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Heaving lungfuls of air, her body wanted her to rest. But she wouldn’t allow it. It also smelled funny—musty and stale. She rose on shaky legs and tried to open the back door. It wouldn’t budge. So she secured the whip to her belt before going up and over. With the train not at full speed, she jogged across the roof with relative ease.
Urgency nipped her tail.
She had the sense that if she didn’t end this fast, then it would be too late. She didn’t have the stamina she once had.
The third car from the rear was the one Sam hid out in. She’d seen him leap into it. Lying flat on her stomach, she put her ear to the roof. Too noisy. Nothing but the clickety-clack of train tracks. She wrapped her whip around her waist and then secured one end to an exposed U-bolt on the car roof. Then she eased her head over the side. The whip pulled tight, stopping her from slipping and meeting the tracks. She needed to lower herself enough to look inside.
Head over the side, her long silver hair streamed down from her ponytail. She gripped the sliding door handle and peeked through the two-inch gap. Dark inside. Musty. But light cracks through the wooden car revealed three Faithful in dirty white robes, masks off, talking. Sam was one. She also recognized the second. But the third was more familiar. He looked like one of the mercenaries Julius hired but he was dressed in the acolyte robe. Since when did he convert to a Faithful?
Didn’t matter.
What mattered was that she got her hands on the cell phone Sam used to contact Julius. Then Sloan could trace the calls made and find out where he was hiding. If Sam wasn’t the one who’d contacted Julius, then one of these other two must be.
Daisy tested the tension of her whip against the U-bolt and then flipped her entire body over the edge of the train. She twisted midair and dangled near the door. Her arms strained against her weight. Her feet kicked as the tracks whizzed below. On her exhale, she kicked open the sliding door and swung in.
Her bat was swinging for the head of the second Faithful before they registered she was there. She knocked him out and went for Sam.
“Give me your cell phone,” she demanded.
His eyes widened and he scrambled further into the dark cabin. Daisy launched after him, but the third Faithful grabbed her hair and yanked. Pain sparked in her scalp as she jerked backward. She cried out. A sliver of doubt hit her, of fear, and then vengeance filled her with red hot fury. Her face screwed up and she shut off her bodily sensations. There was no pain. It was the space of emptiness she’d survived in her entire life. The cold place that had kept her safe. She used the bat to sweep his feet out from beneath him. The Faithful hit the floor with a jarring thud.
She turned her back on the fallen Faithful and stalked into the dark recess.
“Give. Me. The. Cell,” she gritted out.
Sam reached for a second door in the back and hauled it open. Blinding wind rushed in and Daisy winced. It was only a second. But it was enough for Sam to toss the cell out.
“No!” Daisy reached for it, instinctively trying to catch it with her new gift, but she didn’t know how.
Horrified, she watched as the tiny handheld object wobbled in the air then continued sailing down to the tracks where it shattered into a million pieces.
“Fuck you, Falcon,” Sam spat. “You can’t stop what’s coming. No one can.”
The fury in her system compounded tenfold. It bubbled and sizzled and burned like the fire in the barrels back at the yard. That cell was her retribution. That cell was her forgiveness. Their clean slate. And he’d dashed it away.
Her fist tightened around the bat. Pain in her palm. She stared at the landscape whizzing past for long hard moments while heaving air into her abused lungs. And then the dam broke on her restraint. The fire in her body rose up her neck to coat her vision red. She rounded on Sam and punched him in the face. His head snapped back and hit the wooden cabin wall. Dazed, he slid down to land on his ass.
But she didn’t stop there. She kept hitting him. With her fist. With her bat. With her boots. She unleashed her pent-up rage at the world on him. The unfairness of it all. All the effort she put into being good. Useless. She took it out on Sam until his blood was as much on her face as his.
Then she rounded on the other two. One was still unconscious, but the third was awake and wide-eyed as he backed up against the wall.
“Where’s Julius?” she blurted.
He shook his head.
“Where are the kidnapped partners of the Lazarus family?”
He kept shaking his head.
She fisted his robe at the collar and shoved him. “Where!”
Daisy let go. He slumped. She raised her bat, ready. The Faithful whimpered and she pitied him. To end like this—
“He called from a landline!” The Faithful shielded his face. “That’s all we know.”
“What good is that to me?” she snarled, feeling that ire raise again.
“I don’t know. But that’s all we know.”
