DEPARTURE
The train isn't empty, although it certainly feels that way. Whole sections currently sit unused. Coach cars. Dining car. Sleeper. All are vacant and silent save for the echo of the train itself clickety-clacking over the tracks. This train that can hold dozens, even hundreds, is occupied by only eight people.
Seven are alive.
One is dead.
That wasn't the case a minute ago, when the whole lot of them were very much alive. But unexpected things happen when traveling by train, and this, apparently, is one of them. It certainly took Anna Matheson off guard. Her reaction makes it clear this isn't the plan at all. She seems honestly distressed by the body now splayed flat-backed on the floor of the first-class lounge.
A strange reaction.
Anna has every reason to want the others dead.
Those others, by the way, are the six people aboard this train at her invitation. One that, had they know who was doing the inviting, all would have declined.
Your singular presence is requested on an overnightrail journey from Philadelphia to Chicagobeginning the evening of December 14aboard the Philadelphia PhoenixDeparting Philadelphia at 7 p.m. ESTArriving in Chicago at 7 a.m. CST
Not particularly compelling, as invitations go. It's 1954, after all. No one wants to spend thirteen hours on a train when United Air Lines can get you to Chicago in just under three. Anna knew this, of course, which was why she added a handwritten message on the back, specific to each recipient. Although their misdeeds are the same, their secrets are different.
Those individualized notes were all it took to get the six of them here. They didn't care that they had no idea who the invitation came from or why it was extended to them. Nor were they bothered by the lack of a way to RSVP. They all showed up at the scheduled departure time, invitation in hand. Now here they are—five guests, one hostess, her accomplice, and a corpse.
Not enough time has passed for color to drain from the dead person's face. Their eyes are wide open and aimed at the ceiling, and flecks of crimson stain the foam still bubbling at the edges of their mouth.
This, it's clear, was not a natural death.
Nor was it painless.
At least it was quick, the time between the first sign that something was amiss and sudden death totaling less than a minute. The victim didn't even have a chance to let go of the white linen yanked off a cocktail table as they fell. One end of the tablecloth remains gripped in lifeless fingers. The rest of it still clings to the table, soaked through with gin spilled from an overturned martini glass.
In another minute, someone will have the good sense to use a dry tablecloth to cover the corpse. Until then, everyone stares at it in combinations of shock and disbelief, none more so than Anna, over whose face ripple a thousand emotions. The biggest of them, though, is fear.
Because now that one of the passengers has been murdered—by someone else in that very car—she fears it's only a matter of time before it happens again.
Copyright © 2025 by Riley Sager. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
