“See how stubborn he is?” Madeline said to the wife. Inside, though, she knew it wasn’t stubbornness but calculated strategy. If he showed her the wound now, she’d know he was the creature. His refusal convinced her he was in fact her hunter. She had to get away while he was distracted.
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 the remaining stairs. She’d almost convinced herself it couldn’t really be MacCready but must be the creature. But seeing George-that meant one of them was the creature. Didn’t it? She furrowed her brow.
Throwing himself at the Sickle Moon Killer, George knocked the old man sprawling, both of them landing violently amid the seats.
“Someone call train security!” George yelled out.
Madeline gripped her arm where she had been cut. Blood seeped through the material, soaking her hand.
The observation car exploded with activity, people crying out in surprise and yelling for security.
George struggled with MacCready on the seats, restraining the hand with the flaying knife. Madeline darted forward, twisted the hand painfully, and wrenched the knife from the man’s grip. His face contorted in fury when he saw her. Old, powerful rage and fear welled up within her, hatred filling her mind. Creature or not, she hated this man for what he had done, for haunting her all these years and killing the only person who had ever really loved her.
Her hand balled into a fist, and before she’d made the conscious decision, she pounded him in the face, his nose exploding with an audible pop. Blood sprayed out, flecking George’s face as he struggled to keep the man down.
“I fucking hate you!” she yelled, pounding him again, this time connecting with an eye. Her left hand joined the rain of violence, and she landed blow after furious blow, including one to the throat that left him choking and gagging.
And then uniformed officers grabbed her and pulled her off MacCready. One restrained her while the other pulled George away.
“Are you okay, sir?” the portly, younger officer said to MacCready, obviously seeing him as some sort of elderly, innocent victim of a violent attack.
“He’s the killer!” Madeline yelled. She thrashed in the restraining grip of the officer behind her, so angry she just wanted to pound the old man and the cop into oblivion.
By now all the passengers in the observation car and the snack bar below had gathered around the fight. “She’s right!” a man said. “The guy had a knife!”
“He cut her!” another added.
“Is this true?” asked the officer who held her, a lean older man with wispy white hair.
“Yes, damn it!”
The cop released her, and she grabbed her arm again, the sleeve completely soaked now in her blood.
“Madeline,” George said to her, pushing past the portly train cop to come to her. “Are you all right?”
She saw that his head had been neatly bandaged where she’d injured him.
She backed away, not sure what to make of him. “Stay back,” she warned, fists still balled at her sides.
Behind him, the older cop approached, pulled out his handcuffs, and stood the Sickle Moon Killer up on his feet while his hefty partner looked on.
George frowned. “I don’t understand. You leave without even saying good-bye. Then you ask me to come up here to get you and practically bash my brains in!”