Chapter 1 - The Horn in the Glass
The train horn hit the car before the train did.
Grace Nolan felt it in her ribs—a long, savage blast that made the windshield tremble in its frame.
She was eight months pregnant, wrists burning from rope, one ankle still looped to the passenger seat. Rosa Alvarez was half inside the car through the shattered side window, blood running from a cut on her forearm.
Then Daniel grabbed Rosa by the back of her sweater and threw her into the rear seat.
“Daniel!” Grace screamed. “What are you doing?”
For one second, her husband looked exactly like the man who had once slept with his hand over her stomach because he said he liked feeling the baby move.
Then he slammed the door.
His mother, Victoria, dragged a thick plank across the outside handles and wedged it between the car and a concrete signal post.
Daniel stepped back.
Grace stared at him through the glass. “Please.”
He didn’t answer.
Victoria did.
“Everything will seem like an accident.”
The horn came again.
Closer.
Rosa was on her knees in the back seat, sawing at the rope around Grace’s wrists with a broken piece of window glass.
“Don’t pull,” Rosa snapped. “You’re making it tighter.”
“I’m trying not to die.”
“I know. Stop helping.”
It was such a stupid sentence that Grace almost laughed. Instead, a sob escaped her.
The rope finally opened.
Grace grabbed at the door handle. Nothing. She slammed her shoulder into it once, twice.
Outside, Daniel and Victoria were walking uphill through the weeds.
Not running.
Walking.
Like they had time.
Rosa leaned between the front seats. “Your foot.”
“What?”
“The parking brake.”
Grace looked down. The old sedan was angled across the rails. Daniel had left the transmission in neutral, but the parking brake was pulled hard.
Rosa reached for it.
“No,” Grace said. “We’ll roll into the train.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Rosa’s fingers wrapped around the brake.
Grace looked through the windshield.
The locomotive was no longer a light in the distance.
It had a number on its nose.
She could read it.
“Rosa—”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Rosa released the brake.
The car lurched.
May you like
Grace’s stomach dropped as steel screamed beneath the tires.
And the sedan began rolling backward down the tracks—directly toward the oncoming train.
