Malcolm had been lying on the other bunk, hands behind his head. Her suggestion didn’t move him. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. It’s one hell of a risk.”
Glancing out into the short corridor, she came to his bunk and sat on the edge, studying his eyes. “I expected an argument.”
Malcolm propped himself up on an elbow. “We might have a little more time to spare, but not much. Alfie and the kid are out there, which means the monsters aren’t far away. Probably hiding in somebody’s cellar or something. If we’re here when the sun goes down, we’re dead, and when they find Maggie’s body—”
“They might not. The dust I covered her with—”
“I’ve been shot and I’ve been stabbed, but no matter how much pain was involved, it happened fast and I knew it was over. I would either die or I’d heal. I know some hard men, soldiers who are almost like monsters themselves, but even those guys have limits.They’re human, and so are we. They start in with real torture, I will absolutely tell them what they want to know, and so will you.”
Jennie nodded slowly. “So how long can we afford to wait before we don’t have a choice?”
“Another hour at most.”
“Then we’d better start figuring out how to get the drop on them.”
Despite his humming and the way he’d reclined on the bunk, Malcolm felt a dreadful urgency in his bones. A woman capable of doing what Jennie had done last night, coming to their rescue the way she had—not to mention traveling the world and educating herself about the occult—would not have left it until now to think about an escape. He knew that his sister had been considering options all along, that she’d have suggestions, and he suspected they would be similar to his own thoughts. Feign illness, or start assaulting each other, or yank the young uniformed cop toward the bars, smash his head against them until he dropped, then take his keys. So many things could go wrong.
“There’s still Violet,” he said.
“We have no idea where she’s gone,” Jennie replied. “If she’s smart, she’s a hundred miles from here.”
Malcolm shot his sister a hard look, not so much at the suggestion that Violet didn’t love him enough to stay and fight but the idea that she didn’t have the courage. Malcolm knew she did.
“She’s out there somewhere, trying to figure out how to help,” he said. “You can bet on that. Which means if we get out of here without her help, we’re going to have to find her before we can skip town.”
“If she’s around, like you say, she’ll know when it happens,” Jennie assured him.
Malcolm agreed. “What about Alfie and the kid?”
Jennie blinked. “What about them?”
“They’re not like Elias. They’re puppets. They’re not in control of what they’re doing. I just think if we can help them, we should.”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten the stakes.”
“I haven’t,” Malcolm assured her.
Footsteps echoed beyond the bars, silencing them.
Detective Hope appeared in the corridor, wearing a thin smile. “Awfully quiet in there. You guys having a little sibling quarrel, or just worried about talking in front of me?”
“Just impatient,” Malcolm said. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” the detective said. “Something about you two makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. You’ve got secrets, both of you.”
“Don’t we all?” Jennie asked.
The detective narrowed his eyes. “I shouldn’t like you. Too clever, by far. But I find I can’t help myself.”
Jennie laughed. “You’d be the first. I’ve never been the charming one.”
Hope pointed at Malcolm. “If he’s the charming one, you’re both in trouble.”
Malcolm stared through the bars at him. “Not exactly news. We’re in a jail cell.”
Detective Hope lit a cigarette, taking his time about it, then leaned against the wall opposite their cell. He studied them as if they were under a microscope.
“I just got off the horn with the police in Springfield,” the detective said. “The survivors from the derailment were taken to the municipal hospital there. Some of them had injuries none of the local patch-up spots could handle. The state police are tallying the casualties. All they’d tell me right now is that the number is very high and ticking upward. Some of those folks brought to Springfield Municipal were just too badly injured. The doc I spoke to there… he told me he’d never seen anything like it. Worse than the war, he said. Like a pride of lions got at them.”
