“Not so fast,” Mary Alice said. She rummaged in her fanny pack and brought out a handful of pills, tiny and bright red. “Take these.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re already limping and I can barely hold myself vertical. We’re too old to have days like this without a little pharmaceutical assistance.” She dropped some of the pills into my hand.
“What kind of pharmaceutical assistance?”
Mary Alice shrugged as she palmed her pills into her mouth. “Hell if I know. Nat gave them to me. Said to take them if I needed a boost.”
Knowing Natalie, the pills were probably some unholy cocktail of uppers and painkillers, but I wasn’t fussy. I’d learned a long time ago to do whatever I had to in order to finish a job. I dry-swallowed three of the pills and stuffed another two in my pocket for later.
We headed down the corridor in the direction Marilyn had run. We found Helen at the far end of the carriage, outside the compartment where we’d left Jovan Muric’s henchman. She was carrying Marilyn’s backpack, and looked almost entirely unruffled. Only a single lock of hair was out of place, and she tucked that neatly behind one ear as she looked us up and down.
“My god,” she began.
“Don’t start with me, Helen,” Mary Alice warned. “I’ve had a challenging few minutes.”
I gestured towards the backpack. “I take it you found Marilyn?”
She nodded to the door she’d just closed. “I left her in there with a broken arm. I thought we could lock her in and let her figure out how to explain to the Montenegrin police what she’s doing with a dead man.”
“Elegant,” I said. “But we need something to hold it closed.”
Helen took off her wimple and—with a little help from the knock-off Swiss Army knife Mary Alice was carrying—cut it into strips. We used a handful of these to tie the door handle to the grille of the air vent in the wall.
“Will that hold her?” Mary Alice asked. “A broken arm might not be enough to slow her down.”
“Oh, she’s not going anywhere,” Helen assured her. “It’s a compound fracture.”
Mary Alice went a little green around the gills and held up a hand. “No details, Helen. You know I cannot handle bones sticking out of flesh.”
She shuddered and Helen turned to me. “What about Galina and Tamara?”
“Gone,” I told her.
“Well, that simplifies matters,” Helen replied. “No other bodies to worry about.”
“We need to get off this train,” I said, glancing down the corridor to where the conductor had just shuffled into the toilet compartment. “Before he finishes zipping up.”
We didn’t discuss it further; there was no need. Three women had gone flying off the train and another one was locked in a compartment with a dead man without a head. And somehow we had managed all of that without being detected. It was a minor miracle, and I made a note to drop a few euros as an offering to St. Harlampy should the opportunity arise.
“Wait a minute,” Mary Alice said. She darted back to thecompartment we’d started in as Helen and I headed for the open door. I leaned out, squinting into the darkness to survey the track.
“It looks like there’s a slowdown coming. It’s our best chance for getting off,” I told Helen. “Mary Alice better hurry her ass up.”
We’d left the viaduct behind, climbing away from it into the stony mountains. I couldn’t see it then, but I knew from Helen’s Lonely Planet that those grey peaks were melting off the last of their winter snows, the lower slopes studded with scrubby-looking pines and bushes. The train track itself had a few safety lights which meant I could see a little distance. For most of the next stretch, the ground fell straight away, and jumping off the train would mean plunging into the valley below. But coming up was another tunnel—there were 254 altogether which was another thing I learned courtesy of Helen’s guidebook—and the train would slow down going in. And right where it slowed, the ground leveled up a bit, forming a shelf with a gentle slope instead of a dead drop. At the edge, where the shelf broke into the gorge, a few thorny bushes huddled together—all that would stand between us and a messy end to a truly shitty day.
I tried not to think about Nat as I calculated what would happen if we missed our window of opportunity. I glanced back. Mary Alice still wasn’t out yet, and we had seconds left. I pushed Helen in front of me. “When I count to three, jump out as far as you can,” I instructed her. “Then tuck and roll and pray to Jesus.”
She didn’t argue. She gently tossed the backpack out thedoor, wincing as it landed and rolled away, but that was better than it being crushed under her as she somersaulted down the slope. She gave me one last look—her lips pressed together grimly, then nodded, more to herself than me, I think. The last I saw of her was her nun’s habit fluttering out behind as she threw herself off the train. I held on as long as I could, waiting for Mary Alice, but she wasn’t showing.
“Goddammit,” I muttered. But we were out of time. I went at a run, hoping to get as much distance from the train as I could when I launched. I had a moment of weightlessness as I flew out over the little slope, then a landing on ground so fast it knocked the wind flat out of me. I would have taken a minute to get my breath back, but I was rolling, falling towards the line of brittle little bushes that marked the end of the slope. I threw out my hands, scrabbling at anything that would give me a handhold. The rocky ground slid through my fingers, pebbles tumbling and falling all around me as I rolled. Finally, my hands brushed something that wasn’t rock. I grabbed wildly at something thin and twiggy, and I held on for dear life. I was happy not to be falling anymore, but I also knew one wrong move could hurtle me through the thin wall of bushes and over the cliff. I lay perfectly still, whooping air back into my lungs.
“Billie?” From a little distance away I heard Helen’s voice, muffled and wheezing.
“I’m here,” I managed after a minute. I sounded even worse than she did.
“You alright?”