Exhibit C

The metal screamed, the briefcase flew, and I saw his face—Arthur Victor—watching my life's work scatter across the floor.

The shriek of tortured metal is the first thing that registers, a high-frequency scream that rips through the low rumble of the train and the quiet murmur of the afternoon passengers. It’s a sound that doesn’t belong, a sound of catastrophic failure. My stomach lurches, a violent, sickening heave that sends the lukewarm coffee from my paper cup sloshing over my hand. The burn is a distant, secondary sensation. My body is already bracing, muscles coiling tight, my knuckles white where I grip the worn leather handle of the briefcase resting on my lap. The world outside the window—a blurry smear of white snow and grey, skeletal trees—tilts at an impossible angle.

Then comes the jolt. Not a bump, but a full-body concussion. It’s as if the train car was picked up and slammed back down onto the tracks by an angry god. My head snaps back, striking the thinly padded headrest with a dull thud that echoes in my skull. My teeth clack together hard enough to make my jaw ache. The briefcase, the sixty-pound albatross I’ve been tethered to for the past seventy-two hours, is ripped from my lap. It flies. For a split second, it seems to hang in the air, a rectangular black hole against the sudden chaos of the car, before it smashes against the opposite seat’s armrest with a sound like a gunshot.

The clasps, the heavy-duty brass clasps I’d checked three times before leaving the office, burst. The case springs open like a grotesque mouth. And the contents, the meticulously organized, chronologically sorted, life-or-death contents, vomit out into the aisle. A blizzard of paper. White sheets, manila folders, tabbed dividers with my own neat handwriting on them—*Exhibit C: Laundered Asset Transfers*, *Exhibit D: Shell Corporation Schematics*—all of it fluttering, sliding, scattering across the grimy, slush-tracked floor.

A woman screams somewhere behind me. A man shouts, a sharp, angry curse. My own breath is a ragged gasp, trapped in my throat. My world has shrunk to the radius of this paper spill. My heart is a frantic hammer against my ribs, each beat a sickening reminder of the magnitude of this failure. The case files. The one and only complete hard copy of the evidence against Northgate Holdings. The evidence that was supposed to be delivered by hand, no couriers, no digital transfers, directly to the district attorney’s satellite office in Albany. My one job. My one single, critical job.

I’m on my knees before I even realize I’ve moved, crawling, scrambling into the aisle. The coffee I spilled is a sticky, brown puddle soaking into a stack of bank statements. A child is crying, a high, panicked wail. My hands are shaking so badly I can barely pick up the first sheet of paper. It’s a wire transfer confirmation, a seven-figure sum moving from a Northgate subsidiary to an offshore account in the Caymans. A key piece of the puzzle. I snatch it, my fingers leaving a damp, coffee-colored smudge near the signature line.

My focus is a pinprick, a desperate tunnel vision centered on the scattered documents. My hearing is muffled, as if my head is underwater. The panicked chatter of the other passengers is a distant roar. I need to get it all back. Every single page. I’m stuffing papers back into the ruined briefcase haphazardly, no order, no sense, just a frantic attempt to contain the disaster. My hair has fallen into my face, and I can feel a warm trickle of something—sweat or maybe blood from where I hit my head—running down my temple.

And then, I feel it. A stillness in the chaos. A focal point of calm that draws my attention like a magnet. I lift my head, pushing the damp hair from my eyes, and my gaze locks with someone across the aisle. He is sitting perfectly still, untouched by the lurch of the train. His overcoat, a tailored cashmere thing the color of a winter sky, is unrumpled. His silver hair is impeccably in place. Not a single drop of his own drink, whatever it was, has spilled. His hands are resting on the polished head of a cane, and his eyes, a pale, piercing blue, are fixed directly on me. On the papers in my hands. On the disaster spread at my feet.

It's Arthur Victor. Senior Partner at Shaw, Victor, & Caine. Lead counsel for Northgate Holdings. The man I’ve spent the last six months of my life building a case against, a man I’ve only ever seen in grainy deposition videos and courtroom sketches. And he is here. Watching me. A faint, almost imperceptible smile plays on his lips. It isn't a smile of amusement. It's a smile of predatory recognition. Of opportunity. The train car has stopped moving, but for me, the world has just ground to a complete and terrifying halt. The cold, which had been a dull presence at the edge of my awareness, now floods the space between us, a physical entity that promises a long, hard freeze.

My blood runs cold, a slushy, icy sludge in my veins that has nothing to do with the winter air seeping through the train's seals. The background noise of the car rushes back in, sharp and overwhelming. 'What was that?' a man in a rumpled suit barks from a few rows ahead. 'Did we hit a drift?' 'My daughter—is she okay?' a woman’s voice, high and tight with fear. 'Is anyone hurt?'

I can't breathe. My lungs are two frozen sacs. Arthur Victor’s gaze doesn’t waver. He sees it all. He sees the panic in my eyes, the Northgate letterhead on the papers I’m clutching, the broken briefcase that is my career, my case, everything, lying in ruins. He gives a slow, deliberate blink. It’s a gesture of finality, of judgment. In that single, infinitesimal moment, the aisle of this stalled Amtrak car ceases to be a public space. It becomes a courtroom, and I am the witness, the evidence, and the accused, all at once. And he, the opposing counsel, has just been handed an unexpected, catastrophic advantage. My frantic gathering of papers slows. My movements become clumsy, robotic. He knows. He knows what this is.

“Everything alright over there, young lady?” The voice is smooth, laced with a disingenuous, grandfatherly concern. It’s Victor. He’s speaking to me. The entire car, desperate for a focal point, for some explanation, goes quiet. Every head turns. I’m pinned by a dozen pairs of eyes. I feel a hot flush of shame and fear creep up my neck. I look like a mess. A clumsy, panicked kid who can’t hold onto her paperwork.

“Fine,” I manage to choke out, the word tasting like ash. I stuff another handful of documents into the briefcase, the pages crinkling in protest. “Just… clumsy.” “Quite a spill,” he observes, his voice resonating with false sympathy. He makes a small gesture with his hand, a flick of the wrist. “Looks important. You should be more careful with client materials.” The words are simple, innocuous. But the emphasis on *client materials* is a surgeon’s scalpel. It’s a signal, a quiet declaration for my ears only. *I know what you have.*

A few other passengers are getting to their feet, their voices a rising tide of confusion and irritation. “What the hell is going on? Conductor!” “I’m going to miss my connection in Albany.” “It’s getting cold in here.” The murmurings swell, a chorus of inconvenience turning to anxiety. They are starting to see me not as a fellow victim of the stoppage, but as a strange, frantic girl making a scene, a weirdo on her hands and knees amidst a sea of paper. I can feel the shift in the car’s atmosphere. Victor orchestrated it with a single sentence. He’s turned their attention, subtly redirected their burgeoning panic towards me, the anomaly.

I shove the last of the visible folders into the briefcase. I know I haven’t gotten it all. I can feel the slickness of a few pages still under the lip of the opposite seat, but I can’t risk drawing more attention by crawling around on the floor. I slam the lid shut, but the broken clasps won’t catch. It’s useless. I have to hold it closed with both hands, hugging the bulky, ruined case to my chest like a shield. It feels heavy, impossibly heavy, weighted with the gravity of my failure.

My hands are shaking, a violent tremor I can’t control. I try to push myself up, but my knee, which must have slammed into the metal seat frame during the jolt, screams in protest. I bite back a cry of pain, my vision momentarily swimming with black spots. I’m vulnerable, exposed. And Victor is watching my every move, his expression a mask of detached, clinical interest. He’s assessing me, I realize. Gauging my response, my level of panic, my competence. He’s looking for the cracks. And right now, I’m nothing but cracks.

A heavy-set man in a blue uniform pushes his way down the aisle. His face is ruddy from the cold, his expression a permanent scowl etched into a landscape of wrinkles. “Alright, alright, folks, let’s stay calm. Everybody stay in your seats.” His voice is a gravelly bark that commands attention. The Conductor. He stops short when he sees me, still half-kneeling in the aisle. “What’s all this?” he grunts, gesturing to the scene with a thick thumb. Before I can answer, Victor speaks again. “The young lady had a bit of an accident. Her bag flew open.” His tone implies I’m a liability, a piece of chaos in an already chaotic situation. The conductor, Gus, as I’d later learn his name was, gives me a look of pure annoyance. “Well, get it cleaned up and get back in your seat. Last thing I need is someone slippin’ and crackin’ their head open.”

He’s not helping. He’s just another obstacle, another pair of eyes judging me. I finally manage to struggle to my feet, my leg throbbing, the briefcase clutched in a death grip. I limp back to my seat and collapse into it, shoving the broken case onto the seat beside me, trying to cover it with my coat. It’s a flimsy disguise. The damage is done. The evidence is compromised, and the enemy is five feet away, watching my every pathetic, frightened move.

The power in the car flickers, the overhead lights buzzing erratically. Then, with a final, pathetic hum, they die. A collective groan rises from the passengers. We’re plunged into a dim, grey twilight, the only illumination coming from the vast, unforgiving whiteness of the snow-covered landscape outside. The emergency lights, thin strips along the floor, flicker on, casting long, eerie shadows that dance like ghouls. The ventilation system whirs to a stop. The silence that follows is profound, broken only by the whistling of the wind outside and the frantic beating of my own heart. The heat is gone. The real cold is coming.

Hours crawl by. Or maybe it’s minutes. Time has lost its meaning, stretching and compressing in the dim, freezing train car. The grey light from the windows has faded to a deep, bruised purple, then to an inky, starless black. The only light now is the sickly green glow of the emergency strips and the intermittent, desperate flare of a cell phone screen. My own phone died an hour ago. I’d watched the battery icon turn from red to black with a sense of sickening finality, as if a lifeline had just been cut.

The cold is no longer just an inconvenience; it's a physical presence. It’s a predator. It seeps through the metal walls of the car, through the double-paned glass now thick with a crystalline layer of interior frost. It works its way through the fabric of my coat, my sweater, my skin, settling deep into my bones with a persistent, grinding ache. My fingers are stiff and numb, my toes are burning pins and needles. My breath plumes in front of my face, a ghostly cloud in the faint light. Every shiver that wracks my body is a violent, uncontrollable spasm.

The other passengers have huddled together, a miserable knot of humanity in the center of the car. The man with the missed connection, the young mother and her now-sleeping child, an elderly couple wrapped in a shared blanket—they’ve formed a small, shivering island of shared misery. They talk in low, hushed tones, their voices brittle with fear and cold. I remain separate. An outcast. Victor’s subtle machinations had worked perfectly. My frantic scramble for the papers, my subsequent reclusiveness, hugging a broken briefcase to my chest—it all painted a picture of instability. They give me a wide berth. They look at me with suspicion. *What’s in the bag? Why is she acting so strange?*

And Victor… Victor remains in his seat across the aisle, an island of perfect, infuriating composure. He hasn’t moved. He hasn’t shivered. He seems entirely unaffected by the plummeting temperature, as if he generates his own personal climate of cold, corporate indifference. He hasn’t spoken to me again, but I feel his eyes on me constantly. A heavy, physical pressure in the darkness. He’s waiting. He knows the cold is his ally. He knows that desperation, fatigue, and fear are the best tools of interrogation. He’s letting the environment do the work for him. This isn’t a train car anymore. It’s a holding cell. A pressure cooker. And he’s just waiting for me to break.

I need an ally. I need a distraction. I need to get out from under his unwavering surveillance. My gaze falls on Gus, the conductor. He’s been moving through the car for the last hour, his gruff demeanor a thin veneer over a deep-seated sense of duty. He’s checking on the elderly couple, trying to get a signal on his two-way radio, his face grim in the green glow from the floor. He represents a semblance of order in this frozen chaos. And he’s the only other person in this car who isn’t looking at me like I’m a problem.

I take a deep, shuddering breath, the icy air stinging my lungs. I need to move. I need to do something other than sit here and freeze and wait for Victor to make his move. Forcing my stiff limbs to obey, I stand up. My knee protests with a sharp, grinding pain, but I ignore it. I pull my coat tighter around myself and make my way toward the front of the car where Gus is wrestling with a stuck emergency supply closet.

“Anything I can do to help?” My voice is a hoarse croak. It sounds foreign in the oppressive quiet. Gus grunts without looking at me, yanking on the metal door. “Doubt it. Damn thing’s frozen shut. Got blankets and water in here.” “Let me try,” I say, my voice a little stronger this time. “My hands are smaller.” He stops, turning to look at me for the first time. He studies my face in the gloom, his expression unreadable. I can feel Victor’s eyes on my back. This is a risk. Any interaction can be twisted, used against me. But sitting still is a greater risk.

Gus hesitates for a moment, then gives a curt nod and steps aside. “Be my guest.” The latch is a simple metal tab, but it’s encased in a thin layer of ice. My fingers, numb and clumsy, can’t get a purchase. I fumble with it for a moment, my frustration mounting. This was a stupid idea. Now I just look useless again. Then, a thought sparks. I pull the sleeve of my sweater down over my hand, using the rough wool to get some friction on the icy metal. I pull. Nothing. I reposition my feet, putting my weight into it, and pull again, a sharp, upward jerk. The ice cracks with a sound like breaking glass, and the latch gives. The door groans open.

Gus lets out a low whistle. “Huh. Not bad.” It’s the closest thing to a compliment I’ve heard all day. Inside the closet are stacks of thin, foil-like emergency blankets and several gallon jugs of water. A wave of relief, small but potent, washes over me. It’s a tangible victory in a situation defined by helplessness. “Here,” I say, my teeth chattering too hard to speak clearly. “Let’s get these passed out.”

We work in a strange, unspoken partnership. He hands me the blankets, and I carry them to the huddle of passengers. The man who was worried about his connection takes one without a word, his earlier hostility replaced by a weary gratitude. The young mother thanks me, her voice trembling, as I drape a second blanket over her and her sleeping child. I am no longer just the weird girl with the broken briefcase. I am a resource. A helper. I’m weaving myself back into the fabric of the group.

I save a blanket for myself, wrapping it around my shoulders, the crinkling foil a loud counterpoint to the whistling wind. I move back to my seat, my fortress, and huddle down, the briefcase pressed between my side and the wall of the train. The blanket does little to stop the bone-deep cold, but it’s a psychological barrier. A thin layer of silver armor.

I glance over at Victor. He’s watching me, of course. But his expression has changed. The detached amusement is gone. Now, there’s a flicker of something else in his pale eyes. Annoyance? Respect? I can’t tell. But I’ve shifted the dynamic. I’m no longer just passive prey. I’ve allied myself with the car’s authority figure. I’ve made myself useful. I’ve taken a tiny sliver of control back.

Gus makes his way over to my seat, a half-empty water bottle in his hand. “You alright?” he asks, his voice low. “You took a nasty knock when we stopped.” “I’m fine,” I lie. My head is pounding and my knee feels like it’s on fire. “What happened? Why did we stop?” He shakes his head, his expression grim. “Switch froze up the line. Blew a transformer. We’re stuck. Rescue crew’s on its way from Syracuse, but the snow is comin’ down hard. Could be hours. Could be morning.”

Morning. The word hangs in the frozen air between us, heavy with dread. Another six or seven hours in this freezer. I’m not sure I can make it that long. I’m not sure any of us can. “We need to conserve heat,” I say, the words coming out before I’ve even thought them through. It’s the paralegal in me, the part that organizes, strategizes, finds solutions. “If we move everyone to one end of the car, the combined body heat might make a difference. We can use luggage to block the drafts from the doors.”

Gus looks at me, really looks at me, a glimmer of appraisal in his tired eyes. “Smart,” he says, with another curt nod. “Alright, let’s do it.” He becomes my amplifier, his authoritative voice cutting through the passengers’ lethargic misery. “Alright, listen up! We’re movin’ everyone to the front of the car. Grab your bags, find a seat. We’re gonna try and stay warm.” Slowly, groggily, the passengers obey. They shuffle forward, a miserable, shivering procession, dragging their belongings with them. I stay back, using the activity as cover.

While Gus is directing traffic, I turn my attention to the briefcase. I have to know what, if anything, is missing. I have to try and restore some semblance of order. My back is to the rest of the car, my body shielding the case from view. My numb fingers struggle with the pages. They feel brittle, alien, in the cold. I can’t see anything in the oppressive darkness. It’s impossible.

“Leaving so soon?” The voice is right behind me. Victor. He’s standing in the aisle, his tall frame cloaked in shadow, the only thing clear is the glint of his silver-headed cane. He didn’t move with the others. He stayed behind. With me. “We’re moving to the front,” I say, my voice flat, trying to betray nothing. I start to stand, to join the others, but he doesn’t move. He’s blocking my way. “A commendable display of leadership, Riley,” he says, his voice a low, intimate murmur. He used my name. My blood turns to ice. I never told him my name. Of course, he knows my name. He’s known who I was from the moment he laid eyes on me. “You’ve managed to ingratiate yourself with the conductor. You’ve won over your fellow passengers. A classic tactic. Establish a rapport with the jury.”

My heart is hammering against my ribs so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t crack them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He takes a step closer. The faint green light from the floor illuminates the bottom half of his face, casting his smile in a ghoulish, predatory light. “Oh, I think you do. You work for Michael Chen, don’t you? A bright kid, they say. Ambitious. The kind of person who gets tasked with… sensitive deliveries.” He knows everything. Every word is a hammer blow, dismantling my composure, stripping away my defenses.

“This is a ridiculous conversation,” I say, trying to push past him. He doesn’t budge. He’s a wall of tailored cashmere and cold intent. “Is it?” he says, his voice dropping even lower. “We’re stuck in a metal box in the middle of a blizzard, Riley. The normal rules have been temporarily suspended. There are no phones. No witnesses who understand what’s at stake. Just you, me, and a broken briefcase full of… let’s call them ‘discrepancies’.” He leans in closer, his voice a cold whisper in my ear. “That evidence is a liability. For you. For your firm. A good lawyer knows when a case is unwinnable. A smart person knows when to cut their losses before things get… worse.”

The threat is unmistakable, hanging in the frozen air between us. He’s not just trying to intimidate me. He’s making me an offer. A threat wrapped in the guise of paternal advice. Give up. Walk away. Throw the briefcase out into the snow and forget any of this ever happened. “I’m not having this conversation with you,” I say, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “You already are,” he counters softly. “Think about it, Riley. What are you hoping to accomplish? A junior paralegal against Northgate Holdings? Against me? Your boss is feeding you to the wolves to see what sticks. This isn’t your fight.” He’s good. He’s so good. He’s planting seeds of doubt, playing on my insecurities, my youth, my inexperience. He’s isolating me, not just physically, but psychologically.

“Get out of my way,” I hiss, my fear finally curdling into anger. He smiles, a thin, bloodless line in the darkness. “Of course.” He takes a deliberate step back, granting me passage. It’s not a retreat. It’s a calculated move. A demonstration of his control. He let me pass because he chose to. I stumble past him, my leg screaming, my whole body trembling. I join the huddled mass of passengers at the front of the car, burrowing into the small space Gus has saved for me. I can still feel Victor’s eyes on me from the other end of the dark, empty car. The distance means nothing. He’s occupied the space in my head, a cold, calculating presence that I can’t escape. The battle for the evidence is no longer a matter of keeping it safe. It has become a battle of wills. And I am so, so cold.

The blackness outside the windows is absolute now. The wind howls, a lonely, mournful sound, rattling the frame of the train car as if trying to find a way in. Inside, our small camp at the front of the car is a pocket of shared, shivering silence. The initial chatter has died down, replaced by the grim reality of our situation. People are conserving energy, succumbing to a cold-induced lethargy. The air is thick with the smell of damp wool and fear. Gus sits near the front, a stoic, unmoving statue, his radio occasionally crackling with static but no voices.

I have the briefcase on my lap, my arms wrapped around it, the emergency blanket draped over both of us. It’s a poor shield against the insidious cold, but it’s the only one I have. My thoughts are a frantic, chaotic spiral. Victor’s words echo in my head. *This isn’t your fight.* But it is. Six months of my life are in this case. Eighteen-hour days, skipped meals, cancelled plans. I’d poured everything I had into building this fortress of facts and figures, and I wasn’t going to let him dismantle it with a few well-placed threats.

But fear is a persistent, gnawing rat. What did he mean, *before things get worse*? We’re already stranded in a blizzard. How much worse could it get? He’s not a physically imposing man, not in a thuggish way. His power isn’t in his fists; it’s in his mind, his words, his influence. He can ruin careers with a phone call, dismantle lives with a lawsuit. What could he do to me out here, where none of that matters?

I need to see the evidence. I need to reassure myself that it’s all there. I need to regain my focus. The darkness is both a curse and a blessing. It hides me, but it also prevents me from working. I think of my phone, dead in my pocket. But there are other phones. The young mother, a few seats away, had been using hers to play a game for her daughter before it, too, went dark. But maybe it has a little life left. Just a little.

I wait. I watch the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of her shoulders as she dozes. Her daughter is curled up against her, fast asleep. I don’t want to wake them. I don’t want to draw attention. My heart is a slow, heavy drum in my chest. This is a bad idea. A risky idea. Victor is still at the other end of the car, a motionless shadow. But what choice do I have? I can't just sit here and wait for him to act.

Moving with excruciating slowness, I get up. Every muscle screams in protest. The cold has made my joints feel like they’re filled with ground glass. I limp over to her seat. “Excuse me,” I whisper, my voice barely audible. She stirs, her eyes fluttering open, wide with disorientation. “Sorry to wake you,” I say softly. “My phone is dead. I was wondering if yours had any charge left. I just need a light. For a second.” She blinks, confused, then nods, fumbling in her purse. She pulls out her phone and presses the power button. The screen flickers to life, a glorious, beautiful beacon in the oppressive dark. 1% battery. It’s a miracle.

“Thank you,” I breathe, taking the phone. “I’ll be right back.” I retreat, not to my seat, but to the small, cramped space of the lavatory at the very front of the car. It’s the only place with a door I can close, the only place I might have a moment of true privacy. The door groans as I pull it shut, the lock clicking into place with a sound that seems deafeningly loud.

The lavatory is an icebox, even colder than the main car. The metal toilet and sink are coated in a layer of frost. It’s tiny, claustrophobic, but it’s mine. I place the briefcase on the closed toilet lid. My hands are shaking again, this time from a combination of cold, fear, and adrenaline. I turn on the phone’s flashlight, the single, bright beam cutting through the darkness. The 1% icon glares at me. I have minutes, at best.

I open the briefcase. The papers are a mess, a chaotic jumble of my meticulously ordered work. I start sorting, my fingers so numb I can barely feel the edges of the pages. I’m looking for the key documents, the ones that tie the whole case together. The signed affidavits, the falsified shipping manifests, the internal emails.

My eyes scan the documents, the familiar text a small comfort. It’s here. It looks like it’s all here. I’m just reorganizing, I tell myself. Just putting things back in their proper folders. My breath fogs in the beam of light. I work faster, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against the clock of the dying battery. Folder A, Folder B… Then I get to Exhibit C. *Laundered Asset Transfers.*

This is the heart of it. The complex web of transactions designed to hide the money Northgate was skimming from its pension fund. I flip through the pages, the bank statements from shell corporations in Panama, the transfer orders, the cryptic accounting notes. It’s all as I remember it. Then I see it. Tucked in the back of the folder. A page I don’t recognize.

It’s not a bank statement. It’s an internal corporate authorization form. A capital expenditure request for a ‘consulting fee’ paid to a firm I’ve never heard of—‘Vanguard Strategic Solutions’. The amount is staggering. Exactly the amount that went missing in the fourth quarter of last year. It’s a smoking gun. A direct link, not just a circumstantial one. How did this get in here? My boss, Michael, and I went over this file a dozen times. This was never in here.

My eyes drop to the bottom of the page. To the signature lines. The first is for the CFO of Northgate, a man we were already indicting. The second is the counter-signature, the final approval. The beam of the flashlight illuminates the crisp, black ink. It’s an elegant, decisive signature. A signature I would now recognize anywhere.

A. Victor.

The air leaves my lungs in a rush, as if I’ve been punched in the gut. My mind struggles to process what I’m seeing. It doesn’t make sense. He’s their lawyer. He’s not an executive. He wouldn’t be signing off on internal financial transfers. Unless… unless he wasn’t just their lawyer. Unless Vanguard Strategic Solutions was his. Unless he wasn’t just defending the fraud. He was a part of it. An architect. This document doesn’t just implicate his client; it implicates him directly.

The phone screen flickers. The battery is about to die. No. Not yet. I stare at the signature, burning it into my memory. This changes everything. His presence on this train isn’t a coincidence. It can’t be. He wasn’t just here by chance. He must have known I was transporting the evidence. He came for this. He came to get this document back, to bury it before it could ever see the light of a courtroom.

A wave of nausea rolls over me. I’m not just a paralegal carrying evidence. I’m a witness. And he’s not just the opposing counsel. He’s a cornered criminal. The phone screen flickers again, then dies, plunging me into absolute, suffocating darkness. The silence of the tiny room presses in on me, amplifying the sound of my own ragged breathing.

I stand there for a moment, my mind racing. I have to get this document somewhere safe. Separate it from the rest. But where? My pockets? He could search me. There’s nowhere to hide. The train is a sealed tomb, and he is the monster inside it with me.

A soft click. My blood freezes. It’s the sound of the lavatory door lock turning from the outside. A key. Gus has a key. But it’s not Gus’s heavy, grunting presence I feel on the other side of the thin metal door. It’s a chilling, silent stillness. The door swings open without a sound. A tall, dark silhouette fills the doorway, blocking the faint green light from the car. The silver head of a cane glints in the darkness.

And a voice, low and devoid of all warmth, whispered right beside my ear, 'Find something interesting, Riley?'