Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 59

It took Hala a good twenty seconds before she could get her muscles to relax and her eyes to open. She gritted her teeth at the burning pain in her hip as she looked all around her.

To her left and down the tracks, red lights glowed at intervals all the way to the snow-blanketed mouth of the terminal. Hala could make out, about fifty feet ahead of her, the dark hulks of the suburban MARC trains. She smelled diesel exhaust and heard the rumble of the Acela’s engines warming and the chatter of the last few grateful travelers boarding the train bound for New York City.

Hala got out her phone and checked the time: 6:47 p.m. She had eighteen minutes to get into position and get ready. Limping toward the far end of the dark commuter train, she heard the Acela’s wheels begin to squeal across the tracks, pushing north.

She stood in the darkest shadows, feeling the effects of the painkillers start to seep through her as she ripped open the first of the Christmas presents and watched the train leave the terminal. Weary travelers were visible in the lit windows.

Hala wondered if these train passengers would look back on this day and feel the way people who’d been late to work at the World Trade Center on 9/11 did: confused and haunted by the random circumstances that had led to their survival.